The Dance Concert

So you know how us theater junkies have dreams that it is opening night and we don't know our lines or we have to sub for someone and don't know their lines (or the like)? Well I had a similar one about this dance concert. Well apparently NO ONE knew any of the dances and we all agreed to make them up. I thought the easiest way to get away with that was to have a bunch of solos. But of course I had to work with a bunch of amateurs and no one understood. I decided that one of my solos was going to be on point. On top of that I was going to do a bunch of really slow fwetes (spelling?) in a row. Let's just say I didn't know I was so talented. Then i really had to go pee; so I went. But after I went I still felt like I ad to go. I was told that that could be really dangerous. I began to worry that maybe I had a bladder infection or something worse. But I knew the concert needed to happen. So me and a few girls from my collegiate team, Janiece and Caroline, tried to do a dance and watch each other to stay in sync. Needless to say it was disastrous. We got off stage and were changing clothes. They came up to me and were complaining that they couldn't follow m movements. I got really mad at them and slapped Janiece right in the face. But of course in dreams you can't do anything hard. SO I got even more mad that it was a weak slap so I pulled her toward me by her shirt and spat in her face. In response, she leans in and wipes off a something on my nose saying, "Uh you have something on your nose." Immediately clam I replied, "you have something on your face" and wiped my loogie off her face and wiped in on her shirt. When she told me that was gross, I said, "Well it's better than your face!" Now those girls know I love them and in real life that would not happen. (Caroline is on the far right and Janiece just left of her. I am on the far left of course.) But I feel like we can learn that service and love can combat hate better than anything else. This is what it means by "love your enemies". How cool was that dream? 

Space ships, Buzz-cuts, Toddlers

DREAM #1:

All I remember is that we were all going to go see “Wicked,” but couldn’t because the theatre flooded, so we jumped onto a spaceship for a spaghetti dinner instead. Then we realized that half of the people with us were zombies, so we spent about half an hour trying to avoid them and then finally managed to separate from them and lock ourselves into the “escape pod.” Then we realized that the zombies were going to destroy the ship, so we actually had to escape with the escape pod. The problem was we were a little overcrowded by about 4 people, so we took off barely in time, with people not buckled in or still scrambling to even find something to hold on to. Somehow having 4 people too many doomed us to death, so after discussing our options…killing 4 people, sending out a distress signal, etc, we decided to just try and make it back home. It was a big risk, and we knew that if we didn’t make it home within two hours, we would ALL die. So the majority of us gathered in the main room for a Sunday school lesson, just to pass the time. It was kind of a boring lesson, but I was sitting with Jordan and Sarah and Jenny and Annie, so we drew pictures to keep us entertained. Then I noticed this delicious smell and looked around to discover that it was coming from Jordan…he was smoking a cigarette and it was almost gone. I looked at him and smiled and he just said “I’m stressed. Last two hours I might be living, you know?” I said “Pass it over.” I took the almost-finished cigarette from him and just about finished it myself. It tasted like tobacco and caramel, and while I was smoking it, he lit another one. I looked at him and said “When did you start smoking?” He looked at me guiltily and said “Over the summer. It was just really stressful, you know?” I laughed and said “Yeah. That’s when I started too.” So Jordan and I sat and smoked the rest of his carton of caramel Marlboros in Sunday school while we waited to find out if we were going to live through the next few hours.



DREAM #2:

I was biking home from somewhere and noticed a handful of people I didn’t know sitting around on a corner, with Kirby flyers in their hands. I stopped to see if I knew any of them…if any of the old Kirby gang was there, but I didn’t recognize any of their faces. They were waiting for Shadi to come pick them up, so when he and Johnnie came by in the white Kirby van, I hopped in just to say hi. We stopped to drop me off at these apartments where Kathleen was washing her van, and where Jenny was living by herself a few doors down until her baby was born. There was a moment of wondering why Jenny was pregnant, but in one of those dream-moments of clarity I remembered that Jenny didn’t need a husband or even any kind of relationship to have a baby.

