So I'm currently reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, which recounts the adventures of the likes of Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, Altman, DePalma, Polanski, and a host of others, and how they changed Hollywood - first by making "films" instead of movies, and then, in the case of Spielberg and Lucas, by creating blockbuster films, and the now-ingrained blockbuster mentality now prevalent in the majors. And there's been one recurring theme that has been in a lot of these people's films, and that's why, two nights ago, I dreamed what I did.

I forgot what the dream was. But I remembered the last thing I thought before I woke up. When I did, I told what I had dreamed to my wife, who was already awake, and she wrote it down.

And that is how I got this:

Nixtion. NIK-shun noun 1: The belief that a story can be made better by drawing parallels with, or turning it into an allegory for, the Nixon Administration. 2: A work that uses said parallels and/or allegory. Usage: The Spielberg films Jaws and Close Encounters both deal with secrets that have been kept from the public by a corrupt government, making them classic pieces of nixtion.

Now you know why I have dark circles under my eyes every morning.

After probably 10 years of having a Palm PDA in my pocket, I'm quitting.

It's not so much any kind of idealism, or some kind of neo-ludditeism. I don't think that the Palms available now have the integrity of product that they had when I first got one.

The first Palm I owned was a IIIx. A nice little unit that was easy on AAA batteries unless I overused the backlight. It lasted three years, until I dropped on the last night of a long camping trek that took our family through Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Illinois. The face cracked. I bought a used one on eBay and fixed it myself, but it wasn't the same after that.

So I bought a IIIc, which was a color unit. This one had a rechargeable battery, so no more feeding AAA's. It ran about five years and then started showing symptoms of impending doom. I was proactive and bought a newer Palm, but the IIIc wouldn't die, so I gave it to my wife so she could try out Palmdom. It ran for another year or so before completely giving out.

The replacement, which I bought around 2005, was a Zire 72. Had a camera in it that I didn't care about, and a feature that played mp3's that was useful but superfluous since I had an iPod Shuffle. But it did have a nice screen, and a voice memo feature that I used a lot less than I thought I would. It lived less than two years before giving me trouble and dying.

So earlier this year, I decided to take a step backwards. For $99 I bought a vanilla Z22 that was a starter model, a step or two back on the evolutionary scale from where I had been. Less resolution on the screen, bare bones features, but all the stuff I depended on the Palm for - calendar, address book, memos, Bible. I had gotten one for my wife to replace the IIIc, and it seemed to work fine.

Mine worked for less than a year. Last Friday it decided not to turn on in spite of being freshly charged. Attempts were made over the weekend to charge and revive it, but it was dead, Jim.

I did a little quick arithmetic and concluded I'd gone through two Palms in as many years after having had two models that gave me nine. Well, they've changed hands at least once; maybe Palm isn't the company it used to be.

So I dug out my old DayTimer binder, printed out my remaining 07 date book and contacts into pre-formatted pages, cut them, punched them, and presto. I am low tech once again. Thirty bucks a year on refills is cheaper than $99 or more a year on new Palms.

However, there is a bigger issue. This thing has gotten me to thinking about my brain. I had heard someone talking on the news or somewhere (and this is symptom one - I can't remember where), and they were blaming modern technology for what they saw as the softening of our brains. Calculators perform mathematical functions for us (instead of... slide rules? An abacus? Fingers? Stones in a pouch?). Pocket phones remember phone numbers. PDA's and Google and Yahoo have calendars and alarms. It's no longer incumbent upon us to remember anything.

As opposed to long ago, when oral tradition was everything, where tricks like adding rhymes and then meter helped the storytellers remember the story, the birth of both poetry and song. And even 100 (well, say 150) years ago, when folks would memorize and recite poetry for each other in one another's parlors. Or even as recently as when I was in the third grade and had to memorize one poem a month (I still remember the opening lines of the one about the Village Smithy, written by, I think, Longfellow).

Now what do we have occasion to remember? I'm saddened to think that I can name all of the members of Yes from their start up to about 1988 or so, but I still can't remember my son's cell phone number.

Or to put it another way. At my work, there are 7 fax numbers that I use once a month. Each month I look at my list and write them down,, then punch them into our fax machine, so that's two exposures. I have been working directly with the client that uses these numbers for seven years. So that gives us 12 x 2 x 7, which means I've run every number through my brain 168 times during that time. How many do you suppose I know? Only one, and that was a number I already had memorized from when I worked for the company that owned the number. And I know the last four digits of another number because it's 1350, the frequency of their AM radio station. Other than that? Pffft.

How critical is it that I know all of these numbers? In the long run, probably not that. I suppose I never learned them because I never had to. They're on a sheet on a bulletin board that overlooks my desk. I don't know the regular phone numbers, either, though I use more often. On my phone, each has a four-digit speed dial code. And I don't know those codes because, you guessed it, they are all on that chart, too.

Basically I never memorized this stuff because I never had to.

Well, maybe I ought to start exercising my brain a little more. Apparently, a lot of other people feel the same way, judging from the rising popularity of brain-building games like Nintendo's Brain Age for the DS and Big Brain Academy for the Wii (where the worst I do is on the memory games). And now I'm similarly inclined because I recently realized that, while I can spout all of those Yes-ites and what instrument they played, and probably which albums they were on, I'm pathetic when it comes to doing more practical things like quoting Bible verses (usually I paraphrase and say, "This is from the Joe Standard Version").

(Although maybe I never memorized verses because I never felt the need since I try to read frequently - and, of course, part of my Palm software included two translations of The Bible.)

So what am I going to do about all of this? I'm not sure. I'm still getting over being ticked off with myself for letting my brain get so lazy. I suppose I can work on memorizing Bible verses again. Maybe I should memorize a poem a month like back in third grade. Although it might be enough if I memorized some of my own songs (if I could just play them with any confidence at all, knowing the words might do me good someday).

I suppose the best place to start would be to memorize my son's cell phone number.

If I come up with a plan, I'll let you know. I'll even do progress reports. Unless I forget.