This weekend I decided I'm going to switch off between melatonin and valerian supplements on alternating weeks, because the melatonin seemed to work great for like a week and a half, then I had two days of insomnia.
Don't know (and really can't know) if the dopamine didn't work this weekend because it had stopped working for me, if it was working just as well as ever and couldn't do anything about a spike of insomnia.

Also don't know and can't know if the valerian would have done better.
But I know I've had stretches of time in my life when I took melatonin and it worked for me and ones where I took valerian and it worked for me, so I'm going to try switching off between them and seeing how it goes.
The valerian I ordered arrived yesterday so last night was the first night I took it. Just like the first morning after I started the melatonin, I am feeling a little hungover... but good. Good mood. I forgot how valerian affects my dreams, and even my thought processes.
My dreams last night involved me being thrown into a "dungeon" (which was like a modern prison run by D&D monsters) by Dragonlance death knight and villain Lord Soth.
My dreams also involved having gone to see (not going to see, but having gone to see. I was wearing a t-shirt from it) a small-time theatrical sequel to The Shining that Stephen King produced after being dissatisfied with Doctor Sleep. It was called "Welcome to the Jizz Factory"
In my dream, Stephen King had decided that both his own novel and the movie loosely based on it had gotten it wrong and his publisher wouldn't take a retcon sequel, so he rented a community theater in Maine and wrote, produced, and directed his own version.
It was about Danny being sent to a boarding school, and his psychic powers activated and amplified the memory echoes of all the boys who had ever lived in the dormitories there, which I think is what the title was about, though the dream did not elaborate.
But in my dream it was somehow not big news that Stephen King had acquired a theater and used it to stage a play, it was like this little glittering fandom jewel and if you knew about it you went to go see a performance but most people didn't know about it.
I've also been sitting here since the tweet where I mentioned him by name trying to remember Danny's last name (it's Torrance), like so:

me: "Tanner?"

my brain: "That's Bob Saget."

me: "Rand?"

my brain: "That's Iron Fist."

me: "...Tanner?"
Anyway, though, the key point here is that valerian can produce very vivid but strange and disturbing dreams, dreams where Stephen King's publisher says things like, "We don't want to publish this. It's too weird, too self-indulgent, and there's way too much underaged sexuality."

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More from @AlexandraErin

22 Feb
The other day while playing on The Language Owl I learned that wi-fi in French is "le wi-fi", pronounced so that it sounds like you can't *quite* remember the name of Mario's brother, which certainly tests the "everything sounds sexier in French" hypothesis.
And I understand that if you arrange those letters in that order and follow the standard rules of French pronunciation then you wind up with those sounds. And "le wi-fi" is doubtlessly better than some twee academy phrase that people would ignore anyway.
And of course the English phrase "wi-fi" is nonsense to begin with, a rhyming pun on an unrelated technology in a different field in which the pronunciation of "fi" with a long i sound is completely arbitrary.
Read 4 tweets
22 Feb
The novel I started writing this weekend name checks a bunch of actual web sites, brand names, video games, etc., and Elon Musk, but for some reason I decided to refer to what is transparently Duolingo as "The Language Owl" within it and that tickles me.
This is my second stab at writing a long form apocalyptic story involving computer sciences where Elon Musk factors in somehow.
The previous attempt involved the simulation hypothesis and one of the precursors to the end of the world was Elon Musk, having figured out what was happening, launching himself into space unprotected so he can flip off the universe as the plug is pulled.
Read 4 tweets
21 Feb
Hello, creative mania my old friend. I'm here to write 16,000 words of an epistolary novel in 24 hours once again.
Not that I have ever to my recollection specifically done this with an epistolary novel in particular, but the feeling is very familiar even if the form is new.
I haven't even spent all day doing this. I was watching Muppets for a lot of it. I chopped vegetables. I had dinner and watched @dropout with my family. I napped. I dinked around and played video games. I had a video chat with a friend.
Read 12 tweets
20 Feb
The sheer raw power...

Theme Song: This person is definitely responsible for every bad thing you've seen so far.

Character: Also I murdered this dog. *laughs*

audience: This character is a perfect angel who never did anything wrong in their life and that is why we love them.
That said, I won't be surprised if the situation with that character winds up being more nuanced than the introductory song implied, not just because of comics canon but because Wanda's powers are still running the show.
So it's possible that in learning that someone else has been pulling strings, Wanda immediately mentally cast that person as a card-carrying, metaphorical mustache-twirling villain before learning anything else.
Read 4 tweets
20 Feb
I understand people thinking the book seen in Wandavision is the Darkhold but I don't understand people thinking it's going to tie in Agents of SHIELD and Runaways into the canon. Those shows used a completely different design, so I'd say if it is the Darkhold it's severing them.
The Darkhold seen in previous Marvel Television shows had a cover with its title printed as an ambigram (a usually unsatisfying lexicographical trick where a word is supposed to read the same if mirrored, famously used in Angels and Demons). An image of an old-looking book with a metal clasp ,and an e
If Hmm-mmm-mmm's grimoire IS the Darkhold, I'd say it's a superior design, especially since fans immediately identified it as the Darkhold on sight whereas the one with "Darkhold" stamped on it is... hard to identify as the Darkhold, because of the weird orthography.
Read 8 tweets
19 Feb
The Muppet Show: It's time to put on make-up! It's time to dress up right!

me: *glares in pandemic*
me: So now let's get things started!

my brain: Why don't you get things started?

me: It's time to get things started!

my brain: How about no.
Early Gonzo calling the audience yokels and rubes is me internally every time I make a joke tweet that gets eight likes and no retweets.
Read 18 tweets

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