BS: existential problems

Subject: BS: existential problems
From: GUEST,fred miller
Date: 13 May 04 - 08:57 AM

owing to a curse or something I'm beset by weird problems that cannot be explained. They come and go. There's never any solution or explanation.

I've never been able to wear a watch. They die. They're torn from my wrist, as if I routinely escape danger by the breadth of a watchband. One started running backwards, which you may not believe--fine. I'm used to it. That's part of the curse.

I never have a pen that works.

My belt has decided to rotate. For no reason, just this past month, any belt I wear winds up by mid-day with the buckle to the side, or around back, or somewhere. Maybe it's trying to tell time, to compensate for the watch I can't wear.

   People make a point of misunderstanding things I say. Yesterday I asked for tomato and onions on a fish sandwich, and got a tomato and onion sandwich with no fish.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 May 04 - 09:05 AM

Be glad that you don't wear a pocket watch.

By "have a pen" do you mean using someone else's, or owning one? If it's the first, I'm not going to lend you mine.

Suspenders (braces) might be the answer. If THEY rotate, however....

I can understand why they'd misunderstand an order for a fish-tomato-and-onion sandwich. They were saving you from yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Bill D
Date: 13 May 04 - 09:10 AM

Oh, well...it's simple....you have ebistimuhrongoiverangilosis, a rare condition where 4th dimensional elves play pranks using a gravitational warp to twist your aura and confuse the good fairy who 'should' be looking after you!

There IS a cure...but it's FAR worse than the problem.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: John Hardly
Date: 13 May 04 - 09:30 AM

I get more yellow traffic lights than is believeable by chance. People don't believe me until they ride with me.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: GUEST
Date: 13 May 04 - 10:16 AM

Errrr... did you "piss off" some African witchdoctors recently?

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 May 04 - 01:38 PM

"My belt has decided to rotate. For no reason, just this past month, any belt I wear winds up by mid-day with the buckle to the side, or around back, or somewhere. Maybe it's trying to tell time, to compensate for the watch I can't wear."

You are on the right track- just think it out. Your belt is engaged in an effort to take the place of your malfunctioning watches. It's a sun dial, silly. Only slightly different.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Bill D
Date: 13 May 04 - 01:43 PM

I wear my wristwatch on my belt, for various reasons. Since it wont fit thru the belt loops, the belt could never move more than a couple inches easily. How does your belt buckle get thru the loops?

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: CarolC
Date: 13 May 04 - 01:47 PM

Fred, your reality paradigm is slightly out of synch from those of the people and things around you. I know about this sort of thing because that's how it's been for me for most of my life. This condition does seem to be improving for me though (I'm not exactly sure why... I think things started improving for me when I started learning to play the accordion).

Now, as far as watches go, you can at least help with the problem of them going haywire by putting some masking tap on the back of the watch (where it comes into contact with your skin). I was a watch-stopper for most of my life until I tried this. I'm able to wear a watch now without stopping it.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: GUEST,earthling
Date: 13 May 04 - 02:17 PM

CarolC......I too have never been able to wear a watch, since about the age of eleven. But they don't go backwards, they all used to just stop after about a week of wearing them.Ended up with a drawerful of defunct watches.

Tried for a few years,if I received one as a pressie, and then gave up and carried a small alarm clock around if I was doing something where the time was 'important'. I thought I just had bad luck with watches? So there could be a real reason? Thankfully I now have a mobile phone which seems to be behaving, so tha alarm clock days are over.. Your masking tape idea sounds a good one.

However no trouble with sandwich orders. Had a lovely tuna and sweetcorn today, with all the ingredients in the right places.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Pied Piper
Date: 13 May 04 - 03:33 PM

I think Fred you need to strengthen your cognitive immune system, I'd suggest a course in statistics, but even I'm not that heartless.
TTFN
PP

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 May 04 - 04:16 PM

No problems with wrist watches here. I've worn one since I was about fourteen. The only problem I've had with a wrist watch (and it was my fault) was once when working for a radio station, I was in the production room taping a commercial. I had it all done on the open-reel tape recorder and I needed a clean cartridge to dub it to. I took one with a bunch of discontinued commercials, flopped it on the magnetic eraser, pressed the "ON' button and swished the cart around. While doing this, I felt a brief electric shock in my left hand. Surprised me, but I couldn't figure out what did it, and wondered if the magnetic eraser was on the fritz. Later, I noticed that my battery-powered digital watch (complete with stop-watch, alarms, and other bells and whistles) had stopped. The magnetic field had sucked the charge out of the battery and generally screwed up the watch. Most upsetting, because this was when digital watches first came out and they were very pricy!

