Last night I woke up yelling and throwing punches in bed. It was the most startling awakening I’ve had in a very long time. Looking around in the glow of nightlights I had this overwhelming sense of anxiety, anger, frustration, and a deep sense of self preservation but the kicker is I had no idea what I was dreaming.

None. I was asleep. Then I was awake adrenaline coursing through my body.

Then I laid back down and almost immediately went back to sleep. I didn’t even have time to contemplate what it might have been about before I went unconscious again. All I know is this morning I remember that I woke up that way at least once in the night.

I awoke at other times in the night - around 3 and 4am - but never like before.

Weird. I wonder. I just got back to class and am going to bed early.

Curiosity has gotten the better of me. That and I’m really tired. 8^)

UPDATE: I meant to ask this but forgot because of the tired. Has anyone else had an experience like this? Do you remember what the dream was about? Has it happened often?

I use to be really into studying dream stuff and the “night terror” experience was a fasinating subject. I think that’s what this was.

Thinking out loud

http://www.wimp.com/truefear/

Vote Yes!

I particularly like the exclamation as the Rep. turns the page to continue reading the bill. Clearly he wasn’t thoroughly briefed. 8^)

Thinking out loud

One of my classes this semester is Organizational Behavior. Our final (and only) report is a five page essay on our core competencies as known by ourselves and the people around us.

So I’m throwing a call out for insights into my flaws and strengths as seen by the people I know. Please note that if you don’t know me your comment will hold less weight than people who do but won’t be completely worthless. Random guessing is a legit human process and I embrace the concept - mostly.  But it does have its drawbacks - especially in the area of universal origins and meaning of life stuff.

I’d like to get feedback on flaws mostly. They stand out more brightly as being completely wrong and my big brain can skip over them more easily. But if you have any strengths you’d like to share I’d welcome those as well. Oh and if you have any witty quotes I can use as coming from my friends/family it would go a long way toward filling out the five pages.

Not that I’ll need it, the source material is very rich and robust. Unfotunately he won’t allow photos. (I gained fifteen pounds since I started my new job! Eeek!)

But seriously I’m very interesting and feel I can easily write this paper and get an A with or without any so called insights by the people around me - otherwise known as the lower ones. But if they feel the need to better themselves and talk to me about me I will not discourage them in any way.

I await no one but will check back in a couple days for what might have been left. (It’s an eight week class so it goes rather quickly. Can’t delay too long you know. Of course you don’t. That’s ok.)

 Let’s get this started. 8^)

Communication Competency
Diversity Competency
Ethics Competency
Across Cultures Competency
Team Competency
Change Competency

Thinking out loud

…

Discover Card

Thinking out loud

Everyone knows China has a huge industry surrounding pirated movies. It’s a fact and really something to be concerned with. We all know Hollywood is freaking out about it. 

But truth be told I think they are so concerned because then the Chinese people will finally realize that Hollywood has been stealing all their movie ideas and rise up as an angry mob and crush them under a sea of Kung Fu fists and feet. 

Take the amazing movie The Departed. 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407887/

Great movie and powerful performances but it’s a complete and utter rip off of a movie that came out four years earlier called: Internal Affairs (USA Title. Mou gaan dou Hong Kong title.*)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338564/

They ripped this movie off so badly it’s really difficult to see how they got away with it and how they weren’t sued into non-existence for plagiarism and theft of intellectual property.

Here’s how bad it was: (spoiler alert)

Remember the scene with the stand off at the end where they were coming down the elevator in The Departed and the undercover cop was going to take the mole into custody and when the doors open up the undercover cop gets shot in the head by another mole cop sent to protect the original mole and the elevator doors continually close and open on his legs? And then the mole in the police force (who’s really bad) shoots the other mole cop in the head and makes it look like they shot each other? Well that scene is played out exactly expect for one part - they aren’t in the elevator. They are outside an elevator and when the doors open the undercover cop gets shot and the doors continually close on his legs.

That’s the difference.  The blocking was the same except the director said, 

“I know this translated Chinese script says inside the elevator but just to switch it up a little, we’ll do everything the same only we’ll do it” …wait for it…. “outside the elevator.” 

Then the director is praised as a genius of creative cinema as some lowly director wanna-be intern gives him a massage with a happy ending while they move the camera to the opposite side of the room. 

There are so many other parts that steal directly from this movie I just don’t have the time or energy to rant on them all. 

Just know that as much as I enjoyed The Departed after seeing Internal Affairs it is now a cheap imitation of a fantastic and gripping foreign film. I highly recommend renting it. It was better acted and directed then The Departed and I was reading the subtitles while watching it and it still was more enjoyable.

*(Ok. So I know Hong Kong isn’t exactly China but since the British left and the entire island is filled with Chinese descendants, and it’s now under Chinese rule again, and because I needed a country with enough people to rise up in angry mob fashion that would elicit the appropriate imagery - they are China. Done.)

Thinking out loud

I saw this video and had to share it. 

Watch it, now!,  then pass along to everyone you know. 

http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/

Yes, start a chain email on this video. 

My only solice is that we have appoximately 600 more years to go before we (America) goes the way of the Roman Empire. Of course with accelerated technology comes accelerated societies so perhaps I’ll live to see the fall of the US. But at least not until national and local elections turn into propoganda machines for special interest groups pitting one section of society against the other utilizing moral platforms of hate and prejudice under a guise of choice between two parts of the same cloth and the rule of law is usurped and restricted by those Inside to defend “us” against those outside. 

Wait… oh crap.

……

And now for the saddest commercial I have ever seen. 
http://www.wimp.com/inspirationallife/
And one final video for the rational thinkers in the group, just to tie in with the history theme of this post:
http://www.wimp.com/nicetalk/

Thinking out loud