How Many Licks

Junior lollipops are over-rated. Get the good mass-produced Seniors, the kind that comes in many different flavors, because if they were lucky enough to make one fucking good one, (the “fucking” was added for emphasis), then the 10th might be as good if not more. Keep the hits coming.

In dedication to the hits, the following most Internet-searched words of the day are to be used & abused: crocodile needlefish, intellectual ventures, crystal rock, act test, billionaires for wealth care, lugubrious, & act tips.

Crocodile needlefish! What the hell’s in this crystal rock? Intellectual ventures? Just watch the lugubrious billionaires for wealth care take act tests for act tips.

Stock act tip: Lugubrious crocodile needlefish frozen in crystal rock is the new intellectual venture designed for billionaires for wealth care (principally for those who took the act test.

Billionaires for wealth care made act tips and bought crystal rock for enemas. The crocodile needlefish was just not cutting the act test. Lugubrious, it engages in intellectual ventures.

Crystal rock crocodile needlefish are for the billionaires for wealth care. Take this act tip now & boost their lugubriousness into recycled intellectual ventures for the unwitting of tomorrow.

Lugubrious billionaires for wealth care buy crystal rock. Like crocodile needle fish, they pass act tests. These kinds of act tips are no good for intellectual ventures. Stop the fleecing.

Act test, so behave. No act tips. Pure intellectual ventures are in demand. Do not become lugubrious like billionaires for wealth care on crystal rock or crocodile needlefish.

In Crystal Rock City, the lugubrious is worth intellectual ventures for those billionaires for wealth care. Act tips & act tests are abundant in supply due to crocodile needlefish swimming up urethras.

Intellectual ventures behave like act tips that passed the act test. Neither crocodile needlefish, nor crystal rock will provide substitute. There is no just thing as lugubrious billionaires for wealth care. Or is there?

One idea, two words: Google Bombing.

Does Propaganda

make you her Bitch?

Well does she?

i couldn’t help but ask myself my own question immediately after it crossed my mind. Like the chicken that crossed the road for whatever reason humor decrees, the reason the question crossed my mind was so i could be cold to those who could stand the freeze. Otherwise, i had planned on saying i found the question on a bumper sticker.

The question is not necessarily a response to current world-changing events. For my friends in Italy, Puerto Rico, Poland, Japan, Germany, Russia, England, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Columbia, France, Holland, Iceland, Chile, Brazil, Denmark, not China, Belize, Argentina, Spain, Japan, South Afrika & New Zealand, the world-changing events i’m arrogantly speaking of are the Presidential elections as of ’08 gone though & done in the U.S. of Amerika. No, the question is a general response deserving attention because… well, because i don’t want to be anybodies’ Bitch. Not even if that body is in the Abstract.

Of course i can look over my life & see how throughout the years i wore a shiny, jeweled leash. Just look at the music i listened to in ’98 or the clothes i wore in ’03. What about the color of my hair in ’82? Or the drugs i did in ’76 for that matter. i said ’76 not ’66… the drugs of ’66 were the bomb!!! Whether it was a be-in or an Acid Test, the times have never been so… so… ’66. Idealism had some real roots then. If the now then was unsatisfying, then wasn’t the now of the future a speckle of Hope? Yeah, i agree “nostalgia stings the nose with stink” so let’s age that nostalgia home.

As for the Abstract Propaganda i’d like to say, “Now i know better.” Fitting-in is okay to get by, i’d say, because nothing can neuter or spade my mind’s fertility. “Are you losing your pregnancy or Vitamin C?” i’m trying not to bake my family goods with all the radioactive mediums of communication out there. Lead underwear & helmets aren’t cheap to come by, you know. But it’s necessary, quite law, to jump into the peg hole. Skip stones on the lake of social consciousness or skip fish? What am i, an ad agency?

