Coats Sez

During my last sleep period I woke up choking and unable to breathe. In my sleep my stomach had burped into my throat and I was choking on my own stomach acid. I slid to the edge of the bed and coughed up some of it and then ran to the bathroom stool and coughed up some more. The damage had already been done, though. My throat hurt and burned and my vocal cords made my voice sound like I had laryngitis. It still sounds that way as I type this. I hope I am not permanently injured. I’ve coughed some stuff out of my lungs today along with a little blood. I’ve tried to exercise my vocal cords to get them to loosen up and get back to normal.

This isn’t the first time I’ve choked on my own stomach acid but it’s the first I’ve really been messed up my aspirating it into my lungs and vocal cords. I’m kinda afraid to go to sleep tonight. Maybe if it happens again I won’t wake up and will simply choke to death. Hopefully coughing will restore me to normal soon with no permanent damage. I’m breathing alright but my throat is still sore and my vocal cords still feel coated with gunk.

Terry

“Wake up!” That’s what I heard about 2 p.m. this afternoon. I woke up at noon and laid in bed thinking about getting up but never doing so except to go to the bathroom. I finally went back to sleep and was asleep for a very short time, maybe even seconds, when a voice shouted “Wake up!” I was startled. Who would be waking me up? It sounded like a man’s voice pretty much but I couldn’t tell for sure. I lay there trying to figure it out. The voice sounded somewhat distant. Was someone outside the bedroom window trying to wake me up?

I thought about it for a while but never did figure it out. I got up and looked out all my windows to see if someone outside was wanting me to wake up. There wasn’t anybody.

I got my pillow and went into the living room where I lay on the couch. I went back to sleep for a couple more hours without any further strange occurrences.

I don’t know why I heard someone shouting at me to wake up unless it came from the dream state but it was so real.

Terry

I was awakened in the early morning hours by what I can only describe as a gunshot. It sounded like a small caliber handgun was fired a single time in my bedroom or close to it.

It was startling. Coming from a deep sleep I wasn’t sure what was happening. I thought of my own gun, a .45 automatic, and realized it was in the living room in a drawer. Too far to help me. As I lay there I tried to understand what was going on. There was no one in my bedroom. What else could make a gunshot sound?

I was annoyed that I had to figure something out while I was in a sleep fog. I stayed in bed and tried to think of what could make such a loud popping sound, loud enough to wake me up. Did one of my bullets in the bullet box in the closet go off by itself? Did a power outlet short out?

I didn’t smell any smoke or anything else strange so I drifted back to sleep. As I write this, I still don’t know what made the gunshot sound. A quick scan of the area didn’t reveal anything obvious. Batteries and capacitors can short out and pop loudly but I saw no sign of that in the devices I looked at. I don’t know what happened. It’s as if a ghost stepped into the bedroom and fired a ghostly .22 revolver and then disappeared. I’ll continue to look around and maybe I’ll eventually find a logical solution but as of now it’s a mystery.

Terry

If the Republicans are so smart why aren’t they coming up with a crop of potential presidents who have some smarts. These people shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the nuclear football.

Terry

The Iowa straw poll has occurred and Michele Bachmann is the winner. I’m concerned about the future of the U.S. if the right-wing consider this woman to be a serious candidate for president of the United States. She doesn’t even know U.S. history. I expect presidential candidates to be smarter than me and I’ll be glad to take any test alongside her to see which one of us comes out on top and I wouldn’t expect it to be her. I’m not against a woman for president. I would have voted for Hillary Clinton if she had won against Barack Obama.

I hope Michele Bachmann IS the Republican nominee for president as it will assure the reelection of Barack Obama. If by some chance or trickery or criminal activity she should become president I’ll give up hope and just try to last until the natural end of my life. I’ve been waiting all my life for an improved America but if the Republicans take over completely it’ll be a sad end for equality in the United States. By the way, Republicans, I know most of you are racists and most all who are against Obama are against him because he is a black man. Many of you made that clear as soon as he was elected. You’d rather destroy the United States than have a black president. I know where you stand, Republicans, and nothing you do can change what I or millions of people know. It’ll be hard for you to get out of this one. Being the party of racists and haters, that is.

