Blast from the past...

When I was a kid, I had a series of recurring nightmares. Three or so different ones, that would pop up regularly over the years. One (about the person chasing me and beating me up) stopped when I got my green belt in karate and turned around in the dream and beat him up. One (the weird one about stretching really thin to cross a gorge that's basically your essential pain-filled dream) I haven't had for a while.

The third made a reappearance last night. *brrs* It's the cannibalistic psychotic murderers one, where I'm safe but everyone around me is killed/tortured/eaten while I cower in a floor space/tunnel under a trap door and hope they don't find me. And unlike most dreams, when I wake up from it and go back to sleep, I always go right back to where I was. Stupid thing intrudes on regular dreams, too - I was having a rather pleasant Firefly-inspired dream before my psycho cannibal friends showed up.

I'm glad it was sunny this morning - nothing like daylight to dispell stupid childhood fears.

Ugh.

This is why I hate those pseudo-patriotic chain letters that get passed around. They're complete fabrications. The latest is this gem, (page down to the part where it was supposed to be a speech of Howard's) this time purporting to be from a speech by Australian PM, Kevin Rudd. Complete lies, of course, down to the part where the morons who made this didn't realise AUSTRALIA DOESN'T HAVE A PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE! And certainly not a motto of IN GOD WE TRUST.

Bloody idiot morons. The worst thing is, people believe this tripe and pass it on, perpetuating the falsehood, not to mention a completely repugnant message. Especially when it's so easy to double check:

1) find a particularly signature line in the chain letter;

2) copy and paste that line into a Google search;

3) look at the results. If you get news sites, it's more likely to be correct (but read the article to be sure). If you get things like Snopes.com and Break The Chain, double-check the article and it will probably tell you it's a pack of lies;

4) return chain letter back to everyone who sent it/received it with the debunking link to point out it's wrong.