My random bits of insomnia continued last night with an interesting twist. Once I finally got to sleep, I woke up again around noon. I went to the bathroom and returned to bed. Then I spent the next hour and a half drifting in and out of sleep whilst having all manner of nifty dreams.

The dreams kind of bled into each other, some of them tying into my everyday life in Moncton, while others had to do with a gathering of Acadia folk. It's hard to explain the dreams but the blending made for very bizarre dreams (for instance I remember using a weight machine at the gym which then became a ride at a fair). Pretty messed up stuff, all in all.

Quote of the (Yester)Day: "The first casualty of sliding is dignity."

I actually choose this quote over some better ones because I thought the inclusion of 'sliding' would greatly increase the chances of someone getting it. I'm going to leave it open another day and see if anyone has any competence out there. :P

Going to bed has been a rather odd experience for me of late. Probably about 2/3 of the time when I go to bed two things happen. 1. I feel very warm, even if I was cold all day. 2. I don't feel tired.

I have no idea why these things are happening but they are rather annoying. The not being tired isn't as bad. I mean I don't like getting to sleep an hour or later than I initially intend but I sleep well enough once I get to sleep. The being warm thing is rather annoying though as I much prefer to sleep with a blanket on. And it's not like it's hot in here. I'll often have a blanket on while lounging around watching TV, reading, whatever but for some reason when the blanket is on and I intend to sleep, I suddenly feel very warm. If I wake up for a few minutes during my sleep period, I'm usually cold and can easily but the blanket on but not until after I've slept a bit. Very odd.

At least this only happens some nights. It'd be more annoying if it happened every night.

Quote of the YesterDay: "And I think it's the best idea I've ever had. We're picking up the weirdo, and that's final."
- Homer

Hbaka got this one. It's from the ep with Mr. Burns' son (voiced by Rodney Dangerfield). I'd have used one of Rodney's quotes but there weren't really any great ones. I've never really been a fan of use work anyway. Just seemed fitting to reference him via a quote on account of his recently dying and all.

Quote of the Day: "The first casualty of sliding is dignity."
-?

It's far better to go grocery shopping at 2:30 AM on a Tuesday than at 9 PM on a Friday. Last Friday I did such as A) I needed some groceries, B) I was already right beside a Sobeys after seeing Shaun of the Dead and C) I don't really have a life. I knew it was a sad thing to go grocery shopping at on a Friday night but I wasn't prepared for the sheer number of people out there who apparently need to get lives.

I've never seen a Sobey's as crowded as that Friday night. There were enough people that you would often get stuck when two different people (with seemingly no common sense) would pull their carts beside each other (facing different directions), thus making the aisle impassable until one of them moved.

It wasn't even just people by themself with nothing better to do either. There were tons of couples and families and the like. Surely there must be something more exciting they could do at 9 o'clock on a Friday night.

By contrast going at 2:30 this morning (to the same Sobey's as it's the only 24 hour one nearby) was far less crowded and much easier to navigate (If you're wondering why I went again so soon it's because I realized that while I had lots of meal type stuff I had almost no pudding/fruit/snack things that I could take to work with me). I really like shopping at that time of night/morning. It's very easy to get what you want and there's little or no waiting to be had.

Quote of the YesterDay: "And if I don't complete my brutal rampage, well, it just wouldn't be X-mas"
- Robot Santa

I'm pretty surprised nobody got this one. You all need to watch more Futurama. :P

Quote of the Day: "And I think it's the best idea I've ever had. We're picking up the weirdo, and that's final."
- ?

Another of those tribute quotes.

I've got a number of thoughts floating around in my head today but nothing really blog-worthy. I have a feeling that some of them will eventually bloom into blog-worthy thoughts (esp the ones that have been kicking around for a while) but I'm fresh out of thoughts which I'm ready to talk about. (re-reading that I realize it could be taken as meaning that I'm upset about something and I just can't deal with talking about it right now but it's not like that at all. There's just nothing interesting going on in my brain right now that I feel like developing in a writing it down right now sort of way).

Quote of the YesterDay: "Someone's in my fruit cellar. Someone with a fresh soul!"
- Henrietta
No Deadite Awareness badges for you folks tonight.

Quote of the Day: "And if I don't complete my brutal rampage, well, it just wouldn't be X-mas"
- ?

The other day after watching an episode of Quantum Leap I got to thinking about the ethics of the series. For those unfamiliar with the show, it's about a man stuck in time. He used a machine to go back in time. Unlike most other time travel concepts he basically goes into (or 'leaps') into another person. While there he appears normal to himself but everyone else perceives him as whoever he has leapt into.

In order to leap again (for various and somewhat ambigious reasons which I'll not go into here) he has to accomplish some task. These tasks involve helping people in a variety of ways (anything from saving a marriage to to influencing someone's career to stopping a murder). Once he accomplishes the task he leaps again.

It's not really made too clear on the show but presumably changing the past has a domino like effect on the present/future. And if you think about it, not all of those changes are going to be good. For instance if he gets someone a job, that's a job that originally went to someone else. There really would be no way to predict these effects as the farther into the future you went the greater the divergence would be from the original timeline.

So saving someone's life could actually end up leading to all sorts of unintended disasterous consequences. So while Sam Beckett's (the main character) intentions are good, he has no way of knowing whether there will be more positive or negative results from whatever action he performs (side note: His intention is basically just to help people. He wants to get home as well but there are several times when he opts to help people and gives up a chance to return home).
Now to translate that into real-life, any choice you take is also bound have countless unintended (and impossible to predict side-effects). Therefore it is foolish to use the consequence of your act to determine if something is ethically right or ethically wrong. You can never know all the consequences. Therefore one make ethical judgements using a different scale (intention perhaps?). Not only is the consequential scale the wrong one to use, it's impossible to measure.

I could obviously expand quite a bit on this argument against consequentialism but A) this is just a spur of the moment thing that I didn't really plan and B) I'm sure most of you have already skimmed past this stuff anyway. Maybe I will expand on it at some point though. If they ever do a book on the ethics of QL (like they have for quite a few shows), I could submit a longer/more polished version of this. I haven't really given a lot of thought to constructing the above argument but I feel the structure is fairly sound (if a bit underdeveloped).

Quote of the YesterDay: "The real spaghetti got wet when I was boiling it so... it's in the dryer!"
- Master Shake
Shake said this to trick Meatwad into the dryer. Good stuff. (Oh and it's from Aqua Teen Hunger Force)

Quote of the Day: "Someone's in my fruit cellar. Someone with a fresh soul!"
-?

Kind of in an odd state of mind tonight. I've got all sorts of ideas floating around in my head. Philosophical ponderings, random bits of social commentary, and a bunch of other stuff. And I have the urge to right about such things but they seem to not want to be written about. Not in a writer's block sort of way or anything. It's more like I do want to write about these things but I don't have the energy to do so at the same time. I'm not sure how I can and cannot have ambition at the same time but there you have it.

Quote of the YesterDay: "God bless those pagans"
- Homer
Homer said this upon learning the origins of April Fool's from Lisa. Nobody picked up on it.

Quote of the Day: "The real spaghetti got wet when I was boiling it so... it's in the dryer!"
-?