What a Wonder is a Gun

**WARNING: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE**

This dream was pretty disturbing in the main conflict of it, but when I woke up, the predominant feeling was one of triumph. My dream was part "Diary of Anne Frank," part "On the Waterfront." The dream itself sounds pretty melodramatic, but I can't think of any other language to describe it in. It was far from comedic at the time.

I was helping some new friends move their stuff from an LDS Church building, where BYU-Idaho's housing office had been letting them stay until their apartment was ready. I don't know who these friends are in real life, although one of them looked a little like a co-worker of mine. Otherwise, they're strangers. We had to move everything...beds, clothes, shelves; all of it had to go into the back of my truck. But Adolf Hitler and a small band of Idaho rebels (their identities and nature remained mysterious to me, I only knew they were there) made it difficult. They were hiding around corners and would shoot at you as you were moving things out of the building. It was like being in the the videogame HALO. It was kind of an accepted thing, and people just tried to make do with the situation, instead of doing anything to stop it.

I helped one friend move, and managed to avoid wounds by using her furniture and suitcases to block the bullets. But in the course of taking the mattress out to the car, this friend's sister was shot. I watched the blood and gray matter pour out of her head next to me. She had been helping me carry the mattress, and when she was shot, she let go of it and it fell against both of us, pinning us underneath. I was trying to get up and run, but my hands were wet with blood all over them, and I couldn't lift the mattress off of my legs. Finally someone came and shoved it off, and I ran, bullets shattering the walls around my ears as I finally reached the door of the church building. I took a shower in my friend's new apartment to get the blood and brains out of my hair while she called their parents and was comforted by her roomates.

I go back to the church building to get the mattress. (The logical thing to do in my dream...none of us even considered any other option.) I'm alone this time, my friends waiting at the door. There's some sort of treaty, that we've allowed the Nazis to occupy the building only if they do not exercise any violence outside of it. The moment you're outside the door, they cannot shoot. Still, I know my friends are taking a big risk in waiting for me.

I find the mattress where we had left it. Because its a dream, there's no blood or anything anywhere, but the body is gone. I remember the smoke I had seen coming from a close-by building and I decide I don't want to think about it. I go to pick up the mattress, and as soon as I have it up, a bullet hits it from the other side. It misses me, but it breaks a wooden beam across the bottom of the box spring in half, and the whole thing sort of collapses on that side. I swear loudly and try to keep it all upright, while at the same time using it as a barricade. Then another bullet comes through and splinters the other bottom beam. All of a sudden, I see the image of my friend, the one whose sister was killed, floating above me, just over the mattress. Its as if she's laying in some invisible upper bunk, and I can just see her head and torso leaning over the side. She says to me "Leave the mattress. You are going to be killed."

I decide to make a run for it. Shoving the mattress over, I start sprinting with all my strength for the door. Its a good 40 feet away, but I go for it anyway. All of a sudden I hear a blast, and pain explodes in my right thigh. I fall to the ground and when I look down, I see blood all over, and I know that I've been shot. But since its the thickest part of my thigh, I decide I can still make it, and get up to run again (apparently I don't have a femoral artery in my dreams). I can hardly stand it, but I run anyway. Then I feel the same pain in my left calf. I fall again. Another gunshot wound. But in that moment, I decide that I will not be a victim of the neo-Nazis. I will avenge the death of my friend's sister by surviving this exit of the building. I get up somehow and continue staggering to the door. My right ankle takes a bullet, and then my left arm. I'm starting to pass out, but I still aim for the door.

Now things are like that climactic scene in "On the Waterfront," when Marlon Brando is staggering to the warehouse after the fight. Except I'm still being fought, and there's no one there to help me. My vision is blurring...I can see the door, but I can't tell if its moving or if I am, and everything around the edges of my vision are fading in and out. I see men in uniforms and handguns come out from behind the corners. They think I'm a goner, but I refuse to fall. They shoot again, this time I can't even tell what they've hit, but I stagger for a moment, and start to crawl towards the door. I reach up to open it, and I'm shot again in the side. By now, I'm counting the bullets as they hit me, and I'm up to six now. I know I won't survive if the number reaches 10. No one can survive 10 bullet wounds, especially not at this range. I can see the reflection of the men behind me in the glass of the door. I push it open, and all of a sudden I'm kicked from behind. I land on the pavement right outside the door, and I'm shot in the elbow. "Seven," I think, and I roll onto my back in pain. I look up and see that its Hitler himself standing over me, a pistol in hand. I turn my body to cough up the blood that's filling my mouth, and even though I'm barely conscious, I try to crawl away. I know my friends are watching, trying to stay hidden. Hitler's breaking the rules, and it makes me angry that they're now in danger.

