The Mysterious Coffin Caper

MORNING OF DECEMBER 30, 2010

This dream started out as though I was watching a movie, but eventually it felt like I was taking part in the action myself. There was a team of police investigators led by a pretty, forty-ish blonde woman. They had located a mysterious, ancient-looking coffin with unidentifiable markings all over it, and were trying to discern where it came from.

They eventually got the coffin open to reveal the perfectly preserved corpse of an Asian man who looked liked he had lived centuries before. For some reason they loaded the coffin/body into an empty boxcar on a train.

As the train moved, the blonde investigator and I were the only ones in the boxcar with the coffin. She opened a book she had found and began reading a spell from it. The markings on the coffin began to light up, and then little tentacle-like wisps of glowing smoke began streak from them.

The smoke coils wrapped round and round the woman as she read, until finally she began convulsing and light shot from her eyes!

I took such a start that I woke up!

Squatters in a Hotel

MORNING OF DECEMBER 27, 2010

I was in a large facility that basically looked like a posh hotel, only it was very obviously abandoned and in the early stages of decline. Many people had begun living there like "squatters", and I was among them. There was a feel as though this were some sci-fi movie, and masses of people were being forced to live like this because of some tragedy or disaster.

I had met up with an ex-girlfriend among the throngs of squatters, and we were sitting on the floor in an area, just talking. Suddenly she confronted me, accusing me of being "an atheist", and really insulting me about it. Then an intercom announcement called me to the "office" of this facility.

I remember a long walk in which I took in the scenery of all the masses huddled around in this formerly fancy hotel. Apparently all of the rooms were filled, because a lot of the people had set up boxes or tents along the hallways. One group of people had a structure that looked like a big version of the old Fisher Price "Little People" barn!

There was very little light to walk by. Only the emergency lighting was on at this time. Finally I arrived at "the office" I had been called to. Some woman was in charge, and I had to wait to see her because she wanted to talk to me. About this time the dream simply changed.

Now I was in line to meet "Weird Al" Yankovic. At his table were a variety of watercolor prints featuring subjects like rain forests, toucans, kangaroos, etc. He was signing these for people, though they weren't his paintings. I couldn't figure out the connection.

iPod Animations

MORNING OF DECEMBER 25, 2010

My car was in the shop for some reason. My dad was supposed to have left his car at the shop for me to drive home after I dropped mine off. I couldn't find it, so I just started walking around. It was fairly late in the evening, and I was in a large city.

I was playing with my iPod as I walked, only it looked more like a futuristic iPod Touch rather than my real Classic. The menu screen had realistic animations of colored, polished stones. It's difficult for me to describe how it looked or seemed to work.

Finally I remember being in a hotel room. There was a huge animated wall display that simulated the "shiny stones" animation from the iPod earlier. Only there was also the silhouette of a dancing girl incorporated into the animation. And then, without any particular notice, the girl was in my room with me. We began talking a bit flirtatiously.

The Weird Indoor Playground/Games Area

MORNING OF DECEMBER 26

I remember the band Metric had released either a (fictional) new single or a new album called "Bastard". I was discussing it with some friends on Twitter, and intended to purchase it when I had a chance.

Then I remember leaving a hotel room with Lisa. We met some strange lady that spoke to us briefly, but I can't recall the conversation. On our way out of the hotel we passed through a gift shop. I saw a Metric T-shirt for the new "Bastard" song, and I also saw a cool T-shirt which featured a mash-up of "Scott Pilgrim" and "How to Train Your Dragon".

Next we were in a room that looked like an indoor playground. There were many tall slides, including one that was somehow designed to look like a scene from "Indiana Jones". At the bottom of the slide, you slid into a fake snake pit.

There was also a bowling alley in this area, only you had to slip and slide down the alley and crash into the pins with your body instead of a ball. It was bizarre! And at some point we were informed that this wacky play area was all owned by Snoop Dogg.

About this time I went to the restroom. Guys in their kept coming up to me and telling me they liked my "Fatback & Skinny McLean" comics. I sadly haven't given much attention to those characters in the past few years, so I wondered how these people were so familiar with them--and why every man in the bathroom seemed to be a fan!

When I returned to me friends, they explained that was a "gay bathroom" and Fatback & Skinny had become very popular in the gay community.

Eric and I went into a gift shop and they had holograms of pets! Just little semi-translucent projections of cats or dogs that you could interact with. They were really cool.

When we left the gift shop to return to the bowling area, we saw Richard was now trying it. He'd devised a special method for slamming into the pins head-first, and we thought it looked painful.

Ice Cream or Wrestling

MORNING OF DECEMBER 24, 2010

In real life there is a local "meetup" group I sometimes attend in which people meet up to go see a movie and have dinner. In my dream, I was in an amusement park with Lisa. We were debating whether to leave the park and go attend the movie meetup, or to stay in the park and have ice cream there.

We must have decided on the ice cream, because I remember buying two cones, and then I went back to where Lisa had been, but she was no longer there. It seemed liked I looked for her for ages, while eating my cone and trying to keep hers from melting all over the place.

