Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Head-First Preacher

MORNING OF JUNE 27, 2011

There was some kind of public rally that was more or less like a church service. It was held indoors, and the crowds were seated in rows of chairs as well as on bleachers along the side walls. A fat preacher I thought I recognized as a televangelist was screaming from a pulpit and the crowd was listening intently and responding enthusiastically.

The preacher was warning everyone to get right with God, because Jesus would be coming back at any time.

I was just sort of roaming the auditorium as a dispassionate observer of the whole affair. At one point, the fat preacher set his open Bible on the end of a table, then climbed up to the top of one of the sets of bleachers. He shouted out something to the effect of "God expects us to get into the Bible head first!!!"--and then he dove off the bleachers, deliberately aiming his head for the Bible on the table. His aim was true and his head loudly cracked on the table and snapped back as he hit the ground, limp and unconscious.

In addition to his weight, the preacher was not especially young, so there was a good chance this fall had killed him--it was severe enough to have done most anyone in. People were screaming, medics were rushing to his aid. I just stood in a state of shock. It had been a very disturbing thing to witness--especially knowing he'd just done it intentionally!

There was a separate, but also religiously-themed dream later. I was watching a show on TV where a supposedly Christian host was interviewing Will Ferrell. They were explaining how they'd become real-life friends, and Will Ferrell had accepted the Christian's challenge to follow some kind of religious program for a month to see if he could be converted. Ferrell seemed to be treating his host respectably while still being jokey.

Monday, June 20, 2011

An Auction with Mr. Gaiman

MORNING OF JUNE 20, 2011

In the dream I owned the original art for a page from a comic book that Neil Gaiman had written (he's my favorite author in real life, though I'm actually more familiar with his prose than his comics work). The page in question featured Mr. Gaiman as one of the characters. He was shouting "squirrel!" in one panel, followed by five more panels of vague action I can't recall. Two panels had been left blank, but the others were in full color (which is rare for original comic art).

The art was framed on my wall, but for some reason I decided, quite on a whim, to sell it to make money for charity. I scanned the art and posted it on my art blog, announcing that I would start receiving bids. The winner got the art, and their payment would go straight to whatever charity.

Shortly after posting this on my blog, Neil Gaiman contacted me online and wanted to get involved in the effort. I have vague memories of eventually meeting him in person and coming up with creative ways to promote the auction.

I ultimately realized that I didn't really want to part with the artwork, and now I was sad that I'd posted it, because I felt like there really was no honorable way out. I can't really recall what happened next.

There was another dream involving a stray Siamese cat that hangs out where I work in real life. We feed him and are trying to tame him. In the dream, the cat showed up at my house with several kittens in tow. For the first time ever, the Siamese let me actually pet it. At this moment, my long-deceased dog Harley ran up to me. I shooed him away because I didn't want him to scare the cat away. Then I realized Harley hadn't been with us in years and felt guilty for shooing him, so I started calling him back.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Weirdo at the Track and a Depressing Store

MORNING OF JUNE 16, 2011

I was at a walking track that was vaguely like the one I walk at each morning in real life, only this one was in a downtown area, near a lot of little shops and such. There were several people there, including a really weird, awkward man who decided to talk to me. He was around my own age, tall and lanky, and I think probably based on a real person I met before. He kept hounding me about random, pointless trivia I didn't care about.

There was some "game" he wanted to play while we walked the track, like, some kind of "Dungeons & Dragons" style role playing we could enact in real life. I just wanted to get away from the guy, so my dream conveniently provided my friends Eric and Richard, so I ended up hanging out with them.

At some point I had to leave the track, pick up a push lawnmower from somewhere, and bring it back to the track. It was early evening, and I was mowing the grass near the parking lot (this is a bit odd, as I live in an apartment and therefore haven't actually cut grass in quite some time now).

I eventually put the mower away and went back to the track. It looked like Richard and Eric were gone by now, so I started to listen to my iPod. Then I found Richard and Eric again.

