Dear Dr. Babooner,
I spend so much time doing my work-from-home job on the computer, I’ve set up a desk in my bedroom so I can take quickie naps when a work lull allows for it.
Lately I’ve been having this recurring dream where I become lost in a storm. Unsure of my bearings, I don’t know what to pay attention to anymore.
My world is transformed into a blizzard of information bits, all of them flying past my head in a swirling cloud of text and images that seems driven by some unyielding, spontaneously generated wind. Too tiny to catch but too big to ignore, each individual know-flake feels terribly significant until I look closely enough to see that it is made up of absolutely nothing. As I stumble through these mounting piles of apparently urgent but ultimately pointless distractables, I have a growing sensation that I am missing something crucial that I will never, ever find.
I always wake up the same way – tangled in the electronic device cords that form a hot, dusty web in the tiny space between my desk and the wall.
What does it mean?
Desperately,
Digital Dreamer.
I told Digital Dreamer she should stop sleeping in the same room with the computer. Your brain and the Internet are just two different types of electronic networks, and it is not healthy to bunk your precious noggin so close to all that commotion. Try resting next to a houseplant instead.
But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?
Trail Baboon 
Too tiny to catch but too big to ignore, each individual know-flake feels terribly significant until I look closely enough to see that it is made up of absolutely nothing.
🙂
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I agree… fabulous turn of phrase.
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DC, I mean DD: if you can fit in “in the tiny space between my desk and the wall”, maybe you need to have a big bed time treat each night.
I know I always do.
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
I’m with Dr. B on this one. Sleep near a house plant. BTW, that sense of “missing something” is right on. What you are now missing is….YOU. There is a world apart from what is on line. You have things reversed. Right now you think on-line is real, but it is the other way around. Try a digital vacation. You will find yourself in some solitude and in the world away from the computer.
Another great review of yesterday on the trail. The image of tim in a mini-skirt and fishnets is priceless. Especially with the image of his baboon leg hair sticking out of the fishnets.
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Ooh la la.
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ok, gotta go back and see that. I’ll deal with the present later!
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when life gets confusing i like to … well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVshkVF0SY
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keep those cards and letters coming kiddies, dr babooner is here to help you with whatever life throws at you. life isn’t working. ask dr babooner, lifes working fine but youre not ask dr babooner we are so lucky to have somene here to help us figure it all out , the cool part about charting your dreams is that if you keep track of them as time goes on they tell you something important. obviously life is messed up right now you don’t need a dreeam to tell you that but kep checking in and you will see when you re starting to turn the corner. i love watching dreams but i am not always crazy about what they tell me but like my dad always said dont ask if you dont want to know. sometimes the truth is not welcome medicine. sounds to me like there is a little work to do here dd. good luck and sweet dreams
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I spent the night dreaming my novel, maddeningly, repetitively so. Then woke up at 5:30 with the perfect solution to a hole I had in the story. I do not think I have ever dreamed a solution to a problem before.
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congrats. i find solutions to my dilemmas through dreams all the time. i hope you find this is a new regular occurrence for you too. its proof that we knew it all the time, you just need to step back and let it come to you. looking forward to the novel . now get to work on plugging in the solution.
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I dream artwork. Just have not had time to DO it yet. Great dreams.
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sketch it so it doesn’t get away
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I seem to only dream about houses. They start out as houses I theoretically know, but which are no more. Once you get inside them, they go on and on.
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I think Carl Jung would have said that houses are symbols for the self.
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I’ve heard that too, which is why I get seriously worried when I have the one where I have somehow managed to sell MY house(why I don’t know), and now am desperately trying to get another one, because we are living with my parents.
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FINALLY… someone else who has that same dream, islandgirl! What does it mean? I’ve been trying to answer that question for years!
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…although I’ve never had the trying to sell myself dream! Any architect trying to design the houses in my dreams would have stabbed themselves with their pencil long ago (am I dating myself with that comment?).
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I just heard about this cloud thing where we don’t have to keep CDs any more or even copies of them on our hard drives. It seems Google and Amazon both are working on clouds where we can stick our music and where it is presumably impervious to any type of loss. If you upload all your Willie Nelson to the clouds you could paint your hard drive with peanut butter and still be able to download your Willie anywhere on earth.
