Oh, and speaking of dreams

Speaking of dreams, the other morning I had the strongest, clearest sleep paralysis / hypnopompic illusion I’ve had in a long time. This is the sensation of waking up yet being paralyzed, accompanied by various dreamed sensations. People who don’t understand that this is just a weird dream state can be terrified by it (and think that they are being abducted by aliens/molested by demons), but I’ve had some lucid dreams and welcome weird dream phenomena as a gateway to lucid dreams. It was definitely a more intense experience than usual, and there was a moment of confusion and concern before I realized what it was, at which point I started hoping I could get some fun out of it, but as so often happens with these moments of lucidity, I woke up for real very soon.

Communication?

They tell us that studying languages can help us communicate with our fellow humans. Sure, but sometimes you don’t want to communicate. Do you really want to communicate with that panhandler asking for “spare change?” I don’t, but I tend to get sucked into lengthy discussions with them. Sometimes I’m just to polite to tell them to buzz off. I tried a different approach today on the streets of Milwaukee. The encounter went something like this:

Begger: Excuse me....
Me: Guten Tag!
I don’t mean to be any harm I’m just looking for some change to...
Wie geht es Ihnen?
Huh?
Wie geht es Ihnen?
Uh......
Wie bitte?
Um.......

At this point, I had successfully achieved my goal, which, you’ll recall, was to fail to communicate, but to do so in a creative manner.

I suppose it’s unnecessarily cruel to cheerfully speak to someone who probably has mental health issues to begin with in a language I chose to use specifically because I doubted he had any knowledge of it, but it was way more entertaining than these encounters usually are.