Disorienting: waking up and thinking about the things I have to do, then falling back asleep and dreaming that I am doing those things, then waking up and falling back asleep and dreaming the same thing again, in a very realistic and convincing way, then waking up and starting to do the things I have to do, but not quite trusting that I am actually awake, and therefore losing some of the motivation to do anything, since I might still have to do it again when I really wake up. But that time I was really awake.

More site traffic studies: Last week the site traffic reports showed two odd patterns. One, I had hits from many colleges, but only a few from each; the entire Ivy League seemed to be represented, and the most were from Berkeley. Two, I had a lot of hits from google searches for "horrible failure," which appropriately enough I am the number one result for. The connection? A campaign, probably mostly among college kids, to make the president's official biographical sketch on the white house site the number one result for "terrible failure," which was successful a few days ago but now seems to have been 'fixed.' So, a simple miscommunication among a few idiots at each college, and voici.

Aggravating: Losing this entry after typing it the first time (excluding this paragraph) when a stupid blog crashed the browser. The author of this blog mentions how the body of a homeless person was found in a Japanese train station after lying there for 5 or 6 weeks. He uses it as an example of how cold and insensitive the Japanese are, that they probably walked by and just ignored it for so long. Dude, it's not the Japanese, it's people in a big city. If I walked by a blanket that seemed to have a person under it, especially if there were a foul odor, I would ignore it too.

What is odd is the seeming propensity for limbs of the Japanese to detach from their bodies. It seems like every other day there's a report of the arm or leg of a missing person turning up, with no sign of the rest of them. Perhaps they simply don't report on it here.

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The other day there was a fire in a building about 8 blocks from my workplace that we could see from our window. The smoke looked lighter and more steam-ish than one expects from a fire, but there was definitely too much of it. Then I stood up in front of the window and noticed there was a fire truck parked directly below it. Then I checked the NY1 news site and saw that a firefighter had died battling that fire. The article didn't exist yet but the headline was already there. He was probably pronounced dead 2 floors down. It all seemed to happen very quickly. I felt nothing.