I wandered over to what was suddenly my own apartment, where my sister Melissa helped me trim my hair. I decided I wanted to buzz it, but changed my mind halfway through, so just the back was buzzed. We tried to layer the rest, so that it looked like a really close A-line cut, but we knew that really we’d just have to wait for it to grow out.

Then Isha came in and said it was time for me to take her to school, so she and I walked through the woods to her new school. It was the first day she was going, so I had to try and help her find her classroom. Sometimes it was Isha and sometimes it was Beckah that I was helping. We were wandering around South Medford High School, which had all these additions to it, and I realized as I was walking through them that they were actually the kid’s section of the Fremont Main Library. They had apparently just transferred the entire chunk of the building from California to South Medford. They also had a new theatre where the old theatre classroom used to be, which made me cry, it was so beautiful.

We never found the classroom, because apparently it didn’t exist. Beckah said that the whole building smelled of iron and salt, so we left a note on a map on the wall that said “Classroom 151 doesn’t exist. HCl Le.” Apparently we were using the chemical symbols to notify people of the iron and salt smell. I have no idea if that’s correct or not.

My sister stayed at the school, and I walked home again through the woods to the apartments, but on my way, I ran into JD and Melissa Taylor with their son, Shadi and Stacey and their baby (who in reality hasn’t been born yet, but in my dream she was like two), and a handful of other people I didn’t know. They were on a group outing to the park that was just through the woods a little further, but they were stopped because Jaden, the Taylor’s son, was trying to draw their attention to something on the ground. They were leaning over a metal railing, which all of a sudden I remembered was supposed to be decorated for Christmas, so I quickly hung a “Season’s Greetings” sign on it while watching Jaden try to tell JD what it was he wanted.

Apparently Jaden was bizarrely good at communicating for his age, but it wasn’t necessarily in words. He seemed to share this semi-telepathic bond with his parents, but it was hazy and it was only with them. Finally JD figured out that Jaden wanted the seashell that was on the ground next to the railing I was decorating. He picked it up and then all of a sudden we noticed that there were dozens of shells all over. We spent a few minutes picking them up and touching them and playing with them and showing them to the toddlers in our midst. Shadi and Stacey’s daughter got upset because one of the shells was “still alive” so instead of being hard, it was soft and porous on the outside. It really bothered her, so Jasper Cullen came and kindly took it from her and we all kept walking to the park which was just around the bend. The baby girl was upset because she really wanted a shell, but she didn’t want an alive one, so Jasper comforted her by promising that we could all play baseball in the park. I looked at the crowded and sunshiney park, and asked “Uh, can you do that?” He smiled at me and said “Nope.” And so we all went back to the apartments instead, where we tried to distract the toddlers with half a dozen metal folding chairs.

Guess what I dreamed about...

That's right! House. Again. I haven't even watched in forever. Anyway.

I dreamed that I was part of House's team, and that he had left me some notes but I had to take a shower before I went into work. Which shower was apparently on the top bunk of a set of bunk beds. So I took my shower, and then I looked at one of the notes before stuffing it in my pocket, and it had a column of numbers on one side (four numbers, around 450, except that the last number was like 600-and something) and then another column of numbers next to it, about half each number. Except that next to the last number was the word Double, in bold letters. I knew that it had something to do with heart rate and that the last number was mine. There was also what seemed to be a rectangle in the top right corner of the paper, but then I remembered that it was really a kid's drawing of a house, with a little sun and a little fence. (It wasn't until later, when I was telling this dream to Melissa, that she pointed out that there was a picture of a house on the note from House. Ha!)

