Optimus2g

Deja vu!!!!

Wed, 23 May 2007 19:51:31 -0500

I just had to share this on the blogs today. I experienced this sensation today while student teaching today at Francis Lewis HS. I was standing at the front of the classroom, at the very beginning of class, and some of the students had crowded around me to see their grades in my gradebook. At that very moment, I felt this EERY sense of deja vu. I had a dream where I imagined this exact scenario, and I didn't recall it until that moment. It felt COMPLETELY SURREAL. I wanted to just sit down and let it sink in for a second, but a class of ninth graders at 9 am won't exactly stand for that---by the way they are a GREAT class; I'm very lucky in that regard--no degenerates among them, well at least those who are don't show up! lol. Has anyone else experienced this before? I'm actually wrapping back around to the beginning of the blogs, when I wrote about this exact scenario in August. How appropriate! Discuss....hmmmnnn.....("Fascinating...", to quote Mr. Spock!)

(Spring Blog #30) Final Entry: The closing of the blogs

Mon, 21 May 2007 14:44:42 -0500

This is kind of a surreal experience---Salvador Dali would be proud! Writing about the closing of these blogs, something which we've been doing since August of last year, is bitter-sweet in a way. Look, those of you who know me will probably say that he's REALLY lost it now while reading this, but wait: The blogs have been fun--not that they weren't before (Prof. Tougaw knows I'm just kidding!) whenever we've just sat down and written what was on our minds with respect to what we thought the supposed rationales were behind our dreams.
We should all be proud in a way. I mean look at tlike this: We've ALL come up with a TON of convoluted shit! Some of us took these things back to our childhoods. Others, have reflected upon failed relationships and dead relatives, just to name a few popular topics. We've also tried to tie some theory up into this dream-a-thonic bitch (please excuse the misogynistic metaphor). In the end it all came to down to this...(Please excuse me for this, but I know that I'm sounding more like John by the word---HOLY SHIT!!)---we are all trying to come to grips with certain aspects of our selves, deep within our unconscious psyches, regardless of whether we realize this or not. Our waking lives serve to spur us on with respect to coming up with more things to dream about. Repressed thought plays into this, and sometimes they don't--sorry Siggy!! (that's what they called him in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure")
I'll leave you cats out there with this last tidbit before signing off for the semester: Dreams are a smorgasbord of desire, regret, overactive minds repeating things for no particular reason--at least that we know of, and memory consolidation (to use a scientific word and pacify my scientifc side). If we get nothing else from our experiences documenting our dreams, we can at least realize that we are all going to look back at this and realize that dreams are truly the only aspects of oursleves that transcend the bounds of reality. Sometimes "escaping" from ourselves into ourselves is necessary in order for us to come to grips with who we all really are.
OK had enough? See the YOUTUBE CLIP BELOW for more of what I mean with respect to our friend Siggy...lol. Bill & Ted fans you better not blink (pay attention to the 0:24 second mark) !!
To quote Bugs Bunny!! That's all folks!!

(Spring Blog #29) A Dream: Groundhog Day Dream

Mon, 21 May 2007 14:31:27 -0500

Has anyone ever had a dream in which they envision the same scenario in many different ways over the course of the same night/dream? Is it just me, or do I have an overactive guilt complex..wait don't answer that one. Anyone who's read my psychobabble over the course of the past semester can attest to the fact that I readily admit---I could use a shrink to "talk out" my relationship issues! (it's pathetic, i know...lol @ myself)
I've repeated scenarios in which I can see myself doing things differently, but with the same result over and over and over again (breaking up SUCKS, but being dumped is even WORSE). No matter what I say or do differently each time---the end result is always the same---I get screwed (figuratively speaking of course for you pervs out there with the hairy hands!).
I'll try and see, through priming, if this dream of mine can become lucid if I experience it anymore. I guess our psyches just tend to repeat shit that is stuck in our memories---it's just never been expurgated from my "internal hard drive" so to speak, to use a "techie" metapor. Fuck Frued I say...maybe I can open a clinic!

(Spring Blog #27) Reflection on upcoming Conference

Mon, 14 May 2007 16:09:20 -0500

Download file I feel both a sense of apprehension and excitement in anticipation of this fast approaching conference, which is only 2 days away. I feel more prepared due to the amount of work that we've put into this, both contenet-wise and stylistically. The group presentation work which we worked on at the begining of the year (way back in the Fall) will now benefit us immensely for this conference. The key is getting the jitters out, which the rehearsal will hopefully do tomorrow.
Personally, I feel that my student teaching experience has prepared me for the role of Moderator extremely well because I am now more familiar with speaking in front of large groups of students (about 60 per day). I researched the work of the 5 speakers that I will introduce and have prepared a brief introductory speech as well (SEE THE DOWNLOADABLE LINK ON TOP OF THE PAGE OR THE TEXT AT THE BOTTOM). I encourage anyone with suggestions for me to post them here, after reading my prepared introductory speech for Roundtable #2-Words & Pictures: Representing the Elusive Dream. Thank you and best wishes to everyone in performing their given part for the conference on Wednesday.