I've made it about 3 feet away, dragging my body towards the car in the parking lot. I'm about 10 feet away from the edge of the sidewalk, and I can hear Hitler behind me. I know I won't make it, but now I'm simply determined to make it as far as I can...make some sort of point, do all I can to show how unjustified Hitler's actions are. He kicks my hip, and I fall over onto my back. He keeps me in place with his foot-- he's got it resting on my right knee. He aims and at point-blank range, he shoots my left shoulder. "Eight," I think. "I'm going to die." He shifts the gun slightly to aim at my other shoulder. BANG! "Nine. I'm sorry. I didn't make it. He won this time." Hitler kneels down now. I'm barely conscious, but I feel the cold metal of the pistol next to my right temple. I know I'm going to die in the next second, even though the gun is pointed at the ground, so that when it goes off, it will only blow one side of my head off. But I know I won't survive it anyway. I try to focus my vision for one last moment, and gather up the spit and blood and bile in my mouth. I muster all the strength in my body and spit. Hitler's face, looking down on me, my blood all over his face, is the last thing I see before I hear the final bang. My friend starts screaming my name. "Ten," I think. And then everything goes black.

I open my eyes to see my friend leaning over the edge of the upper bunk. (The dream is continuing...) I can't move, and I can feel myself bandaged almost from head to toe. I can only see out of one eye. I try to stammer something, but it hurts too much to talk. My friend smiles down on me. I start to wonder what's going on...if I'm dead, why can't I move? And why do I still hurt? My friend smiles down on me and says "You made it. Ten gunshot wounds, and you survived. The Nazis are gone now. You made it." I black out again.

The next time I open my eyes, I can see out of both of them. (But I'm still dreaming...) I notice that a lot of the bandages are gone...I just have one on my leg and one on my arm, and one side of my head is all wrapped up. I can't believe that I'm alive. My friend tells me that I'd been out for 2 weeks, but they knew I'd make it. I had survived 10 gunshot wounds. They let me "sleep off" most of the healing. I try to get up, and I'm so stiff, its difficult, but it hurts a lot less than I thought it would.

I sit up, and even stand to walk around a little. I know that my life is a miracle. I begin to try to help out in cleaning the room a little bit. The next part of my dream is like right after any severe injury in real life. I'm limited, but I'm kind of enjoying the opportunity to take a little break. And I find that I'm not so limited as might be expected. I enjoy helping out in the little ways I can. I learn that not many people know the details of my story, but they know that the Nazis have ceased their occupation because they broke their treaty. It's exactly how I want it to be. We have a memorial service for my friend's sister, and I feel like I did a great thing...I know there's still so much hate and war and evil in the world, but I know that by surviving, I helped chalk up one for the good side.

Mitch Hedberg on Dreaming

"I hate dreaming, 'coz when I wanna sleep, I wanna sleep. Dreaming is work, y'know? Like, there I am, lying in my comfortable bed in my hotel room, and it's beautiful -- next thing you know, I have to build a go-kart with my ex-landlord. I want do dream of me watching myself sleep." --Mitch Hedberg, Mitch All Together

Sleepy, dreamy words

I have this great habit of writing things down in my sleep/half-sleep. Often I'll be dreaming something, or thinking in that barely awake state, and something will sound really poetic to me, so I'll write it down. Of course, when I find it later, its absolutely ridiculous. I've also had some pretty quotable dreams. Mallori has the same things going on, except she often TEXTS in her sleep, which is REALLY neat. Just for fun, I thought I'd record some of those gems here...

DREAM QUOTES:

"Good thing my bangs have gone to gravy. Where ARE the Turks?" --Beckah, in my dream

"You wouldn't mention it if YOU were ground beef." --a ziploc bag, in my dream

"In violence, hope...in hope, amor." --my last words as I died of a gunshot wound in the arms of Al Pacino, in Mal's dream

Guy: Are those your red pants in the window.
Me: No.
Guy: Aren't you the girl from JC Penny?
Me: No.
Guy: Huh.
--in my dream

THINGS WRITTEN/TEXTED IN SLEEP:

"Hit me like you did with some extra big electrical tub." --Me

"I get to be naked with Christian?" --Mallori, text message

"The air was hot. Ants and bees assaulted the windows. There was a stench on the tongue of every anteater that would make any human close their mouth in fear of death." --Me

"Bridges don't give companions sweaters." --Me


This one's pretty elaborate...I was falling asleep at a training meeting for work, so to keep myself awake, I thought I'd take notes. Well, I BARELY stayed awake, and didn't learn a thing from the training meeting, and my notes were PSYCHOTIC.

"If ship to adress is pink, you must verify it by spelling it out fools. Stay awake. I am high with sleepy. Now I'm literally crosseyed with sleepyness. Look I can't spell. No acidity. Wee--I feel like I'm in l alaland, which I am But there's not some small drawf with a moustache that's green. Moo can someone fall asleep while sitting and wrighting fool? I just dreamt something in the 2 seconds I closed my eyes that Paul McCartney saw this and laughed and Jesse joined him. MUST STAY AWAKE. This is so not healthy. My body needs sweep I know screen. Who was jush talking and that's not to I was going to say. Sister King passed away recently. That will make President's day an extra special holiday. Stand up again, Real Slim Shady." --Me

ALSO:
These are a series of messages left for me on my facebook wall a few months ago by my friend Nathan...since they are quotable and dream-related, I feel that they belong here as well.