So then it switched to where I was wearing a school uniform (white shirt and navy trousers) and I had a backpack on, and I was running through a group of buildings. I ran up to this one building, where Bruce Willis (who had bright orange hair) was standing guard, but I said something to him and pulled open the glass doors and ran inside. The building was open and all white and silver, and there was a large sweeping staircase at the far wall and bulletin boards along the walls. There were a few people walking around, and some sort of really nerdy Shia LaBeouf was standing there watching me. He was wearing a white shirt and plaid shorts, and had these thick black glasses on. But I ran past him and there was this other nerdy guy reading one of the bulletin boards (glasses and orange plaid shirt) who looked like a combination of someone famous and the twelve-year-old kid from the weird British show I had watched the night before. He was rather tall, but as I ran past him I jumped up and kissed him and then kept running. He yelled after me, "Hey, was I supposed to kiss you back?" but I just yelled "Don't worry about it!" over my shoulder and ran up the stairs. When I reached the top I went into a two room office (one of the rooms was in front, the other in back) and I went to the back room where Kutner, Taub, and Thirteen were sitting. I sat down with them and I was breathing heavily because I had been running, but I knew that we had to talk about the heart rate thing. So then the nerdy guy that I had kissed came in and sat behind the desk, and told us that he had something that could slow our heart rates down. He took out some white powder and poured it onto the desk and I knew that it was some sort of drug and I was astonished that he would have something like that. He divided it up and sprinkled it onto apple slices and gave them to us all, but I didn't take one. I told him that he was crazy and that he shouldn't be doing this, and that House was sure to find out, but Taub, Kutner, and Thirteen all took a slice and started eating it. I told them that they should stop, and then House came into the front office and started going through drawers and stuff, and the others saw him and just kept eating their apple slices. I knew that they trusted me not to rat them out, because we all knew that House was going to come talk to me individually. I didn't know what I was going to do, and for some reason I kept thinking of nerdy Shia LaBeouf and how I had just run past him, and how he probably would have been a better friend.

Then I woke up.

Waffle Blocks, Outer Space, Encoded Driftwood, and Lennon/McCartney

I had this dream a few months ago, and it was awesome.

First and foremost, John Lennon was alive. Secondly, his partnership with Paul McCartney had been restored. Apparently the dream took place in the mid-80s, as both John and Paul were all middle-aged and mellow and domestic and lovely (those of you who know me will be able to imagine how much this delighted my soul). 

                                                                 Lennon, 1980

                                                          McCartney, c. 1984

Like all good literary and/or cinematic partnerships, theirs was one of constant banter overlaying a deep mutual understanding and affection. The nature of  their collaboration had changed a little, however. Instead of being songwriters, they were on a mission to save the universe from the Corrupt Bureaucratic Empire which held all sentient life under its iron thumb of censorship and stagnation. Their first order of business was to get approval from said government to rent a space-travel pod. The Pod-Approval-Giver guy (who was large and hulking in an overgrown warthog sort of way... I'm not sure if he was supposed to be an alien or not) was skeptical of their intentions; Lennon/McCartney's reputation had preceded them, apparently. But John and Paul managed to convince him by the fact that they were bringing their wives along. 

"See," they said, having turned themselves partly into giant replicas of those fat plastic waffle-block toys that usually came with a wheeled green base, ostensibly so that you could build a wagon or something, though every kid I ever knew just used it as a skateboard while pretending to be old and cool enough to actually own a skateboard. 

Anyway, John and Paul demonstrated the innocence of their intentions by becoming humanoid/waffle-block boxes and fitting themselves together with their respective spouses (John was red, Yoko blue, Paul green, Linda yellow). Somehow this convinced hulking warthog dude, and he rented them the Space Pod (a small spherical spacecraft, good only for travel within a single solar system). 

They shot away to a different planet very much like earth (I don't know if the dream started out in our solar system or not), where they hiked around in an awesome canyon-ridden jungle for a while before coming to the ocean and finding what they were looking for: a piece of driftwood. 