We walked down the street from the track to where there was a fictional comic book store. As we approached it, we saw a sad, fat man placing a "going out of business" sign in the window. We decided to check it out.

The sad, fat man--bearded and wearing an ill-fitting, generic superhero costume, was the lethargic owner of the shop. I browsed a for a little while. The selection in the store, both of comic books and of collectibles, was fairly pitiful. I couldn't figure out if this was because the closing sale had emptied a lot, or if it might have always been so.

There was a large boxed set featuring a large Batmobile toy based on the 60's TV series, with matching Batman and Catwoman figures to go with it. The store owner told me it was marked way down and it was his last one, so I should really buy it! The "markdown" price was seven hundred-something dollars! There was a similarly overpriced "markdown" Batman statue of some kind.

I looked at a shelf in the back of the store and they had a lot of old toy sets from the 80's or before. I saw a lot of things that reminded me of my childhood, including a set of "Tinker Toys", which I haven't thought of in years.

Now it was as though I'd come into this store with a girl instead of Richard and Eric. (I can't even remember if she's someone I really know or was a fictional dream character). I approached her and told her I was ready to go if she was. She was very anxious to go, explaining that this store really depressed her. I had to agree it was a fairly depressing place.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Taking Donations Before the Wedding

MORNING OF JUNE 11, 2011

I was with a large group of people one evening. We were gathered in a parking lot of some sort, across the street from a row of buildings that looked like small businesses. Though I remember nothing wedding-like about the dream, we were supposed to be part of a wedding party.

I was standing around talking to someone when my mom approached me and told me I needed to be ready because the bride (whatever her name was) was almost ready for my part in the ceremony (and now, I wasn't the groom, just a participant, though I can't remember in what way). I looked over my shoulder and remember seeing the bride and bridesmaids giggling and talking a few feet away. Awake, I don't recognize them as any actual people I know.

Before my part in the wedding, however, my mom handed me a baseball cap and said I needed to make the rounds taking donations for Pixar (as in, the animation studios). I couldn't fathom why Pixar needed donations from anyone, but I dutifully walked around the crowd with my hat.

Everyone very happily and graciously donated, each proclaiming their love for the studio and how they were so glad to help out. It was a lot like that last scene in "It's A Wonderful Life" when everyone helps George Bailey! Pretty soon my upturned baseball cap was full of cash and checks.

Then my mom appeared again and told the the wedding was starting and I was going to be late! I held the cap up against my chest as to hopefully secure the contents from spilling as I began running across the street, toward where I knew the ceremony to be held. I looked back and saw some loose pieces of paper in the parking lot as I fled. Fearing it might be money I'd lost from the cap, I ran back, only to find it was just litter. Now even later, I began running to my appointment at the ceremony again!

I remember running up sidewalks, jumping small landscaping walls, etc. Finally I made it up the street to a very big, probably very old house. It was in a poorly lit area and it was fully dark outside now, so visibility was not great, except for the lights from the home's windows. There was steep hill leading up to the house. Fortunately there was a stairway made of old railroad ties and stones to make the trek up the hill slightly easier on foot.

I bounded the steps two at a time, by now grunting and huffing and sweating profusely. One I made it to the house, I slipped in a window into a small room with my bed and the TV from my living room together in it. This "room" was actually just a small "balcony" of sorts that overlooked a larger room where all the guests were.

Some animated movie, I think "Tangled", was playing on the TV. My last memory is looking down at the crowd and someone shouted up at me that I'd left my TV on too loud, and could I please turn it down. I informed them that I'd used "the remote control on my keychain" to turn it down from the parking lot, but I guess it hadn't worked.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Cleaning the Shower

MORNING OF JUNE 7, 2011

What should have been the bathroom in my master bedroom was actually just one huge shower. Literally, it was the size size of a small room, and was octagonal in shape (or perhaps pentagonal, or some similar, many-sided shape).

