beware...

went to Hemingway's last night (well, Monday) to play trivia and gorge on their All-You-Can-Eat Fish and Chips. coupla plates and beers...we were good for the night. and if we hadn't have choked by betting 20 pts. on the last question, we would've finished third and won a $15 gift certificate for the next visit. ah well, sometimes ya gotta bite the bullet... twas funny tho'. i went with my brother, Sandy, and a good friend for whom i used to play (v-ball), Barb. Sandy is in his early 50's and has a bum knee that needs some operatin'...Barb is in her mid-40's and has had Achilles problems lately...and you know all about my bad knees and shoulders. anyway, we named our team the 'Triple Cripples.' ya think that would be a good strength for topical muscle rubs? you can buy regular, extra strength, or triple cripple...i gotsta market it...LOL

oh yeah, i put beware for my blog title because i should discourage anyone from eating five fried fish filets (similar to a 6" hand), coleslaw, fries, onion rings, and three pints o' Blue Moon Belgian White...you will get some FUH-REEAKY dreams. in my dream, i was walking w/ Wanda (went to grad school with Lois) in the late afternoon...past numerous turn-of-the-century houses, most of which were having garage sales. we strolled up to a tall, white, narrow Victorian and peeked inside. it was well-lit and had a lot of rattan furniture. in fact, on one of the loveseats was Lois and an unknown female...chatting...laughing. we walked through to the back and ended up talking to Lois' two male roommates(?!?) for a bit when Wanda says to me, "Ya know, I'm in the mood for some homemade cotton candy." I agreed...grabbed a skillet (wotdafuk)...and proceeded to make some strange concoction that resembled a cross between freshly picked cotton and a runny omelet. I can still hear myself saying, "Good. We can burn off the first layer and have a clean batch." It was if I was seasoning a pan with oil...

the last time i had a dream that strange was when Lois and I were in Bolivia. we were taking Lariam, which is the most prescribed anti-malarial medicine for areas with chloroquine-immune mosquitoes. the majority of travelers who go to Africa, South American Amazonia, and SE Asia, will be on this prophylaxis.

while it is so widely prescribed, Lariam also has a list of side effects; the most common one is 'the tendency to have quite lucid dreams.' there are others, such as: feelings of worry or anxiety, depression, feelings of persecution, crying, aggression, restlessness, forgetfulness, agitation, confusion, panic and hallucinations. in fact, the most extreme cases even led to suicide, but i think the numbers were like 1 in 1.5 million. still, i think there have been about a dozen (documented) Lariam-related suicides in the last four or five years...

truly, the worst things I experienced were really odd dreams of people that i hadn't even seen in two or three years. i did have one night of lightheadedness and confusion though. still, I was the lucky one. Lois recalls having horrific dreams that traumatized her enough to dread falling asleep for three nights at a time. she told me about a gruesome nightmare that was so lucid and convincing. it involved a lynching scene that metamorphed into a wild party with strippers who weren't just taking their clothes off, but peeling their faces off as well...revealing maggot-eaten flesh underneath...ugh.

if you want to read a bit more on this, here's an interesting page with personal accounts of Lariam side effects. i posted our experiences on page 32 of the guestbook...