So, after all is said & done, then criticized then said & done & criticized in cycles, the joke is… on You! HA-Haaa ha- ha-haaaa hew HA! All this banter dissin’ Propaganda is really just a love letter. i & Propaganda are friends. i can’t escaper her no matter how hard i try. i guts to eat, drink & be merry in her presence– even if its pretend. Just talking about Propaganda, makes me mad with delight-fright. Like they say “Bad Publicity is Good Publicity.” He ha-ha haa ah hA haAaAaaaA…

You & Me & Propaganda forever!!

the Left-Right to Choose

From the beginning of these confessions, i’ll place at your feet, oh Master, the meat of my capture:

Vote if you must! But don’t cry when i suggest there is no decision. The jagged cogs labeled Media, those moving this massive machine, don’t tell you what to think. We’ve known that for quite some time now. No, the Medias tell you what to think about. Saying as such, it is quite obvious you should vote for Politician A & not Politician B. (Notice how i’m trying to avoid naming conventions.)

Because it really doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what side your penis or boob(s) hang. If it’s to the left or to the right, the majority who has the power to “choose” have been supplanted to move in a certain direction.

“How?” you ask. By being given the answer, i answer.

“The answer to what?” you retort. For whom to vote for, i reply.

“And who controls this mighty machine, (& jagged Media cogs included)?” you retort some more. “That is for you to decide; though i have my suspicions, i really don’t care,” i reply some more.

“Why?” If i cared to find the identity of the master controller, i believe & thus confess, i’d first need as many hands as a Hindu Goddess to be able to point in the right direction. Or at least in the vicinity of the right direction. Secondly, i’d have to investigate; learn more; feed more. In turn, my feeding would naturally be supplanted by a source, quite possibly from the master controller, whoever they may be.

“And what’s wrong with that?” you quickly ask. i’m trying to avoid falling into a trap. These damn traps are everywhere you know.

“Then what, dear tell me, is this whole political process for, if it’s all a sham as you want us all to believe? You do want us to believe it’s a sham, don’t you?” i lovingly smile, wring my hands & smile some more after thinking awhile to say, “It is all apart of the show, for it must go on. How easy is it for, let’s say, a plumber named Joe – sorry Joe, i know you’ve been getting barrels of shit lately – to be plumbing away three years out of four, then get absorbed into the social political stream? Quite easy, given our current cultural state i’d say. Medias galore. Now add all the Joes & what do you get? A mass of Joes.”

“What is causing you so much pain that you have to wring your hands?” you perceptively ask. i wring my hands because it seems as if you want to believe so much in this illusion, no matter what can be said about it, i simply reply.

And this show could go on… but i’ve lost interest & have given my loyal readers/masters what they came for. What’s this? You want more? Hold on a sec. The instructions for this thing say: Taking the skin off may not just be more enjoyable for your mouth, but it also may help your body as well. Skinless meat has less fat than meat with the skin left on it. While boneless skinless meats are available in the supermarket, you can get more and spend less money if you skin and debone the meat yourself. No shit, that’s what i’m trying to do here, Fucker. In this section, we'll teach you how to skin and debone a meat. Finally. To make the first cut, insert the knife into the front. Work the knife and cut along one side to the back of the bone. It is important to cut as close to the bone as possible. Cut down the other side to the back of the bone and remove it. Cut down the other side to the back of the bone and remove it. Cut down the other side to the back of the bone and remove it. Who wrote these instructions? Oh well, here we go! Ughnnnn %$&*@ uhgnnnnnn huah @$$% arggggg ahhhhhhhhh!!! Wow! That wasn’t hard at all. So, here you are dear Reader, here’s my Leg.

“Yummy, but there’s too much fat. So, earlier you said it didn’t matter what i thought because the masses have been told what to think & they are the one’s who will ultimately choose. But you forget really negligently that I, like everyone else, can choose, that I have the Freedom of Choice, to decide between A or B. What say you now?” Did you just say ‘what say you now’? Who taught you how to talk/read/write? Where did you learn to engage a conversation? Do the people surrounding you talk like that? To answer you though i feel i’d be repeater, this Scepter of Choice you wave at me is really just a stick all prettied up. Like my face. What i’m saying is there is no Scepter, & like me there is no face. If there were, it’d all be apart of the same system, the same machine, the same illusion created to contain the current state of coveted existence. Hint Hint.