I knew that company was coming, and this meant I had to clean the shower. It was so large I had to start out by spraying it down with a garden hose. I remember lots of grime and stuff that looked like algae washing off the walls. Then I had to start scrubbing. It was not an easy task. What a fun dream!

There was also some other dream, or another part of the dream, in which I had found some pages for a comic book I'd started to draw but never finished. I think these were really supposed to be from one of the ideas I had roughly a decade ago. I remember discussing this find with Richard and showing him the pages. He declared "we never should have stopped that project, we should have kept on with it!"

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Flying O'er the Fairgrounds

MORNING OF JUNE 5, 2011

This is the second of two dreams from this night. Due to the length of each, I've made them into two separate entries.

In a second dream it was a bright and sunny afternoon and I was at what looked like an outdoor fair or festival of some sort. I was browsing the wares at the various merchant booths that were set up in rows when I ran into comedian/actor Patton Oswalt. He was obviously in a state of grand amusement, and told me I just had to come see this shirt he'd found for sale at one of the booths.

He led me to a clothing shop where several shirts, mostly men's styles, were hanging from a variety of racks. He pointed out a particular shirt which was a long-sleeved, mustard yellow button-up. He went on and on about how he really wanted that shirt and wished he could have it, but it wasn't in his size. I couldn't tell if he was being sincere or sarcastic. And in either case, why was the big deal? The shirt was neither particularly eye-catching nor particularly ugly. I was literally perplexed by his reactions.

From here I continued to walk around the fairgrounds. That's when I met up with Amy Adams. We just walked around leisurely and talked together, very much enjoying ourselves. Eventually we came up to a steep hill that dropped off into a dirt pit of some sort. We decided to try to walk down the hill for some reason. About halfway down, Amy lost her footing and almost fell. She leaned into my shoulder and I caught her before she did. Then, in a singular motion I just swept her legs up with my other arm and flew away, carrying her in my arms. Yes. I flew away. Casually. It was no big deal!

It was such a great feeling as I just flew around over the fairgrounds with Amy in my arms. At one point, I stated that I felt like Superman carrying a real-life Lois Lane! It wasn't until after I said it that I remembered that she is actually going to play Lois Lane in the upcoming Superman movie. My saying this changed her entire expression. The smile left her face and she started acting awkward and said she wanted to go back to the ground.

I assumed she must not have liked the fact that I inadvertently referred to her being an actress instead of treating her like a regular person, and I feared I had ruined a great day. When we returned to the earth, however, we began making out...

There was some other portion of the dream, I think still at the fairgrounds, in which I was watching a play. The actors were not that great, but it was fun. There was one really, really fat guy with a beard who reminded me a little bit of a much larger Dom DeLuise.

In one scene of the play, the fat guy was dressed in drag as some kind of fortune teller, only he was naked from the waist up. His overweight man-boobs were meant to serve as his female character's breasts. It was a grotesquely odd scene.

After the play I remember the cast hung around and spoke to the audience. The fat guy, however, was so large that he just lay in the floor and you had to walk up to him to speak to him. He was so large that just being in the play had made him too tired to walk around and greet people, or even to stand.

Tornadoes and Memoirs

MORNING OF JUNE 5, 2011

This is the first of two dreams from this night. Due to the length of each, I've made them into two separate entries.

Another dream in which the cousin that I was very close to growing up was hanging out with me as though we were both kids again (not that I could really see myself to say for sure what age I was in the dream). He was spending the night at my house and we were upstairs getting ready for bed. We had the TV tuned to the local weather where they were showing a system of strong storms moving towards the area.

The storms were only supposed to be mildly severe with no expected tornadoes, but we decided to stay awake until they passed over us. Then I remember we went downstairs to where my parents were (being that we were both younger in the dream I naturally still lived at home) and watched the weather reports with them. Now they were showing tornadoes everywhere--not just in our state, but all over the country. One had even touched down in Washington D.C.