With me, pens and pencils proliferate, as if somehow related to clothes hangers. Their all over the top of my desk and my bedside table and almost every flat surface in my apartment. Except, of course, when I need one in a hurry.

With peanut butter and Concord grape jelly sandwiches (from another thread), I invariably get a big dollop of grape jelly on my shirt front, especially if I've just put a clean shirt on, and especially if the shirt is a light color.

As far as clothes rotating is concerned, I have the same problem with my Jockey shorts that Fred has with his belt. It's most uncomfortable when your Jockey shorts wind up at a 45° angle from where they should be. It took years of research and study, but I think I have a viable theory. Check it out HERE.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 May 04 - 04:33 PM

The effect of the Coriolis force is an apparent deflection of the path of an object that moves within a rotating coordinate system. The object does not actually deviate from its path, but it appears to do so because of the motion of the coordinate system."

So, your shorts only appear to rotate? :)

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Megan L
Date: 13 May 04 - 04:43 PM

Carol C nail polish has the same effect. Strange I dont have an effect on watches but i darent press the call button for a lift, all it usually does is give me a shock then banish the floor i am on from the lifts memory for the next 15 minutes.
#

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 May 04 - 05:04 PM

Although I am not conscious of it, I presume that it's me who's doing the rotating. Relative to my immediate surroundings, I have sat motionless for hours (as I'm doing now). Not entirely motionless, though. I manipulate the mouse and I type, and I drink vast quantities of coffee. Then, after all that coffee, when I go to drain the sump, I discover that the fly of my Jockey shorts has move over toward my left hip.

What makes me wonder a bit about my theory is that I live in the northern latitudes and when sitting at the computer, I'm facing south. If it truly is the Coriolis effect, I would think that my fly should rotate toward my right hip. But perhaps I'm actually stationary and my surroundings (including my shorts) are what is rotating. If that's true, though, then why is it that after a substantial period of time, I find I'm still facing south, not southwest?

Most confusing. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 May 04 - 05:07 PM

I have a problem I have never heard of anyone else having- I get static shocks from the most innocuous things, especially in stores. Bananas, refrigerated doors- anything. I have learned to give everything a smart slap before grasping it to dissipate the energy, on the premise that the feel of the slap covers the slight shock I get. (I'm surprised people don't walk along behind me to watch the madwoman.)

One exception: I do not slap a proffered hand as I'm introduced- but I often do get shocked when we touch. For that matter, I'm often shocked when someone touches me on a shoulder.

I don't drag my feet, the floor isn't carpeted, there doesn't seem to be an electrical current nearby- what could be the reason?

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Megan L
Date: 13 May 04 - 05:09 PM

Ah ebbie like myself you have a highly charged personality. Dont you just hate those rubber rails on moving staircases.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 May 04 - 05:19 PM

So there is someone else out there? But what does 'highly charged' actually mean? I'm willing to discharge!

Not that it hurts, and it is over very quickly but it will happen again three minutes later.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Bill D
Date: 13 May 04 - 05:27 PM

you need rubber soled shoes..or, better yet, walk about an inch above the floor/ground :>)

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: CarolC
Date: 13 May 04 - 05:31 PM

A stainless steel collandar worn on the head with a chain of paperclips hanging from it down to, and dragging on the ground ought to take care of that shocking problem I figure.

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 May 04 - 06:02 PM

What about aluminum foil? It works for other things. And it wouldn't be quite so obtrusive. I despise drawing attention more than I must.

I really like the suggestion to walk an inch above the ground. I have seen airfoil boats on the ocean. I might have trouble keeping a steady flow of air on the ground below me, though. I'll have to experiment.

Incidentally, I have never found a watch that I can wear. Way back when, my first boyfriend gave me a wristwatch. I was so crushed when a week or so later it stopped working that I never did tell him what happened. Indeed, I suspected that it was a cheap watch! It was not until other watches over the years 'wore out' just as quickly that I gave up. I think I may still have one or two watches in my 'jewellery' (Yeah. Right) case today.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: GUEST,fred miller
Date: 13 May 04 - 11:30 PM

oh I was just getting started.

I might have shorts problems, also, but I'm almost entirely unable to wear underwear. Only in sub-freezing weather. I also can't stop myself from telling people more than they care to know, even though I know that people don't want to know that I um I've lost my train of thought.

