Sunday, September 28, 2008

Super Gas

MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 27, 2008

In real life, since hurricane Ike hit a few weeks ago, there has been a gas shortage where I live. It's very difficult to find a station with gas, and when you find one you often have to wait in line. That leads to a lot of frustration...so you'll see how this reality plays into parts of the dream, especially the middle part.

It was late at night. Eric and I were in my car and I needed gas. We found a station that was selling it, but you had to pay inside. We were both walking inside, and I noticed through the window that a couple of crooks were currently robbing the place at gunpoint. Eric didn't notice this, and before I could tell him, he started to open the door and enter. I stopped him before the crooks noticed us.

We rushed back to the car, but instead of calling the cops and getting out of there, we just waited until we saw the crooks flee the store, then we went inside to pay for our gas. And everything was just fine inside the store...there were even lots of customers.

There was a very young girl there with her dad, and when he wasn't looking, she grabbed a whole stack of these promotional coupons off the counter. She tried to hand them to the clerk, demanding he redeem all the coupons, and when he explained to her, "one per customer", she pitched a colossal fit.

Finally it was my turn to pay for gas, and the clerk explained to me that he didn't have any more regular gas, but he was expecting a shipment of "Super Gas" if I was willing to wait just a few minutes for it to arrive, and willing, of course, to pay a premium for it. I was almost on empty, and everywhere else was out, so I waited on the Super Gas.

Soon an 18 wheeler arrived and four men began unloading barrels of "Super Gas" from the back. They made me help them unload! As we unloaded they were telling me how Super Gas was somehow akin to jet fuel. I thought it was rubbish that I had to help them unload the stuff, so I pretended to have to go to the bathroom and went in there and waited until enough time had passed for them to be finished.

When I came back out, all the men were having a picnic around a picnic table outside the station (it was still the middle of the night). I joined them, and among the dinner conversation I discovered that the four of them were actually a Southern Gospel quartet and only delivered Super Gas part time. They were sharing their stories of traveling the road doing shows, and I soon lost the ability to even feign interest. As soon as I finished my food, I left.

I don't remember the series of events next, but I somehow ended up driving with my mom into some neighborhood that was partially destroyed. She said hurricane Ike had done it. Then we went into a place with a lot of other people, and while I can't be certain, I think it was a church.

Seated next to my mom and I was the waitress I actually had at Olive Garden in real life earlier this night. I wanted to talk to her, but then, naturally, her boyfriend came in and the two of them were talking loudly. Then the church service, or whatever it was, began and the two of them just kept on loudly talking. My mom got really annoyed.

There was some other little tidbit of dream where I was watching the news on TV, and they showed these giant monster-men fighting downtown, and they crushed a KFC restaurant. The news said this had upset a lot of people, but that it was revealed to have been an elaborate hoax. They were normal-sized men in costumes and the KFC was made out of cardboard...and yet somehow it had fooled even people who had seen it in person.

Al and Greg

MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 26, 2008

Recently in real life, my friends and I were discussing the Old Greg skit that has attained a bit of YouTube celebrity. In my dream (which I remember very little of), I found a new clip that featured "Weird Al" Yankovic interviewing Old Greg. The two of them were sitting at a picnic table in a park, and while of course it was all for laughs, it was played very straight.

I can no longer remember the specifics of the "interview", but in the dream I loved it and wanted to show friends. I was trying to pull up the link on YouTube to show them, but no matter what I searched for, I couldn't find it. At some point some clip came up with a girl dancing in black leotards, and I think Old Greg was involved in that one as well, but I was frustrated that I couldn't find the right clip.

Pointless.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

A Movie at 10:30

MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

I was in some sort of mall among a huge crowd of people. I noticed some commotion in one area and went to investigate. It turns out there was a group of teenagers, and some girls from the group were fighting! I soon learned it wasn't a literal fight, but the girls were deliberately "wrestling" for fun. They were even often giggling while they struggled. Other girls were in a queue waiting for their turn. Entertaining though they may be, I will...erm...spare you further details.

All too soon, however, my attention was diverted when I was approached by a girl I once knew in real life. She was a terribly misguided crush from several years back. She was with some other girl who I believe she claimed was her sister. I had less than zero desire to talk to her, but felt obliged to be polite because she was being so polite.

It turns out she and her sister were on their way to get some food and then to see a movie at 10:30 (guess they like their movies late!). They invited me to go with them. I told them I had dinner plans with my friends already (which, in the dream world, was perfectly true) but maybe we'd meet them at the theater later. Then we parted ways.

Later I was having pizza with Eric and D. (haven't really seen D. in years). Eric said he'd already had pizza twice, but he didn't mind having it again. I told them about the 10:30 movie plans and they were OK with it.

Next, I was filling out some kind of papers. I don't know what they were, but they were official documents of some sort, and I was having to put my signature on most of them.

Then I was out on a lawn at night. Several other people were in the area, and I was still hanging with Eric and D. There were a couple of weird-looking toys in my hands. One of them looked like it was constructed out of various seashells glued together...straight out of a cheap souvenir shop in Florida or something. It's appalling tackiness made it somehow appealing, and I had set it in the grass to take pictures of it.

I was in the process of snapping pictures when the girl and her sister from before approached us. They canceled the movie plans and said they weren't going...they acted very apologetic, but I didn't even care, because I had never really been enthusiastic about the plans we'd made to begin with.

Then I turned my attention to another one of the strange toys in my possession. It was a very tiny baby doll, about three inches long, with a plush body and vinyl head. Someone told me it cried if you got it wet. There was a bucket of water conveniently nearby, so I stuck the doll in the water...nothing happened...so I completely submerged it, then removed it. Upon coming out of the water, you could squeeze the doll and water would spit out of it's mouth as it made an eerie crying sound. I thought it was the creepiest toy I'd seen in quite some time.

Monday, September 15, 2008

The Cult on the Meadow

MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

C. and I were going to meet the rest of our group for a movie on a Saturday afternoon. We drove out to a grassy meadow. It was a beautiful scene with the lush green grass and colorful flowers blowing in the breeze, occasionally overcast by the shadow of a huge, puffy cloud as it floated through the deep blue sky above.

The meadow turned up into a large, steep hill and there was a building at the top that looked not unlike a gothic church. This was supposedly our destination. We parked the car near the bottom and began to walk up the hill. There were several people peppered all around us, each one marching in the same upwards direction. They were all wearing their Sunday best and a blank expression.

It didn't take us long to figure out that the building at the top of the hill definitely was some kind of church, but it wasn't a traditional one. It was a bizarre cult, and all the people around us were marching in like robots. They wouldn't even respond if you spoke to them. It was kind of creepy, so C. and I immediately headed back down the hill, but this time on the other side of it.

There was a restaurant and some other businesses at the foot of the hill, and we decided to meet the rest of our group here instead. Once inside, it looked like a department store instead of a restaurant. I found myself looking at section of DVD's. Then some guy whom I supposedly recognized came up and was talking to me about them. Then the talk turned to CD's, and he asked me if I could burn a particular one for him. My last memory of the dream is attempting to burn said CD, but I was having a lot of problems with it.

Wasn't reading this dream a valuable use of your time?