2001-07-26 - 10:52 p.m.

This entry is brought to you by an incredible need to get my mind off the fact that Jolene, the landlord of the building I've been trying to move into, isn't answering her phone, and the cackcackcackcackcackcackcackcackcackcackcackcackcackcack of the paper folding machine, run by Barbara, the old woman who spends every morning folding statements and stuffing them into envelopes while wearing big gaudy glasses and pastel flowered shirts, sticking her tongue in the side of her open mouth in concentration and puffing out her cheeks in that way that makes her look like a doped-up frog in a stupid shirt.

Just the other day I wrote about my tendency to have dreams that come true and how I truly believe that it's a sign that deep-down, however uncontrollable it is, it is possible to tell the future.

And it happened again. Not the dreams, but what happens every time I bring it up on a wide enough forum. The proclamation that it's probably not real because I don't have any proof.

This is something I've been hearing most of my life. This is something I've actually *believed* most of my life. For years I just assumed it was a random misfiring of synapses, something where the memory that should be only seconds old seems years old. I was almost positive that this was actually the case, because my typically logical mind didn't want to accept it as anything more.

That stopped fairly recently when I started remembering them before they happened. Only seconds before, but with enough vivid detail that I knew exactly what would be said and done by people just before they said or did them. That was the point that I was convinced. I *knew* this was something more than just a clerical error by my brain.

The thing that gets me here is these constant attacks by the cynics, the intellectuals. Those who don't believe in *silly* things like ESP and will, given the chance, give all of the same reasoning that every other intellectual with a reasonable explanation has given on the subject.

"There's no proof! Why didn't you remember the dream earlier? Why didn't you ever tell anyone about the dream earlier? Obviously, with all of the people in this world who write dream journals, *one* of them *had* to have written one down that came true if you were right." Every possible thing they can possibly come up with to show that you haven't proven that you're right, you probably aren't.

Now, why is this acceptable? Why is it all right for me to be shown how silly I am, believing in such things with no proof, but it's not acceptable for someone to attack a religion in the same manner? Religious people don't have proof, that's how it works. It's based in faith. They *believe* something to be true, and so we let them believe it, even if we don't. What would it be like if someone did the same thing to a random Christian?

"How do you *know* Jesus loves you? Did he send you a Valentine's Day card? Did he have Jenny tell Sandy tell Jeff tell you that he kinda sorta wanted to go out? Do you snuggle on the couch eating chocolate and watching 'Casablanca?' I haven't seen it. Where's your proof?"

Things like that are now considered wrong. Of course there isn't any proof, but some people still believe it, and believe it with all of their hearts. And our society accepts that. They accept a massive group of people accepting what a centuries-old book says completely without proof, and that's all right. But someone like me believes something that I have felt and seen for myself, and people will jump out of the woodwork to show me the flaws with it.

And why is that?

Probably because of people like "Miss Cleo."