Friday, May 21, 2010

Spicy Corn, Spilled Milk & Spotting Intruders

MORNING OF MAY 21, 2010

I was at some sort of restaurant with my parents. We were seated at a long table with several other people. I don't think we knew everyone around us--it was as if this restaurant just filled big tables with random customers.

One young man across from me looked to be in his early twenties. He was very skinny, had a mustache, wore a baseball cap, and generally had a sort of "white trash" vibe to him. He ordered an ear of "spicy corn". When the waitress brought it to him, it looked like someone had already eaten a few of the kernels off the cob. This wasn't the case, however, as it was explained to me that the "half-eaten" look was just how it came out when they made the corn "spicy" like this kind apparently was.

I watched as the guy dug into his corn. While he sloppily (and rather grossly) chowed down, a Dwight Yoakam song began to play over the restaurant's speakers. The corn-dude began to try to sing along, spewing corn everywhere as he did. It was awkward and disgusting, all at once.

Later I remember a dream in which I was at what looked like my grandmother's house. I was eating cold cereal at the kitchen table. I dripped a few splotches of milk from the bowl or spoon onto the table. When I made to wipe them up after I was through eating, the mess was improbably large. Instead of looking like a few drops of milk, there was a large puddle of milk and cereal on the table, almost as if the whole bowl had been spilled.

Finally, I remember my parents were going on a trip somewhere and they asked me to take care of their dog, Einstein. But for some reason we we all ended up just taking him and dropping him off at the home of a family friend instead.

I stayed at the friend's home with Einey for a little while to help him get acclimated. At the same time, the family friend received visitors and went to entertain them in another room. I inadvertently overheard the visitors (a snooty-seeming middle-aged couple) berating Einstein and telling our friend they couldn't' believe she'd have such an animal in her home.

Around this time, Einstein got away from me and went running off around the house (at his age in real life he does little running to anywhere, but it didn't seem to hamper him in the dream). I followed him to what looked like maybe a dining room, but all the lights were out and it was very dark.

I heard a bump in the dark room and assumed it was Einstein, but soon I noticed it was a man wearing a "hoodie" jacket and holding a knife. I started so bad I woke up.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

A Beautiful Spacescape

MORNING OF MAY 18, 2010

I'm not a gifted enough writer to properly explain the beauty of the first dream, but I will try.

I was with a small group of people at someone's house one night. We were out in the yard when I looked up at the night sky and realized that I could see other planets in the sky--and I mean visibly detect them, like a picture in a book. They weren't just showing up as especially bright "stars" or something. It was eerily beautiful. I ran inside the house to get my camera, and I think my friend Richard joined me at this point. We went back outside to get a look.

The spacescape was now lower on the horizon and much larger. Just over the tops of a nearby row of trees we could see several colorful planets. I noted Jupiter and Saturn among them. The creamy swirls of the Milky Way were evident in strokes across the sky. It was breathtaking. We walked toward the trees and saw that, beyond them, there was a very steep drop into a deep valley.

Nestled in this valley was a giant carnival. Tents, Ferris wheels, and everything you'd expect to see at a carnival and more.You could hear the faint, cheerful sounds of calliope music on the air. It was extremely bright and colorful, as was the bright planetary array in the sky above it. I remember gasping that "it looks like something out of a Pixar movie!".

Though the beauty of the scene overwhelmed it, there was beneath it a slight feeling of dread. Something just didn't feel right, seeing a scene this surreal in what I believed at the time to be real life. And that's probably why this was about the time I woke up.

I tell you, I thought of these dream scene several times throughout the day today, and it's brought a peace to me.

In a later dream I remember trying to pick out a birthday card for someone. I'd first picked out a funny-but-rather-generic card. Then I noticed they had cards based on the "LOST" TV show. Each card featured cartoon depictions of the various characters. For some reason I chose one with cartoon Jack and Kate riding a horse as they fled the "Smoke Monster".

Sunday, May 16, 2010

A Ball Bearing X-File

MORNING OF MAY 16, 2010
This is the second of two dreams from this day...the first is posted in a separate post below this one...