"you know, this morning I planned on waking up at 7:45 and just putting around my apartment until my 9 oclock class rolled around, but my alarm clock doubles as my cell phone and me, being the polite young man that I am, had it set to vibrate as to not disturb my fellow students. Only I woke up at 12:45 after an AMAZING dream about how I was jesus surfing. I know that sounds sacriligious, but its my subconcious not me so whatever. Anyways so here I am after I missed 3 out of 4 classes today and Im not doing so great. Sometimes it seems like my corn dogs are my only friends."

"ok re-reading my prvious comment, there are some things that require attention/ punctuation. Ok so my dream- I was jesus, surfing on water, not using jesus to surf. Second, I deprived you from the moral of the alarm clock story and that is being polite EFFING sucks because you miss classes for it. So next time you see an elderly man or woman in the store, give them the finger cuz, hey, you cant afford not to. And the corn dog bit being my friends...what kind of friend eats their friends? No, not a single one. Corn dogs are not my friends, but a gateway out of bordom induced by crappy television and rexburg idaho. I just realized its 3:01 and NO im not crazy ok. I just have the internal clock of a chineese adolecent, post mountain dew. Signing off: Nathan."

Ah, the complexities of the sleepy human mind!

Honorable mention goes to the complexities of sleeping when your neck is as long as the rest of your body...


I came across this picture while looking for a few to use in this post, and had to include it somehow. WEIRD.

Stop and Go

These dreams all happened a couple of nights ago, in the same night, as I kept waking up and falling asleep.

I was with Mary, Dad and Melissa in some sort of parking garage or underground hideout or something. Then someone fainted and I was supposed to drive them to the hospital, but the only car that we had was a stick shift, and since I don't know how to drive stick, I couldn't get the car to start, and so I was just rolling around in neutral. I think that Nelli was around there somewhere, and that the person who fainted was a young man, someone that I'm supposed to know, but I couldn't remember who it was.

The next dream mostly took place at a gas station, where there was lots of cheap crap for sale and there seemed to be a lot of people there. I was in the U.S.S Dorcas, and I was trying to figure out how to stuff my wallet, my CD players, and my CD case into the glove compartment so that it wasn't just sitting on the seat while I went inside. I think I eventually just shoved them under the seat. I went inside and was looking around at all of the cheap trinkets and then spoke to the guy who worked there about something that was going on around the town or something. Then I went back outside to the car and Liz was there, and she was really angry at me for having the car. We started throwing stuff at each other (strangely, I don't remember any yelling) and then we were wrestling. She had me pinned to the ground (as if that would ever happen) and she kept asking me where something was, some sort of wooden decoration thing. It had been in the back seat of the car, but I told her that I had thrown it at her, and so it was lying on the ground around us somewhere. Then I woke up.


I must have fallen back asleep, but I seem to remember walking back to bed from the bathroom and all the lights were on. There was a big vent in my wall that had light shining through it, and I looked and it and thought that I could fit through it, because I did that sort of thing on such a regular basis. Whatever that means. Then, in my dream, I went back to bed.


Then I had the most strange and elaborate dream of the night. I was working at a huge Canadian lodge, as an entertainer and waitress or something. The parts of the lodge I was in the most was upstairs, where there were rooms along the walls, and there was a huge open balcony thing in the middle that looked down onto some sort of ballroom. In the back there were the stairs, and in the front was a huge window that looked down to the lake that the lodge was next to. There was this guy working there, with whom I had had some sort of argument, and I was trying to confront him about it, but he would never acknowledge me. The first time I saw him in the dream, he was driving a sleigh through the hallways with some girl, and I stopped him and told him how cruel it was to force the horses to drag the sleigh across the carpet. I made him and the girl get out, unhitched the horses, and took them away. There was a party going on downstairs and I think the horses were rather smaller than in real life. Then I sent the guy some sort of message to come meet me at a certain time so that we could work this thing out. I went out to the lake (the lodge was just on a beach of dirt going down to the water) and into this weird clear plastic pill capsule thing that was sitting above the lake. It had no visible means of support, but it was a couple of inches above the water and just off shore. It was clear except for the very top, where it was black, and I got in and sat down and I think I sang some sort of song of anger and frustration. I remember thinking that I should look down to see what it was like, but I ended the frustrated song on my hands and knees, looking down into the murky waters of the lake. It wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be. So I got up, and zipped up the capsule like a tent, singing a little soft reprise as I did so. I went back up to the lodge and there was the guy walking toward me, and he had the girl with him. There was also some sort of Mountie or park ranger standing in the background at the corner. I had just enough time to say "what is she doing here?" when I woke up.

Land of Senses

So I had this dream a long time ago, but I wanted to share it because it was so cool.