Here’s another approach. Try hard as hell may heat to separate yourself from all your emotions, from all your past & whatever you think you may know. If you know nothing, then i agree, recognize our mutual situation & invite you to a Beer – my treat.

Now that you’ve separated from all the past, get a blanket cuz it might get cold. Better? Okay. After much internal wrestling, which is still going on despite the dried & fresh blood; whole & broken teeth; chunks of hair, some of which is attached to layers of flesh; bits of ears; tips of fingers; skin scrapings; wrangled veins; innocent parasitic bystanders; offal; bone marrows; solid & mushy feces; spit; animal parts – hey, how did those get in there? i only eat vegetables – urine & bone fragments; i’ve decided not to pastes an editorial from the New York Times below (an article that had appeared in print October 24, 2008, on page A30 of the New York edition (Shhhh, don’t tell anyone i live in New York City…)). i’ve decided against my torn Will not to paste the editorial though doing so would provide an example of jagged Media cogs churning away, a leaning comparison, if you will. The name of the editorial is/was “Barack Obama for President”. After reading it all, if you could (i had to huff ‘n puff a lunch bag every other paragraph (no, i don’t smoke cigarettes)), doesn’t the “choice” seem one-sided, if not almost gone? Thanks Media.

Before you cry foul, remember how i do not promote Candidate A over B, nor B over A, or even A minus B +2C. Remember that.

Yeah, there’s multiple comparisons on these Internets. So, to balance scales here’s an article not-so-lengthy, curiously so, drawn from The Dallas Morning News titled “We recommend John McCain for president” (shhhhhh don’t tell anyone i was in Dallas).

Better yet, to add a meta-tone to this blogpie, an news article about news articles titled “Why McCain is getting hosed in the press” should do the trick. Yummmmm! Enjoy the full flavor.

Setting the scales of justice aside, the first editorial above had summarized the eight years of political plunder quite well. Here’s the bit that caused me to fit:

“The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.”

The summarization required immortalization along side another immortal quote i had once used (on November 6, 2006 to be exact) to describe, in hindsight, what eventually became:

Adlai Stevenson once said, "In a democracy, people usually get the kind of government they deserve" – a fine stake driving itself through the heart of Amerika's current status. To some it was a clear victory. To others it was a straight-out bummer.

But regardless of the turnout, it’s going to be beautiful to watch it all come down upon the weak, yet massive foundation supporting it. Building a hut out of straw sure is going to suck for the Pig, but that’s what the power hungry Piglets & Fatback Swine get…

Here’s a real life conversation i had with a friend the other day, here’s how it kinda went:

Dash: “Fox News is the best.”
Dot: “Foxes are sly creatures. God made them to keep the hens alert.”
Dash: “Yeah. Did you watch the debate?”
Dot: “Nay, the contest – if is even is such a thing – is a no brainer.”
Dash: “Then no brain me.”
Dot: “When people do not even know what ‘truth’ is, they are easily led astray. Arguments out of context about statements taken out of context. The system has chosen its savior/sacrifice.”
Dash: “Totally”
Dot: “Did you watch the debate for homework or for shits ‘n giggles?”
Dash: “Shits ‘n giggles”
Dot: “I watched ‘Fido’ instead; i figured it was the same thing. Have you seen ‘Quarantine ’? It’s quite good – ‘A’ material.”
Dash: “Thought about it.”
Dot: “Like with voting, don’t think too hard about it. The masses don’t (think hard; they let others think for them…). Fido was awesome.”
Dash: “Fido is Great .”
Dot: “Totally – i am exercising my right not to vote.”
Dash: “Not voting anyway either.”
Dot: “Amen”

There you have it: If the Vote hangs by one or two hands, part of it would be my fault. And you, faithful Master, are reading the proof of my guilt. But i’m not worried. Day by day, month by month the bandwagon has been growing. We’ll see if they show up too the booths & put an end to this zombie-ism.