Eventually I found her in a room that looked like a small gym. People were in wrestling gear (like the high school sport, not the WWE stuff). She told me it was the co-ed "wrestling meetup" and she'd decided to attend that group instead of the movie one. She was getting ready to go at it with some brunette girl.

Mangrel

MORNING OF DECEMBER 18, 2010

Apparently I was creating a silly superhero comic book. It was called "Captain Amazing" or something to that effect. I had just come up with an idea for a villain to use in the comic who was half man/half dog. I named him Mangrel (like "Mongrel"...get it?). In the dream I thought this was the funniest pun, and I immediately showed it to Lisa. I actually woke myself up laughing, only to realize it wasn't really very funny.

There was another dream later on: In real life I recently returned from a trip to Disney World with Lisa and friends. In my dream we were still there. For some reason I was alone in our hotel room at the Grand Floridian for a few minutes. I was trying to do something on my cell phone, but it kept shutting down and rebooting and otherwise acting strangely. Eventually I got a message on the screen saying that it had been infected by a virus!

Amusment Parks and Detective Work

MORNING OF DECEMBER 12, 2010

First I have vague memories that I had been talking online to a fellow cartoonist that I mutually follow in the deviantART community online. In the dream we had fictionally delved into a lengthy correspondence about some sort of topic I can't recall.

Next I remember being at an amusement park of some sort with several friends. I also saw and recognized the girl from the deviantART correspondence. I tried to say hello in person, but with all the crowds we somehow got separated.

Later I did see her and speak to her and she freaked out, calling me a stalker. Somehow she could not comprehend that I had just randomly seen her at the amusement park.

Some more vague memories of my friends and I doing things at the park, and then suddenly it becomes a crime drama. We witnessed a guy stealing a bicycle and a German shepherd somehow simultaneously, and we chased him.

Then my friend Eric and I split from the group and became detectives, searching the whole city (yes, the whole city, not the amusement park) for clues as to where they guy went with the bike. We eventually found him in a shabby apartment complex and arrested him.

The final memory of the dream was riding on a train discussing this caper with Mulder and Scully from The X-files. Mulder was amused, Scully was unimpressed.

The Sinking Ship Disaster

MORNING OF DECEMBER 11, 2010

In my first memory, I am on a cruise ship. I have never actually been on board one, so the dream environment is based on ships in movies, and is most especially comparable to the Titanic.

I was in a long line of people were standing single file against a wall in one of the hallways. There was obviously some kind of emergency and we'd been told to wait here for further instruction. A woman around my age was in front of me in the line, and we talked for a bit about our mutual fears of whatever danger we were in.

But I really had to go to the bathroom. An official let me step out of line and go do that, but then I returned to my place. Now, instead of being fictional, the woman in front of me was an ex girlfriend. We resumed talking and began to catch up with each other.

During this time we learned the danger was the fact that the ship was sinking. As my ex and I sat and talked, the hallway gradually began to tilt at an angle, with the part of the ship ahead of us going down and the part behind us tilting up. Even as this slow-yet-terrifying process continued, my ex and I were still talking.

We began to make amends for things in the past. I think neither of us really wanted to be back together, but it felt good to be able to "bury the hatchet".

Eventually, I had to pee again. This time there was a row of port-a-potties lines up against one of the walls near us. I went into one. By now the ship was sinking very deeply so the hallway--and indeed the port-a-potties--were tilted at an extreme angle. This made my business very daunting.

I returned to my place in line again, and my ex and I continued to talk. The lights went out. You could hear the sound of creaking metal, things breaking, and fellow passengers crying and praying.

In my next memory, my ex and I are running through the cabin where I was staying on the ship. It looked a lot like the bedroom I had as a teenager, but it was slanting and falling apart with the ship. I remember finding a model of something that looked like a "steampunk" version of Garfield, and a Curious George comic book was on the floor. It made me wonder how many kids were on the sinking ship.

After this, we ran outside, and were no longer on the ship but were coming out of the a building in the middle of a city late at night. Even though the sinking ship no longer factored in, there was still imminent danger. This is because the city was under attack from some sort of apparently alien force. They were giant and robotic--I remember thinking they looked like the "Transformers" in the movies.

The city was mostly on fire, and destruction was raining down. My ex and I saw a car parked in a driveway and jumped in. But instead of using it to attempt to drive to safety, we just huddled and cowered in the back seat. As though this car would offer and protection against the outside carnage, were it to make its way to our exact location.

Somehow, in what were probably our last moments, we began to make out. But we had only just started when suddenly a group of people in HazMat/bio-hazard suits approached the car. They told us to get out and ushered us to safety in a nearby garage.

Safely inside the garage, the bio-hazard suits came off and to reveal a rag-tag group of survivors, the leader of whom looked like Rob Lowe. Only the Rob Lowe dude was flamboyantly gay. They gave us the tour of the garage, which was outfitted to look like a beauty salon/barber shop.

The Rob Lowe character was explaining to us his master plan--when society begins to rebuild itself, people would need to get haircuts! Around this time, I woke up. I REALLY had to go to the bathroom. The end.