I was in a place where you would go to different rooms, and each room was a land that was specific to a certain sense. One for sound, one for smell, one for sight, etc. I was in the land of sight, sitting on the floor and the walls were all white, and there were rice paper windows on the wall opposite me. In the middle of the room there was a women dressed all in white, layers and folds of fabric draped around her in a robe. She was sitting slumped over to the side of a rounded wooden chair and there was a sheer white veil hanging from the ceiling around her. She stood and stepped through the veil and came towards me. Her face was painted white like in Japanese theater. She came to me and said something, and then something angrily, and when she emphasized words she would hold her arms out and her clothing and face would suddenly have more colour, brown and cream and grey. And I just knelt there and then she stopped and leaned down and held my face in her hands and kissed me softly on the mouth.

Then we walked through a hole in the wall, from a white maze-like room into the land of sound, which was like a dark sea port or something, stormy and windy. We walked through a path of wet sand, making gritty, squelchy kind of noises. There was some sort of white noise going on the whole time as we lined up and walked up a creaky ramp to an old wooden tower. We had to ring a bell, and the crows would answer with their croaking caws. Then I woke up.

A "W.I.P. moment"

I’m in a pool somewhere, that doubles as a form of public transportation. It’s hooked to a truck that pulls it, but when we move it feels and behaves like we’re in a boat. A boat that happens to be filled with water. There are seats all along the edges, like in a hot tub. I don’t remember why I’m going somewhere in this pool-bus, but I’m surrounded by a lot of other people that I don’t know. A lot of them are the “popular kids.” I befriend this cute guy, who’s not a “popular kid.” I know he’s a midget, even though in my dream he’s just a few inches shorter than me. He makes a living doing impressions and ventriloquism. During the day, he plays Johnny English and a few other characters in Oakland’s “Fairyland.” Which I tease him about, because he’s gay, even though no one really knows or suspects that about him…he strikes people as being quite the ladies man, probably because of one of his hobbies, which is this: he loves half-way seducing women. He says he doesn’t even have to work very hard…most women are strangely attracted to the idea of an encounter with a midget. So he allows them to think he’s seducing them, and then after making out with them for a while, he tells them he’s gay! Surprise! He considers it a practical joke of sorts. No one really outs him because they’re embarrassed, and some women even go so far as to assume it’s his way of running away from commitment.

We’re sitting and talking about all this in hushed tones as we travel in the pool-bus. I ask him if kissing all these girls ever does anything for him, and he says the only pleasure he gets from it is knowing he’s playing such a great practical joke. I tell him I haven’t been kissed in simply AGES, and hinting-ly suggest I’d even be willing to make out with someone in the name of science. (Apparently, I’m a brazen hussy in my dreams.) He teases me back and says he gets all the kissing he wants.

During all this, I’ve been noticing that this blonde in a bikini has been eyeing my midget friend. He looks over at her and winks at me, then moves over to talk to her. I roll my eyes, but laugh, because somehow I really love how he plays this same practical joke on so many people. Especially since the people he plays the joke on are “the popular kids.” Scars from middle school, I guess.

The dream switches for a while to something completely different…I’m at my old house in Medford, which on the inside is my grandparent’s house in Fremont. I don’t remember as much of this part of the dream, but I know there was something about these scary wolf-bears in the neighborhood, and a Native American man from down the street coming to warn us, and then all of a sudden, it was complete chaos in our driveway, and I was trying to help all of our neighbors with everything from finding a blanket to signing autographs to solving math problems to making sandwiches. And I’m distracted the whole time because A) My sisters all have to leave to catch the school bus soon (even though its nighttime) and I’m leaving town today and need to say good bye to them, and B) I’m not sure who’s watching my son, and I know he gets moody and upset around this time of night because its his bedtime and he probably wants me. He’s the same little boy I’ve had dreams about before, but in past dreams, he’s been the baby, who I call my “bambino.” In this dream, he’s just turned four, and he’s still got this Italian look, with olive skin, dark dark hair and green eyes. I finally find him, wrapped in his comfort blanket, playing with the dogs in the backyard by himself. As soon as he sees me, he clings to me and won’t let go. So I try to keep doing all these things I’m trying to do, but with my 4-year-old son wrapped around me. Which is difficult, but I don’t mind, because its part of being a mother.

Then, I remember my gay midget friend, which I realize is actually from an alternate life in another dimension, and I decide I want to find out what happened and live that life for a little while. I leave my son in the care of my sister, even though I’m mad at her for going to a dance class with my grandma and not telling me about it, and I go to find out what happened with the blonde. When I get to his penthouse, he and the blonde are still in their bathing suits, sitting and talking on the couch, and I can tell that her IQ is about equal with the couch’s. I can tell he’s laughing at her, but she doesn’t know it, which is even funnier, in a cruel sort of a way. I ask about someplace to rinse the chlorine out of my hair, and he says there’s a shower-head in the foyer. He says he and the blonde should probably rinse the chlorine out of their hair too. (Okay, so this next part sounds kinda dirty, but in my dream, it really wasn’t. At least it didn’t feel that way…you know how dreams can be.) So the three of us are all rinsing off in the foyer, in our bathing suits, and all of a sudden she’s ALL OVER HIM. I stand there for a minute like “Hey, wow, I’m still right here.” My midget friend is actually looking at me over her shoulder and laughing and winking. I stand and wait for her to realize that I’m there, but in “popular kid” fashion, she ignores me. Finally, I say “I’m just going to take a seat. Got any popcorn?”

