Category Archives: Fantasy

education, Fantasy, History, Movies, Nature, Science, space, Travel, Uncategorized

Aliens Among Us?

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Back to my rant on reactionary headlines. Now I’m seeing news that some videos from quite a few years ago have been leaked from Navy archives, videos that the Navy says are “real”.  They show unidentified objects that have never been explained.  So now aliens exist and are among us according to the headlines.

Personally I’m not willing to say that we are the only life in the universe. As Matthew McConaughey says in the movie, Contact

However, I’m pretty sure that if there is other life in the universe, the human race doesn’t have it within itself to RECOGNIZE that life. I think that our definition of life is too small.  Even our definition of life is based on what we currently believe to be life:  “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants form inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity and continual change preceding death.”

I’m also pretty sure that any kind of life/civilization that can get to Earth is/will be way more advanced than we can imagine. So I’m not really concerned that the Navy video is really aliens – if aliens are here, they are advanced enough to keep themselves hidden from us.  For all we know, aliens do walk among us and we’ll probably never figure it out?

What place in the universe would you like to visit?

Fantasy, Gatherings, Stories, Uncategorized

Full Moon Dream

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I’m driving down the interstate and am drowsy. I jerk awake and it seems as if I am on a different road.  It is still two lanes in my direction (I feel like I’m going south) but there aren’t many street lights.  Seems more like a more rural highway.  I’m not sure how I could have gotten onto this road.  I see flashing lights in the distance and as I come to a stop, I see a grisly accident on my right.  It’s two mangled cars, but up on the hillside along the road, as if the intensity of the crash flipped them up onto the hill.

There are several cops and also mechanics at the stop. One of them uses a catapult-type contraption and shoots a spherical object up into the sky.  I’m not sure what it is.  While I sit in my car, I suddenly here a bang and feel something drop behind my head and catch in my hair.  I look up and there is a small hole in the ceiling of my car, about ¾ of an inch.  I get out of my car and show the hole to the cops and mechanics.

Suddenly I’m in a car repair shop and there are two mechanics telling me that it will take 30 days for them to get to the car and they’ll call me when it’s repaired. I tell them that they should call me when they are ready to work on it because I’m not leaving the car with them for 30 days.  They consult a bit and then say “well, if you can wait, we’ll do it right now.”   Then I’m rolling over and hitting the alarm.

As I’ve mentioned before, I subscribe to the “detritus swirling around in your subconscious” theory of dream interpretation, however for this particular dream, I’ve got nothing.

What do you think my dream means?

100 Words, Art, Fantasy, Gatherings, Music, Songs, Travel, Uncategorized

Strawberry Fields Forever

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In the news today, Strawberry Fields, the spot that sparked John Lennon’s imagination and led to their great song will be opening to the public soon. You will be able to walk the gardens and grounds and there is a visitor center with interactive exhibits that highlight Lennon’s early life.

According to the story, about 60,000 visitors gather at the gates to Strawberry Fields every year.

What spot inspired by song would YOU like to visit?

Fantasy, History, Media, Nature, News, Science, Uncategorized

Who Dunnit?

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We all know that headlines don’t always tell the story. The last few days there have been lots of articles about scientists “solving the Loch Ness Monster”.  Although I am a skeptic in general, I couldn’t help clicking on the first story I saw.  Of course scientists have NOT solved the mystery of Nessie.  What they have done is find more eel dna in the water of the lake than they expected.  All it took was for one person to say “maybe the Loch Ness Monster is really a giant eel” for the story to take off.

The same arguments for why the Loch Ness Monster can’t exist apply to a giant eel (lake too cold, not enough food to keep a giant eel alive, no bones/evidence of previous generations) but that hasn’t stopped the explosion of “Nessie is a giant eel” stories.

I don’t make it a point of following stories like the Loch Ness Monster, the faked moon landing or anything having to do with Area 51, but I look at reports if they cross my path. I do follow the work being done on Amelia Earhart’s disappearance fairly closely (TIGHAR) and I do think this mystery will be solved in my lifetime.  But Nessie, not so much.

What mystery would you like to be explained?

Fantasy, History, Media, Nature, News, Uncategorized

Urban Legend

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Today in 565 AD, St, Columba reported seeing the Loch Ness Monster.  I wonder how he would feel if he knew people were still talking about Nessie today.

Around Luverne, legend has it that Jesse James jumped his horse across a ridiculously wide gap at the Devil’s Gulch in Garretson, SD, running away from Northfield and the disastrous raid there.  I have seen the gap and I seriously doubt a horse could jump it, but what do I know? Luvernites also believe that a tornado will never strike the town because of some special characteristics of the Blue Mounds formations to the north of the city. Maybe. Maybe, though, we have just been lucky.

Any legends from where you have lived or where you grew up? What is your favorite urban legend?

 

Fantasy, History, Medicine, Science, Uncategorized

Hypnagogia

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Rivertown

Have you ever been waking up in the morning and hear the phone ring, then become fully awake and realize you just imagined it? If so, you may have experienced an auditory hypnagogic hallucination.