   I can manage a peanut butter and concord grape jelly sandwich but not without thinking of Ephram Bull who was a neighbor of Hawthorne and developed the concord grape and whose tombstone expressed bitterness about the whole thing. He sowed, others reaped, it says.

   I excell at slow recall trivia but can't find a game. Is that my final answer? No, give me a few more hours on the clock.

   When I was twelve I developed a cognitive allergy to milk. It occurred to me that it was white and opaque like paint, and I couldn't drink it without choking from there on. So to compensate, I round up my height.

I'm a painter and every few months I completely forget how to paint. I've learned to do perspective drawing more than 20 times and currently don't know how.

   I have no idea how the buckle gets through the loops.

   I worry over what people thought about static electricity before the discovery of electricity. My mind wanders when reading old books, hoping maybe they'll mention it somewhere.

   I sometimes start reading a book only because I hope it will have a word I can't think of somewhere in it. When I find the word I can't remember why I was trying to think of it.

   It utterly makes my day when people I've been rudely argumentative with will still talk to me about my stupid problems.

I think I did piss off a witch who ran a little shop in New Orleans once when I was a kid. Hm.

   If anyone is trying to save me from myself they have worse problems than I do. Sort of. If you think about it. But not too much.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: CarolC
Date: 14 May 04 - 12:05 AM

Yeah, well, just wait until the excellerated entropy sets in. You think you're complaining now...

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: MAG
Date: 14 May 04 - 12:15 AM

Ebbie, I hold my key ring in my fist and touch something metal with it. it dissipates the charge so you don't get a concentrated zinger.

I don't like to use fabric softener in the wash; it's a bit itchy. This may cause excesive static cling ...

Fred, I suggest klearning how to do the yogic spinal twist. or move to southern california; there every other person is going to have the answer to your problem. or I can give you the name of my shrink.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 14 May 04 - 12:39 AM

Funny you mention that CarolC, at a gathering once everyone was sharing their phobias. Mine was entropy. I'm not kidding, this was an historic event and I have witnesses, albeit drunk ones. So. What's yours?

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 May 04 - 12:44 AM

Howling over here...

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: CarolC
Date: 14 May 04 - 02:10 AM

Well, things move in mostly reverse order in my life, so I've been moving out of the excellerated entropy phase and into more of a controlled entropy. And it does seem to be slowing down more and more all the time. But I think that's backwards compared to what other people experience.

The way it worked for me was that everything that was directly connected to me in my life, my body, my car(s), my stuff, my life, one day I realized that the rate of entropy for these things was highly accelerated as compared to pretty much everyone else. And I was also worried that the rate of accelleration was accelerating. I was pretty alarmed when I made this discovery, but also a bit relieved because it explained a lot of things about my life. But the last few years, as I've said, it's slowed down a lot. Maybe some day I'll move out of the entropy stage altogether, and start having the opposite of entropy.

At any rate, I recommend learning to play the accordion. I think it might help.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: CarolC
Date: 14 May 04 - 02:12 AM

Oh, yeah. My phobia is holidays. But that's been getting less severe also.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: SueB
Date: 14 May 04 - 03:12 AM

Speaking of entropy, chaos theory (or is it complexity theory) tells us that energy dissipated by entropy is ultimately reorganized on a "higher level". I'm not exactly sure of the implications for Carol,
but I think Fred might be playing a key role in the transformation of the world as we know it...

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: SueB
Date: 14 May 04 - 03:17 AM

I've got it now - Carol, in taking up the accordion, has thermodynamicly passed the baton, so to speak...

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 May 04 - 05:54 AM

My neighbour has started her looney antics again (I've mentioned her in previous threads - she must be off her medication again!) - screaming out that I am dumping toxic waste in her yard, poisoning her grass and Morning Glory plants (isn't that a noxious weed here in Queensland?) She empties her bath water all over her yard & garden (apart from what she doesn't drink I suppose!) and was then traipsing around the yard singing at the top of her head. A friend told me that her therapist may haver told her that when the voices in her head get too loud, she should sing.

I attract nutters.

When I did my Advanced Resucciation Certificate, one of the instructors went off his nut that I was some sort of smart arse who wasn't listening to him, etc. I had been doing CPR on the dummy (no - not him!) at work every three months for the previous 10 years or so - Telstra had a Company program.