Then I realize what a ridiculous situation I’m in. Sometimes that happens in real life, when you’re just kind of living in the moment and then all of a sudden you wonder how you got to be in such an absurd situation. I think to myself “I’m in the apartment of a gay midget impressionist/ventriloquist, watching him make out with a blonde bombshell. How the heck did I get into this?” I stand up and say “This is what my friend Shaun and I call a ‘W.I.P. moment.’ That stands for ‘How Did I Get Into This Absurd Situation?’” And then I wake up.

New Olympic Event

So most of this dream is pretty pointless so I'll skip to the important part:
I was in a hotel room watching the Olympics with my friends Dustin and Chris. The even was taking place on a glacier. Trying to show my immense knowledge of geology to the boys I pointed out that the contestants were sledding down medial moraines (where 2 glaciers join together and all their rocks pile up in the middle of them). They were suitably impressed, but only until we realized what these sledders were doing that qualified their sport to be Olympic worthy: they were eating while sledding. The first contestant was eating chips and salsa, the second; a huge sausage, and the third; a Lunchable. We were most impressed with the sausage, I sure hope he won.

WERK DREEMZ

I dream about work. I think everybody does, and it's terrible. And there's no money in it.

I dreamt that my roommate/coworker/buddy Bryan and I were IMing at work, and that's 100% true-to-life. He was giving me flak for my performance on moderating our online guitar reviews, and I was getting flustered and defending myself via instant messenger even though he sits six feet away from me in a direct line of sight. That's yet to happen in real life (the flak part, not the cubicle location part).

When I worked for the TV station, I would have terrible, teeth-gnashing, super-stressful dreams. I think I owed a lot of that to the stressful nature of the job: one hour of calm, then thirty minutes of chaos, deadlines, and shouting, and then a live broadcast (usually with more chaos and shouting). The TelePrompTer dreams were the worst. The words on the screen would melt, blend, or turn to gibberish, or the anchor's voice would sound like a slowed-down tape recording.

And here's the thing: the anchors would have the same awful dreams, except they'd be doing a live broadcast and the TelePrompTer would start speeding up faster and faster.

Ugh, these dreams are insufferable. They should be outlawed, or at least there should be a pill I can take to keep my dreams from becoming stressful, unpaid drudgery. SIGN ME UP, DOC. I want to dream about margaritas on a California beach.

A zebra, a shopping cart, Walgreens, and melons

So I'm in a cage in the middle of this desert which looks like something straight out of an old crappy Hanna-Barbera cartoon. It's a strange situation because (aside from the obvious) the cage both imprisons and protects me. In other words, my captors are always trying to infiltrate my cage (which apparently effectively doubles as a mosquito net) with mosquitos, which look like ordinary mosquitos but here in Badly-Drawn-Wilderness Land are terrifying in their ability to breed and infest and consume everything in their path. Like, they are VERY scary. 

Anyway, one day a nice talking Zebra joins me in my cage. He's not exactly a cartoon, but his proportions are a little more stylized and his colors brighter than a real zebra's would be. We become good friends, and then a few days later my captors throw some melons in the cage. Yum! Well, the Zebra starts to warn me but I chop one open before he can stop me and out buzzes A MOSQUITO! I totally panic, in that awful internal frozen sort of way, but the Zebra says he thinks those kind of melons only carry one mosquito anyway, and not even these Killer Mosquitos can breed asexually. I fly into a rage and, powered by the strength of my own awesome wrath I am able to escape.

Next scene I'm in Rexburg, the landscape of which is also sort of exaggerated and surreal without quite being cartoony. Anyway, I'm about six months pregnant but in rocking shape otherwise, and I'm pushing a shopping cart out of the parking lot of a grocery store which has inexplicably sprung up across the intersection from Walgreens. The slope of that street is crazy-steep in this dream, and the traffic is insane. When I finally make it across the intersection and into the Walgreens I discover the building is now basically just a fantastic Escheresque labyrinth of hallways and revolving doors and stairs and windchambers, all with that very clean, clinical Walgreens ambience. 

