The Hawaii Chair

I'm taking a slight shift, less towards the senses and dreams aspect of this blog, and more towards the "yeah" feature. I will be critiquing an infomercial - one advocating a unique chair, guaranteed to make you less depressed about your disappointing physique: The Hawaii Chair. If you would like, watch the whole deal right here straight through, but I'm going to be analyzing each and every meticulous detail of this commercial and product.

0:00 - 0:04

Bam. Music starts right off the bat and off we goooooooo! It's like I'm at a tropical resort right now. "Take the work, out of your workout." Good motto by which to live. Oh, and we have some specs here, too. Let's see, 2800 RPM hula motor? Wow. That seems necessary. And a 300 hundred pound capacity? That one is probably not enough for the fat, desperate, and lazy consumers who bought this chair.

0:04 - 0:08

And there it is in all its revolving glory, along with a URL to the website, which, surprisingly, is now defunct. Hmm, where do I go to buy this then? I'm sure it's available somewhere as a novelty.

0:08 - 0:25

Ok, and here's the repulsive man speaking on behalf of the Hawaii chair. Oh, he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt as well. How appropriate, since this is the Hawaii chair, which is called the Hawaii chair because... well. Wait, why the hell is this called the Hawaii chair? Because of the circular motion you make with your ass? Alright, so it's referring to a hula, which we all sort of know how to do, and that is a graceful dance. This is a disgraceful piece of shit. But anyway, back to the video. This guy seems genuinely excited about this "revolutionary" (yes) chair. Tamra seems to be paying absolutely no attention to this guy, despite him addressing her. Good for her. Oh, and there's another toned woman behind him who looks like she could really get a lot of work done with that position. Then he drops some stats. Hmm, 40 hours a week sitting. Sounds pretty sad, but unfortunately it's probably generally correct (too many adverbs, consider revising). Good, now we are going to the workplace with Erin Lee.

0:25 - 0:34

Great whirring transition there. Did we just travel through an active volcano, or what was all that lava? More Hawaiian shit for sure. And there's Erin Lee. She doesn't look very Asian for such an Asian surname. By far one of the goofiest things I've ever witnessed. It's as if you can see her trying to focus on anything but how annoying and unnatural that chair is to her. And around she goes, smiling and leaning on the desk to balance and not look that much stupider. Well, let's take a look at this "very busy work environment."

0:34 - 0:40

"Oh my Gosh (capital G) this is amazing!" Again, more genuine-sounding people, especially with that free-spirited laugh.

"That feels great on my ass- er, abs." I definitely anticipated his to testify how wonderful this Hawaii chair felt on his ass. I'm sure it does feel great, just like a workout feels. Oh, wait, no. Workouts hurt.

"I can really feel this working." Shut up, lady. We've heard enough out of your mouth already.

0:40 - 0:47

Oh my god (must be uppercase, see me after class) they are attempting desk work now.

"Answering phones" seems simple enough. I mean, you might hear an annoying whir on the other side, but that's manageable.

"Using the computer" is out of the question. I'm sure it would interfere. Bosses would be all, "get that stupid swiveling piece of trash outta here, or YOU'RE outta here! Capreesh?" But you've grown attached, "Ok," you nod capriciously.

"Balancing books or... filing paperwork" are both out as well. You're going to end up devoting all your energy to balancing yourself. More like, "fling paperwork." All over the office. You're quarterly review is coming up and this chair will be the end of you. But at least you'll have your health with that great body.

0:47 - 0:52

You're right, Lee. I can hardly call that work because you will get nothing done corporeally or corporately. If any of these did sell, I'm sure they would have been outlawed in every professional setting.

0:52 - 1:06

There's that lovely tune again with new lyrics. "If you can sit you can get fit*. The Hawaii Chair." And now we see 4 prime examples of this chair being used by what appear to be physical therapists of some sort. Bottom Left Lady looks euphoric. They day I see a Hawaii Chair in a gym is the day I take a shit on a Hawaii Chair. And watch it spin in circles.

*fat

Harold Camping is an Ass

Confused Harold, sitting in his office and wondering when the next doomsday will be. Soon, Harold? We're dying to know!