I was with agents Mulder and Scully from The X-Files. We were investigating a large, silver box, about the size of an SUV. The box had no apparent openings, no seams, just solid, shiny chrome-like metal at all sides, and it had mysteriously appeared in the front yard of the house I lived in as a teenager. Mulder was determined to figure out how to get inside the contraption, though it seemed impervious to any attempt.

Suddenly, a futuristic woman appeared holding a large gun. She began firing at the box, and this weapon was actually successfully at ripping holes in it. Immediately, hundreds of tiny ball bearings began rolling out! It quickly became apparent that the balls were sentient, as they all swarmed toward us and we began to flee!

Then a pinkish, slimy substance began to pour out from the box and envelop the ball bearings, drawing them back into the crate. We all stood staring, in a state of total shock. Mulder began to explain how this could somehow be explained by common evolutionary processes.

Then my family dogs, Einstein and Harley, came running up to me. In reality, Harley is long deceased and Einstein is very old, but they were both in their youth in this dream. I began petting the two of them, especially Harley. Then I looked down and noticed that, cradled in one of Harley's front paws, was a taco, as though he were casually holding and eating it! Aaaand that's about when I woke up.

Cast In A Movie

MORNING OF MAY 16 2010
This is the first of two dreams from this day...the second will be located in a separate post, directly above this....

I found out that an ex-girlfriend's sister had been murdered (these aren't people that I'm any longer in contact with in real life). Naturally I thought the news was horrible, but then it turned weird when I was informed that I was to star in a movie documentary about the murder. And things got weirder still when I learned I was cast in the role of...the sister!

So, naturally, Oprah Winfrey was directing the movie. The first scene was set up in my grandmother's living room. I was sitting on the couch with my actual ex, and though I wasn't in any sort of costume, I was supposed to be in the "sister" role. Oprah sat in a director's chair across the room and, well, "directed" us.

After the first take, Sandra Bullock walked into the room and whispered something to Oprah. My friend Eric, who had apparently been sitting somewhere nearby all along, shouted out, "Oh my Sandra Bullock, that's Sandra Bullock!". In dream logic I found this to be so hilarious that I simply had to "tweet" the quote.

I got out my phone to do compose said tweet, but I only got a screen filled with images of various movie posters. Text on the screen explained that I had to check off posters for movies that starred the celebrities currently present in the room before I could go any further. I scanned through and checked off The Color Purple...but the confusion of straining to find posters for anyone else quickly led to my waking up.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Stuffed House

MORNING OF MAY 15, 2010

It seemed at first like I was at some sort of comic book/sci-fi/anime convention. I had some samples of my artwork there. I also had "tickets" or "passes" to some event that was to be held later that evening. I was going to raffle away my extra passes in some manner that would also help sell my art. I remember setting up a table/booth to feature these things but, before I was finished, I had to go ask my friend Eric a question.

Eric was in a room that looked more or less like a bedroom. There was a shelf full of all sorts of random collectibles, and he began to show me some of the cool things he'd found (collecting random knick-knacks like this is not very Eric in reality). I wish I could remember all of the things he showed me, because they were so strange. One of them was a brass Tiger with gold-painted trim. While the tiger was an individual piece, it could be nestled into the hand of a sculpted female idol of some sort.

At one point I suddenly remembered my half-set-up table on the convention floor, and was afraid people might be stealing the things I'd left unattended. But before I could do anything about it, our friend Zach joined us and he and Eric and I went into the living room of my grandmother's house and turned on the TV.

We watched a pizza commercial during which my grandmother entered the room and commented on how loud it was. Then she asked what we wanted to eat. Zach reminded me and Eric that we'd really been wanting to try this new (fictional) pizza place called "The Stuffed House". We agreed we should go get some.

There was some other dream during the night in which I was walking through a mall and ran into a girl I used to like in my teenage days. We walked and talked together for a bit and it was nice, but I had to remind myself that it wasn't my teenage days anymore, and it was too late to do anything about it. Then Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter books was suddenly there as well, and she was friends with this girl. (Hermione looked like a hybrid of the actress who plays her in the movies and the way I've always imagined the character in my head when reading the books.)

Monday, May 10, 2010

The Affair

MORNING OF MAY 10, 2010

Disclaimer: The subject matter of this dream has no basis in any realistic situations. It's as entirely silly as most of my dreams, and was probably largely inspired by the episode of The Office I'd watched that week.