The grooves and crevices of this driftwood were encoded with Special Information which would enable John and Paul to defeat the Empire. They were the only people in the universe who were able to decipher it. There was a very cool acid-trip-like sequence where I was able to zoom in with my mind on the hidden code and see it all come spilling out in iridescent digitization. It was groovy.

Next scene was a big epic Space Battle. John and Paul manned the controls of their nifty new spaceship (a definite upgrade from the Pod), and I was aware that in this age, we had discovered that the fabric of space was knit together by a three-dimensional pattern of invisible energy threads, sort of in the shape of chicken-wire. For space travel, we had also discovered that the way to achieve maximum maneuverability was to tap into these energy threads. For example, the fastest way to turn around and face the opposite direction was not to turn around using your own power, but to move ahead along one of the energy threads and essentially loop around to your original position, twisting to face the other way. Anyway, this was the method of space-motion used in the battle and I thought it was cool and that I'd mention it.

As I say, John and Paul fought away, their complementary natures and abilities making them the perfect duo. I assume they had some sort of army under their command at this point, though that was never addressed. John was in charge of large missile deployment and overall battle strategy, advances and retreats, while Paul was in charge of reconnaissance, tapping into enemy spaceships' information systems, creating distractions and diversions, and occasionally acting as a sniper. I liked this because I think it's a pretty good reflection of their personalities and songwriting styles. John is interested in the big picture, Paul deals with details. John is straightforward, Paul is obscure. John speaks universal truths, Paul finds the universe contained in a seashell. John makes sweeping statements in his songs, Paul describes specific images. John says, "All you need is love," Paul says, "Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been." John says, "Well I'm lonely; wanna die," Paul says, "My hair is a tangled beretta." John says "Beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful boy," Paul says, "Picking up a mountain: Mama's little girl." 

I don't remember how the dream ended. I'm sure Lennon and McCartney, having already conquered the world back in the 60s, had no trouble conquering the universe together this time around. I loved every minute of this dream. It was probably the best one I've ever had.

Not a dream per se

But here's the latest "sleep-poetry" I've found.

I awoke a couple of weeks ago and found on a piece of paper next to my bed, the slightly illegible words:

"MY COMPUTER TELLS ME THAT I'M SEXY
BUT THAT'S OKAY
BECAUSE I'M PREGNANT."

Hm. Not sure what I was thinking about, or why that was so deep. But it's a keeper. Maybe I'll actually write a real poem based on that first line.

Uhhh...

Kay, so this dream was particularly weird.

I'm an elephant. That is, I'm wearing an elephant costume which consists primarily of a giant head, very simplified and cartoony, made from that stretchy nylon material which is usually used to make pillows stuffed with tiny beads. Like the Squishy or Shanelle's bizarre pink blanket. Only this one is bright turquoise. You see, I'm sort of only portraying an elephant (I experience most of my dreams at least partially as if they're a movie I'm directing), but I'm also sort of really an elephant. I'm not myself, either... I'm a sort of more grownup, smartass, world-savvy, elephantine version of me. I spend much of my time trying to get my limp, bead-filled trunk to behave organically and being surprisedly relieved that no one seems to notice my hand manipulating it.

Anyway, I'm called into my Boss' office. We work for some sort of high-profile, uber-hip and important company. She is blond, middle-aged, attractive in a totally un-frilly way. She tells me my assignment is to go find this other woman (a colleague of mine) who has gone missing or is playing hooky or has simply misunderstood her assignment... anyway, she's not where she's supposed to be.

"I'm sorry to call you in on your day off," says my Boss, "but who else could I send?"

"Who else indeed?" I agree, smugly. I'm an extremely competent employee.

"Well, enjoy your flight. You'll need to make all your traveling arrangements. She's in that place... oh what is it called... you know..."

"Right, the British equivalent of the Bahamas."

"Yes, exactly! But what is it called?"

