As a counterweight to last week’s meaty rant, here’s a few casual thoughts:
1 – Why do many couples have a shared email? As in “john-mary@troutmail.com”? You see that kind of thing all the time on internet buy-and-sell sites. Do they think it’s too expensive to have separate emails? Do they feel compelled to prove to each other just how little they have to hide? Or show their undying love through sharing an inbox? Perhaps they feel that everything – bank accounts, friends, jogging outfits – has to be shared otherwise they aren’t a “real” couple? I have no idea. Maybe somebody else does.
2 – There was a docusoap in Sweden called “Expedition Robinson” where a bunch of people go to a tropical island and get slowly humiliated and starved in their quest to win … something or other. Each contestant was allowed to bring a “personal item” which was usually something like cigarettes, or Valium, or shampoo, or chocolate. Then they were left to fend for themselves, and occasionally taunted with food and drink for our entertainment. The men’s beards grew long and lush. However, despite nobody bringing a shaver of any kind, none of the women’s underarm hair grew long and lush – or, in fact, at all. Apparently women, in their natural state, have no armpit hair, and it’s just our stressful modern life that makes it grow.
3 – Does anybody else dream a lot about subway tracks? About climbing off the platform and walking into the train tunnel, finding things and people in there? Or is that just me? And is there anything else that you people (dwindling in number as you are) dream about on a regular basis? And can you tell me so I can nick it for a book I’m doing? Cheers.
/ paddy
Paddy K 
My occasionally recurring dream theme: difficult climbing at perilous height. Unpleasant. Nick away!
I’d need more juicy details than that. For example, are you wearing just underwear?
Details vary, but are rarely juicy. Sometimes I’m up on a cliff, sometimes some sort of tall building. Usually there is no immediate danger, but in order to get to where I need to go, I will have to make some sort of move that seems likely to set me tumbling.
I dream about airports every 2-3 weeks. Specifically, it’s about trying to get to an unidentifiable foreign airport in time to make the flight. I keep getting endlessly and stupidly sidetracked, destined to be trapped in some faraway place forever, because in my dreams it’s impossible to rebook a flight or pay a couple hundred Euros to get there by alternate means. (For some reason I’m still dreaming in Euros, not SEK.) It’s also impossible to tell how much time is left before check-in closes, so it’s always a futile Bourne Identity kind of car-chase trying to get there in time.
I occasionally make it on to the plane, but last time the flight was interrupted by some kind of kidnapping.
Have you thought about taking the airship? The ones in dreams are very reliable.
Now you don’t expect an audience to look at women exposing themselves on television with hairy legs and armpits, do you? In bikinis? Just imagine how uncomfortable they would feel, or grossed out, plainly speaking. Since no razors were brought, however, I guess the most likely explanation is that the women chosen for the show all suffered from some kind of disease, manifesting itself by loss of body hair
That would be a very practical solution.
could be used for breeding purposes
I tend to dream about spending time in towns with canals. Mostly in colour. I don’t dream in black and white. Last month I dreamt that I was supposed to deliver a boat to a guy that worked in a processing plant for old machinery, like diggers, trucks and such. The processing plant also processed the dead bodies of drivers within these machines. In order to make the view of this less unpleasant, there was a big screen, showing an alien humanoid life form suckin away all the soft tissue with some kind of sucking thingy attached to the wall… The main export product of this town was oil and small, elongated hand crafted flowerpots (the kind that you hang on your balcony) complete with a tiny rc-boat. I didn’t buy one because I had to look for the bloody boat I was supposed to deliver. I found it a pier 7. And no, I *didn’t* make up this stuff and if you’re nice I can tell you about my dream as a cameraman, doing a documentary of a guy shovelling manure from an outhouse for deers. I actually tend to dream a lot about toilets…
Fantastic. Makes perfect sense to recycle the drivers with the trucks. I have dreamed of canals on many occasions. Often they are frozen. I’d like one of those flower-pots too.