“Dreams are very elusive. It is as if they are aware that they don’t belong to the realm of waking consciousness and are eager to get back into the darkness from whence they came […] Temporal sequences seem jumbled and juxtaposed in strange ways” (26). –Appreciating Dreams by Montague Ullman (Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University)

This quote demonstrates the difficulty of capturing dreams in words or pictures. Their amorphous nature has captured the imaginations of people the world over. Theorists, authors, artists, and film makers have all thrown their figurative hats into the ring of dream theory.
Each of our speakers will address the question of how dreams are represented with respect to differing visual mediums. Tina Ramos will discuss our blogs, which we have been working on as a class since the end of August of last year until now. They reflect our class’s attempts at capturing the elusive feeling of describing our dreams and their subsequent effects on our waking lives. They range from the absurd to the heart wrenching and the solemn to the comical. Why this variation you may ask? The answer lies within the plastic nature of our dreams themselves which provides the spark for these types of dreams in the first place.
Doreen Deignan has explored this concept in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Unconsoled. Ishiguro has found a new way to use dreams to create an environment that is both disorienting and familiar. His writing in the "language of Dreams" is the glue that links the form and the content in his novel. The world which Ishiguro has created is one in which the writer’s imagination converges with a setting that is as surreal as it is recognizable, turning the reader’s conception of what is real and what isn’t upside down in the process.
Caroline Yu has focused upon the surrealistic art of Salvador Dali, which is directly influenced by Sigmund Freud and aims to represent the hidden desires which are encoded in dreams. Dali’s stated desire "to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality" made him an instant star among the Surrealists, until he proved to be too surreal even for their tastes. This, likewise, aims to capture the hazy sensation of dreaming that teeters on the brink of reality and the fantastic.
Melissa Chen has focused her effort on describing how the contemporary medium of anime is dramatizing Japanese cultural and historical ideas about dreams on the screen. She discusses how one specific aspect of anime reflects the current conflicting approaches to dream theory—that is the “interpretive” and “scientific” approaches. She discusses how the interpretive approach is more “spiritual” in nature and compares this to the scientific approach which is seen as being the result of material causes.
Maria Hartolfilis discusses how film makers, such as Ingmar Bergman, have used the film making medium to portray dreams as being more concrete and less tactile. She discusses the long tradition of filmmakers incorporating psychological elements when constructing their films so that their audiences may gain deeper insight into their own innermost feelings and desires.
We all can learn more about the elusive concept of dreams by understanding how each of these respective mediums functions with respect to capturing something, which by its very definition is nebulous and fluid. By themselves, these mediums may not make the case for representing dreams in a more concrete fashion, however taken as a whole they can teach us more about the very nature of dreams themselves, but our own individual psyches as well in the process. We welcome you to explore these ideas with us…

(Spring Blog #28) A Dream: Disoriented

Mon, 07 May 2007 18:40:03 -0500

I had a dream where I was just walking around and wasn't aware of where I was at any given moment other than knowing that I was constantly moving around without knowing where I was going. The colors around me would change and I would try to sit down, but the sense of disorientation was too great for me to overcome. I get this sense sometimes in waking life when all this shit that I'm bombarded with at Francis Lewis H.S. and here at Q.C. becomes too overwhelming for me. I don't sit down though, even though I'd like to. My worlkload has just gotten crazy and there are times where I don't know if I'm coming or going. I suppose that this is the manifestation of my waking life problems into my dreamscapes. It would be cool if I were lucid during this. I'll actually try to do this once we're done (Too bad that's not until the end of June for me...lol).

(Spring Blog #26) A Dream: Quitting my job...

Mon, 07 May 2007 15:42:24 -0500

My boss at work has been driving me crazy lately. I quit my Friday shift to focus more on school and I got screwed over on the weekends because of an ownership change. To make a long story short, the new owner promised to leave me alone, and then he went back on his word. My boss is a good guy, who's stuck in the middle admittedly, however he should've showed me more resepct than he did by calling me and telling me what this new guy wants me to do when he knows pefectly well that I won't do it. I didn't care anymore and called him and said that you can do what you want, but if you don't give me an assignment that I can handle after going back on your word then I guess you're losing an employee. He knew that I was serious and I was proud of myself for once--I actually stood up for myself.
I dreamed about quitting on these bastards "Scarface style" (the famous character from Half-Baked). I actually told my boss off in my dreams and they begged me to come back...which wasn't exactly the case in waking life, but I did get the assignment that I requested. I've been with them for a bit now and felt that I had enough cache to request what I wanted, which I actually got (Thank God). Here's that famous scene from "Half Baked" where Scarface quits in style, doing something which we ALL wish that we could do!

