microsleep weirdness

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you know when you're a bit tired and your brain kind of switches off for a split second and you jerk awake again. this happens a lot in meetings and presentations. i just had it and i heard all these weird robotic frog croak noises mixed with voices. it's cool. shame it only happens at work.

― the next grozart, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:15 (eighteen years ago)

Me too, but then I realized I was importing Pussy Galore's Exile On Main Street in my itunes.

― nathalie, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:16 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, i really enjoy that feeling except lately i've had it while driving, which is not the greatest thing ever safety-wise. I usually love when that happens though, especially if it's while watching a movie.

― Jibe, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:17 (eighteen years ago)

a plane just passed by and i started nodding off and the plane sounded like a weird digeridoo/jew harp thing.

― the next grozart, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:17 (eighteen years ago)

i get it when i'm reading. sometimes i swear i end up reading a word or sentence that isn't there.

― the next grozart, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:18 (eighteen years ago)

driving as a passenger is the worst for this - i get so tired and there's this undulating road. it's physically impossible not to start going a bit doolally or fall asleep.

― the next grozart, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:18 (eighteen years ago)

thankfully i've never done this at work, as I usually awake from them with a loud ripping snort.

― Ste, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:22 (eighteen years ago)

grozart it is a result of invisible, odorless fumes that are available only to churches, professors and people who hold office meetings. god knows how the fumes get into cars.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:26 (eighteen years ago)

engineers

― the next grozart, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:27 (eighteen years ago)

I once had a microsleep driving home after an all-nighter. I mounted the gutter and blew a tire. Somehow I managed to end up in between two telegraph poles and not wrapped around one of them. After that little incident I took to taxis and public transport for night time outings.

― Hard like armour, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:26 (eighteen years ago)

Wow. Scary!

― Trayce, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:39 (eighteen years ago)

It was certainly a wake up call. I also felt like a complete tool for doing something so stupid and never told anyone about it until years later. Now I always heed Dr Karl's advice of Stop. Revive. Survive!

― Hard like armour, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:57 (eighteen years ago)

It was certainly a wake up call.

Har :)

― Trayce, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 01:20 (eighteen years ago)

Thanks, I'm here till Thursday, try the veal.

― Hard like armour, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 01:24 (eighteen years ago)

my most frequent occurrences of this were in college, at about the 50-minute mark of 75-minute lecture classes. i'd start falling asleep and the lecture would be coming from donald duck, or my mother, or a magic tree. my notes would be undulating waves legigle to illegible script.

― tipsy mothra, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 01:37 (eighteen years ago)

le giggle to il le giggle

― tipsy mothra, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 01:43 (eighteen years ago)

I keep seeing this thread and thinking of microcredit/microloans.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 01:52 (eighteen years ago)

i am always worried about this happening on the subway and looking like a weirdo with a tick

― tehresa, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 02:00 (eighteen years ago)

During an 8 AM class (5x a week, 3 hours, in summer) I would force my eyes to stay open, but I was so sleepy that I would frequently have small hallucinations of things like smoke/steam and people outside of the windows. Every time it happened I would jump in surprise. People noticed.

― Jesse, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 02:11 (eighteen years ago)

You guys are giving me GRAVEYARD SHIFT flashbacks, when the donuts I just made started to look like the overtanned steroid-enhanced abs of disgusting muscle magazine covers. i could swear it was circles of Florida flesh. Then taking classes @ 7 am 2 hours later and getting all twitchy, floating in & out of consciousness.

― Abbott, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 04:43 (eighteen years ago)

When I pass out sitting up I always wake up thinking I'm falling

― JW, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 05:08 (eighteen years ago)

yeah that little jolt of consciousness returning is vertiginous.

― tipsy mothra, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:25 (eighteen years ago)

(i was in a taxi once where the cabbie was doing this. it was about 8 in the morning, so probably the end of an all-night shift. my wife and i would see his head nod down a little, then jerk back up, and the car would jerk a little too to one side or a the other. we were on an expressway so we couldn't say "just let us out here," so we just talked really loud, trying to keep him awake until we got into the city.)

― tipsy mothra, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:28 (eighteen years ago)

those little jolting falling feelings are called 'hypnic jerks'.

― estela, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:30 (eighteen years ago)

just begging to be a band name or dance name or something.

― tipsy mothra, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:34 (eighteen years ago)

This happened to me several times yesterday when I was watching a recording of a futurist play for class and it was like descending into a nightmare. I had to turn it off and walk around to wake myself up.

― Maria, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 07:18 (eighteen years ago)

I was doing this yesterday when watching TV (I think - or maybe I dreamt it!). As so often happens, I got jerked back not so much physically but by a sudden storm of "THAT LAST THOUGHT OF YOURS MAKES NO SENSE!". Usually I then instantly forget said thought but yesterday I rememebered it precisely, long enough to think about it and wonder if there was any way in which it made sense in a free-association kind of way. It didn't.

― Alba, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 07:47 (eighteen years ago)

i once worked in a temp job where I had to sift through tons pages and pages of onscreen fax documents. Shapes started appearing out of the screen - it was so trippy.

― the next grozart, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 15:39 (eighteen years ago)

I remember in the Hendrix docu, his Army buddies refer to this as a "alpha jump" and wonder if it's what killed him.

― sexyDancer, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

Often when I'm on the verge of sleep I'll hear vaguely familiarish phantom music coming from somewhere, from a specific direction as if there's someone in another room listening to something on a boombox. I've learned not to investigate now, but when I was a kid I would get up and wander around the house looking for where it came from.

― nickalicious, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 15:48 (eighteen years ago)

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