Dreams, Revisited

I have a terrible memory for dreams.  Some parts of the dream have been altered due to inability to completely remember full details.  Other parts have just been completely made up.

            My dream begins in “media res”, or with the action already begun for those not aware of term.  Basically, this really creepy girl, whom I have never seen or met before was peddling some form of bicycle thing.  The thingy had no wheels and was clearly used for powering something.  I felt that the girl needed to be freed from her prison, so I went and let her out of the cage that was holding her inside the horrible machine.  Unfortunately, this was a terrible idea, as she was even creepier in person.  I am unable to describe her in detail as, the second that I allowed her to exit the cage, the lights went out.  Cleary the zany contraption was used to power the lights in the house and my removal of the creepy girl had caused them to cease working.

            Anyways, at the same time C was being held captive by this equally creepy guy (equally creepy to the creepy girl, not C).  The creepy girl and I went upstairs to rescue her.  (The details at this point of the dream are sketchy)  Somehow defeating the creepy guy, I was able to free C, who promptly left the room and disappeared without so much as a thank you.  At this point I noticed that both the creepy girl and equally creepy guy had morphed into not so creepy dogs.  For some reason this did not seem to bother me and I went to pet the cute doggy.  Upon close view, however, the dogs had kept the creepy qualities.  Then the creepy girl dog tried to bite me.  I ran out of the room and slammed the door, believing my ordeal to be over.  I was wrong.

            Just as I was about to go down the hall and try and find C, I heard my dog yelping.  It was at that point I realized that he was also trapped in there with the creepy, demon dogs.  Rushing to aid my dog, I tore open the door. Fortunately, the creepy dogs were in the bathroom and feeding.  My poor dog, was cowering at the back of the room.  In an attempt to save him, while avoiding putting myself in danger, I called him to quickly run to me.  At first he was reluctant to move, but with eventual coaxing I was able to get him to come with me.  Just as I was about to exit the room, the two creepy dogs noticed me and rushed at me.  I quickly tossed my dog out of the room and sprinted out after him.  Slamming the door with just seconds to spare, I successfully kept the creepy dogs away from me.  It was at this point I awoke from my slumber. The End.

1. Wish Fulfillment Theory:  Upon analyzing my slightly odd dream, I have discovered two possible hidden desires/ goals/ observations of my life.   The first hidden thing’s Manifest Content is that C leaves after I save her.  The Latent Content is that I fear that C may leave no matter what I do.  The second hidden desire/goal/observation’s Manifest Content is me forgetting about my dog while going after C.  The Latent Content would be me forgetting about a loyal friend while C is in the same room.

2. Activation-Synthesis Theory:  My Amygdala may have been stimulated; as I occasionally felt fear that the creepy dog/girl would attack me.  My limbic system was definitely at the center of my dreaming, as this dream had lots of varying emotions ranging from fear to sadness.  Overall, my brain was being a downer.

3. Information Processing Theory:  The main plot for the story may have been derived from the mass amounts of media that I am exposed to.  The original contraption that the creepy girl was stuck in could have been due to me recently watching the movie Saw 3 and the fact that I read “The Yellow Wallpaper”, which has a woman that tries to free a woman from a “cage” made of wallpaper.  Another similarity between my dream and “The Yellow Wallpaper” was the fact that in both accounts it was a bad idea to release the trapped woman. The fact that the girl shifted from person to dog, may be my brain sorting all the ‘werewolf’ references my friend and I make (Inside Joke). All of these possible connections make the cognitive theory the most plausible, at least for my dream.

Helen Keller: Deaf, Blind and Better Off

            While most people may view a lack of vision or hearing as a disadvantage, there are actually numerous advantages.  When the brain loses a sense, it adapts by heightening the other senses.  Thus, when a person has no sense of vision or hearing, they will have much better senses of feel, smell and taste.  This heightening of senses can allow you to detect potentially harmful odors (eg. Natural gas leaks) before others, find imperfections in objects easier (allowing for better quality of products) or improved taste leading to a possible career as food critic.  All of these attributes can be very beneficial to a human being.  Although deafness and blindness separately are quite common, not many people have been affected by both.  Helen Keller, is by far the most famous deaf-blind person.  Born on June 27, 1880 without the ability to see or hear, she eventually learned to communicate with people and went on to get her bachelor of arts from Radcliffe.  She then went on to become an author and political activist.  Helen Keller proved that the senses of sight and hearing were unnecessary for communication.  With the brain not focusing on using two extra senses, Helen Keller was able to concentrate more on her thoughts, thus allowing her to gain some very progressive ideas.  Had she simply been another human with all five senses, she would not have had the chance to think.  Instead she would have been put to work as a maid or a nanny.  This lack of sight and hearing not only raise her other sense, but raised her social status as well.  Helen Keller is a perfect example of life being better without your two main sense.