(Spring Blog #25) Reflection on course web project

Mon, 07 May 2007 15:33:40 -0500

Here are my two cents. Take 'em for what they;re worth. The web project was not what I thought it would be. I probably had the worst webpage in our class. I think I started to get the hang of it at the end--specifically the last couple of days, but it didn't turn out as well as I thought it would or could. The jargon got me at first and then the heavy toll of my student teaching added to my job on the weekend both combined to exert a heavy toll upon me. These factors--not to make excuses, but hey I gotta defend myself--combined to make my end result one that wasn't as good as it could have been. If it's not too late I'll try to improve upon it some, but I wish we had more time to work on this then we did. The tutorial should have been given earlier in the semester so we didn't have to rush the way that we did, but what do I know?...

(Spring Blog #24) A Dream: "Blob" dream

Mon, 07 May 2007 15:27:37 -0500

I had a dream where I was just going through a cycle of evernts that I had recently undergone, "rapid fire" stlye. I would jump from one event to the next--without any rhyme or reason to what I was doing--it was based solely on my recent experiences the last few days. It seemed to be mental regurgitation or "diarrhea" of the dream plane, if such a thing exists. Lately things have been such a blur to me that it is no coincidence that this dream reflects this point. Has anyone else experienced this sensation where it seems that your recent memories were thrown into a blender and you could recall excerpts of these events like I did for a few moments upon awakening?

(Spring Blog #23) A Dream: Late night stroll...

Mon, 07 May 2007 15:19:49 -0500

I had a dream a couple of weeks ago where I was walking down the street in my old neighborhood in Valley Stream, by my old elementary school, at 3 or 4 in the morning/night (At least that's the time it seemed to be to me in case you are interested in the specifics of the hour). I was walking and all of a sudden my cell phone went off at and I looked on the caller ID and it was my ex-fiancee. Before I could answer I woke up. That's all I can remember from that point on. Have I gone crazy? You decide. My mind seems to be playing tricks on me lately. Spatial disorientation seems to be a constant theme of my dreams--as well as in waking life now too (that certain friend who called me on the weekend and woke me up from my beauty sleep!!!! I didn;t know where I was!!), it seems (lol). Discuss....

(Spring Blog #19) Reflection on web project

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:08:55 -0500

This is obviously a big portion of our grade (30%), but it's not like it's something that we're doing for the first time. It's based on our research papers that we've spent MONTHS working on. We should all be starting off in a good place as the result of all the hard work that we, our writing groups, and the Professor put into writing and revising them. In speaking with Prof. Tougaw, this project will be a condensation of our papers to a web document consisting of no more than 1,500 words---making it roughly a third the length of our papers. We'll be adding images & links that correspond to the various sections in our papers that would arouse any specific interests, the way we would if we were blogging, except it will be on a website.
I would imagine that some basic knowledge of HTML will come in handy, but without it I doubt that it would screw people's course projects up (just correlate it to the blogs). I've already started reducing my paper down, using the MS Word auto summarize feature, to see what it would look like if I only used it to shorten my paper. It helped a little, but not that much, when I saw how some of the things that it chose were not things that I would want to include in the final version of the web project document. Needless to say, I'm going to have to work on this a lot more to get it to where I want it, and not where MS Word wants it.
I feel confident in working on this, but would like some guidance during class in narrowing down the scope of what I have somewhat. Hopefully we can get some feedback and assistance on this when we come back, but we won't have much time when we do because the class and the semester, for that matter, are rapidly coming down to a close (would you believe that?).
While waiting for the official email from Prof. Tougaw about this final major project, which is due before the conference on May 16th, we should all start to "trim down" our research papers to their bare essentials and look up images & links (I'd aim for 5 of each right now) that would be most appropriate for visitors who would be interested in our respective topics for the course project website. In the meantime, if anyone is interested in brushing up on their HTML skills, here's a link that might come in handy (if it's even necessary). I've used this website over the years to help me hone my own HTML skills---or lack thereof. I think you'll find it handy, regardless of if we even need it for this class. But hey, who the hell am I to make such a bold statement? As the great LaVar Burton said: "But you don't have to take MY word for it!" Check it out...HTML:An Interactive Tutorial