My boss was having an affair with a younger woman. She was a good bit younger than him, but only very slightly older than me, probably in her late thirties. A very attractive brunette who seemed to dress in sensible business attire. For some reason I had to attend some kind of dinner meeting with the two of them. They for some reason seemed to be fine with my knowing their secret.

The thing was, at this dinner, the woman flirted with me any and every chance she got. Eventually the two of us became physical and ended up an item (my boss was just suddenly out of the picture at this point).

Then I was back at work and I saw both my boss and this lady again. My boss explained that corporate had found out about the affair and fired him. The woman suddenly looked older--significantly older than me now--and I couldn't remember what the attraction had been between us (she no longer showed any signs of it herself, either).

Regardless, my boss still encouraged the two of us to do things together. He said there was some kind of "animation forum" being held nearby, and that we should attend. We kept shooting each other looks as though we agreed we were unwilling but didn't know how to tell him. This is pretty much all I remember.

In a different dream I was at the zoo. I saw a hippopotamus wading in a pool and it suddenly starting performing all kinds of unlikely tricks. No trainer was nearby--nothing was provoking it at all. It's as though the animal was performing just for me. And so naturally I realized I had forgotten my camera!

Then, suddenly, the hippo was a gorilla. The gorilla was behaving in a similarly photogenic manner. I suppose I simply willed my camera into the dream, because now it was with me. But whenever pressed the shutter button, it simply washed a color filter over the image on the digital screen. It never actually snapped a photo.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

A Truly Epic Movie

MORNING OF MAY 8, 2010

Richard and Eric and I went to see a new movie that was supposedly based on an epic Stephen King novel. I wish I could remember more details of what we saw on the movie screen, because it was a trip. Here's what bits I can recall:

One of the main characters, serving as a sort of antihero, was Elphaba, the "Wicked Witch" from Gregory Maguire's Oz re-imagining Wicked novel (and yes, the play). Who or whatever the major villain was had in their employ scores of Star Wars' Storm Troopers. They would patrol the land, arrest, and harass people, etc. There was a cat, mostly CG animated, that behaved a lot like the Cheshire Cat from any given Alice in Wonderland adaptation, in that it seemed maybe helpful to the heroes, but its motives were unclear. There were other characters but, as I said before, I'm short on details beyond this.

In the final scene of the movie, Elphaba was corned in a castle by the Storm Troopers and was going to be captured. And then, rather than watching this movie like we had been, Richard and Eric and I were actually standing outside, looking at the actual castle from a distance.
This was all located in the middle of a barren wasteland of cracked dirt and rocky terrain. We hid behind a rock and watched. The outside of the castle, too, was surrounded by the Troopers and you could tell a battle was going on inside. We didn't want to be noticed.

Suddenly, the "Cheshire Cat" character appeared--huge, slightly larger than the whole castle--and attacked it. The castle came down. An unseen, wind-like force (Force?) began blowing the Storm Troopers from the scene as they tumbled across the ground--in some cases leaving long trench-like rifts in the dirt as they skidded out of sight. The cat was apparently the hero. But were our heroes OK? Dd they fare any better amid the destruction than the enemies had?

I'll never know, because I woke up.

There was some other dream about being at a party. Some pretty girl in a casual, summery dress and yellow stockings was acting silly, wanting me to take pictures of her antics.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Making Up, a Garbage Disposal, and a Puppet

MORNING OF MAY 6, 2010

For some reason I was in the apartment of an ex-girlfriend. We ended up talking and in no time it seemed sparks were flying and we were back together again. For real life context: Like any relationship, the one I had with this ex has its pleasant memories, but it's not a relationship I long to--or ever would--go back to in real life.

Even in the dream it felt weird to be back together. Something felt "off". I wish I could remember the story in the dream. Instead I just remember vaguely spending time with her and talking and just generally being together. I do remember going to some outdoor event along a riverbank in the early evening. We were walking, along with many other people, along a pier. All the while I kept wondering why I was doing this and telling myself not to. But I was having fun.