As we waited out the storms I realized there were many, many people downstairs with my parents, more or less like some kind of party. There were two long tables where men and women all sat with loads of paper and notepads all around them, studiously writing.

My dad explained to me that the people writing at the tables were transcribing all his notes from his entire lifetime. He was going to use the transcript to write his memoirs. He told me that in the morning, I was going to have to transcribe all day as well. There went my Sunday plans, I thought.

Then I turned back to the TV where the local weatherman was still warning about the tornadoes. The meteorologist was very, very manic and crazy--not from panic about the weather, but just his natural personality. At one point he began mocking a real-life local meteorologist, James Spann, who is widely hailed and respected around here. The crazy guy said something like, "Of course he's so accurate! He has all kind of equipment! Look what we have to work with! Cameraman! Go show them what we have to work with!"

The camera then walked through what looked like not a television studio, but a regular house. It opened the front door and zoomed in on what appeared to be a normal doorstop on the front porch, though the "doorstop" did have little lights and buttons and a tiny little radar dish on it. The weatherman explained that this was the only weather tracking system they had.

In the final part of the dream, the local weather switched over to an episode of The Simpsons. In what was obviously a spoof segment, the Simpsons family were in a spaceship, having a Star Trek type of adventure. Their ship was attacked and left in ruins. Then the Simpsons "woke up" and realized their real home was in ruins because it had been hit by a tornado! This was supposed to be the season finale cliffhanger, and it's about then point when I woke up.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Disney Holocaust and Fun with Brie

MORNING OF JUNE 4, 2010

Early one morning I found myself in a crowded classroom taking a test. I was excited because I knew that after the test, my friends and I were leaving for Disney World. The next part of the dream is sort of a vague blur, and then I remember actually arriving at Disney. At first I was there with Richard and Jessica and their daughter Cailey (in later parts of the dream, my companions are less clear).

I realized I'd left my backpack at home (backpacks are handy for carrying your belongings through the parks all day), so we stopped in a gift shop and I bought a pink "Tangled/Rapunzel" one! (I assume I chose this in my dream because Cailey and I played with her Tangled toys a little bit the night preceding the dream.) Richard and Jessica teased me for choosing that one, but I explained to them that Flynn Ryder and Maximus were also pictured on it, and they were male, so it was OK!

The first attraction at the park was a "ride" where you went into a building and for an allotted amount of time they recreated the holocaust! This was not intended to be in any way offensive, but merely educational! They lined you up and walked you in, actors dressed like Nazis separated you from your friends, stripped you of your belongings, etc. I remember being filed into a room with my allotted group and having more instructions barked at us by actor-soldiers.

Next I remember being herded outside. I looked up at the night sky, which I think was a fake projection inside what was actually a building. You could see a lot of stars overhead, and the occasional silhouette of a warplane flying overhead (complete, of course, with the loud sounds). Then I saw an actor playing an American solider who was there to rescue us. I recognized him as someone I went to high school with--and then remembered that I'd seen him at the test I took that morning before leaving for Disney. How odd, I thought to myself, that we both ended up here at the end of the day.

In a second dream, I was with the beautiful actress Alison Brie (I know her best from the show "Community"). We were eating chicken dressing, more or less like the kind my grandmother used to make. There was just one huge casserole-type dish full of it, and we were both eating straight out of the dish together. I had to explain to her what exactly chicken dressing was, as it was largely a southern thing. Somehow, naturally, this ended with us kissing.

Next, we joined some other people outdoors. Everyone began running down a huge, steep hill. Many of them chose to do cartwheels down the hill. I told Alison I couldn't do cartwheels, so she tried to teach me. Of course that just led to us tripping over each other and landing at the bottom of the hill in a heap. Which led to more racy parts of the dream I'll skip here.

And then we were on our way "home" at the end of the day. Someone was chauffeuring us around, so we were both in the back seat. I was seated at one end, and she at the other, though she was turned to recline all the way across the seat, with her legs in my lap.