I've lost the shopping cart by now (even though earlier it was this Big Huge Mission of mine to steal it) and am sneaking around with awesome pregnant prowess through this nonsensical building, when the thing I've been dreading the entire dream happens... THEY find me! No, I have no idea who THEY are. But there is machine-gun fire and shouting and a swarm of people in black SWAT team type gear and the clashing of steel on steel, and suddenly my unborn child is born and about five years old and standing in the line of fire, crying, so I grab her and charge through the chaos and escape with a big gash on my belly, and somehow the five-year-old version of the child disappears, but that's fine... it's almost as if she appeared in her future form in order to give me the motivation and the adrenaline to save myself, and, by extension, her unborn, present self.

My only reaction to my injury is "Sweet! Finally I get to be a hero with a cool, gory injury. I totally rock." And with that, I drag myself off to our Greenbriar apartment where I know Sarah Jagger (former roommate and nursey-type) will tend to me.

The Effects of a Time Warp on a Fatigued Brain

I call my room in Oregon "the Time Warp" because when I pull my blinds down it gets pitch black. And my bed it the most comfortable thing in the world. And I find that when I sleep in a time warp I have really weird dreams. For instance, a couple of nights ago I woke up multiple times and my body was really tense. I was dreaming about escaping from the mob. Of course there were multiple levels to the adventures I undertook, but I will not go into detail. Last night  dreamt that I was working at the Playmill. Roger had lost a lot of weight to the point where he was scrawny. He actually resembled my ex that I had seen yesterday. The cast and i were sitting onstage and I was leaning against a friend from high school named Marty. The first time I met Beckah I thought if Beckah was gothic she would highly reminded me of Marty. Roger was doing some sort of stand up comedy and kept looking back at the cast. When ever we made eye contact he would smile as if he were saying "I'm so glad I cast you". (...oh man, if only, right?) Later that night i had a totally separate dream were I was married to a woman. It was an arranged marriage and I think it was even sanctioned by the church. I guess the world was in a difficult spot because we lived with another couple (this a heterosexual one) and we shared my bed at home (it the Time Warp Room). The last thing I remember is dreaming that i had woken up and realized that I had missed my friend's homecoming. Then I really woke up and realized it was Saturday. So all in all, thanks to the Time Warp and the lack of using my alarm clock, I had quite the adventure in the past week.

The Prison Diaries: Inside the Idaho State Penitentiary

I’ve been arrested for driving without proof of a license. I’ve got to go to jail because it’s the second time I’ve done it. These two cops have me gather my belongings in a backpack and tell me to go to the courthouse before a certain date. I drive down there in my old Cutlass Ciera and sit in the parking lot for a moment, talking to my dad on the cell phone. I don’t want to tell him where I am or why, so after a while I don’t say anything at all, and eventually hang up without an explanation. I leave the keys in the car while I go to “check in.” Security seems pretty lax for a prison. I’m actually going to be staying in the women’s correctional facility, which scares the hell out of me, but from the looks of things, the atmosphere is more like a dentist’s office than a jail. I go to the reception desk and the two ladies there help me fill out my paperwork. I’ve got a lot of questions for them, since I’ve never spent any time in prison for. They answer my questions, but I can tell they’re getting a little impatient with me, since these are things I should apparently already know. I’m a little unclear as to when my sentence actually starts…when I actually enter a cell and stay there. They say no one’s available to show me to my cell for another 3 hours, so I wait around and chat with other prisoners coming to check in. Finally someone shows me to my room. Not my cell, my room. There are two beds, three bathrooms, several closets, and carpet and furnishings. My cell-mate isn’t there yet, so I feel uncomfortable “moving in” until I know which spaces are hers and how much re-arranging I can do. I explore the place a little bit, while my sister and a few friends wait in the cell with me for my prison-mate to arrive again. The room is really messy…lots of clothes in the closet, lots of stuffed animals lying around, and tons of knick-knacks. Somehow I know that they’re not all hers, but things that have been left behind by generations of prisoners. I decided I’d like to take the “downstairs bathroom” for my own, which isn’t really downstairs, but is down a few steps into a separate bedroom, with a bathroom off to the side. It’s a small space, but there’s a nice vanity and shelves, with Betty Boop collector items and jewelry all over them.

I go back into the room, and there are more people there…some of them I know, some of them friends of the people I know, and some of them I don’t know at all. I start to think that this prison stint won’t be so bad, but I’m really ashamed to be there, and worry about what everyone else will think when they find out that Liz is in the state pen.

Finally my cell-mate comes back from the library, where we was checking out an armful of great classic books. I notice for the first time the dance posters on the walls near her bed, and I find out that she’s a dancer. She’s short, and not terribly pretty, wears no make-up and slightly out-of-date clothes. She seems a little immature for her age, but a nice girl. I had been told that she was in jail for killing her cousin William. I’m still a little unsure about how we’ll get along, but a lot of my fears subside when I actually meet her.

I sit down on the bed and think about all of the other things I could have Beckah bring me from home…I hadn’t realized I would have this much room for my belongings, or that I would be allowed to bring all of them. I ask a guard if I can use my cell phone, and he says I just have to ask permission first by pressing a button by my door, but no one’s there right now, so I have to wait a few hours. I think again about how this place is nice but doesn’t seem very well organized. Well-funded and well-staffed, but lazy.