In a different real-life conversation a valid argument had been presented (what became a needed reminder) how the Vote was an important moment in our lives, considering the history building up, as it were, to this moment; and we were all apart of it. As such, how could i (your Captain Author) throw away my opportunity to at least say “i was there & i swung my bat.” Okay, okay, her words didn’t flow downstream in that manner, but it was the gist of the mist i was able to capture.

She was right. There was way too much emotion attached to the Vote. How can i ask you to forget a part of your humanity to consider logically & stoically the question of weighing two elements, Candidate A & B, as unbiased as an objective chemist? Well, all i can say is, “Try, Damn it!! Try hard as Rhino-fuck to be objective.”

“Lock your Subjective in the cellar no matter how horrifying it yells ‘Dead by Dawn!! Dead by Dawn!!’ Then & only then will Chance fornicate itself upon thee, planting its seeds into your fertile mind. Ohhhh your mind is sooooooooo fertile!”

(Now is there any question why the Medias kill for your attention, for that virgin landscape below, equal & above your brow?).

@ = RFID

The factory works under my cap crawled 'n cracked to an RFID-monster-of-an-article. Despite the ugly brute, my ghost whispers, "Things in & of themselves lack a moral dimension." It is a reminder i’ve set to random & loop especially at times when loopy contemplations are running wild 'n about such topics as the said mammoth of an article; daunting prospects by sticking its finger in the knows of our future with/of RFID's. The title of the beast is “Microchips everywhere: A future vision”. Here we have predictions, as well as quoted pros & cons, and maybe, as in the original Greek:

"----? ? --?--?-- ------??; ? ??--? ???? ??--?--?---- --?? --??--µ?? --?? --?????; --??--µ?? ----? --?--??--?? ------?; ?--? ? --??--µ?? --?--?? ???'."

Or in King James' version:

"Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."

That was a monkeyshine. Here's Monkeyshines. There's yet another:

It'd be easy of me to preach on this pulpit-type blog, but i would first have to wonder to what ends would my means take shape. Whipped on top of the peach is an instinctive response of repulsion; who'd want to surrender themselves to a firing squad of lectures, dogmatic conversions or proselytizing? But a preachy peach can't be eaten any other day than Sunday, so let's shake off our wigs & robes and try to be neutral: Eat the peach. Allow teeth to sink past the fuzzy navel. Lap the squirting, secreting juices. Dig the tongue deep enough to touch the pit. Through this neutral process we can, hopefully, fearfully, nip the core of the matter square in the balls, or to be consistent with the analogy, in the ovaries. (This neutral approach might work… as it has been hoped to work… by other professionals & friends of these professionals & friends of these friends of the professionals... which would eventually end up qualifying you & me (notice "me," not "i").)

After a second reading it appears that i may have been unclear about the peach along with the other cloud-surfings. Of all those peaches on a peach farm, including the unripe dangling ones & those multi-quality ‘n collected into baskets, the last peach i was promoting was the Peach of Neutrality: The taste has its merits like the way different herbs & spices are known to have their qualities.

Further thought – something i had not intended to share, much less intended to conceive – paradox? – leads me to think that the Peach of Neutrality once consumed, under the human paradigm, would be something like Objectivism. Of course, that is as the Consumer is under the influence of the Peach of Neutrality; the consumer’s qualities determine his/her objectivism. (So does pure objectivism exist? (If no, it is a fate shared by journalism. If yes, please show me how.))