In August of 2015, Dr. Laurence Knott of the UK wrote:  https://patient.info/doctor/hypnagogic-hallucinations “Hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations are visual, tactile, auditory, or other sensory events, usually brief but occasionally prolonged, that occur at the transition from wakefulness to sleep (hypnagogic) or from sleep to wakefulness (hypnopompic). The phenomenon is thought to have been first described by the Dutch physician Isbrand Van Diemerbroeck in 1664.[1] The person may hear sounds that are not there and see visual hallucinations. These visual and auditory images are very vivid and may be bizarre or disturbing.”

And Wikipedia describe it this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia   “Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep in humans: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. Mental phenomena that occur during this “threshold consciousness” phase include lucid thought, lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.” As you can see, there are several other “conditions” mentioned, that I don’t have the time to explore here.

I love what is sometimes called the “twilight time” as I drift off to sleep, and frequently have little vignettes play out before my (closed) eyes. I have heard seemingly original strains of music that I wish I could write down and remember later. Rather than thinking of it as a medical condition to be “treated”, I often wish they would last longer.

Do you experience any sort of hallucinations upon waking or falling asleep? Or do you have any elaborate daydreams?

 

books, Fantasy, The Future, Uncategorized

Back to the Future

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A weird coincidence resulted in three dystopian future books hitting my reading list in the last month. First there was Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel that was a Blevins Book Club selection.  Then there was The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch then Ready Player One by Ernest Kline.

Normally I like the dystopian future genre but by the time I got to the end of Ready Player One, I was ready to renounce any other titles that come my way.  I’m not sure if it’s because I’m feeling like a dystopian future is already on our doorsteps or if it was just too many of these books in a row.  Whatever the reason, I’m looking forward to a Jane Austen title I just picked up from the library!

Do you have a favorite genre? Do you ever get tired of it?

Art, Business, Fantasy, Media, Uncategorized

Saving Me From Myself

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I have always had a penchant for t-shirts with slogans. When I was 13, I discovered a Northern Sun Alliance catalog while babysitting and was smitten by the huge number of t-shirts with not just slogans, but left-wing, liberal slogans.  (Imagine my excitement when after five years of living in Minneapolis, I discovered that Northern Sun Alliance is actually located here!)  I saved up my money, filled out the order form (yep, a paper order form) and sent off for my very first slogan t-shirt.

(FYI, Northern Sun doesn’t sell this t-shirt any longer but you can still get this slogan on a poster or bumper sticker!)

I have a hard time staying away from t-shirts with sayings that I think are relevant or funny or geeky or all of the above. I also have trouble staying away from State t-shirts and those cheap t-shirts that the DNR sells.  This means that I occasionally have to go through and purge my t-shirt drawer as I have WAY TOO MANY.  Right now I have t-shirts w/ dragons and reindeer, Pluto, Mongols, Gravity: It’s the Law, Pizza John, cats with books, more dragons, State Fair themes (at least 5), Stihl lumberjacks and Rocket Sheep.So you wouldn’t think I’d be in the market for any more…. well, you’d be wrong. Now I’m trying to figure out how to keep myself from getting a t-shirt that says “If the earth were really flat, cats would have knocked everything off the edge by now.”

How do you justify getting something you want when you really don’t need it?

Automotive, Fantasy, Media, Movies, Nature, TV, Uncategorized

Real Life

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In a TV murder mystery I watched over the weekend, the heroine is trailing some bad guy at a hotel. He leaves the hotel and gets into his car right outside.   She comes out and gets into her car which is parked right behind his.  That’s when I realized that Aristotle was wrong about art imitating life.  When, in any movie or TV show does the hero or heroine have to circle the block to find a parking spot?  Or park 3 blocks away and hoof it to where they are going?  Or stop to pay a parking meter?  Never.

It made me think about other things that never happen on screen. Nobody ever scoops poop when walking their dogs, nobody ever seems to put groceries away (although every now and then there is actually time spent in a grocery store) and nobody EVER stops to worry about birth control.

I think it would be nice to have a world in which I could always find a convenient parking spot and have my groceries put away magically.

What daily task would you love to have disappear from your life?

Family, Fantasy, holidays, Media, Music, Travel, Uncategorized

Strange Performance Opportunities

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In November, Husband and I and four other members of our handbell choir are going to New York City to play in a massed handbell choir of 300 ringers at Carnegie Hall.  We have been invited to play a separate concert in Central Park, and last week, the silliest ringing opportunity thus far came from the Carnegie staff, who have arranged for us to play at Radio City Music Hall with the Rockettes.  We can sign up to perform in  one of three shows on November 29 and 30.

I just don’t know if I am up for the Rockettes. We don’t have to dress like the Rockettes, which is a blessing.  Husband  would look pretty silly in tights and high heels!  This trip is getting stranger and stranger!

If you could perform anywhere doing anything, where would it be and with whom?