Non sequiturly, I'm not entirely sure why this made me laugh out loud for several seconds:

(Mom and Dad, you probably don't get this, so I'll explain [away the humor]: the guy in the white t-shirt is named Vin Diesel, and the above image is four frames from one of his movies. The delightfully bad punning dialog, of course, was added after the fact in a way that somehow fits deliciously with the out-of-context imagery. See? Hilarious!)

So, the plan is to migrate my site to another domain name that I've owned for a while and is considerably less personal identity-related. Same site, just under a different address. I will put up a nice helpful link when it's ready.

Maybe I'll turn TimDowling.com into something more useful to the greater good. I'm sure I can apply my superpowers in a way that is at least moderately meaningful. Well, we'll see.

(You might have to turn the volume up to really hear this)

Jay Leno's fans aren't going to like the new Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. No, probably not very much. David Letterman's fans couldn't stand Conan when he took over the Late Night spot back in '93, and I'd argue that Letterman's humor is closer to Conan's than Jay Leno's is. There are going to be some angry baby boomers expressing their disgust at the water cooler/Internet in the coming weeks, I can assure you. (For the record, I like Conan. A lot. If I were a stranger person, I'd probably have a poster of him hanging on my wall. Also, I almost made a mess when I heard Andy Richter exclaim "I'm Andy Richter!" on last night's show.)

But that's the way the cookie crumbles. The normal curve of Conan's fan-base, which has historically gathered around the "young hipster" region of the spectrum, is creeping further and further into the "middle aged hipster" region, while Leno's loyalists are probably finding themselves more and more concerned about the dangers of damn kids trampling their lawns. The two groups do have some common ground, though -- because darn it, they just can't stay up as late as they used to. It's hard enough making it to 10:30/11:30 at night, and it's just tough to find the justification anymore to maintain consciousness all the way through 11:30/12:30.

And who's this Jimmy Fallon punk who took over for Conan? No talent hack, I say! They just don't make comedians like they used to. He'll be booed off the air within six months, you just wait and see. Dagnabbit.

Mmm, I should get her a giant birthday cookie when she comes back to town. That would be so delicious. No, wait, a giant birthday cookie skillet! With ice cream! Michelle, mark this down - we are going to share a gigantic warm cookie topped with the ice cream of your choice (even butter pecan!), which in turn will likely be topped with chocolate.CLICK ME!

Got it? Well, below is the obligatory Comedy Central clip to provide a little more clarity. (I'm assuming it was recorded between shifts at Applebee's) If you glance downward, you'll see that after giving an overview of the recent Tea Party protests, Jon Stewart makes an attempt to comprehend what's going on with this apparently crazy new world order that's brewing around us. I don't know, man. I don't know.

Not that this is any big surprise, but (gasp!) fast food almost always misrepresents itself in advertisements. There's nothing like like a good illustration of a concept, though, so here you go: yummm

I love the current Apple-Microsoft ad wars. And Microsoft has finally pulled out a big gun: PRICE. You can watch the commercial below, but I paraphrased it (with a couple editorial changes) if you'd rather save some time:

The television told me today that some of the people inside of it are angry because Obama laughed during a 60 Minutes interview. I just watched the clip, and I'm not surprised that it agitated the easily irkable, since it involved our current financial quagmire. This was such a human moment, though. I honestly don't think we're too comfortable with our commanders in chief acting like real live humans. The most candid of candidates usually get filtered out one way or another.

Here's what I think was going on. There's this spot that exists somewhere between a rock and a hard place. We all know about it. Everyone's been there but no one ever wants to stay. Some like to spend their visits in a quiet fetal position, rocking slowly back and forth. Others may use the time for exercise, running around in circles, occasionally clawing at the walls. A few might spend their time on the phone yelling at their travel agent for allowing them to end up there. Then there are those who reluctantly accept the reality, throw up their arms, chuckle a cocktail of irony and desperation, and try to figure out how to get out with as few bruises as possible.

I dunno. I'd say the best thing for our national well-being right now is for us to try to filter ambiguous outbursts of humanity through a positive lens, keep our wits about us, and let the summation of actions do the talking. Ask questions and be critical, but look for potential, focus on the big picture, and allow humans to occasionally be human. Pessimistic filters rarely lead anywhere good -- and as it's been mused in the book of Proverbs, A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.