At some point in the dream I ended up in what looked like the kitchen at the place where I work. In the cabinet under the sink a large, square contraption that I recognized to be the garbage disposal took up most of the space. Unlike a real garbage disposal, this unit was not manual. It was timed to go off every so often, whether any garbage was in it or not.

For some reason my family's geriatric dog, Einstein, was with me. He crawled into the garbage disposal box and went to sleep. I tried to coax him out but he wouldn't come. It was impossible to physically reach him in there, so I ran to get help. My goal was to find someone who could turn off all the power to the building until we got Einstein out, to insure the disposal wouldn't start up while he was in there.

I ended up in some kind of auditorium where a lot of people were gathered in seats facing a stage with a podium, as if waiting to listen to a speaker of some sort. There was actually a walking track encircling the upper level of this auditorium, and that's where I was, looking down on the rest. Suddenly I realized I had a Kermit the Frog puppet on one arm.

I can do a passable Kermit voice, so I began talking like Kermit while circling the walking track. The audience below began to watch, and they were very amused. I remember one point on the track had a patch of broken glass. It was obvious it came from broken decorative Christmas balls. I had to remember to skip around it every time I reached that area on my laps, because I was barefoot.

So my "Kermit" show went on for some time, until I suddenly remembered I was supposed to be telling someone to turn the power off for Einstein's sake. As soon as I remembered this, I took off running back to the kitchen area. I even remember running right through the broken glass on the track in my efforts to get there.

When I was finally back in the work kitchen, my mom there was for some reason, eating a meal at the counter. I asked her if she knew if anyone had turned off the power yet, and then explained why. She jumped up and looked in the cabinet and proclaimed, angry and upset, that Einstein was now dead.

The horrible guilt and sadness woke me almost instantly. I had slept through my alarm and was late.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

President Obama the Art Critic and Batgirl Merchandise)

MORNING OF MAY 4, 2010

I was at my job, but I was working on a personal art project with my cartoon characters. President Obama and his entourage showed up. He was touring the station and for some reason I just stayed put, working on my comics.

Eventually he entered the room where I was and began looking at what I was doing and expressing great interest. I gave him one of my cards with my website info on it, and a copy of the "Jennifer & Bueno" art book from a couple of years ago. He asked a lot of questions and seemed really eager to check out more of my work. I figured he was just being fake and politician-like in his expressed interest, but it still was cool that the President of the U.S. said nice things about my crappy comics.

There was another dream in which I was was in some sort of comic or pop-culture-heavy store. I saw a really cool Batgirl T-shirt that I wanted. It's hard to describe the image here, except that it was a more classic version of Batgirl with just sort of a nondescript, design-y background. I really loved the style of art in which she was drawn here.

There was also a statuette in the store featuring several Batman characters. It was actually several little statuettes, each depicting different scenes, but all connected together. It was supposedly titled something like, "The Batman Family Through the Years".

The first statuette was of the very early Batman and Robin. Each subsequent one had Batman, Robin, Batgirl, and other characters as they appeared over the decades. I remember one statue had Batgirl tied to railroad tracks. Another had Nightwing, from the era in which he apparently wore a bright red suit.

Even though I don't closely follow superhero comics these days, I guess the Batman characters still hold a place in my heart, and I found myself really wanting this statue. Naturally, being of such size and detail the price was way out of my range (around $300, I think).

Saturday, May 1, 2010

My Dinner with Neil and Spider-Dwight

MORNING OF MAY 1, 2010

Somehow I had ended up visiting author Neil Gaiman's house. I think there were other people there with us, but details are very vague. My clearest memory is that it came to be supper time and none of us knew what to eat. We went into his kitchen and were discussing things we could cook for supper.

There was some other strange dream that featured Dwight K. Schrute from The Office TV series. He was in a bedroom with lots of Spider-Man decorations (bed sheets, wall posters, etc.) discussing Spider-Man lore. He had Jim Halpert on the phone. Just to egg Dwight on, Jim was arguing with him about Spidey's villains and which one was the greatest threat to Spidey.

Somehow Jim tricked Dwight into agreeing to something that he didn't really believe regarding Spider-Man lore, and it made him very angry when he realized he'd been had. Jim hung up on him as he ranted. Pointless dream.