Dave’s reverie 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve thought about my childhood dozens of times this past week, since reading Dave Fox’s posts at No Code about his own childhood.

 

This weekend in particular, when the weather was blissful, the very essence of spring, I lost myself a couple of times thinking about similar spring days as a kid.

 

My own kids had a little to do with that, as well.  My daughter has changed in a week’s time from a cooped-up mopey child always wanting something she can’t have, to a little sprite out flitting about the yard and garden.  I know I wasn’t exactly like that as a kid – and yet, I do recall running out of the house as soon as my chores were done, heading for the nearby woods and fields.  I'd spend the entire day lolling about in dappled shade and digging up ramps and picking wild flowers, looking for salamanders in the creek bed, neglecting to come home in time for dinner.

 

I wish I could give that to my kids in spades; but I guess we’ll have to be content with a large, pillowy garden full of bugs and worms, strawberry beds blooming and fruiting, squirrels threatening overhead as the kids fly through the air on their swings, and plenty of sidewalk for chalk art and scraped knees.

 

Perhaps it’s enough.  I took them to the park down the street -- a mega-playzone place with all kinds of play equipment.  They lasted less than thirty minutes, saying they were bored and wanted to play in the back yard at home.

 

  4:36:07 PM    comment []

ConsciousThoughts: Interpreting Dreams, Interpreting Memes

Last evening I caught the better part of ‘Young Dr. Freud’ on PBS; while I'm still not a fan of Freud's, I'm inclined to think of of him in a somewhat different light after watching this program.

Freud was both on the money and off the mark.  For instance, his work which recognized the globality of sexuality and its role early childhood was a positive achievement, but his assessment of women and their motivations purely stunk.  I’m not certain how much of both his successes and failures to lay at the door of his incredible drive to make a lasting mark; was he more determined to say and produce something than be certain of its essence?

As I listened about his work on Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams), it occurred to me that Freud may have been somewhere in the middle in his theories that dreams are thought-impulses which:

-- Were left unfinished and unresolved during waking hours;

-- Represent problems we were unable to solve;

-- Are suppressed thoughts;

-- May have been stirred up in the unconscious during the day, but not addressed;

-- Represent leftover oddments of unresolved detritus accrued during the day.

Are dreams only the residual RAM which hasn’t fully cleared the registers once the human system is powered down to sleep mode?  Are they really a preconscious or unconscious operation that continues while the conscious mind rests and regroups?

Are dreams just stuff left in the remnants of glycogen soup in our brains, like the last noodle in the chicken broth?

I’ve not seen this anywhere else – help me out if someone else has already nailed this concept.  Perhaps the real challenge is not to see dreams as thoughts-impulses, but paused, abruptly terminated, still open, looped, or abended memes?

Does it add value to look at dreams as memetic pieces and parts?

And why is it that so many of the contemporary consciousness studies theorists tippy-toe around dreams and memes?

I’m only pondering on this.  Feel free to add your two-cents.

2:56:59 PM    comment []

Economy going north or south?  Check your lipstick

The “lipstick effect” is the change in lipstick and cosmetic sales, which fluctuate in inverse relationship to the condition of the overall economy.  When the economy goes south, lipstick sales improve; sales fall off as the economy improves.   Theoretically, women feel comfortable with making small discretionary purchases but not larger discretionary purchases during an economic downturn.  They’ll feel entirely comfortable with a 10 to 20 dollar purchase of a tube of lipstick, but not a 400 dollar purchase on a new suit or a multi-year commitment on a new car.

So?  How’s your lipstick or your significant other’s lipstick?  Does this mean the economy is improving, stable or getting worse?

Checking the stock of four firms that manufacture and/or sell cosmetics, I’d have to say the economy is starting to improve…at least in the United States:

Estee Lauder

Revlon

Avon

Arden

The one company of the four with heavy foreign sales, Avon, is going gangbusters; perhaps it’s due to strong management, perhaps it’s that overseas economies are not doing as well.  Or perhaps it’s that many unemployed or underemployed women are trying to make ends meet by selling cosmetics door-to-door, thereby improving the revenues.  What’s your guess?

And no, I don’t need any lipstick.  Not a daily necessity while I’m unemployed.

9:34:04 AM    comment []