Neither of us can remember, so we press a button and this huge sepia-toned holographic world map appears all around us (our office building is equipped with ALL the latest technology) and then I'm somewhere else entirely, having never found out the name of the place I was supposed to go, though I remember thinking in my dream, "Oh! I think that place is called Majorca! I remember the Dursleys mentioning it in Harry Potter! Pity I didn't remember that back at the office..."

Anyway, now I'm walking along a series of rooms which are a cross between train compartments and old abandoned Victorian manor-rooms. Beckah is there, but I'm still my elephant character.

"Hey, help me open this trunk," she says. "I think there are some Reeses Pieces in here."

We pry it open (it's rusty and covered in dust) and find, to our disappointment, a set of toys and hundreds of bags of those uber-cheap generic-brand peanut butter taffy things. Gross. We look at the toys instead, which are a set of tablets about the size of a pack of cards, intricately carved and painted to look like a cross between space-age robots and Native American totems. One of them (the red and green one) is the father of this family of tablets, and for some reason I find this utterly hilarious and start making up a game where the father goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night to take a bath in his big jacuzzi-style tub (suddenly I have a whole doll-house for these toys), and is found in the morning by his family, drowned -- and now they're not robot-totem-tablets, but rather ferret-shaped stuffed animals with long green algae growing all over them instead of synthetic fur. Why I thought this was a funny or appropriate game, I have no idea. 

All this time I've been (pretending to be?) an elephant with a giant stretchy turquoise bead-head.

That's all I remember. Help.

I just can't seem to get enough of House in real life....

In this dream, I had a huge crush on Kutner, and I kept trying to get him to notice me or something. We were on this train that serviced some sort of animal park or something, and we were in the "dining car," which was really just a big cafeteria. Kutner was sitting in a corner, and I was too shy to talk to him, so I went to the counter to get something to eat. They had a bunch of cakes and pastries in the counter, and I really wanted a piece of chocolate cake with mint frosting. There was one piece left of that cake, and for some reason I knew that I couldn't have it because they always needed to leave one piece in the counter, for display or for some other irrational reason. So I asked the lady if they had any more of the chocolate mint cake cooking or in the back, and somehow I ended up with a huge piece on a plate, surrounded by lots of pieces of banana bread. Somehow she implied that I could share with someone, specifically Kutner. So I put my stuff down and went over to talk with him, and I asked him if he wanted to come sit with me. He said that he couldn't, because he needed to do something with "them" (I assume he meant Taub and Thirteen) and even when I insisted and asked if he was sure, he declined. So instead I went into the bathroom, which for some reason was really dark, and there was an electronic map of the train and the park on the wall, and the little train was flashing where we were. That's all I remember from that part.

There was also something about me and the Lindsey's and some guys in suits going to the temple, and I was skateboarding, and then my board split and became two little skateboards, and I tried skating with those, but it was really hard. I don't recommend trying it.

Sweat pants vs Superman

I dreamed a dream where people would give up their sight for a 6th sense, well technically its still a 5th cuz you gave one up but whos counting. Anyways, you would sit down and these two knives or things that looked like the meat thermometers would swoosh up and stab you in the eyes. The wierd part is your eyes would still be totally intact, just void of color. Oh, and it made you evil. THATS RIGHT... evil. Then the evil ones would try and convince others to do the same. It was like some wierd cult or something. Anyways then my dream derailed and I was sitting in this posh black leather couch as it toured some museum-like retail store that rivaled the style of Telepopmusik's music video "Another Day" (which I adore btw), but anyways the couches stopped and I tried to find the right size of hot black underwear and of course all they had was XL. Sad. Right, so apparantly I could emit an electrical surge to obliterate any information on this now evil retail stores computers. So I do and of course they were none less than IRATE about this. So I'm on the run now as these agents are running after me and oh, I can also now run through walls. I still am in danger though as these agents have underground tunnels that are connecting every building in the near vacinity so I go up the stairs and double as a casual jogger. That's right friends, they never saw it coming and ran right past me. Who knew the super-powers were no match for sheer wit. Sadly, I woke up in mormon underwear and I couldnt emit any sort of electrical surge.