Terry Coats

Last night at close to the end of my salvia divinorum experiment, which I wrote about previously, I had a vision of myself with other people. Some of them were relatives or people I had been friends with. They were at the head of a huge crowd of people/beings which stretched into infinity. They all had their backs turned to me. I was rejected. Not worthy. Unwanted. Shunned. Of no importance to them. I saw that it seemed I was totally alone in the universe, rejected by every being that existed. Fine, I thought, I’ll just go it alone as I have since birth. I’ve done nothing to be shunned by the whole universe except to be my own person but I’ve contributed much more than I’m given credit for. If I really am on my own then I’ll just have to have the adventure on my own. Screw you, universe.

Terry Coats

Last night I put a generous amount of salvia into my pipe bowl and lit it up. I was away from the couch and I barely made it there before I was transported into the world that salvia divinorum opens up for you. I can report that for a brief time I was in the most powerful hallucinogenic state that I’ve ever been in. Salvia is very, very powerful. Make no mistake about it. Do not use this substance if you have never used hallucinogens before. It is not a good place to start. It is easy to become very, very afraid of what is happening to you.
What is happening? After lying down on the couch I totally lost contact with reality for a while. I blended with the room and became a part of it. The salvia has a side effect of making my skin feel tight and hot so I was feeling that. After fighting it briefly and being fearful I let go and just went with it to see where it would take me. I couldn’t really feel my body much and my mind seemed somewhat separate from it. I had my eyes closed because I’ve discovered that the experience is deeper if your eyes are not open and looking around. I was playing some music from one of the TVs music channels and I listened to it for a while. It was very beautiful, transporting me through ever-changing colors and geometries that changed in time and pitch to the music I was listening to.
Salvia is different than any other hallucinogen I have used. The difference is hard to describe. After my first experience I invented the expression “liquid lizard metallic magic” to describe for myself what I was experiencing. Something in it’s favor is that the experience is fairly short, like 15 minutes or so, so that if you are freaking out you can take comfort in the fact that you will focus back into reality before you go mad. And yes, I have no doubt that some people could easily go mad under the influence of this substance. In short, don’t use this if you don’t have extensive experience dealing with hallucinogenic substances. I’m not kidding at all. I’m also not in any way recommending that anybody use this plant. I’m just reporting on it.

Terry Coats

My marigold seedlings kept disappearing. I finally went and got growing plants from the Home Depot store and planted those instead. Now they are about gone.

It’s snails and slugs eating them. I know because I went out one night with a flashlight and took a look. Apparently slugs and snails consider marigold seedlings and plants to be as tasty as humans consider lettuce. If you’ve got lots of snails and slugs around, you probably won’t be able to grow marigolds. Or cantaloupe vines either. The snails and slugs mowed down my row of cantaloupe seedlings.

I gave up and I am trying other plants. In place of the marigolds I planted iceplant and stonecrop a few days ago. So far they are still alive and have not been eaten. I’m trying these because I read on google where these two plants were resistant to snails and slugs.

I really like marigolds. They are a beautiful plant and have lots of flowers that practically glow. Not many will be growing here. I actually do have a handful of marigolds which survived the snail and slug onslaught but they are growing in places around the house that just by luck are probably away from the snail and slug hideout areas. I’m not sure why they are still alive. I am going to save their seeds and plant them next year. Maybe they have some resistance.

Terry Coats

I bought some salvia today. I had been reading about it and wanted to try some while it is still legal in Oregon so I went to a place I knew had it and bought me a 1 gram packet of 10x salvia extract. When I got home I waited around for a while until I felt I was ready and then proceeded to prepare.

I had a hard time getting organized. My cat Sky wants to be involved in everything I do so she was inspecting everything I was doing. She thought the little water pipe was going to be a great toy and kept trying to get it. I finally went to the bathroom and closed the door.

I opened the salvia packet and put a very tiny piece in the pipe bole. Very tiny, not knowing really how much it was going to take.

I burned the tiny piece but got hardly any smoke at all. I went to the living room and sat down and just felt for a while. I felt nothing. I decided to burn a bigger piece so I went back to my hiding place in the bathroom. I put in a slightly bigger piece of the extract and lit it up and got a small lungful of smoke. I went to the living room and sat down on the couch.

As I sat on the couch I began to feel different. Things became clearer. Colors started to stand out. Everything felt beautiful in a way that’s hard to describe. I spoke to my cat who was in the room and I said “Sky, the whole world is SO beautiful!” My chandelier in the dining section of the living room was so beautiful. The glass was gleaming crystal and the brass looked like gold fit for a king. The colors of the TV were beautiful. I was watching still scenes while listening to newage music on one of the cable’s music channels. Even the area of the TV surrounding the screen was beautiful, light reflecting in such a beautiful way.