This amazes me. Where are these clouds? Does anyone own them? Can they actually store warehouses of music that never, EVER goes bad, or do clouds sometimes crash? Will space aliens be able to access these clouds (I assume they have no trouble guessing the sort of password most folks invent)? What, besides music, can be uploaded to the clouds for eternal life?
Jacque and other baboons seem to think that you are too involved with your computer, Digital Dreamer; but I’m thinking you aren’t involved enough. I’m hot to figure out how we can eliminate the dying part of life and move on to a process by which we don’t die but get uploaded to the clouds. I’m not sure what happens in those clouds, but floating around up there with all the music of the world seems like a better gig than sticking on earth and just . . . decomposing.
I’m trying to wrap my brain around the implications. Presumably, if we can migrate into the clouds, we would exist up there as something like files. And files can be edited! Oh joy! All my life I have wanted to edit myself. There are some lines of code in me that would be worth saving, just a few, but I’d sure be a more elegant thing if we could delete all the lousy programming that went into making me me. Some people fear the future, but me, I say “bring on the clouds.”
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Didn’t Judy Collins sing that years ago? “Bring in the Clouds?” Oh wait, that was Clowns. Well, that fits, too.
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Judy Collins did Send In the Clowns…I think Bring In the Clowns was George W.
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Both sides now was Judy Collins cloud song I think
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Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere, i’ve looked at cloud that way.
But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things i would have done but clouds got in my way.
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions i recall.
I really don’t know clouds at all.
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Both Sides Now was from Joni Mitchell’s Clouds album.
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Joni wrote it, Judy made it famous.
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I never did understand that. I thought Joni’s rendition so much better. Same thing with Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans.” Will never understand why Arlo Guthrie’s version was a hit and Goodman’s wasn’t.
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the problem is what if you are not in charge of editing. when you die here on earth you do become a file and the editing is left to those who remain, how are you remembered, what is left behind? you can leave excellent instructions but then you are hoping they are carried out and ot misconstrewed or disregarded. clouds… new big thing. casr off this mortal coil and hang in a cloud, heck with out all this mortal coil pleasure i am not sure where i would focus. music, good tasting food pleasurable physical sensations
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. – Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
i am going to a cloud seminar at mall of america later in the month for 6 hours or so to get more detailed info. . i think its 30 bucks. care for info?
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Tim, I suppose some folks might have to worry about who would edit their basic programming when they are uploaded to the clouds. Not a problem for me. I have a smart daughter who is highly informed about my character flaws. She can do no worse with the edit than I did with the original code.
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Aaah, Hamlet first thing in the morning. Thanks tim!
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To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do
come to Dunsinane,
But that the fear of something after death
Murders the innocent sleep,
Great nature’s second course,
And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
Than fly to others that we know not of.
There’s the respect must give us pause:
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The law’s delay, and the quietus which his
pangs might take,
In the dead waste and middle of the night,
when churchyards yawn
In customary suits of solemn black,
But that the undiscovered country from whose
bourne no traveler returns,
Breathes forth contagion on the world,
And thus the native hue of resolution, like
the poor cat i’ the adage,
Is sicklied o’er with care,
And all the clouds that lowered o’er our housetops,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery—go!
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Oooh, and Mark Twain as well. I love this group!
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Maybe DD needs to bear more fardels, or bare more fardels or just fardel more.
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i don’t recognize what i don’t recognize. is this a compilation clyde or is it a little of this and a little of that?
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Huck Finn
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DD needs to move the computer to another room and put a tank of tropical fish in its place. There is nothing more hypnotic than watching the mollys and the moons and the glowfish swim up and down and over and back.
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Or. Move computer into another room and get tanked.
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sounds like a nice tank. i love watching mollys and platies (you call them moons i may start .. it fits) , are glow fish the new neon ones? lots of action in an active but not agessive tank
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The glow fish are schooling fish so you have to get at least three so they can swim around together. We also have one gouremi who make a chomping noise when he gets fed, a loach, and a fat emerald catfish who keeps the bottom clean and uncluttered.
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sounds like a nice comunity tank. i am a fish guy of sorts
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watched regarding henry with harrison ford. what a delightful movie.
