It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then -- to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true.

Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau ...
I would return to the office dazed and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
One day my boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.

I came home early that day after my conversation with my boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"

"But Honey."

"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors do!
College professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.

She exploded in rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio
(Prarrie Home Companion,I think?)and ran up to the big glass doors. They didn't open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers Anonymous poster. Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting.

At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home.

Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
At least, it seems to me ...
Dock

This is a true story. Last night I was in a minor accident on the freeway. We both pulled off to the side and as soon as I smelled the other guy's breath "It seems to me",I thought, he had been smoking pot. When the cops finally showed up, I told one of them this and he said, "and just how do you know what pot smells like?" I told him I used to use it before I was nominated to the Supreme Court ....
I thought it was funny but the local cop failed to see the, what I felt was, timely humor.
Dock

East Coast lawmakers slam border security in bizarre case...

Massachusetts lawmakers on Thursday called for a closer look at border security after customs officials allowed a man carrying a sword, a hatchet, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood to cross the U.S.-Canadian border..... wow ..ya think they might have caught a freakin' clue?
(I think I saw this movie, Bud & Lou go to ...)

Couple of days after being allowed into the United States in late April, this guy, Despres, 22, was arrested in Massachusetts in connection with the beheading ( yes you read it right, beheading) of his elderly neighbor and the stabbing death of his wife in the New Brunswick town of Minto.

Customs officials had fingerprinted Despres, determined there were no warrants for him and let him into the United States. They maintain they could not have detained him because he is a naturalized U.S. citizen and there was no evidence at the time that he may have committed a crime.... and these men have gone to college ......GOD save us ....

"This chilling case kind of ....oh I don't know ....
RAISES SERIOUS QUESTIONS, about security procedures at our borders," said Rep. " Fast Eddie" Markey, Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the congressional committee on homeland security.

"We need to take another look at rules at border crossings so that violent criminals or terrorists are not given a green light to enter our country." .....Gee ya think so "Fast Eddie"? .........

Rep. Stevie Lynch (news, bio, voting record), also a Democrat from Massachusetts, said the bizarre cir*****stances surrounding Despres should have set off alarms. (Stevie I, the rest O)

"He was somewhat delusional, stating he was a Marine working for freakin' President Bush and waiting for a helicopter," Lynch told the press "They might have exercised more caution and held him longer. Their performance was less than what we would have expected." YEA ....MABY IT WAS....."SOMEWHAT DELUSIONAL" MR. LYNCH?

But freakin' Big Bill Anthony, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said, "It's impossible to hold someone if there is no legal recourse. What he was carrying was also not illegal."

In 1999, Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian living in Canada, was arrested when trying to cross into the United States with explosives apparently destined for an attack on Los Angeles.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, there has been increased emphasis on the need to tighten security at U.S. borders.

Despres is being held in Massachusetts as he awaits an extradition hearing next month. Hell'va way to run a railroad, or ...
it seems to me!
Dock

"One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all.

One is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Dock/04

DAMN! ..... I could have sworn I'd answered this question before. However, having scoured my files, I guess it just seems like I did. Is this a déjà vu experience? No, this is an out-to-lunch experience. I feel it's important to make these fine distinctions lest the meaning of this too casually flung about term become even more muddled in the popular mind.

The definition of déjà vu commonly cited in the medical literature these days is "subjectively inappropriate impressions of familiarity of the present with an undefined past." This definition unfortunately sucks, since it requires you to understand the thing being defined before you can understand the definition. (get that?)

A better take on it is that déjà vu is the uncanny sensation that you are reliving some unknown past experience, or drink to much....
I throw the word uncanny in there because it exudes the musty air of cheap paperbacks I like to see cultivated and also because an essential feature of déjà vu is that it seems intensely strange at the time.

The other essential feature is that the relived past experience is unknown--you cannot recall having previously had the experience, and indeed you may realize that it's impossible for you to have had it. You just somehow feel that you have.

The déjà vu phenomenon is a favorite of creative types. Proust mentions it, fittingly, in Remembrance of Things Past. In David Copperfield Dickens has his title character say, "He seemed to swell and grow before my eyes; the room seemed full of the echoes of his voice; and the strange feeling (to which no one is quite a stranger) that all this had occurred before, at some indefinite time, and that I knew what he was going to say next, took possession of me."

Depending on the survey, anywhere from 30 to 96 percent of respondents report having experienced déjà vu. But one suspects the high-end figures are a function of having worded the question too vaguely. Déjà vu doesn't mean merely going through the same situation twice, as many journalists seem to think. Nor should it be confused with other mental hiccups such as flashbacks, precognition (the sense that the present situation has been foretold), and so on.

Déjà vu is said to occur more frequently in those under 30. The experience is usually brief, lasting from a few seconds to a few minutes, but in pathological cases may be prolonged. Although the term déjà vu (French for "already seen") suggests it's primarily a visual phenomenon, it can involve all the senses, which is why some prefer the term déjà vecu, "already experienced." The opposite of déjà vu is jamais vu, ("never seen"), the sensation that a familiar situation is completely strange.

What causes déjà vu? Almost all who've studied the subject have come up with their own explanations, and hey, why not? Our knowledge of the brain is so fragmentary that no explanation can be definitely discounted. Still, the chances that déjà vu is a sign of telepathy, reincarnation, or visitations by one's astral body, as some have suggested, seem pretty slim.

Among the quasi-scientific explanations, what might be called the split-image school holds that two parts of the brain participate simultaneously in the process of perception. If for some reason the impression from part A arrives in one's consciousness out of sync with the impression from part B, one has the sensation of experiencing the the thing twice.

Others explain déjà vu by analogy to a tape recorder. They propose that memory storage is accomplished by means of a "recording head" and memory recall by a "playback head." During déjà vu the two heads are erroneously situated above the same bit of mental blank tape. An experience is thus recorded and remembered simultaneously, with the result that the present is experienced as the past.

There are lots more theories, but you get the idea.

Déjà vu was a hot topic in the 1890s among French psychiatrists, who came up with the name. But later researchers dismissed it as a curiosity. The Dutch psychiatrist Herman Sno sparked a revival of interest in the 1990s, arguing that déjà vu provided insight into the functioning of both the normal and abnormal brain.

It's long been known that prolonged or frequent episodes of déjà vu are associated with various psychiatric or neurological disorders. Some now consider déjà vu, in conjunction with other symptoms, to be diagnostic of a type of epilepsy. Researchers have found that electrical stimulation of the brains of epileptic patients in some cases can trigger the déjà vu phenomenon, or of course there's always massive quanities of dope ....

Nothing you need to worry about. On the contrary, it seems pretty clear that what some consider a glimpse of the supernatural is more than likely just a cognitive burp, or two ...or at least, it seems to me ....
Dock