Pop!

I can only remember part of this dream.

I'm arguing with Annie about wether it's "black" or "African American." We're in my house in the breakfast room/kitchen. A light is behind her and the bulb blows out. When it does, half her head disappears!!! Then she excuses herself, moves out of view and I hear the sound of a bubble popping. She comes back with her head fully inflated. I didn't see it, but I understood that half her brain and skull was gone but she could blow with her mouth closed and nose plugged (like you do when you want to pop yiour ears) and the other half of her head would just inflate so it looked normal!!!

Imagine yourself in the dog's shoes

A horse is chasing me through the rooms of a mansion. I keep trying to go into smaller rooms where he might not be able to get in or hide so he'll lose me, but it doesn't work. I go into one room where a window is partly open. I slide through and catch hold of something (part of the house?, a tree? i don't know) and then let myself drop the one or two feet to the ground. Except instead of just the ground, a bunch of people are at a banquet table so I fall into an empty seat. I think the horse is about to jump through the window when my dream ends.

A House Reunion (without Cameron)

I don't remember much, but Chase had come over for dinner with my family, and he was dressed in casual clothes; jeans and a dark brownish-navyish shirt that had stars or something on it. He was telling us that Australians had so many awards that they had to keep having to be really creative and making new ones up. And he meant the style of the award, not the actualy award itself (i.e. if the star award originally had five points, they had to now make a many pointed star because they couldn't use the old one again).

Then my family were all gathered for dinner again, and this time I was telling my family about the dream that I had about Dr. Chase (I was still dreaming, by the way) and House was there, and I pointed to him and said "Oh yeah! And you were there too!", though I don't actually remember him being there in the first part of the dream. And there was some part about a theatre, and we were in the spotlight booth, and Foreman was there too. That's all I remember.

Toucan Parable

So, this is the story of a little random subset in a dream I had recently. The main part of the dream involved 1920's geisha, awesome pyrotechnics, and God impersonation. But never mind that.

So I find myself narrating a sort of... child's book, or maybe a child's PBS morning cartoon or something, because it was also like a nature video of a toucan Family. With my voice-overs. 

This is how it went.

"Once upon a time, amid the wet, green jungle bordering the Amazon River in South America, there lived a toucan Mother, and a toucan Father, and a toucan Son. They were very happy in the jungle eating nuts, showing off their colorful bills, and chatting with their neighbor toucans.

But one day, Toucan Father decided that his family did not get enough respect from the other toucan families. So he decided to tell a little fib.

'Did you hear that my son just got back from university?' He asked his toucan neighbors as they all sat on a branch cracking nuts together.

'Toucans don't go to universities,' they replied. 'We crack nuts for food and fly around the Amazon jungle, looking for adventure.'

Toucan Father went slightly berserk at this. He had expected his gullible neighbors to believe anything he said, no matter how preposterous. 

'He has been to university, I tell you! And graduated with honors! He is now a certified *hedonitrician! A hedonitrician, I say! My son is a hedonitrician!" Toucan Father flapped his wings as he shouted, and Toucan Son hid his beak in his feathers in shame.

No one ever really believed Toucan Father, but he continued to repeat this lie over and over throughout the years. Eventually Toucan Son, desperate to give credence to his father's dishonesty, became a Toucan Thief and stole jewelry and other valuable objects in order to prove that he was indeed as successful and rich as a certified hedonitrician would be. But everybody knew of his misdeeds, and the Toucan family soon became a despised and shunned presence in the Amazon Jungle community.

The moral of the story is, don't let your pride goad you into telling lies, because you will end up hurting those you love most. And nobody will believe you, anyway. The end."

*My brain made this word up

Office Space meets Pod People

I, um, "awake" to find that it's 10:00 a.m. on a Monday, and that I've slept off my carpool only to wake up with a dream hangover.