[From left field] If we're to multiply Consumers, we'd have a demarcated society.
Now, from the outside-in, you’d have cameras…

We may not agree on the speed of change, the cycle if you Will, that hassled up our present; but it appears as if we, as a collective, as a society, have slowly surrendered our rights to an Orwellian prediction of what has become our present. (Wait! Was that a vacuous statement self-possessed of simpler statements that in such a way made it logically true, whether the simpler statements are factually true or false? Was that a tautology, or was that a tautology? Here's tautology of the second nature: "United States President George W. Bush, before the Unity Journalists of Color convention on August 6, 2004, is quoted as saying (with regard to Native American tribes), 'Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. You're a — you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.' That one can be found at the White House.)

No matter, the repeat is that we have slowly, yet surely become a surveillance society. Nothing new there, but if it comes as a surprise, turn off the tube & recycle a bit off the black screen: what rights have we handed over while trying to remain “free”? Did we have freedoms before cameras began budding around town? Why do i care, i look good on cameras anyway? How many times have i come close to dying & not know how a camera saved me? (Note: are these the beginnings of a surveillance church/religion, whereby material salvation is guaranteed by the devotion to those who can protect a livelihood?)

i just considered how T.V. sets may be watching you with hidden cameras.

Aside from the machines & air i need to strike digital ink, i live in a box. Quite obvious, i know, so, a boring life would have nothing to worry about. Opening the Dupe-tube would be a dangerous proposition to check. Otherwise i'd nullify the warranty.

"Otherwise i'd nullify the warranty." – There’s a progressive stance. On! And upwards! Towards UTOPIA!!

The utopian dream is yet to die off, to take a break or fade from public & private spotlight – The "future" (told to us with ulterior motives, hence the quotes) is now & ever making. Why not contribute to a better tomorrow? A machine can live the drearier part of my life…

What i can't determine is if all this, RFID's & T.V. sets filled with cameras, is for the best or for the worse. What do i have to hide if i'm not doing any wrong? Don't i gain from learning about my culture, my humanity through RFID's & T.V. sets filled with cameras? Sure, forces outside my own will know me better than myself. These forces can help relieve the strain of this overwhelming freedom of choice. But where has my Will shrunk? ("DRINK ME" the bottle says; "EAT ME" the muffin says (if only the Will could change in shape by drinking & eating things …) .)

Aftermath

We must be at a point in our evolution where we can’t trust each other enough not to be watching & recording each other’s behavior. Or is this another myth being forced upon us?

Go to Hell's Pass of the North?

"Go to Hell," she sells tells me. How much for how much, i think. (Did she mean “Hell’s Pass of the North”?)

Of all the things i coulda, would’va should-tilda do, should i do a no-comply? i don’t think i shouldn’t even if i could. i’d like to, kind-of feel obligated to but, but is that within my nature? Left foot, right foot & cozy now with skater shoes, suit & tie, i wonder if i'd end up going to her Hell or to Hell’s Pass of the North. What if i crap it all & go to Hell Paso, Texas? Would i then get an "A" for the effort?

And yet more "Go to Hell"-s. Well, they’re not verbatim but it adds up in the end. Like getting your car bent by careless neighbor-lane parkers or busted eggs post-grocery shopping or, or, or. Each one stretched out in time can easily be forgotten. But in a one-day, in a sequential series & Hell will have to pay for itself.

So, before i go somewhere, i must sit here on Rodin's rock:

We are told to go to Hell. Fine. And we have the ability to tell others to go to Hell. Amen. But what is this act of being told to go to Hell that others, like we, wish to endorse or come to predict?

Stripping down the vehicle, command or insult, it is eh… mostly on average… a naked return of injury, a sort of verbal justice. This Justice mostly affects a balance of the give & take and take & give. Like that blindfolded statue with the toga, sword & scales, Justice is for-the-most-part supposed to be a system of fairness. So for instance, when i tell you to go to Hell, we can assume my self had been insulted – Oh! My beautiful self, why are you so muddy? Mind how a jury will never wholly understand how the accused, the self-described judge was injured; the judge was outside the bounds of pure empathy... This injury felt was on a subjective plane & no articulated tangled mess of reason will fully convey that experience. ~ Weeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiii ~ Whether the judge knows this. or not. at the time of declaring his verdict is only a trivial happenstance. ~ Wheaaaaaaeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiii ~ In short, it is from hell - Did i just hear a violin?? – Anyway this is the main point here, so ignore that bit of the violin – It is from Hell, that one is told to go there. Otherwise, how will the discomfort of Hell be known and thus communicated to another?

