Streams of Consciousness & Thoughts~~~

MBGA!

Make Birthdays Great Again!

It seems an almost universal quality of life that the older you get, the more your birthday becomes just another day. Birthdays no longer have the thrill they used to have when we were kids.

But we can fix this!

I propose making Steam, Epic and GOG wishlists public. They need to be open to anybody and anybody should be able to contribute to the games on these wishlists. Then we can make it customary to buy games for friends and loved ones on their birthdays. Or for more expensive games, at least chip in a few bucks toward the price of the game the gifter chooses.

"Nah, I haven't got the new COD game yet. My birthday's coming up next month."

"Mom put $30 on my Elden Ring, but Aunt Polly put $20 on the Oblivion remaster. I might get BOTH and have a very happy birthday indeed."

This would have many social ramifications:
- "What do you get for the person who has everything" would be a thing of the past.
- Game sales would naturally go up.
- It would be very easy for any company's computer system to tell when anybody's birthday is, by checking which day of the year you buy the most games.
- There would be some interesting dynamics with wishlists themselves. "Do I really want everyone to know I'm keeping an eye on this game? Maybe I'd better just bookmark it..."
- It would be easy to tell which of your friends were cheapskates. They'd be the ones choosing early-access games.
- It would create pressure to buy a game. Do you really want your mom to see that the game she put $30 on last year is still hanging in your wishlist, with exactly $30 on it?

But most important, it would make people look forward to their birthdays again!

(Substitute makeup wishlists, or car parts wishlists, or whatever thing you like instead of video games.)

My dog is sleeping out in the rain. It must be June. June already?

My dog is quite intelligent, and most times of the year he will hit the doghouse at the first drop of rain. But in April and May it rains so much... By about this time of year he just gets so tired of his doghouse that he sleeps out in the rain. When I seem him sitting out there getting soaked and not even caring anymore, I know it must be June.

I was just remembering when I was around 7ish through 9ish having one strange reoccurring thought almost nightly.
It was an intense fear that hit while I was in bed trying to sleep. That my life was someone else's dream and when they woke up I would, essentially, die, or cease to exist. We all would.
Not sure what sparked that thought, nor why it went away, eventually.

Also, starting from the earliest days I can remember, I spent all of my childhood having only bad or scary dreams. This didn't start tapering off till I was around 10.
Even then it didn't stop, they just slowly started to become less frequent. It took years for them to stop completely or only occur at a normal pace.
I had one bad dream in particular that repeated countless times in the earliest years. It sounds stupid, or maybe even cool, to a degree. But it wasn't for me.
I would be in a giant warehouse. I could see the opposite wall, but length wise it seemed to go on forever in each direction.
My brother and father were there, standing a little ways apart.
The only other thing in this room was a fire escape type stair system that went about three or four stories high. I was at the top of the stairs watching it all this go down.
The entire place had balls of various sizes. Some the size of a soccer ball and going up to ten foot tall, maybe higher. No order to them, just randomly placed and spaced apart.
My brother and dad would start out talking normally, though I never understood a word.
It didn't take long for their chatting to start growing increasingly angry and loud.
Finally one would push a ball at the other. Next thing you know they're pushing balls at each other non-stop. Yelling at one another the whole time.
It would gradually increase in speed, anger and chaos, the faster it went the more quickly it sped up. I would be terrified as soon as they started pushing balls at each other.
If I recall correctly it kept getting more chaotic and angry and fast until it was like a cassette playing while being fast forward. Then I'd suddenly wake up, terrified.
I had this dream multiple times a year.
It was the only dream I had during that time up until they began gradually shifting over to the random bad dreams mentioned before.
In over thirty years I still have no idea why it kept reoccurring or if there was a point to it.
Also my dad and brother got along fine in real life.

I'm not looking for people's interpretation of any of this, just simply sharing random events I went through as a kid.

My random thought - man this is a long thread.

I would wish something that could help me break my nasty habit of smoking.