So why are my dreams indistinguishable from a normal day? I hate knowing myself so well I can predict my dreams. I want to surprise myself with everything I say or do. Is everyday life so repetitive it’s being engraved into my psyche? I don’t want to have the kind of days that blur together when you look back on them. When I die, am I really going to look back and think, “Wow, I wish I had watched more episodes of “The Office”? I’m sick of just occupying myself. I want to live the kind of life that produces dreams in full colour.

If you turn on essentially any “news” program today, I guarantee it’ll be “And how do you feel about the events of such-and-such, So-and-so?” That’s not news. There are opinion based talk shows and things for that, and I have no problem with them. Sharing your opinions, that’s totally fine, I get that, but you can’t market it as news if it’s not.

Ask someone you know about current events, and you’ll see the effects of this mislabeling of opinions. We’re slowly brainwashing the public by force-feeding them the latest popular opinion about what’s happening. I get that for some, Fox News or CNN is the only way they’ll hear about current events, but seriously? When all the media in the country is controlled by the same 3 major companies, and all of the media from each of those 3 is spouting variations of their own opinions and calling it news, eventually people start to believe it is. They tell their friends and family, passing it along to their kids, and that’s that. We’ve all got electrodes super-glued to our heads, connected to the same transmitter repeating the same messages over and over.  We can’t advance as a people if we’re all moving along the same thought processes. We’re slowly losing the ability to think for ourselves. The only way for us to move forward from this point successfully is by giving people just the facts, and letting them form their own beliefs.

Differences of opinions? Forget about it. Even those who want to be “controversial” are simply parroting something they’ve heard before. Watch a social network after a celebrity dies, and it’ll be about 50% “R.I.P So-and-so” and 50% “I don’t get why people are making such a big deal over So-and-so dying, it’s not like they did anything special.” In a world where everyone has the same opinions being shoved down their throats, it’s “cool” to do the opposite of everyone else.

So here’s my message: Humans tend to be passive about this sort of thing, “Well, that’s not me they’re talking about, I can’t do anything.” What I’m saying is, don’t be. What’s the opposite of passive? Is it active? I think it’s active. So be active. The next time you talk to someone about politics or anything really, listen carefully and see if you can see it. Once you start noticing it, you won’t be able to stop.  You’ll start noticing it in yourself as well. Look at your opinions and ask yourself why you hold that view.  And then think.

This magical tale of whimsy and excitement begins as most fairy tales do, with a 6 hour drive along a bumpy African road (during which we saw 7 other cars and had no cell service the entire way). We were going for the weekend to an itsy bitsy coastal town called Swakopmund.  That’s how insanely deserted  this country is.  The nearest town worth driving to is 6 hours away. On the morning before we left, we decided to go sandboarding, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s snowboarding, on some of the highest dunes in the world. Of course, the hills are made of sand, so they couldn’t very well install a ski lift. This meant trekking all the way back up a big, giant scary hill of sand. Now, as much as I hate walking, I love snowboarding, so I had a pretty enjoyable day. At the end of the day, we got to try something called lying-down sandboarding, which, again, is pretty self-explanatory. Basically, you lay on a piece of particle board, and shoot down a dune at up to 70 km an hour. Honestly, this was one of the most terrifying things I’ve done, and I’ve seen the Justin Bieber movie. Here’s a picture of me being super intense. So you know, like normal.

Going off a jump on some of the highest dunes in the world

PS: The company that took us was amazing. The instructors were very patient, and they had a photographer documenting the whole thing. Here’s their website: http://www.alter-action.info/web/

Right then, one of my friends called me to ask if I was going to the carnival going on in our town (about a twenty-minute walk from my house) because he was there. My devious brain wheels turning, I asked him where he was. I then found him in the telescope. Now, this was pretty cool, but I decided to have some fun.  

“Hey, that lady in the  pink is looking at you funny.” I said.

“What?!? Are you here?!?” He replied,  whirling around.

“Don’t be crazy. I just told you, I’m at home. Also, if you keep whirling around like that, she’ll stare at you more.”

I then hung up, but kept following him with the telescope. Around 10 minutes later, he sneezed, and I texted him, “Bless you.”

I feel like he spent the rest of the night looking for me, and being nervous I was watching him. This is more fun than television.

PS: I didn’t want to interrupt the story again, but while typing the title, I realized that abundance is spelled “a bun dance” and this makes me think of waltzing Cinnabons. And that kind of made my night….

“Well, it’s like dried meat, but greasier, and stick-shaped.  And in a clear plastic wrapper.” 

However, I guess there are some good aspects of it as well. If I’m tired, or not paying attention, and I say something wrong, I just claim

“Oh no, see, in America, Thursday and Wednesday are synonymous, so really, when you thought I misspoke, I was correct.”

After I first started realizing this, I decided to have fun with it, and see how far I could go. Sometimes, in conversation, I just make up phrases and claim they’re American.

“Yeah, that test was just bucketbasket. Oh, that? That’s slang for……hard.”

I have to say, my triumph was convincing my friends “balderdash” and “poppycock” were normal everyday phrases people use. I now get to use them at will without getting strange looks. This amuses me more than it should.

Afternote: On a subject other than taking advantage of other cultures and being a bad person, I put up some of my favorite pictures I’e taken while here. They’re somewhere over in this bar ———————————————————————————————–>

Lion catching a hunk of gross dead animal midair

I’ve decided to add this photo of a lion to up the awesome factor of this post. Please ignore the horrible grainy quality of the photo.