Your brain and the Internet are just two different types of electronic networks,
your brain and your potential brain are sometimes two different types of electronic networks. there’s the rub
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“Your brain and the Internet are just two different types of electronic networks.” I see this as validation of my idea of migrating to clouds rather than dying. For centuries men have struggled to accomplish a virtuous death. Me, I choose a virtual death.
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Morning all. DD’s problem is exactly why I don’t work from home. I like having a big wall between my work life and my life life. Besides, I’m sure I would be bad at it. It would be too easy to take a break to walk the dogs, to check out some movie on TNT, to work on a craft project for just a bit. Then I’d be stuck on the pc at 3 a.m., trying to catch up from all my “breaks”. Nope… cube farm for me does just fine!
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Besides, if you work from home, you don’t have a cube, and there’s no place to post your Dilbert cartoons.
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True, but I’ve resorted to posting them on the wall above my studio desk. And the fridge, of course!
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i just staple them to my cat
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ahem-this is why we have basements……
I would love to be working full time at home again. and tim, before you tell me to go for it, I assure you, all in good time, my pretty. I have a cunning plan……….
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For a change of scenery, DD, try sleeping in a graveyard for a night or two. Information is handled much more deliberately when it has to be carved into stone, and accordingly does not accumulate in overwhelming drifts.
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Good morning to all,
Digital, I also have a recurring dream, but it is about having trouble completing university course work. Maybe the dreams you and I are having are a minor form of Postraumatic Stress Disorder. Our bad dreams might be caused by stress with your stress caused by doing too much work on your computer and mine caused by doing course work that was not much fun. Maybe you and I need help from Billy Marty Barry. I don’t know if BMB can help us, but I’m sure he would have plenty to say about those things flying around in your dreams and about my dreams where I can’t find the locations of my final exams.
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Jim, I can relate to the not being able to find the final exam locations. Dreamt that for years.
I’ve even had recurring dreams of not being able to find the classrooms where the courses were taught. I’d go to one place, and the class would have moved to another, and I’d be perpetually late. A whole semester would go by without me ever having attended a whole lecture. Would wake up, heart pounding, and all sweaty from anxiety. Never had that problem in real life; have no idea what caused those dreams.
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I have that same dream. It is horrible and it is always too late to drop the class. I also have a dream fairly often that I still haven’t finished my dissertation and when I wake up, it takes me a few minutes to reassure myself that it was only a dream.
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That is an amazingly ubiquitous nightmare. Like you, I’ve wondered what inspires so many people to have exactly that phobia.
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And when I have these kinds of dreams, they always involve me being far away from wherever I’m supposed to be with no transportation at my beck and call!
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A number of years ago I found out that I wasn’t the only one that had has a night mare about school and taking exams. Over the years I have run into numberous people who have this sort of dearm and now it seems that some of you Babooners also have this type of dream. I think Billy Marty Barry would have a big line up of people to see him if he could come up with a therapy plan for dealing with this kind of dream.
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I take back what I said about only having the house dream. I did dream a couple of weeks ago that I had to get to classes at the s&h’s new junior high, which was strangely hybridized with the one I went to.
He thinks I should lay off the dark chocolate at bedtime…..
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I just read exactly that dream in a travel book.
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DD, you need to take more walks in the autumn woods, rake more leaves and jump in the piles you’ve made, read more books, bake more pies, create more art and sing more songs. In short, get away from that computer before it wraps you in its electronic tethers and you wake up in some cloud somewhere.
My (work) computer died last week and it took an entire week to get it back. During that time, there was an announcement from the DNR Powers-That-Be telling us that the DNR will migrate to the clouds this weekend. Because of the problems with my computer, I would not be going up to the clouds with the group. This led me to ask the IT guy, “Come the rapture, can I have your car?” He looked at me like I was already in some kind of cloud, but the WRONG one to be sure!
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i have mentioned nature deficit disorder before but here we are again. it is a circle isn’t it. http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/definitions/nature-deficit-disorder
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I sometimes end up sleeping in our “all purpose room” with the computer, but does it help that we turn it off at night?
This month’s Atlantic magazine has an article about the dark side of the whole Cloud thing…
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