Odd words that pop into your head when you're half asleep

[Cerys]

This morning. as I woke up, the word Guedescasa flashed in front of my eyes.  I have no idea why.  This kind of thing seems to happen quite often.  Please tell me what my brain is playing at.

[Replies From View]

Inkyou Stadium.  Although for me it's an audio thing - a distinct voice in my head, almost like I'm replaying a recording of something I was hearing during the day.

[Cerys]

Anyone else?  We could come up with an awesome collection of possible album/book/band names!

[doppelkorn]

I have names floating around my head.

Sam Peckinpah and Alexi Lalas spring to mind

[Clatty McCutcheon]

I had one earlier this week, but it's gone now.  I get this sort of thing a lot - waking up with a nonsense word or silly phrase going through my head.

Years ago when I was just a boy I attended a family funeral and afterwards my old man disappeared off to the pub with his rather unhinged cousin from Penicuik, who I have never seen before or since.  They re-appeared somewhat refreshed a few hours later and were driving my mum up the wall with their drunken antics around the house.  Cousin needed to get on the last train to Edinburgh or we were going to be stuck with him until the next morning, but couldn't be persuaded to leave and unfortunately the old man was happily snoring away in the living room when his services were needed to coerce the cousin to get in a taxi to the station.   I tried to wake him up and he could not be roused, but after much shaking and shouting in his ear he eventually opened his eyes wide open for a couple of seconds, looked straight at me,very clearly and lucidly uttered the phrase 'garlic sausages lead to selective sausage eating' and then immediately fell back into a catatonic state, incapable of being roused.

It was such a surreal moment that I've never quite forgotten it or allowed the old man to forget it. 

[Buelligan]

I've been plagued for years by Willy Carson.

[alan nagsworth]

I have a somewhat similar experience in that when I find myself just nodding off unexpectedly, I have these weird half-dreams that really screw with my perception of reality for a few seconds. They're like vivid dreams directly related to whatever I was looking at/thinking about before I dozed off and the immediacy and connection to the real world is surreal as hell. Often it will be some fictional extension on whatever I was doing when I fell asleep. This usually happens at work when I'm trying to stay awake after a brutal night shift and am reading the paper to keep my brain engaged, and I'll have these half-dreams that trail off from the story I was reading. More often than not I will snap back awake due to sitting upright and while I'm getting my head together I will be left wondering what exactly I dreamed and what was real. Not easy to discern when you're reading The Sun either.

Does anyone else get this sensation? It happens in a split second and with the mechanics of sleep and dreams it makes a lot of sense that the brain would do this as much as anything, but I've never met anyone else to whom this happens.

[Cerys]

I quite often get that when I'm reading in bed.  I'll only notice that I've half dropped off when I get a myoclonic twitch and realise that the words I've been reading are nowhere to be found on the page, and yet make sense in the context of the story.

[Replies From View]

I've been plagued for years by Willy Carson.

[Replies From View]

I quite often get that when I'm reading in bed.  I'll only notice that I've half dropped off when I get a myoclonic twitch and realise that the words I've been reading are nowhere to be found on the page, and yet make sense in the context of the story.

Yes, this.  In fact this is how I do research - I "misread" something in this manner, and then realise that what I thought the text was saying was in fact something else, and that I have come up with a nice original idea to develop into a response to the text.

It's not plagiarism when it's so far removed from the thing you thought you'd copied.

[doppelkorn]

I have a somewhat similar experience in that when I find myself just nodding off unexpectedly, I have these weird half-dreams that really screw with my perception of reality for a few seconds. They're like vivid dreams directly related to whatever I was looking at/thinking about before I dozed off and the immediacy and connection to the real world is surreal as hell. Often it will be some fictional extension on whatever I was doing when I fell asleep. This usually happens at work when I'm trying to stay awake after a brutal night shift and am reading the paper to keep my brain engaged, and I'll have these half-dreams that trail off from the story I was reading. More often than not I will snap back awake due to sitting upright and while I'm getting my head together I will be left wondering what exactly I dreamed and what was real. Not easy to discern when you're reading The Sun either.

Does anyone else get this sensation? It happens in a split second and with the mechanics of sleep and dreams it makes a lot of sense that the brain would do this as much as anything, but I've never met anyone else to whom this happens.

I know exactly what you mean! When you snap out of it the thoughts instantly disappear as well. And you have a small period of "lost time" where you think "what was I just thinking about when I was in that trance?".

With me as well I'll mix up two things like I'll go to "work" at my old school or go to meet a friend but his face is the face of another friend or something, then my rational brain goes "NO THAT'S WRONG!" and I snap out of it.

[alan nagsworth]

I know exactly what you mean! When you snap out of it the thoughts instantly disappear as well. And you have a small period of "lost time" where you think "what was I just thinking about when I was in that trance?".

With me as well I'll mix up two things like I'll go to "work" at my old school or go to meet a friend but his face is the face of another friend or something, then my rational brain goes "NO THAT'S WRONG!" and I snap out of it.

