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I always think of your “more smiteing” statue of liberty image on this day.

Perhaps I’m misremembering.

No, that was me.

I did a few 9/11 posts and said my piece. After that, it felt wrong. Like attention seeking. But ignoring it and posting something typically stupid felt even wronger. So I just don’t post.

When I was a kid, changing the subject, I thought I could see colors in black and white static. I’m sure there’s a name for the phenomenon. Something about jiggling up your rods and cones.

Nope. There it is.

https://www.zazzle.com/more_smiting_statue_of_liberty_t_shirt-235911155788848375

I always interpreted shades of gray in black and white TV as different colors. Patents thought I was odd for preferring it to the new color tv in the 70’s.

Fuck I’m old.

We old are told to remember in shades of gray
The things that happened in our yesterdays
At the time we saw them in Black and White
Bad was bad and right was right.
We had heroes and villains too
But now we are ordered to question who was who.

For modern times want to destroy our heroes
And blame them for all our current woes
Destroy the memories of those we admire
And throw their images on the funeral pyre
Of our culture and history
Because our heroes were not good enough, you see

I wish the video quality were better. Still…

Buckingham Palace
September 11, 2001

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwrX-LN9-L0

Someveg – nice. Sad, true, and well expressed.

Black and white are colors….jus’ sayin’.. LOL

@stoaty — About those imagined colors in b/w static: I suspect they are related to the phosphenes we “see” when we close our eyes or are in a very dark place. There’s an interesting description of the phenomenon here. Maybe there’s a related phenomenon that causes us to perceive color when the only visual stimulus is black and white, and the visual cortex tries to keep the cones’ processing part of itself active (insert Vonnegut “busy, busy, busy” reference here).

I dunno.

As a side note, one of my two or three main tricks useful for falling asleep is concentrating on my color phosphenes and trying to make them respond to my thinking. I think that I can do that, but it is entirely possible I’m fooling myself. It doesn’t matter: I usually fall asleep about then, so primary mission accomplished.

I sometimes ‘see’ very distinct images in my phosphenes. I reckon it’s my brain doing its best to extrapolate meaning from noise.

I reckon one way to tell if I’m dead will be vision and hearing without hiss.

Uncle Al – when I was younger, the thing you’re describing I saw as patterns, herringbone or such, and tried the same thing, only I would try and make them rotate clockwise or (anti) counter clockwise. And eventually I’d start endlessly ‘falling’ towards them.
I don’t seem to ‘see’ those anymore, though I try, but as you say, the primary mission is going to sleep and I usually manage that the same way you said you do.

I know what you’re talking about Stoaty, on the TV set. I thought about it a lot when I was younger and we still had B&W sets; I decided it had to do with how well the television was tuned because even B&W sets had to be finely tuned. Also anything on the screen (like dust or bits of lint from dusting) seemed to aggravated the situation.

Related: I sewed a kimono-style robe for JavaSon out of black and white striped fabric. The stripes were about 3/16th of an inch wide; the belt and the binding around the neck and down the front of the robe were cut on the bias. Colors kept flashing over the fabric, and by the time I finished the robe my eyes were so wacked out, I thought I had a brain tumor. I vowed to never sew on striped fabric again and I haven’t.

A different and oddly touching 9/11 story.

Thank you for the link BJM.

I used to see tumbling geometric shapes in my phosphenes. It started when I had a fever when I was three or four. Went away eventually.