I sit down on the bed among all the people who are still there…it’s like this party or something. I realize that this place isn’t so bad at all. A nice room, no rent, free meals, and no responsibilities all day. There’s a library and a yard for recess. I worry for a moment about whether I’ll be required to play sports and if I’ll be beaten up or stabbed when the other prisoners find out I’m really bad at them. I decide I’ll choose to dance instead of play sports. I worry that I might go crazy being in this building all day, but I realize I can have my computer and my phone and a lot of my stuff. It’s not so different from just any old apartment, except you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything, one wall is made of glass, and you’ll get electrocuted if you try to open the glass doors. I decide that it might be hard sometimes, and I’m still pretty ashamed, but since its not a felony I won’t have to put my jail-time on any job applications, so I can make this arrangement work for me.

But then I realize that I have no idea how long I’m supposed to be staying here, and I can’t find anyone who will look at my records and find out or tell me. I look back at all the people in my room and realize that I don’t know ANY of them, and wish they would leave because I didn’t feel like hanging out with strangers on my first night of who knows how many in the state penitentiary. I have the feeling that if I could get out of my room, I could easily leave, but I don’t want to add time to my unknown sentence, or additional shame to my reputation. So I sit crowded into a corner of what’s supposed to be MY room, waiting for people to leave so that I can unpack and get organized. I’m still waiting when I wake up.

I'm still half-asleep and can't think of a good title...

It all started with me loading the dishwasher at my mom's house. I was very cheerful as I did this because my mom's house was apparently the headquarters for some type of Resistance. Eddie Izzard, Executive Transvestite Comedian Genius Extraordinaire (pictured above in the second photo because I couldn't figure out how to get them down in the body of the texts like you showoffs *thbbttbbbtthbbt*), was also part of said Resistance, and it just so happened that it would be his turn to unload the dishwasher I was presently loading. This made me happy because it meant I could leave little things under the cups in the dishwasher with which to surprise and cheer him, seeing as he had been feeling a bit down lately and discouraged as to the Resistance's chances of ultimate success.

So I left a little green dragon made out of some sort of water-proof plasticine clay, along with a little snake winding his way through the crockery, and this really cool metal vine I found; it was about as big as an earbud cord, dark green with little flowers which looked absolutely real, until you looked at it really closely and saw that they were actually painted on, masterfully. Surely, I thought, these gifts could hardly fail to brighten Eddie's day (their placement was, for some reason I don't understand now, highly humorous; I had spent a long time arranging them for maximum comedic impact, and felt sure Eddie of all people would understand and appreciate this).

Well, some sort of Resistance disaster occurred next, in which we were all afraid our cover would be blown, and amid the fracas that ensued I overheard Eddie telling Allison how hilarious and thoughtful his good friend Stephen Fry (first picture; I guess he's a part of the Resistance too) was for leaving him such cunningly-arranged little toys in the dishwasher. Needless to say, I was most disappointed. Indeed I was so heartbroken that it forced me, amid the chaos of trying to preserve our crumbling Resistance, to reexamine my feelings for Eddie and discover that, instead of feeling a brotherly, comrade-like regard for him, I was, in fact, deeply in love with him.

Next scene took place in a horrible wood-paneled office of some sort where I was visiting Rachel Warren (old roommate) and her irascible old curly-haired boss. We were all just chilling together when an Officer of the forces against which the Resistance fought entered. She slapped the dishwasher toys down on the desk with an air of triumph and demanded if any of us knew anything about it. By this time, the dishwasher toys had morphed into a little soldier action figure I had made myself, with a plastic bag for a parachute and a zip-line threaded with this weird, thick, glittery striped needle, which was contraband. The use of the needle was the crime this Officer was investigating. Incidentally, this Officer was the mirror-image of Rachel's old-lady boss, which was weird. Anyway, being a seasoned Resistance fighter, I kept my cool, and Rachel distracted the Officer by insulting her marvelously. The Officer wrote her up a "warning" and left in a huff.

After that, things sort of deteriorated. Eddie became capable of turning himself into an elk, and was running about the forest and grazing in a meadow, and then he was grazing on a school football field because he was sort of a pansy elk who only liked hanging out on nice flat manicured grass. He got in trouble with the local people (who dwelled like aboriginals in my old Girl's Camp campgrounds) for impersonating Diana the Goddess of Hunting (a capital offense in their culture) and while he was trying to talk his way out of this I woke up. The end.

On earth-moving newscasts

I'm sitting on a couch in a dingy room styled in a '70s decor. Next to me sits a girl who's wearing one of those "scramble suits" from A Scanner Darkly, a movie I fell asleep watching and won't try to watch again (I like Philip K. Dick, though, so I might try the book). The suit constantly shifts and blends her appearance with pregenerated people. Eventually her suit settles on a horsey-looking girl with oversized eyeballs. I don't recognize her. We're watching TV.

