Strep throat sucks. If it ever comes knocking at your door, answer it, but shout "I know from a trustworthy source that you blow hairy goat balls" and then slam the door in its face.

Carl Sagan's dream theories are frikkin sweet. They agree with Freudian principles; the neocortex competes with the midbrain and brainstem for control just as the ID and superego battle to win influence with the ego. Basically, the neocortex was built on top of the primitive brain. Because this occured relatively recent in evolutionary history, the brain is inefficient as both parts are trying to direct the organism. The neocortex triumphs, at least most of the time - only a few of us are rapists and murderers. But just because the neocortex triumphs consciously and while we are awake doesn't mean that it does so all the time.

Carl Sagan believes that the primitive brain, or the Reptilian complex (R-complex, brainstem, the structural equivalent of a small mammalian brain that was preoccupied with avoiding ominous reptiles), takes over during our sleep. His primary evidence is dream content. In our dreams we experience the emotions associated with falling from heights, fleeing from someone or something, encountering snakes, spiders, and other dangerous animals, having sex, vague anxiety-provoking themes, and confusing hodge-podges of all the above - essentially the life of an arboreal dwelling ancestor with little neocortex to interfere. While awake, the neocortex spends energy suppressing the R complex constantly, for example, when we come across the hot blonde on the street or watch Al Gore accept a Nobel Peace Prize. When we sleep we lose conciousness, that is, the neocortex takes a break and lets the old pilot fly again. R-complex activities, now unhindered by the suppressions of the neocortex, emerge forth to dominate our thoughts. Or in Sagan's words, the "dragons come out."