Should we come to consider the Status of the almighty person desiring to communicate a mind & body to a place of infamous drudgery? Hell, take an example of a Holy priest who somehow let – allowed – permitted – tolerated - unchecked his/her emotions to get the best of him/her. Would the curse be stronger and uninterruptedly more effective coming out of his/her mouth, considering how his/her emotions went unguarded (somehow)? On the other hand, what if an unHoly priest told us to go to Hell, does his/her unique understanding of Hell have more sway over the state of our Wills? It seems as if this question of status would fluctuate with the Damned's current knowledge of what holy & unholy priests do.

In the unique realm of the Mind, a request to go to Hell & even the act of telling some dot to go to Hell could also be taken as a curse or form of incantation. Would it cause Hell to be told with enthusiasm to go to Hell? As a form of incantation, we can imagine a creative mind's capacity to fathom the depths of Hell, possibly sending it there. "What you see is what you get." "What you feel is what is real." "How does the wheat paste taste?" To rebel & put up a resistance would here indicate a fortified mind with sentries & a moat filled with crocodiles & sharks & zombies; the ease of resistance would show how solid shit that mind is. Got me?

Comparably, being told to go to hell is another way of being told to get bent, go fuck oneself, eat shit, etc. Again, it appears that the person saying this was first bent, fucked, ate shit, etc. But i regress. Of more importance, i wonder if it would cost us too much energy to reverse the flow of negativity by telling a villain that we love them heroically.

Does love cost us more energy than war? Would it be possible to return the insult by flipping the coin, by flipping the negativity, and saying "Welcome to Heaven"?

Her last "Go to hell," echoes away with every fresh remembrance. Ahh, the wind through my hair, looking up, at last i reply "Welcome to Heaven."

Fair Thee Well, Arms

Sometimes when i stretch my arms towards the sky, something i do naturally because the stretch feels good, i get scared that i'd set off my superhuman abilities & accidentally fly straight through the ceiling, crashing through the stories above me & up into the atmosphere. If i'm lucky, i'd be first classified as a U.F.O. then later denied & re-categorized as a human shaped helium-filled condom. If i get luckier, the U.S. Air Force will think i'm dangerous & try to shoot me down. But this is all unlikely. If anything my superhuman abilities will get bored going up, up & away, and i mostly fear that they'd shut off & let me free fall until i'm this close <------------> to becoming one, mind, body & spirit, with the ground.

Another related fear is due to the possibility that when i stretch, the stretch keeps stretching & my arms keep going, ripping on & off of my body. My arms have a mind of their own, and the trouble they'd get into worries me because my arms have fingerprints – a representation or summarization of who i am. Just as the police ask the police. Who knows the dirty, slimy, gritty things my arms & hands will touch once they're on their own.

Another fear i get when i stretch my arms is that i'll stay stuck in stretch. Then i'd have to comb my hair, drive, introduce myself & eat with my penis' hands. Yep, my penis is so big it has its own hands. i'd also have to stump my legs just to get through doors & into elevators. The police would think i'm admitting guilt by sticking my hands up without being told to do so, kind of like pulling over before a cop has had the chance to turn on his party lights & siren. Strangers would think i'm excited to see them, and freak when i don't hug back. Lecturers would get annoyed, rollercoaster rides would be denied and running would be an almost impossibility. At least my armpits wouldn't stink as much.