The beauty lasted for probably 15 minutes but it seemed longer. At no time was I scared or alarmed. I was just enjoying a nice experience. I just went with it until I came back to normal after 30 minutes or so. The intense high lasted for about 15 minutes and the “afterglow” another 30 minutes or so. I was satisfied with my purchase. So far it had lived up to my expectations. I was not disappointed at all.

After a couple of hours went by I was ready to burn some more. My cat was not bothering me so I went into the living room with the pipe and salvia and decided to burn it in the living room. I loaded the pipe with even more extract than the previous experience, wanting to try a full toke of smoke this time. I burned the salvia and got a good amount of smoke and held it in. I put the pipe in the bookcase I was standing by and turned to go to the couch, still holding the smoke in.

I took a few steps toward the couch and almost didn’t make it. Before I even expelled the smoke from my lungs I was stepping out of reality. I felt big, like a giant, and the room seemed very tiny. I had a hard time getting my body to the couch as I was feeling out-of-body and didn’t know if I could control myself long enough to sit down.

I finally made it to the couch but I was totally out of touch with reality about that time. I grabbed the back of the couch with my left hand and my jeans with my right hand and held on tight, reasoning that if I held on I would not totally be out of it.

I continued to space out and feel even further out-of-body. I was somewhat afraid and alarmed by that time and was wondering if I had made a mistake. I had been told the experience lasted about 10 to 15 minutes so with this knowledge I held on, knowing I would eventually come back down.

I got so spaced out and out of touch with reality that I merged with the room and the room and I became one. I was the room and the room was me. I had newage music going on my home theater system and the music was very strange but beautiful. It seemed to take 5 seconds between notes, as if the song was being played incredibly slow. This disturbed me somewhat and I wished the music sounded normal.

I was so high that it was unexpected. The previous burn had been pleasant but this one I was so high that I was disturbed and afraid I had made a mistake. My perceptions were very strange. Proportions did not make sense. I continued to feel very large in a tiny room. Alternately I was very small and objects in the room were giant. I observed that my digital clock seemed to be as big as a TV set.

Sometime right when the incredible high started my cat walked into the room and walked across the floor and climbed onto a low perch that’s right by a window so she can watch birds outside. I used her as a contact with reality. I continued to observe her throughout the experience, both as an anchor to help me keep a foot in reality, and as an alarm to see if I was acting strange. I was so high I couldn’t be sure what I was really doing and I figured if the cat stared at me and became alarmed I should probably become alarmed too. She never turned around and looked at me though all through the experience so I guess I wasn’t screaming or making noises.

After bearing one of the highest highs I’ve ever had I finally started coming down. Things began to look somewhat normal. Normal enough for me to just finally relax and let it run it’s course. After the alarming start of the experience where I was so high I almost didn’t know what was going on things mellowed out and I enjoyed the rest of the experience.

If you have no experience with mind-altering substances of any kind I would not recommend this substance. The shock might be too great. If you do decide to try salvia, and again I am neither endorsing nor recommending it, have a sitter. Someone who is straight and knows what is going on. You may need a “handler” if the experience gets too intense to bear.

This substance should be for responsible adults only.  Don’t do it alone as I did. It’s too intense, or can be.

Salvia is not legal in some states and countries. You can do an online search and find out which ones they are. It’s still legal here in Oregon.

Terry Coats

I was shopping in Office Depot for nothing in particular and came across a wireless mouse for only 10 dollars. I bought one, thinking that if it didn’t work all I’d be out was the 10 bucks. I brought it home and unplugged my wired mouse from the computer and plugged in the wireless mouse’s usb receiver into a usb port. I put 2 AAA batteries
in the mouse and turned on the computer. I had a problem at first with the way the batteries fit into the mouse. The mouse wasn’t lighting up and I had to jigger the batteries around in the mouse case to get good battery contact. After I solved that problem everything worked good. Ubuntu picked up the usb wireless mouse and loaded
a driver for it from somewhere. I don’t know what driver it’s using as I didn’t investigate. It worked so I let it go at that. I’m using Ubuntu 10.10 and the Gear Head MP2100BLU wireless mouse works fine with it.

Terry