After 10 years of hell, I discovered that my Telstra Boss was a paranoid schiznophrenic under treatment for the previous 10 years...

Some woman sent me an email asking me to attend the Medieval Fair in Brisbane, then spent 2 months ignoring my emails & phone calls for information. Whe I asked on an email list if the Fair was still on, or if everybody had been abducted by aliens, she went nuts, making all sorts of false claims that I was abusive to her (on the phone calls she never answered!), and claimed that she would be blacklisting me from all future Australian Medieval Fairs that she ran...

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: CarolC
Date: 14 May 04 - 04:40 PM

Yes, I think that probably explains it, SueB. I think it was time, though. I was getting tired.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 May 04 - 04:54 PM

Interesting that you should say that, Foolestroupe, about attracting nutters. A friend of mine believes that about himself. He says that if there's a man babbling into the air anywhere in town he will find him. (This man is a songwriter and so maybe he does look at people in d different manner from most.) Another man told me he thinks that people are afraid of him because he resembles a weasel. (He does, a little, I suppose)

I'm not sure what this tells me.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Sam L
Date: 15 May 04 - 10:28 AM

I believe there's a social science chaos theory nobody has recognized yet, which does account for things like attracting loons, and other phenomenae.
    There was a guy I used to work with who had a completely odd sense of reality, but when I worked on a trip with him, the world conformed to his idea of it, right on cue. Oddly, he believed women liked to expose themselves to guys in trucks. Then, they did, all across the mid-west. I've never seen anything like it before or since.

   My workspace is organised on a higher lever, which looks merely messy to the untrained eye.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 May 04 - 12:46 PM

A 50ish friend told me that he has been totally spooked after something that happened in college. He was a shy, quiet freshman studying outdoors in the sun in a still, warm day. An attractive girl came out of the hall with an armload of books and papers and seated herself at the steps.

He watched her covertly, wishing he could attract a girl like that. Suddenly a gust of wind caught her papers and sent them spiraling to him, with her in pursuit.

In total silence he helped her pick them up and then left the scene as quickly as he could.

To this day he has not flown in an airplane. Living in southeast Alaska that sometimes creates a problem but he opts to travel by water or road, no matter how long it takes.

He is afraid that if he concentrated on his fear, a crash would be inevitable.

Granted. He may have other problems than that- but that is his story.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Sam L
Date: 16 May 04 - 01:21 AM

I'm not sure I follow the connection, but I imagine not flying in Alaska is a problem of existance. Don't planes have the right of way on the roads?

I tried to rationalize Mario's truck-driving world view. He usually drove NY to Florida, and I said no, that doesn't happen, that's probably a spring break Florida sort of thing. Then there it was, in Missouri, Nebraska, Minneapolis. Minneapolis? Then I thought it was him, because he was a small, non-threatening, teddy bear of a guy, and very nice. But how much of that comes through a windshield at 70 mph? People make their own realities, a little.

Which asks the question, why do I have absurd problems?

   I'd take up accordian, but my hands have problems with basic keyboard shapes, two fingers won't space right. My left hand is better, because of years of guitar chords, so maybe I could play as if I were left handed? I can't do that blues two-note wobble very well, so I decided it was a cliche' and that I don't do it for that reason. Made my own reality.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 May 04 - 01:52 AM

Fred Miller, I like you.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 May 04 - 05:03 AM

Fred, "My workspace is organised on a higher level, which looks merely messy to the untrained eye."

Mine is organised on the method invented by that great Indian Methods Study man ...

The Ran Dom Heap Method.


Robin

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: matai
Date: 16 May 04 - 06:57 AM

If I dont have any existential problems could that mean I dont exist? I tried analysing and solving the one where items of clothing move west. It can mean one buttock is slightly larger than the other. Subconsciously one adjusts by leaning slightly to one side or sitting on a slightly slanting chair and the clothing items imperceptibly shift. Over several hours this can be a few inches of travel. The metal thingy is most likely to do with diet. The elements in our bodies reacting to those without. Sorry to be such a kiljoy but.... actually i just made that all up....but who knows
"there are stranger things in heaven and on earth than we'll ever know, Horatio" (terrible misquote i know but i'm sure someone will correct me)

Matai

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Sam L
Date: 16 May 04 - 11:24 PM

More things, dreamt in philosophy.

I like you too Ebbie, but keep liking me and I'll begin to think less of you.

Subject: RE: BS: existential problems
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 May 04 - 12:09 AM

HA!