Doppelgänger for You

Once upon a time i was reading David Byrne's online journal – no need to clap; yeah, i'm awesome – & he was talking about Mayan history, when the word "doppelgänger" caught & salted my eyes. This is what he said:

"Many of the Gods, and many of the personal doppelgängers, are animal/human hybrids. Dog-faced or jaguar-faced humans. Parrot beaks on jaguar heads on a human body. And of course the serpent with feathers — now confirmed by dinosaur science to have actually existed in some form. Birds are indeed descended from dinosaurs, and flying feathered lizards did exist as (sic) one time — so this stuff is not all imaginary, it's not all the result of those peyote enemas.

"Part of the Mayan aesthetic mixed aspects of youth and age in these creatures — a creature with a child's body and the face of an old man was common. The Gods, being of many aspects and avatars, crossed what we see as the line between humans and animals. The Maya saw no such dividing line.

"What if, and this is a big if, not all of these chimeras were mythical? What if not all of them were figments of the Mayan imagination? What if the Maya had some kind of genetic science, lost of us now, which enabled a limited creation of these monsters? Don't laugh. Plenty of the world's knowledge has been lost, though much of it has been 'found' again — the science and astronomy of the Arabs was 'lost' to Europeans for centuries, then 'rediscovered', resulting in great leaps forward. Other skills and techniques of ancient cultures are still a mystery to us.

"So, given that we now know you can indeed mix a pig with a fish, maybe these people actually did it. Maybe the monsters on these walls and frescoes are not mythical, but are historical."

In another David Byrne's online journal entry, a journal continuation of the entry given above, he also says about Mayan history how: "The Maya believe that one has an alter ego, a spirit double, which is called a way (pronounced 'why'.) The word also means sleep. These dream creatures are often animal — or even a mixture of three animals. A feathered serpent with jaguar claws and spots, for example. They believe these doppelgängers can be contacted during sleep. They give advice, amongst other things."

Doppelgänger. The word itself stumbles across the tongue. The impact appears to strum a thick tune on the attention’s strings, and it wasn't for certain that it had seen before now. So, if i had looked-up the definition, it was forgotten, and if i hadn't, well, i was going to do it anyway: Doppelgänger (n.) = A ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its fleshly counterpart.

Since the time of my birth, which has been a long time since & in the making, the idea of meeting my future-self was always welcome. Here's my logic: if a future me came up to me it was because time-travel was possible within my lifetime. In fact, i promised me to do this. The goal: to share information that'd enhance the future well-being of all humanity. Also, since i know myself, i'd tell myself things that i wouldn't have to learn later. It'd be like me teaching myself Kung-Fu now because i'd have to defend myself against people, machines &/or a crossbreed of both.

The viewpoint of a haunting double of a living me doesn't bother me too much, at least not now. The way i see it, after coming to terms with the possibility, if an evil me approaches me or if an evil you approaches you, there must be a reason for it. Kind of defeatist/deterministic, i know, but it would be like a looking glass into the darker part of the self, possibly a part of the self needing exorcism or guidance. Who said the evil self has to succumb to the good self? Why can't we just get along?

- And, what if i were haunted by a double of dead self?

At the clustering moments of becoming informed & building up an understanding of what a doppelganger is, the clustering of concept were linked into a series of stitches across my back, making me itchy & uncomfortable; especially when Wikipedia said that a Doppelgänger was: "generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. In Norse mythology, a vardøgr is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance."

Also:

"The doppelgängers of folklore cast no shadow, and have no reflection in a mirror or in water. They are supposed to provide advice to the person they shadow, but this advice can be misleading or malicious. They can also, in rare instances, plant ideas in their victim's mind or appear before friends and relatives, causing confusion. In many cases once someone has viewed his own doppelgänger he is doomed to be haunted by images of his ghostly counterpart.

"Other folklore says that when a person's doppelgänger is seen, the person him/herself will die shortly. It is considered unwise to try to communicate with a doppelgänger."