I've seen a lot of optical illusions in my day. By now, I more or less respond to them with a hearty "meh." But there is one never fails to mess with my mind. As much as I try, I simply cannot trick my eyes into seeing those squares as the same color. Can you? In case you don't believe that "A" and "B" are the same, hover your mouse over the image and you'll get a little help.

Crazy, huh?

Of course, I'd be a dirty liar if I said that self-Googling isn't a hobby of mine as well. As I've previously made known, I'm well aware of many of the other Tim Dowlings who walk this planet. I wonder: how many of them feel like they know me via this blog? How many have followed my trials and tribulations and months and months of non-posting over the years? How many times has my existence been cursed during the drafting of a column or chapter? Just as I'd like to think that I'm big in Britain, I would also like to think that this eponymous domain is the bane of other Tim Dowlings' existences. I'm sure you all would agree that inadvertently being the bane of someone's existence is quite a validation of one's significance in the world.

You know, I would love to start some sort of business with a couple of other people who have the same name as me. It would be so novel and confusing. What I'm not sure about yet is whether it would be more amusing if we all looked hilariously similar or hilariously different.

Is this weird? I'm starting to think that this is weird. I think I need to step away from the Internet for a little while.

6:00am - Morning

6:45 - Sharpest rise in blood pressure

7:30 - Melatonin secretion stops

8:30 - Bowel movement most likely

9:00 - Highest testosterone secretion

10:00 - High alertness

12:00pm - Noon

2:30 - Best coordination

3:30 - Fastest reaction time

5:00 - Greatest cardiovascular efficiency and muscle strength

6:00pm - Evening

7:30 - Highest blood pressure

8:00 - Highest body temperature

10:00 - Melatonin secretion starts

11:30 - Bowel movements suppressed

12:00am - Midnight

2:00 - Deepest sleep

4:30 - Lowest body temperature

Rinse and repeat.

On a slightly different note, I generally have a strong disdain for extremists -- folks who for whatever reason lack the "checks and balances" section of their brain. Some make me angry, but the NYU revolutionaries who hit the news recently make me laugh (or at least chuckle and slowly shake my head). If your revolution is an action against oppression and violence, that's one thing, but if your revolution makes otherwise peaceful people want to commit acts of violence against you, then you may want to step back and reevaluate. And by "reevaluate," I mean "stop ruining good causes and do something constructive with your life."

Darn it, now I'm not chuckling anymore. Come on, I didn't want to stop chuckling. I enjoy chuckling! Sigh.

In an effort to keep my brain moving outside of work and school, I'm spending a few precious moments per day reading some pages in this wonderful book called Your Brain: The Missing Manual. The title might sound a little hokey, but the book is engaging, research-based, and totally not dumbed down.

I'm currently in the chapter about sleep. Like we all know about REM sleep, right? It's when our brains are practically in a state of awakeness and we do the most lucid dreaming. It's a pretty amazing phenomenon, especially considering that we still don't fully know what its function is for our brain or body. It's always seemed to me like a manifestation of our brains trying to make sense of random snippets of information that we take in throughout the day. But REM dreaming might actually primarily be a kind of brain-trainer. We first really saw this in action from a study that was done back in the 50s, when the neurons that cause paralysis during REM sleep (yup, we're actually physically paralyzed during our most lucid dreams) were cut in the brains of a few cats; while the cats were asleep, they got up and did things like clean themselves, pretend to stalk and fight, and go through the motions of attacks and retreats. (I totally want to see a video of this in action.)

If television has taught me anything, it's that when humans break their sleep paralysis, they sleepwalk down to the kitchen and make a sandwich. (Although I personally don't remember ever making lunch in my dreams.) In reality, I guess it's all about what we're especially focused on. One study arranged for people to play Tetris before going to sleep, and the subjects reported having Tetris-playing dreams; even a few amnesiacs dreamt of columns of drifting blocks, despite having no idea why! So it's like the brain tries to determine what's important at any given point in time and then tries to train itself during unconsciousness. Much to the disappointment of Gary Wright, your worries of today are probably not too likely to be taken away on the dream weaver train.

(What I want to know is: why do our brains insist on training us how to handle the situation of showing up to a test naked and unprepared?)

In conclusion, the take-away point of my lecture today is that sleep is good, and I should get more of it. Personally, I don't think I get enough REM sleep; I'd bet that a few too many others are in the same boat.

This actually is making me kind of sleepy right now. Great. I shouldn't have done this before finishing my dissertation work for the night. And what if I start sleepwalking tonight while I'm dreaming about sleepwalking? Man, this is getting heavy...