The personals

Thursday Threesome:
Onesome. Readin. Tell me about your favorite book you read as a kid.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Little underscores the wonder of reading like encountering the original novel for the first time after a lifetime of Johnny Weissmuller. And when you've finished this book, there are twenty-three more Tarzan books to discover.

Twosome. 'Ritin. Everyone does a Senior Research paper. What was YOUR Senior Research Paper about?
I graduated from high school in 1971. I don't remember. Could've been Politics in Doonesbury.

Threesome. 'Rithmatic. Using those 'rithmatic skills to balance the checkbook...so, what store seems to have the most entries in your register, and what the heck have you been buying there?
I rarely write checks, but never mind that. It's a bookstore, often Borders. Lately I've been reading two different collected comic book series, The Essential Spider-Man and Video Girl Ai. I actually have most of the original Spider-Man comics, but the Essential collections are inexpensive reprints I don't have to worry about spilling stuff on -- and it's far easier to manage a single big paperback collection than twenty individual issues. "Video Girl Ai" is Japanese, an outrageous romantic soap opera similar in appeal to "Ranma 1/2" and "Maison Ikkoku."

The Friday Five:
1. What's the last vivid dream that you remember having?
I very rarely remember my dreams. On the infrequent occasions that I do dream, I can remember that I did, but I can't remember what it was about. I recall enough of them to know that I don't dream dialogue: I dream relationships, feelings, movement. I don't think they are silent, but they are usually wordless.

2. Do you have any recurring dreams?
No. I'd like to. I've had dreams that I woke up in the middle of, wanting to know how they ended, but I can never seem to pick up where I left off.

3. What's the scariest nightmare you've ever had?
I don't know. I don't remember them. I wake up with a start, heart pumping and short of breath, and I have no idea why. By the time I'm awake enough to realize I'm awake, I've forgotten what I was dreaming about. Fortunately this is extremely rare.

4. Have you ever written your dreams down or considered it? Why or why not?
I typically can't recall them more than thirty seconds after I wake up. That's not long enough to find a pencil and paper, turn on a light, and write anything coherent.

I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for a moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of a cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise ponder): "A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout"

(Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes after ether experiments while a student at Harvard Medical School 1870).

(Widely quoted: I found it here. I suspect any notes I might take in an attempt to capture fleeting fancies would be no more sensical than Dr Holmes' turpentine.)

5. Have you ever had a lucid dream? What did you do in it?
I can't recall having any other kind of dream. However caught up I am in events, I always know when I'm dreaming.