Zellers Scavenger Hunt

            For the “Box Store Scavenger Hunt” I chose to go to Zellers, essentially Canada’s version of Walmart, because it has everything from toys to groceries.  Once I entered the store, the first thing that I noted was that the shoppers and employees were both quite multicultural.  There was an even balance between Asians, Indians and Europeans and even the occasional African-American.  While the races were balanced, the ages were very similar.  Most of the shoppers were elderly or mothers with young children and the employees were almost all middle aged woman, probably working the job as supplementary income for their household.

            Having thoroughly creeped out both the staff and patrons of Zellers, I moved on to finding the clothing sections for plus-sized men and women.  In the men’s section there was no plus-sized section, but there was a much greater range in sizes than the woman's regular section.  The woman’s plus-size section was marked by a sign depicting a slightly heavier model standing beside the words “above average”.  It should be noted that the woman was not heavy enough to be considered overweight and probably would have never shopped in that section.  This led me to wonder if any of the signs in Zellers would show an overweight or over 60 person.  After searching the entire store, I found that there were no pictures of either and that every single model was white, excluding one young African-American boy.  I found this odd, because as I previously noted, the shoppers and staff were both very multicultural.

            Still searching for multicultural pictures, I went to the picture frame section.  There I finally found “filler pictures” of non-white people.  In these pictures, there were lots of multicultural friend groups, all 20 something’s having a great time sitting on couches and participating in various other group activities.  The family photos, however, consisted completely of all-white families, there were no multi-racial families, nor were there any families that consisted of other races.

  Having finally located photos of people of a non-European background, I moved on to the card section, in search of cards that were given to minorities (e.g. Hanukkah or Kwanzaa cards).  These were impossible to locate, even when we went to the specialty card store.  In fact, when one of the employees was asked whether they had Kwanzaa cards or not, they responded, “What’s Kwanzaa?”. Once again the stores had failed to be live up to Canada’s multicultural standards.  While still in the card section, I decided to check if we also failed in our sexual diversity.  After searching through two entire aisles of anniversary/ romantic cards, I was unable to locate a single card aimed at gays/lesbians.  In fact I was unable to even find a card that depicted an interracial relationship.  Almost every card that wasn’t ambiguous featured a straight, white couple.  The only exceptions were the occasional cards showing an African-American couples and other cards showing various animals holding hands.  By this time, I was growing frustrated at Zellers lack of diversity.

Hoping that perhaps they were saving their diversity for the children, I hurried over to the toy section of the store.  At first glance I was actually quite impressed, there was a fair mix of races.  Sure the dolls looked exactly the same, excluding colour, but there was a bit of change.  And then I went around the corner, and was hit by a wave of white dolls.  Every single doll in the entire aisle was white.  It was borderline ridiculous.  Going over to the boys section was slightly better.  There were no G.I. Joes, but there were WWE action figures.  There was a decent mixture of races, but once again all of the figures had almost exactly the same body shape.  Once again Zellers had let down Canada’s multicultural ideals.

            Giving Zellers one last chance at redemption, I searched for any aboriginal artwork or people.  I was able to locate a bottle of Lakota picturing an aboriginal Chief and a Canucks logo, which I believe is aboriginal artwork.  Besides those two objects, I was once again disappointed.  This pretty much summed up the diversity in Zellers, sure there was a feeble attempt here and there to show it, but it really wasn’t much.  If this experience taught me anything, its that companies believe that skinny, 20-30 year old, white people are the ideal choice for advertising and thus are the people we emulate the most.   Which says something about our society.

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Assignment #1 - Blogging about Blogging

  This being my first time blogging, I had no idea of what to expect.  My initial thoughts were of how easy it is to set up and use.  Nothing very eventful occurred in my attempts to create my page and I have been able to create this first blog within minutes of starting to set up.  Before I began my attempts to set up my blog, I decided that I should probably take a look at other blogs to see what they were all  about.  I found that they were mostly filled with the rambles of pretentious people who believe that other people really care what others think of their day to day problems or their takes on issues.  I would prefer to get this information for other news sources, but I suppose that enough people are entertained with other peoples musings that Blogging has become a successful form of communication.
    As previously stated, this is my first time blogging and thus this is the first time that my work will be judged by others, excluding my teachers of course, so I suppose I should be a little nervous.  However, I find that because I can hide behind my computer screen I feel a false sense of security that is often experienced by web users.  I find that the human mind uses the computer as a shield, much like we use the car has a physical barrier.  You would never hear someone swearing at a random stranger right on the sidewalk, but on the highway or on the internet, you will find it is quite commonly.
     Despite all my prejudices against Blogging, I am still a bit excited to put out my ideas and opinions and finally discover what others think of my work.  This should be an interesting experience, though perhaps not something that I will do again.  I guess that we shall find out.