Re: CHAT: The love of inventing & conscripts (Was: Re: I'm new!)

> > I used to get really annoyed with my brain (actually I still do but not
> > for this particular reason) because in a car trip I would imagine myself
> > to be playing a computer game with the scenery, and I couldn't *help*
> > imagining this even when I didn't want to; it was really annoying. The
> > sort of 'games' I mean are things like a character hopping from tree to
> > tree (or car to car), or having an imaginary rope that I had to keep taut
> > by weaving it between landmarks.
>
> Hehe. I had a similar thing going. I had an imaginary rope or knife
> or axe or something with which I had to cut down every single lamp
> on the side of the road. Very often (at least here in Sweden) there
> are these b/w poles on the roadside. And every time I tried to cut
> them down my imaginary sword would just slide off the poles. Every
> single time. You can imagine the frustration. You can probably
> generalize this to my everyday life back then. Today, I have no
> problems with imagining to cut down road poles. :)
I still do :-(.  When I passively ride in a vehicle, I imagine the exact
same sword cutting down *everything* on the side of the road.  Or I
imagine that there is someone that has to ride on the side of the road
along the tops of trees or telephone wires and he has to keep up with the
car by jumping or whatever.  It can be very irritating, but almost
involuntary.

I still try not to step on cracks in the sidewalk.

(trying to get rid of my bizarre obsessions)
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change.  It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_