That may sound a little harsh, but I've been kind of keeping track of and researching this Harold Camping, and I am terribly annoyed by him. I realize this has nothing to do with the senses or dreams or whatever crap I talk about, but I needed to make this fact public: Harold Camping is a pathetic, crazy old fool with nothing better to do than make apocalyptic predictions and trick gullible people into giving up their jobs and lives for this meaningless cause. Harold, what's up with that?
You were wrong, my friend. Although some say he has 11 more days after the prediction to maybe still be correct. Good luck with conjuring up a doomsday by that time.
And I'm officially declaring that May 21st shall forever be a world holiday: "Harold Camping is an Ass Day"
It'll be great. We can sell shirts and buttons and really make this whole thing fun for everyone. Harold, you're invited. There should be some tents set up in his disgraceful name.
I could go on about how crazy this whole thing is, but that's not necessary. I'll leave it at this and save up my dried food in my nuclear shelter for the real apocalypse: December 21st, 2012. How could that not be it? It's got so many 1s and 2s! (12-21-12)
Mayans are (probably) my people anyway.

Part 2 of the Quest for Lucid Dreaming

This is like dreaming, right?

To begin, I should just articulate that I don't know if anybody cares about this quest into lucid dreaming of mine. I certainly think it's interesting, and that should be enough to write about it, but perhaps it would be all the same if it were my journal where basically only I read them. It's funny to think that nobody may read this very sentence about nobody reading this sentence.

But moving on to the topic at hand, lucid dreaming, I am updating this blog to inform the world (nobody) that I have still not have achieved lucidity. In other words, I'm still not an oneironaut (like an astronaut of my dreams!). Great. So then why update if nothing has happened? Well, I don't really know. There are a few things I wanted to express.

First of all, I have been dreaming pretty vividly lately, and I would perhaps partially attribute that to thinking about dreaming (more specifically, lucid dreaming) every night before I go to bed. I would more so say that thinking about the dream as soon as I wake up makes it more vivid, which brings up an interesting question: are vivid dreams vivid if you don't remember them? It makes me wonder about the nature of dreams. Is their vividness dependent on how well remember them, or vice versa? Pretty interesting thought, right? Are some dreams just by their own nature more vivid than others? I don't know. Certainly I remember dreams better if I think about them right away upon awakening, but does that make it more vivid? I suppose I'd like to think that the vividness of dreams is dependent on my memory, and if I just developed good dream memory (which I'll discuss) then all of my dreams would be quite vivid and clear, to the point where it's as real as a memory in the physical realm. Memories are all we take from experiences. Imagine the rich experiences you'd have in your memory if you could just lucid dream vividly! And here's another question: are lucid dreams more vivid because you're aware in them? Or is it because - I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's move on to dream memory.

I'll have some of what he's smoking.

Dream Memory

This is an important part of lucid dreaming, although those who have read "The Power of Now" may disagree and say that just having the experience was enough, and you don't need to remember it for it to be a good thing. I have trouble accepting that. I hold on to memories so closely that it's hard to imagine a life without long-term memory. Not remembering yesterday? Too much. I seem to digress. Let's assume that lucid dreams are worthless without the memory (for me they are as of now, since sharing the experience with others is also fulfilling). Now, I'm no oneirologist, nor to I know much about wine, but here are some things I've learned about dream memory:

1. Waking up in the middle of a dream (REM state) makes the dream quite memorable and vivid (interchangeable?). This is textbook information, and I've experienced this myself (sorry if this sounds like a REMedial psychology class). How do you wake up in your REM state? Well if you're lucid dreaming then waking yourself up in your dream is sure to make that dream quite lucid, or at least I assume it will. There, now I've caught up with myself. You could even REModel your dream house! Another way to wake yourself up is to put a stone in your hand and set your hand in a position so that dropping the stone will fall out of your hand and bed, and then onto the ground. There are a couple of problems I anticipate with this method: REM is the deepest part of your sleep (in one sense), but does that mean that you won't drop the stone before you reach REM? I don't think it would work very well. The most plausible way is to find your friend who cares more about you having vivid dreams than sleeping well. Tell him to look at your eyelids while you sleep, and to wake you up when he notices your eyeballs going crazy. Well, a little after he notices. You have to dream a little, right? So good luck with that one. Your dreams are sure to be REMarkable. Actually, recently I had a dream that I recall as quite vivid, in which I was flying on a tiny plane with a disproportionately large bathroom. The stewardess entered the bathroom and was clearly trying to seduce me. I started getting lightheaded and excited. I asked for some orange juice to cure the lightheadedness, and she walked very close to me. I grazed her body and felt her. It was so real, and in all my excitement I found myself staring at my dark ceiling in my room, awake and breathing rapidly. But I wasn't controlling it! Which brings me to the next point:
2. Another REMedy to better REMember your dreams is to talk or write about it ASAYA (As Soon As You Awaken) (and I'm sure that acronym will not save any time) (just look at all these explanations) (and you'll know pretty soon) (that the acronym took way more time than simply writing out the words "ASAYA"). This is proven to help (if you don't want to listen to the whole thing, they get very relevant when there are 7 minutes left (in regards to the first method of dreamemberance)). I keep a dream journal/sketch book to write all my dreams down and sketch stuff. The sooner the better, even if it may not seem like that. So I'm saying the instant you wake up start writing or talking. It helps (me at least) to talk to someone or a recording device to seem less like an insane person. I call it REM-iniscing. And hopefully there will be a larger REMainder of your dream instead of small dream shard REManence. REMbrandt would be proud. And I am not one bit REMorseful for the pun crimes I've committed on humanity. Thankfully, I'll probably be at a REMote location when you (nobody) are (is) reading this. Alright, I'm done.

This is all I have to say for now. But there is much more to be said. I'm still greatly anticipating a night of beautiful lucidity, and it could even happen tonight, but it probably won't happen until the summer when I'm much less stressed by schoolwork and the like. This is NathaN, signing off. Goodnight.

My Quest into the Unknown: Lucid Dreaming

This mysterious creature appeared in my dreams, and now he wants revenge.

Children, be gone! For this adventure is not for you. And for the rest of you who get uneasy in the face of reality, and who get uneasy knowing they're uneasy, and thus will perpetuate themselves into a state of permanent and infinite unease, be gone as well! For this adventure requires bravery, valor, courage, and other such clichés.




"What adventure?" you may foolishly ask, since you failed to read the title of the entry. My friends, I have begun my quest into my own mind through the magic of dreams. It has interested me for a long time now, and I have finally resolved to get down and dirty in my own mind while I sleep.

First, let me explain what this all this is. Actually, more like third, since this is in fact the third p-graph. Lucid dreaming is reaching consciousness in your sleep, your unconscious state. It sounds paradoxical, I know, but it has been proven long ago in the 70s. I've been doing my research. Many of you may have experienced this, as it's not entirely uncommon (50%-80% of all college students experience it). You are dreaming, and suddenly, by some crazy miracle, you become aware that you are in a dream. From this point, you do whatever the J you want. You can create anything your imagination can fathom and then destroy it. You can sense whatever it is you want, be it sweet food, refreshing breezes, the scent of factory foam, your own symphonies, or straight up naked people! I'm kidding, but it's all possible. Your mind is, after all, the final say in what you experience. Not your fingers or your olfactory receptors or your cochlear implants. For this reason, your dream world can be just believable as your physical world. This indistinguishability could become problematic if you just want to know what is "real." Is the dream not real? That gets us in to a whole nother discussion, which I won't discuss right now. And why do people say "nother" instead of other? I think I do it too.

So, I began last night, and I'm very excited about this whole snordeal. I've been reading, and apparently, to become aware you are dreaming in your dream, it helps to look at your hands. Your hands are always with you, and they can also help stabilize your dream if things start getting shaky. So, last night I stared at my hands. There they were in front of me, beautiful, as I've always known them (I'll let you see them some time). I looked at them and told myself, "Tonight, I will see my hands while I'm dreaming. When I see them I will realize that I am dreaming. When I wake up, I will remember everything." After thinking these thoughts in repetitions, I began getting sleepier and distracted by other thoughts. If I noticed I was distracted I started thinking about my hands again, and how I would see them. Eventually I fell asleep.
I remembered little to nothing of my dream when I awoke initially, but I fell back asleep again and had another dream, this one I remembered.