"Oh noooooooo," I say, suddenly showered, dressed, and present at work.

My boss Michael — who is normally always very chill — is so angry at me that he relocated my cubicle to a weird, scary, undiscovered corner of the building, complete with blue-glowing alien lights and otherworldly foliage snaking around the office equipment. He informs me of his displeasure in a passive-aggressive fashion, then folds up a large, wood-slatted Oriental fan and throws it into my arms with enough force to sting. Then he walks off, and I stand flabbergasted in my glowing cubicle holding this heavy fan. I sigh and turn on my computer.

Before long I learn that the company is requiring "mandatory immunizations," and we're all supposed to be inoculated by the 14th of September [I started the draft of this post on the 7th]. I'm extremely reluctant to get them, since they seem so shady, and I notice that coworkers who had been skeptical about them immediately become pro-immunization after getting them.

"Oh, they're great! I've never felt better!" is the kind of wide-eyed, manic opinion they try to force on me.

In the break room, the Inoculated use an Energy Restoration Machine instead of eating or playing foosball. They walk into a phone-booth-sized pod, strap in, and the machine recharges them, their bodies convulsing with electricity. Their faces twist into strange, lizard-like jaws temporarily, but once they're out they look refreshed, happy, and high on life.

Before long, Bill -- and this is actually his name in real life -- comes over and sits on my desk in my cubicle, even though he has no say over my tasks in real life. For some reason he perfectly imitates Bill Lumbergh from Office Space:

"Yeah, so . . . I'm gonna need you to mosey on down to Human Resources and get those shots, 'cause frankly, Willie, I'm not quite seeing the Winning Attitude we've been talking about in our meetings." The alien zombie coworkers approach from the adjoining cubicles, forming an impenetrable wall of of opinionless flesh, their faces lining me in with expectant and malicious faces.

Adventures of a Sensible Lad Who is Magic

So there I was (I love starting any story with that phrase) in this ultra modern space craft. To call it a ship would be an insult to this advanced technology and we were flying and crashed into these woods, which didn't jolt us at all for some reason. I get off with some random friends and we go searching for this school we were flying to. So when we find it, the ground was made of yellow brick and there was a big circular patch of the original yellow brick road that "only the true of intent" could pass over. So I'm thinking wtf does true of intent mean... that could be anything good or evil. Oh well. Anyways, so we walk across it and try to go inside. So there's this old actor there who I think was the lion maybe telling us that if I didn't drop to my knees and have my friend give me a blessing-- we weren't students. I obviously refused and told him to check my student number and he wouldn't so I BLASTED him with a huge ball of magical goodness and flew past. I even got past some random screen door, but when I saw the two old women selling tickets in front of the gym, I knew we were busted. So, we ended up being sent to the principal’s office (which turned out to be Dorothy herself) and got scolded, but I could stay. After being treated like that, however, I had second thoughts. So I went out to some river to go swimming with some girls who I thought were my friends, but they started laughing insanely and tried to strangle me with a scarf. At this point, I realized that they weren't my friends at all. So we floated downstream for a while (I- being strangled and they-laughing) they stopped and swam to the side as I fell down a small waterfall. Lucky for me I hid in a small eroded underwater cave under the fall. Lucky for me, I could now breathe underwater! So they’re trying to reach down and grab me out when I remembered from the vast amount of useless knowledge I know that ants can live up to 14 hours underwater. So, I did what any knowledgeable magical person would-- I turned myself into an ant. This way, I could float downstream safely and not be detected by the psycho sisters. And so I did. Until I thought it was safe. I met this ogre-pig guy who I thought might possibly be trustworthy, but I took precautions. He invited me into his hut/cabin thing and I said ok, but what he didn't know was that I noticed the ring of soot he had laid around his house. I didn't really know what it was for, but I had a bad feeling about it so I drug my right heel across it as I went inside. My intuitions were right and he tried to eat me or capture me or something negative that I would object to. Lucky for me I could blast the crap right out of him with big wispy balls of light. So, when he was unconscious, I laid a bigger circle around his house so he could never leave. He ended up getting so hungry, he ate his house and then withered away as most evil ogre-pig things should. The End.

