I write in my sleep. You see, the way it works is that if I have something on my mind when I go to bed, my brain will churn over it all night long, and because of the way my head works, it will spontaneously generate a narrative. I do that in all of my dreams — I float aloof from the events, mentally transcribing what’s going on. My consciousness is a kind of disembodied reporter, I guess.

This quirk can work out well. Lots of my longer posts are composed while I’m sleeping — I wake up in the morning and the structure of the story is all laid out in my head, with a jumble of words stacked up waiting to be written down. It’s not a complete word-by-word write up, but major themes and key chunks of text are all done, and writing is more like splicing in a few transitions and tidying up some rough edges than actually, you know, writing, whatever that is.

 Sometimes this has weird results. Like last night. I had finished organizing my talks for this trip I’m on, I’d packed up my gear and had my suitcase by the door, and I went to bed with nothing in particular on my mind, relaxed and unconcerned about the coming week. This is a dangerous condition for me. It means strange, random stuff will waft unbidden through my dreams, and when I wake up I’ll have something really freaky queued up in my consciousness, and my brain will be all “dude, time to get those fingers wiggling and frog vent the blast core to clear this crazy stuff out of the cortex,” and the sober, responsible part of my awareness will be all “no way, meat lump, they’ll lock me up if any of that escapes my cranium,” and then I’m cranky and blocked up all morning.

So, anyway, this peculiar dream/memory/vignette swam into the purview of my floating narrator last night, got annotated and slotted into the blogging module of my brain, and was sitting there waiting for digital instantiation this morning, so I typed it anyway while I was sitting on my boring shuttle ride, just to clear it. It’s not as bizarre as some of my undirected dreams (no way are my sex dreams ever being manifested; they’re choreographed by some twisted Rabelaisian alien), and travel is disrupting my usual schedule, so I’m dumping it online as filler anyway. Don’t judge me! Just think, it could be so much worse.

This one is nothing but an old recollection of cleaning fish. Fair warning, though: it’s channeled straight from my id, and what is an evocative memory for me might be a shrieking nightmare for you. And don’t expect much — it’s just a dream.

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It’s nicely done. The difference is that this one is a parable about sausages.

I’ve heard the “waily waily o waily” cries from the mob after the Endless Thread took a brief vacation. Well, too bad, TET had a wonderful time napping on the barren coral sands of Pukasavilivili, but now it’s back and is slogging in to work.

Don’t listen carefully to the lyrics, or you may learn that TET has not completely shed its cynicism. It would need to spend much more time in the islands to do that, and would also need to meet a lovely Polynesian girl and find redemption for humanity in love and kindness and hope. But no, you had to drag it back.

(Current totals: 12,473 entries with 1,389,844 comments.)

It’s always a surprise. I’m lounging in St Paul with an iced tea, browsing the City Pages, the news and arts weekly, and after reading a good article about the recent pharmaceutical debacle with levaquin, I turn the page, and there’s my name. dang, that’s right — I’m expected to perform.

It’s true, and it has been empirically evaluated: Guinness really does taste better in Ireland.

The results of the Guinness-tasting t-test were clear. Pints consumed in Ireland had a mean GOES score of 74, compared with a score of 57 in pubs outside Ireland. While Ireland may not necessarily keep the best stuff to itself, the science is clear: Guinness tastes better over here.

Being a Man of Science myself, of course, I’m not going to simply accept this claim, but will have to engage in some spot-testing and verification next week in Dublin.

…the fear he fosters spreads around the world.

This woman, fearful of the end of the world, took a boxcutter to the throats of her two daughters, and then sliced her own throat. This is what religion encourages: fear based on imaginary terrors.

Here’s a man who committed suicide in Nairobi. Here’s a family torn by parents who gave away everything to Camping; the mother said a daughter would be left behind…at least she didn’t try to cut her throat.

I want to see Harold Camping prosecuted for bilking people out of their money, for destroying lives and families. I want to see his radio empire dismantled and the people who promoted his lies disgraced and ashamed.

It won’t happen.

I’m busy in DC this weekend, so I thought I might just dick with you all by letting Pharyngula go dead for the whole weekend, as if I’d been raptured. But I decided to be nice and at least mention that I’m still earthbound. (Although there was a scary moment on the plane last night, when something went bump-bump-crunch-thumpety-thump over by the right engine at 30,000 feet, and the pilot came on to announce, “Nothing to worry about, folks, we just mumbley-mumbley throttles mumble flanges something or other Jeffries tubes, but don’t fret, we have “procedures” — just fasten your seat belts, please.” And then we landed and didn’t die in a fiery flaming fireball of fire, so I guess it all turned out OK. And there was a fire truck hanging out by the right engine afterwards, which was reassuring.)

Anyway, Roy Zimmerman!

Of course, I could still dick with you by going silent after 6pm Eastern, when the Rapture is supposed to hit the East coast, but since Australia and New Zealand are still there and report nothing has happened, I suppose any joking around has been blunted.

Although…Australasia and Asia and Europe are all full of funny heathens, anyway, so you wouldn’t expect them to notice a Rapture. It’s only when the Republicans get picked up that it will be obvious.

It’s a great lead: Atheists have better sex. Sign me up already.

Put it on billboards, too.

It’s embarrassing. Not only do we have Michele Bachmann, but the last election swept in a gang of know-nothing Rethuglican scum who’ve been trying to turn our state into Texas. Now they’ve invited the notorious evangelical crank Bradlee Dean to give an opening prayer. Dean, for those who don’t know of him, is a kind of Vox Day impersonator—he’s a raving homophobe with a parasitic ministry that targets public school. He puts on school assemblies that are nominally about fighting drugs and promiscuity, but are actually come-to-Jesus sessions. We see his vans tooling about on the highways now and then: “you can run but you can’t hide”, they proclaim.

Dean delivered his prayer, and it was a doozy.

I know this is a non-denominational prayer in this Chamber and it’s not about the Baptists and it’s not about the Catholics alone or the Lutherans or the Wesleyans. Or the Presbyterians the evangelicals or any other denomination but rather the head of the denomination and his name is Jesus. As every President up until 2008 has acknowledged. And we pray it. In Jesus’ name.

It was so offensive that one of the legislators vowed to never let him give a prayer in chambers ever again. How about going one step further and excluding all prayers from the legislature?

The CDC has issued a preparedness warning for the Zombie Apocalypse. I’m stockpiling water and shotgun shells now. Remember, AIM FOR THE HEAD.