Absolutely, yep. I have that feeling you get when you wake from a memorable dream, where I'm like 'I need to remember this, it was fascinating!' but the yearning, much like the half-dream, is entirely more fleeting and as much as I try I can't hold on to it for more than a few seconds.

Fuck Orwellian dystopia, I hope they invent a machine that reads thoughts just so I can look back on these moments and go 'Whoa, that was strange!' and then archive them into an even more forgettable database.

[SetToStun]

I was suffering from a bout of ebola[nb]My girlfriend reckoned it was just a cold, but what does she know?[/nb] a few weeks ago and consequently rather tired. Sat in a meeting one afternoon I was so knackered and generally unwell that I was on the point of dozing off. Even though I could clearly hear and understand everything that was being said, when I was asked to comment on one particular point it was all I could do to stop myself giving the only truly logical answer, which was, of course, "if you don't have steamed rhubarb with that you'll never get away without using ginger". It really did make 100% sense at the time, especially in the context of the discussion, which was about distributed transaction logging.

[BlodwynPig]

The last thought before sleep and the first thought upon waking:

Biggington Titbo

[Jake Thingray]

Last night, I had a dream about John Junkin [nb]Last week, I downloaded and watched two editions of It's Marty and one episode of Raffles, coincidentally Junkin was in all three.[/nb]. The only bit I can remember of it now was an early 70's BBC1 globe with a caption reading "John Injuncted", then, on 16mm colour film of that time, the defeated-looking comedy stooge, wearing an obviously fake full wig and beard, dressed also in an early 70's style and mentioning legal problems.

[Ginyard]

Buttchinella!

Ballet porn for the mind.

[Replies From View]

The last thought before sleep and the first thought upon waking:

Biggington Titbo

This is like that train or something.

[weaseldust]

this morning my boyfriend woke up and said:

"pig language on your eyes"

me - "what are you talking about?"

"oh my god!"

"what?"

"fuck off!"

_{semi-related: once when i was not quite sober i suddenly had the words "you spittin on her mind, her VAGINA" echo in my head}

[Vader Time]

I get this as much, if not more, when I'm awake, rather than asleep. It's often the names of foreign, not particularly well-known footballers. Azpilicueta. Yarmolenko. That sort of thing. It happens in much the same way as you get songs stuck in your head on repeat. Another common one is long, impressive-sounding words, especially if they're new ones that I've had to look up the meaning of. Perhaps it's my mind rehearsing unfamiliar sounds to try to make sense of them.

As for seemingly rational thoughts when you're asleep — if I'm dozing in the morning and I know I should really wake up, I usually dream about getting up and ready. Most annoying when I actually wake up and realise I haven't done any of that yet, and that I'm late. It's the brain being amazing and shit at the same time.

I had a dream the other night that I could've sworn at the time I'd had before, and was extremely important. But now I'm not sure I have had it previously, and it made next to no sense, so why my brain decided to make it feel that way, I can't imagine.

[Neville Chamberlain]

"Tintinnabulation" and "guano".

[HappyTree]

Just awoken from a dream in which a girl called Amélia Emolet was a co-worker of mine. I was Googling her name and found she had been shot, fell in the water and was saved by dolphins. I was being hassled at the work computer so wrote down her name so I could Google it at more length at home. It seemed very important that I remember her name.

Unfortunately Googling this in real life reveals no such person! The search continues...

[Snobbish Puerile Wanker]

Niddle.

[Crabwalk]

I was just drifting off pleasantly a moment ago, when in my half-dream a scruffy child appeared and started shouting a phrase at me over and over again until it woke me up. The phrase?

'You're dirty aren't you. You're dirty aren't you. You're dirty aren't you.'

Troubling.

[MoonlightingMatron]

Had a bit of a loopy turn the other day actually. I spent half an hour wandering in and out of the bathroom muttering 'Louis Van Hoot' in the voice of Alan Rickman.

Dunno if that counts.

[Buelligan]

No.  We find that a lot.  If it had been the famous actor Jeremy Irons' voice, you could have been on to something.  Pity really.

[biggytitbo]

I sometimes get plagued by a song lyric that I can't get out of my head and I'll wake up about 10 times during the night with the bloody thing racing through my head at a 100mph.

[Buelligan]

I know the one...

[Cerys]

Had a bit of a loopy turn the other day actually. I spent half an hour wandering in and out of the bathroom muttering 'Louis Van Hoot' in the voice of Alan Rickman.

Dunno if that counts.

I had a similar one - I found myself wandering around saying 'pork balls' in the voice of Raymond Babbitt.  Not as satisfying as Kermit the Frog'd voice saying 'herpes', mind.

[non capisco]

  Not as satisfying as Kermit the Frog'd voice saying 'herpes', mind.

Ha, bloody hell, it's not just me that does that!

[Utter Shit]

I lay awake last night thinking about what an odd word 'mortgage' is. How it's spelled, how it's pronounced...it just doesn't really work.