(Spring Blog #22) A Dream: Ex-fiancée shoutdown/beatdown, PART II

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 16:34:06 -0500

The second part of this dream was also very realistic. My ex, all of a sudden, has a new man, who comes into the room where she was verbally scathing me and starts to beat me down, interrogation style. All of a sudden, she jumps into the fray and starts to kick my ass too, making me feel like a total piece of crap! During the dream I felt a mixture of sadness, despair, betrayal, hopelessness, and anger. It's all proabably related to the guilt I carry around during waking life, but keep to myself.
On the vain side, the strange thing about this guy was that he was not better looking than me (not that I'm arrogant about my looks---I think I'm average lookin'---but I know a better looking dude when I see one, especially when it relates my ex). I would have at least expected her to "trade up", but I thought to myself, "was this the best that she could do?" I was thinking about this, mind you AFTER I woke up, and NOT during the ass whopin' that the two of them gave me during the dream. It felt SO weird, and made me want to check and see if I was in the looney bin when I woke up afterwards. I just hope that this was a dream that was based on my over active psyche, and pray that it is in NO WAY true. If it is, then this dude better prepare for a beat down from me in waking life, provided I find out who the bastard is.
P.S. One more thing: Oh yeah, my ex-fiancée was beating me and egged on the new guy to kick my ass with a virulence that was reserved for serial killers. It made me feel like I was her life-long enemy or something, which really bummed me out during the dream and after I woke up, considering all the time we spent together and the memories that we shared. Ugh...

(Spring Blog #21) A Dream: Ex-fiancée shout down/beat down, PART I

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 16:23:47 -0500

I was dreaming that my ex-fiancée was shouting at me and was grabbing me and screaming at me how I was a "failure" and was "no good." I was sitting in a room and she just came in and began a blistering barrage of bullshit that I could not withstand. In the dream I was underneath her and she was directly in front of my face, no more than a few inches away. It felt very real and shocked me into waking up. I fell asleep again and then continued to experience something even stranger when this dream continued. This happened about 2 weeks ago and has lingered with me since then. I'm not sure if the second part of this dream occurred on the same night or the night after. I should have written it down in a dream journal, which may make things like this easier to recall when it comes time to transcribe it for the sake of the blogs. I'll say this though: The dream did NOT feel surreal. It felt as if she were right there in front of me.

(Spring Blog #20) A Dream: Dying young...

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:16:56 -0500

I've always had dreams in which I pictured myself dying young--specifically during my 20s, which is scary since I'm at that stage right now. I've only revealed this recurring dream to my cousin and maybe my brother since he may have been with my cousin and I in his room when I told him, if I can remember correctly. I do know for a fact though that I did tell my cousin. He was very surprised to hear this from me when I revealed this to him about 3 or 4 years ago. He said the typically cliched things one would expect to hear, such as: "God forbid" and "Don't say that" and not to forget "It was just a dream."
The scary thing is that I have had a couple of close calls over the years and thank God nothing happened, but I always had this nightmare lingering in the back of my head. I try not to talk about it, but it pops up from time to time. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there that has dreams that come true or painfully close to coming true, so much so that they make you think that you actually saw a glimpse of your own future---which by the way has happened to me, to make this even creepier.

(Spring Blog #18) A Dream: Falling from the sky...

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 18:14:47 -0500

Continuing with the theme of recurring dreams dating from my childhood, in this blog I'll recall the dreams that I had in which I was falling from the sky. Much like the dreams in which I was shot, I woke immediately upon experiencing this sensation. This primal fear may be just a manifestation of the racial dreams that Carl Jeung theorized and wrote about that all human beings have. I would almost always experience this sensation while I'm at the highpoint (no pun intended) of my dream. This is proabably one of the more common dreams that people have had, I'd venture to guess, because of the universal terror that all human beings associate with falling from the sky--unless you're a sky diver, but I think they're afraid too--why else would they carry parachutes then (the pussies)?
I would have these dreams more often as I was in tense moods and would almost always wake up in a cold sweat--even if it was the dead of winter. The good thing is that I almost always forgot about them moments after awakening, but the terror would still remain. I guess that this lends credence to the theory about what those who know me say about me: I AM a tight ass. It's times like these that I wish I was as laid back as Willy Nelson and Snoop, if you knowm' sayin'...
P.S. Any one got any "Maui Wowie" aroun' here? If so please contact me usin' my...*..umm-umm..*..blog alias. Much obliged!! (check out the 1:12 mark below)

(Spring Blog #17) A Dream: A Funeral...

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:51:52 -0500

I remember having dreams when I was a little kid that were related to attending funerals. When I was little I remember seeing some Judd Hirsch movie on channel 7, on late at night, in which he gets shot and killed or something. I then remember having this morbid scene being re-enacted in my dreams of being in attendance at a funeral and seeing all the crying going on around me and feeling as upset as the rest of the people at the funeral. I don't know what to attribute this to. Fortunately, I haven't attended many funerals of close relatives, so I'm not able to relate to this experience as well as others may be able to. To quote Mr. Spock from Star Trek: fascinating....Discuss my compadres...