Melatonin Dreams + MSM Overkill
A Surreal Parade + Protest...With A (Point of) View
I recently started taking melatonin again to help me get a better night's sleep.
While it definitely helps, it comes with one side effect I could do without: melatonin can trigger some truly wackadoodle dreams. These dreams are usually inspired by whatever I’ve been doodling or noodling about the day before.
Take last night’s, for example: In the dream, I was standing in Times Square, watching a parade of nude bicyclists. But they weren’t completely nude—just from the waist down. Above the waist, they wore gray hoodies, sported face masks, and carried backpacks.
If you’ve been following the news this week, you can probably guess the inspiration.
It’s hard to miss the ongoing mainstream media circus and public reaction after a gunman shot and killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
Legacy media has latched onto this story like it’s the crime of the century.
But most aren’t shocked by the story of a CEO being gunned down. If anything, most are surprised it didn’t happen sooner. And let’s be honest—this likely won’t be the last CEO shot and killed in the “line of duty.”
For years, health insurance companies have denied coverage for essential medical services, forced families into bankruptcy, and left most of us to choose between care we can’t afford and skipping treatment altogether.
Our for-profit medical system may be too big to fail, but it’s also too sick to survive.
In my dream, I cheered on the bicyclists. And not just because I enjoy public nudity or because I think the alleged gunman is more than a little handsome.
No, I cheered on the parade of riders because I am sick and tired of seeing billionaires get richer while the rest of us get poorer…and sicker. Sadly, many of us can’t afford to take the risk the insurance companies won’t pay, so we skip healthcare altogether.
Too many avoid visiting a doctor or taking their medicine until there’s an emergency. And count your lucky stars if you don’t know how expensive a trip to the emergency room can be. Even with “good” health insurance.
Let me be clear: I don’t condone violence. But I do understand how someone could decide retribution was the only option. Cause and effect, plain and simple.
As for the media, they’re like vultures picking over a carcass—not because it’s the most urgent issue, but because it’s easy to sensationalize.
The media’s obsession with the story likely has more to do with UnitedHealthcare being a major advertiser than any journalistic “integrity” they pretend to have.
Back in my dream, the parade of riders stopped in the middle of Times Square.
The pantless bikers dismounted, pulled out fake guns, and stood still in solidarity—a silent, surreal protest for all the lives lost to a healthcare system that’s supposed to, at the very least, “do no harm.”
It was an absurd but also poignant dream—a nocturnal critique of both our for-profit medical system and the legacy media that continues to focus on delivering fear and outrage instead of actual news.
It’s worth asking: why do certain stories dominate the headlines while others barely get a mention? Whose interests are being served by these stories? And what does it say about us as a society that clickbait stories remain so popular?
Maybe that’s the real question my melatonin-fueled brain was grappling with.
Or maybe it’s just a wackadoodle dream. Who’s to say?
Thanks for reading!
Clint
ON THIS DAY = DECEMBER 9
BIRTHDAYS
1608 = John Milton = English poet and philosopher
1869 = Edith Craig = British theatre director and suffragist 🌈
1883 = Joseph Pilates = German-American fitness expert and Pilates founder
1898 = Emmett Kelly = American clown and actor
1902 = Margaret Hamilton = American schoolteacher and actor
1905 = Dalton Trumbo = American author, screenwriter, and blacklistee
1906 = Grace Hopper = American admiral, technologist, and COBOL designer
1909 = Douglas Fairbanks Jr. = American actor and producer
1916 = Kirk Douglas = American actor and producer
1922 = Redd Foxx = American actor
1928 = Dick Van Patten = American actor
1929 = John Cassavetes = American actor and filmmaker
1930 = Buck Henry = American actor, director, and screenwriter
1933 = Morton Downey Jr. = American actor and talk show host
1934 = Judi Dench = English actor
1934 = Junior Wells = American singer-songwriter
1941 = Beau Bridges = American actor, director, and producer
1942 = Dick Butkus = American football player, sportscaster, and actor
1945 = Michael Nouri = American actor
1950 = Joan Armatrading = Kittian-English singer-songwriter
1953 = Gilles Blanchard = French artist (Pierre et Gilles) 🌈
1953 = John Malkovich = American actor and producer
1957 = Donny Osmond = American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actor
1959 = Mario Cantone = American comedian, actor, and writer 🌈
1961 = Elvira Kurt = Canadian comedian 🌈
1962 = Felicity Huffman = American actor and producer
1969 = Jakob Dylan = American singer-songwriter
1977 = Imogen Heap = English singer-songwriter
1978 = Jesse Metcalfe = American actor
EVENTS
1851 = The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal.
1897 = French actor, journalist and leading suffragette Marguerite Durand founded the feminist newspaper La Fronde.
1935 = Walter Liggett, an American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder.
1948 = The Genocide Convention is adopted.
1953 = Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
1960 = The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom.
1968 = Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the computer system NLS.
1979 = The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction (with rinderpest in 2011 being the other).
2017 = The Marriage Amendment Bill receives royal assent and comes into effect, making Australia the 26th country to legalize same-sex marriage.
PHOTO + QUOTE OF THE DAY
“In order to achieve anything you must be brave enough to fail.”
Kirk Douglas
NEW + FEATURED
Moments In Monochrome #2 (NSFW)
Moments In Monochrome #1 (NSFW)
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Yes, this is what a society gets when the central government does not take care of the real needs of its people. This might be our first glimpse of the U.S.A. version of resistance to fascism. In Germany, the people all wanted to be good Germans. In Russia, the Muscovites are willing to endure deprivation intolerable to any other people in the world if only the government will project their paranoia visibly onto the national boundary. In the U.S, we have a history of rebellion against tyranny.
Maybe someone else here can write about the relationship of this assassination with the result of the election in November.
Hahhah I identify with the issue of developing resistance. In light of that, it seemed that skullcaps works better when I skip a night after taking. My weird life: I typically sleep about 3 hours or so, wake up wide awake, and at that point have a dropper full of skullcaps. The taste is a bit cloying so I put it in flavored seltzer. Then, read something boring. I can typically get a couple more hours of sleep.
The Restria I take every night. The effect is subtle. When I order, I get 6 bottles at a time, a tad cheaper. The first time I ran out, I had forgotten to reorder, so I went about 2 weeks without. My sleep was noticeably worse, informing me that wow that stuff makes a difference