Well there goes my desire to be altruistic; here i was reminding myself to visit myself when time travel becomes possible, when in actuality i was paving the way towards death. Sure, death is inevitability, ever present in everything i do, like enjoying a lollipop only to not enjoy the absence of it later… but here i was making a contract, an ultimatum to reach it.

- What if we see a doppelgänger in our dreams? Will our dreaming selves die?

…

What i liked best, maybe because it disturbed me so, were the two accounts given in the aforementioned Wikipedia entry: one by Percy Bysshe Shelley and the other on Abraham Lincoln. They have been captured in a specific moment in time to be here exhibited/pasted for your curious pleasure:

"On 8 July 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley, English atheist and poet, drowned in the Bay of Spezia near Lerici. On 15 August, while staying at Pisa, Mary Shelley wrote a letter to Maria Gisborne in which she relayed Percy's claims to her that he had met his own doppelgänger. A week after Mary's nearly fatal miscarriage, in the early hours of 23 June, Percy had had a nightmare about the house collapsing in a flood, and

"... talking it over the next morning he told me that he had had many visions lately — he had seen the figure of himself which met him as he walked on the terrace & said to him — 'How long do you mean to be content' — No very terrific words & certainly not prophetic of what has occurred. But Shelley had often seen these figures when ill; but the strangest thing is that Mrs. W[illiams] saw him. Now Jane though a woman of sensibility, has not much imagination & is not in the slightest degree nervous — neither in dreams or otherwise. She was standing one day, the day before I was taken ill, [15 June] at a window that looked on the Terrace with Trelawny — it was day — she saw as she thought Shelley pass by the window, as he often was then, without a coat or jacket — he passed again — now as he passed both times the same way — and as from the side towards which he went each time there was no way to get back except past the window again (except over a wall twenty feet from the ground) she was struck at seeing him pass twice thus & looked out & seeing him no more she cried — 'Good God can Shelley have leapt from the wall? Where can he be gone?' Shelley, said Trelawny — 'No Shelley has past — What do you mean?' Trelawny says that she trembled exceedingly when she heard this & it proved indeed that Shelley had never been on the terrace & was far off at the time she saw him."

Carl Sandburg's biography [on Abraham Lincoln] contains the following:

"A queer dream or illusion had haunted Lincoln at times through the winter. On the evening of his election he had thrown himself on one of the haircloth sofas at home, just after the first telegrams of November 6 had told him he was elected President, and looking into a bureau mirror across the room he saw himself full length, but with two faces.

"It bothered him; he got up; the illusion vanished; but when he lay down again there in the glass again were two faces, one paler than the other. He got up again, mixed in the election excitement, forgot about it; but it came back, and haunted him. He told his wife about it; she worried too.

"A few days later he tried it once more and the illusion of the two faces again registered to his eyes. But that was the last; the ghost since then wouldn't come back, he told his wife, who said it was a sign he would be elected to a second term, and the death pallor of one face meant he wouldn't live through his second term.

"This is adapted from Washington in Lincol's Time (1895) by Noah Brooks, who claimed that he had heard it from Lincoln himself on 9 November 1864, at the time of his re-election, and that he had printed an account "directly after." He also claimed that the story was confirmed by Mary Todd Lincoln, and partially confirmed by Private Secretary John Hay (who thought it dated from Lincoln's nomination, not his election). Brooks's version is as follows (in Lincoln's own words):

"'It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day and there had been a great "hurrah, boys," so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it (and here he got up and placed furniture to illustrate the position), and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler — say five shades — than the other. I got up, and the thing melted away, and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it — nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang as if something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again that night I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again, when (with a laugh), sure enough! the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a "sign" that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.

'Lincoln was known to be superstitious, and old mirrors will occasionally produce double images; whether this Janus illusion can be counted as a doppelgänger is perhaps debatable, though probably no more than other such claims of doppelgängers.'"

To watch a re-enacted instance of Dopplegängers in action, go Away to experience “Dopple Ganger Is that your twin?”