Everyone enjoys a good boulder problem

The dream involved going to a very cool gymnasium with one of the coolest climbing walls and boulder problems I had ever seen. My brothers were there and I was dating a fat girl who was clearly heavier than me. I was not ok with that, but felt terrible for even being with her because I felt like I would have to break up on very shallow grounds. She wasn't all that interesting either. I didn't get to climb, but I was very excited to. I woke up, never achieving lucidity.
But I am not discouraged. I will try again tonight, and the next night, and so on until I reach my first goal of having a lucid dream.

As I continue on this odd odyssey, I will try to convey what I experience and what I find useful for achieving lucidity. I do have one thing to say before I finish this, entry, and that's if getting too excited wakes you up, how about some strong sedatives? I'll get back to that later.

The Effects of Sleep on Health

"I'm tie-owed," yawned the sleepy Joseph Ducreux.

Alright, faithful readers. I've a small assignment for you. Now we're really stretching far away from the whole senses ordeal with a beautiful survey I helped write and formulate. It's about the effects of sleep on one's health, and though this study has probably been done many times in many different forms, here's one more for the books.
There are some limiting factors for who should be taking this survey. It's focusing more on the college demographic, so don't take this survey unless your are currently a full-time student at a college.
Here's that link you've been waiting for so anxiously:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZV5MNC6

Take it and be done!
Also, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up about potentially winning some sort of compensation (like $20 cash...!), so I won't by explaining right here, right now, that there is a very small chance of you winning anything, including all of that dirty, filthy $20. Some would like to call it a zero percent chance of winning anything. I'm included in that "some" who would like to call it that, and I would know. So there's that. Good luck!


When the results are in, I'll post them on this here blog and we can all revel in the glorious information that we all already knew: regular nightly sleeping is beneficial to your health. Now get to bed!

Dream 1 - Rigged

I had this dream last night.

I was walking around outside at night on a farm. I was near the barn and I heard some noises around the corner. It was my friend, Joel Sytsma, running some sort of cheap carnival game that he made. It was behind a wooden fence, and he wouldn’t show me what it was. Him and his friend were urging me to play, “Come on! It’s just a dollar to play. All you need is three out of five to win sixty bucks!” “What is it?” I inquired. They continued to goad me into p(l)aying, “Just pay and we’ll show you. You’ll want to anyway.” “Then just show me!” I remarked. I hopped over the fence and saw what it was. Under a bright and naked light bulb was a rusting tin can buried almost lid-deep underground. The ground was dry dirt and the lid was still hanging on by a shred. They were tossing silver dollars at it from behind a lack-of-dirt line and laughing. “I thought you were our only hope!” Joel said to one guy, still flipping coins at the can. They were trying to get it in the can, but it was at least 30 feet away, and it would never make it in, certainly not 1 in 60 times. I was glad that I didn’t pay a dollar to try this. And to think that I needed three out of five. That was absurd. I realized after a little how funny it was that they were all silver dollars. I joked and said, “Did you force everyone to pay in silver dollars too?” Nobody thought it was funny. I continued watching the other guy flipping dollar after dollar at the can.

Dreams. What could they means?

Dreams come from rainbows, and vice versa. Symbiotically, they live in harmony.

I'm delving into a less known and more mysterious sense: dreaming. I mean, senses are what make up our experiences, and we certainly experience dreams. So what are they? I would claim that not only can I see and hear, but I can feel and taste as well. I can't recall any times at which I have smelled in a dream, but I don't think it's impossible. These experiences are like seeing and hearing objects outside of our minds, but does the fact that they only exist in our minds make them sub-experiences or sub-senses? I think certainly not. If a sense needs a stimulus to activate something in the brain then dreams cover that definition of senses.
I happen to be a vivid dreamer. Falling asleep is like taking drugs (from what I hear in popular culture about taking drugs) for me. I remember my dreams about 95% of the time, and if it weren't for the fact that I live a life in which stress can easily interfere with my dream memory, it'd probably 100% of the time, or something like 99.99%
I also think that dreams are interesting. It's a strange way in which small thoughts or concepts in our minds manifest themselves in distorted or hyperbolic ways. So I've decided to start sharing my dream log with the world via the good old WW web. Usually I type up my dreams in a digital journal as soon as I can. Now I will publish them on this blog thing, starting tomorrow.
I should warn you, sometimes they are vulgar, violent, and other things to which you probably would not expose your small child(ren). How is Ren doing, anyway?