Thursday 13:59
Friday 21:16

Friday's puzzle managed 6 Zs in the grid, most bunched together in BUZZ, FUZZY, and JAZZ.

You know what bothers me about The Matrix? It's small because that movie is close to perfect (ugh, the sequels), but it's this. Neo sees a cat walk by, and then sees it again, and comments "Whoa, déjà vu." Every freezes, because déjà vu is "a glitch in the Matrix" when the machines change something. This would be kind of cool, an explanation of déjà vu as a glitch in this computer-generated fantasy world, since the phenomenon is still poorly understood.

Yet that's not what déjà vu is like. It's not seeing the same thing twice in a row, it's seeing or experiencing something just once, and imagining you've seen/experienced it before. When I get déjà vu, it's very compelling, even more so than when I was younger. I feel like it's a stimulus that gets lost on the way through my brain and ends up in the wrong part of my temporal lobe. So a glitch, but an organic one.

I bring this up because I was on shrooms yesterday. I've only done them once before, and it was quite pleasant. I acquired these with the intention of sharing them with my buddy Jon. He's a nerd, but generally open to experimentation. He has struggled with depression, and I thought the euphoria that accompanies a mushroom trip might be good for him. But he wimped out, so I shared them with my friend Jaret, who was with me the first time I used them (don't use drugs like this alone). I divided the eighth in what looked equal halves, but I think I overdid it.

Before I pitched to Jon, I did some research. Effects mentioned alongside hallucinations was time distortion, especially thinking more time has passed than actually has. I didn't recall this effect from my first experience, but you often bring to a trip what you expect. My first trip was exactly like I thought it was going to be. In this one, the time distortion was real.

We were watching Into the Spider-verse, which Jaret had never seen. The visual hallucinations made some scenes look really neat, as if the characters were reduced into crude polygons. But I was also having continuous déjà vu. Of course I've seen the movie before, but there were comments made by Jaret, and I knew some factoids about the movie, so we'd sometimes pause and talk. I was certain I had heard and said it ALL before, while watching this very movie, and my responses were just repeating what I'd already said some other time (verbalizing things was challenging enough without the nagging feeling I was repeating myself). Recall Jaret was seeing this for the first time, and this was the first time I'd watched it with anyone else. When the weed delivery came, I was sure I'd met the driver and been though our exact exchange before (I've never used this delivery service).

Still, it was a positive experience. On the other hand, I'm kind of glad Jon wasn't my partner as I'd advertised more of a fun walk in Wonderland, and I wouldn't have made much of a sitter in my state.