The TV screen fills up the rest of the dream, like I'm sitting really close to it.

There's a breaking local newscast. A car dealership is having some sort of parade/demonstration on the highway. Hundreds of yellow Hummers and SUVs stand parked all over the highway and its shoulders. Saboteurs, however, have attacked the stationary caravan -- they're like the ELF. Hundreds of cars in every make and model converge on the SUVs, smashing into them at high speed. Before long, even the shiny new vehicles spring to life and do battle with the intruders, and the news chopper's aerial shot shows the highway as a dusty, smoky, high-speed bumper car match. Whether anybody's in the cars is unknown, but there are people responsible and people retaliating.

The manager of the SUV dealership, a stereotypically angry, obese businessman, stands watching the chaos from a grassy knoll in the middle of his car lot. He's yelling, tearing at his hair: first in rage, then extreme sorrow. He keels backward slowly, landing spread-eagle and exasperated as the news chopper's aerial camera shot, somehow in Extreme Close-Up, slowly zooms out, spinning idly clockwise.

As the shot spirals up and away, the knoll beneath him begins changing, spreading out from where he lies. The grass begins landscaping itself, as though made with stop-motion animation, into a hill that's half crop circle, half Zen garden, with sand seeming to bubble up from the ground.

And then suddenly it's not a news broadcast anymore; now some sort of disembodied voice -- like that of a shadowy crime boss who never shows his face -- begins talking over the video, saying something to the effect of, "It's time to move the earth, Bob. Lord knows you've had enough practice."

The screen begins cycling through still images of Bob lying sprawled on stretches of intricately designed landscapes, a loud click of an old-fashioned slide projector punctuating each one.

Image from A Scanner Darkly ganked from Boing Boing via Google image search.

The first dream recorded...for those about to believe in a thing called love, we salute you!

One fateful Monday afternoon (namely May 26th, 2008), I was attempting to recover from a severe lack of sleep. So I set aside my to-do list, and laid down to take a nap. During this nap, I had a dream. Nay, nay, a vision. Here I attempt to record the awesomeness of said vision, although I assure you all that mere words can hardly do justice to the sheer magnitude of greatness that this dream truly was.

Perhaps it was inspired by the fact that I'd been watching CHEESY music videos lately. But I dreamt that I, with a select few friends, was a part of a TUBULAR music video. As I attempt to chronicle this dream, I sure hope I remember everything, because its already fading, but I'll do the best I can to be both true to the dream and also tell it so that it makes sense.

In my dream, I was sitting in "The Seduction Room" with my friends Carrie and Nathan. "The Seduction Room" is a real place-- its what Carrie's living room is called. So we were sitting in the living room, with the lights low, listening to classic rock and discussing what category of rock each of the songs went into...glam, punk, etc. We were just beginning to discuss the British glam rock band, The Darkness, when a knock comes on the door. We yell "Come in!" and into the room walks Justin Hawkins, the above-mentioned band's lead singer.



He's dressed in one of the glittery jumpsuits he's famous for, and is as greasy and ridiculously smarmy to us in real life as he is in his band. But we invited him in, and we all chat it up for a while. Then he told us he had come because we had been chosen by the "Gods of the Destiny of Rock" or something equally silly/awesome. We had been selected by the fates to be the starring performers in an historical music video...a music video that would bring together some of the greatest names in classic rock history. Which in reality was only two names in rock history, specifically Justin Hawkins and Brian Johnson.



Yes, the lead singers of The Darkness and AC/DC were bringing their bands together for one historical medley of "I Believe in A Thing Called Love" and "Back In Black." I don't have any recollection of how that musically worked. All I remember is that is was life-alteringly, mind-blowingly, ozone-layer-shatteringly AWESOME. We got on set, which consisted of several locations in one studio, namely a spaceship, Scotland, and that white room from Willy Wonka's chocolate factory...the one with the TV thing. Milli Vanilli came and coached Carrie and Nathan and I on how to lip sync, which doesn't make sense now that I think about it, because Brian's and Justin's were the only voices being used, but apparently we were supposed to look like we were singing with their voices too.

I most vividly remember filming the part of the music video that took place in the white room. The only ones in the shot were Nathan and Carrie and I, and we were all dressed in black with white belts and shoes. We were wearing sunglasses, and Nathan was standing in the middle and singing seductively to the camera, while Carrie and I danced very seriously and unsmilingly on either side of him. There was also this part where we were fighting off something--I don't remember what--with the lightning that came from our instruments, reminiscent of the "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" music video.

I don't remember much more of the music video, except for thinking it was way cool to share the stage with both AC/DC and The Darkness. Just giving you the facts simply can't communicate the feeling of adrenaline and power that came with this event in my dream life. I wish there was some way for Nathan and Carrie to have experienced it with me, because they were there. I guess this blog will have to be enough. Nathan and Carrie, you were part of a great thing that afternoon, and I'm sorry you could only experience it vicariously. Because it ROCKED.