For the love of Jennifer Garner

I had this dream a while ago, but I thought I would share.
The beginning is a little difficult to remember, but there were a bunch of us in this huge old farmhouse that had secret passageways and stairways that led to nowhere and hidden lofts and stuff. It was pretty cool. I seem to remember that it belonged to Cindy Wadsworth, and that she was having a bunch of people over for something (like she does). I think that there were puppies around somewhere. Then there was this event outside, and this man had a beautiful white horse that I wanted to ride. He said that he had to put another horse away first (one that I could only see from the front) and then when he turned to horse around to take it away, I noticed that the front half of the horse was normal, but that the back half of this brown horse was the front half of a white llama. Kind of like a Push Me Pull You from Dr. Doolittle. It was very strange.

Then there was this contest going on between (I think) Annie, Liz and I about who would be the first to be able to win Jennifer Garner's love. Annie and Liz couldn't and so it was my turn, but for some reason Dad and Mary wouldn't let me leave the house. During this time I got some sort of message from Mom (it was like a poem, but I don't remember if it was on the phone or written) and I had a strong feeling that Oma had died. I didn't know if it was true or not so I kept crying off and on. It was especially vivid because I remembered (in my dream) that I had had another dream where Oma was sick and in the hospital, so this made sense to me. But I wasn't really sure. I finally got out of the house to find Jennifer Garner and there was someone with me (I think it was Annie, but I can't be sure) and we found her just about to leave in a car with some guy. She walked around the car to throw something away in the trash can on the sidewalk when I stopped her. She was a lot shorter than she is in real life (I assume) and she was wearing khaki knee shorts and a light pink button-up top. She had on sunglasses and her hair was straight and loose and long. I said, "Um, Jennifer?" to get her attention and she turned to me and said, "yes?" Very shyly, I said, "I was wondering, if there was ever the possibility of someday you...you being with me." She looked right into my eyes and said, very seriously, "I would eagerly await that day." I grinned and then asked if I could have a small kiss, and she said yes, and so she gave me the smallest, sweetest, softest little kiss on the mouth and then she drove away. I walked home really happy, but the person who was with me (was it Annie?) was a little miffed that she hadn't won the contest. Then I woke up.

Intimidation

I dreamt last night that Davey and I were still dating. Davey, Tim, and I think Shanelle and I were staying at my house here in Oregon and of course we ALL slept in my bed. In the morning I gave Davey and hug, got out of bed and wrapped up in a jacket. Davey was becoming disenchanted with our relationship and Tim was helping him to recognize his feelings. I made eye contact with Shanelle and I knew that I could count on her to stick with me and hang out with me. So I ran down the stairs to the kitchen, which was larger than usual. And I saw that my Mom had made this ginormous blackberry crumble with a butter cookie on the bottom. I mean this was probably 6 ft in diameter and 1/2 foot tall. It was already mostly eaten and I nibbled on the cookie. Right before I awoke I remember wondering if Davey was intimidated. Now, I have to admit, that I am almost embarrassed by how nice my home is. I live in a rather large home and we keep it up pretty well. My sister had her "good friend" visit and he was intimidated by the family and all the above. I realized how intimidated I was when I went with Jeff Pringle to Texas and met his family. I enjoy finding a moral to all my dreams and I think this one helped me to realize that I should not be annoyed when things that aren't right don't work out. For instance - and I am going out on a limb talking about things I usually wouldn't -Davey intimidates me. And I feel really awkward around him because I worry what he thinks of me. I think my dream meant that in fact I have equal power in our relationship (that is still struggling even with friendship) and that I shouldn't grudge the fact that he moved on.

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.