Sun - November 23, 2003

It ain't over yet


"and plus means and"

Late afternoon dreams about killing children with piano wire and by crushing their chests with my foot. Turns out, I'm not exactly up to describe it here. The little solar-plexis area just caved in and they cried a lot. But, like I said, it is suddenly something I don't want to document.

Guess there is a long way to go still.

Posted at 05:28 PM     Read More  


Wed - November 19, 2003

Locked doors


"Sleep, sleep, I know that I'm only dreamin'. "

Last night I was scrambling for my sleeping bag that was tossed on the sofa of the apartment I don't have. Matthew (the big do nothing guy of old) had just arrived and climbed through the window. The window detail was incredible in my dream. I can still see the wind-out mechanism and the brushed aluminum frame that is so typical of a cheap apartment building. Anyway, Matthew climbed in as the Lord of the Rings behind the scenes DVD was ending. I explained that I was going to sleep at Lisa's house. He told me he needed a place to sleep because Cassie (his wife) was angry with him and he was moving out. I told him he could sleep on the couch, but what I meant was the couch as Lisa's house. In the dream it WAS the couch I was just sleeping on in my non-real apartment. I meant THAT couch. But I also meant that he would be sleeping at Lisa's. "Crashing on the floor" as it were.

The main emotional part to the dream was the leaving. I was in a panic to find my socks. I was looking for my keys and couldn't find them. I explained to Matthew that the keys I hadn't found would work at Lisa's house because she has no locks on her door. Therefore, the non-keys would work. In the dream it was as if I had found the non-set of keys. There was the finding event I mean, though there was no object found. Emotionally it was still a finding and then a reasoning that no keys must fit no locks...or all locks that aren't there. In terms of psychological placeholders, it was working in my dream.

We left my apartment but couldn't lock the doors or windows of the place as (again) I had no keys. We ran around the inside and locked every door from inside and then we were going to climb out the window when I woke up.

Posted at 07:13 AM     Read More  


Tue - November 18, 2003

It is all digital


"The universe is based on sullen entropy. It falls apart as it goes on..."

Night before last I had a series of dreams that MUST be drawn from the recent lecture called "Plenty of Room at the Bottom" about miniaturization. This isn't some lecture on making small parts, it was about extreme miniaturization in making factories and printed matter that is measured in angstroms. But, it feeds nicely into how a CD is burned and the very technologies that became (30+ years later) the computer age.

Anyway, I was sitting in the kitchen I had drawn when I was a kid in school...about 3rd grade. You don't know about it, but I do because I lived it. It was a kitchen table with George Washington and Abe Lincoln sitting having a discussion about pizza. Long story there. Outside the window (and the reason I won an award for the picture when I was a kid) was a canon shooting pizzas at the long lines of troops for each side. Why were Abe and George seemingly the two sides? I dunno, I was a kid. But, that was the setting for my dream anyway. It was drawn in crayon and an unsteady hand.

Behind me on one side was the window that in my picture had the shooting pizzas, but it actually had two smokestacks. They were drawn but looked like the Battersea powerplant from the cover of Animals. The two smokestacks were opposite the window that wouldn't have been drawn in my picture (it would be behind the viewer). In that window was a single smokestack like the one in the photo I took of the Slow Poisoners at Toxic Beach.

Anyway, as I sat and talked about narcotic pain killers with George and Abe, and George showed Abe his wooden teeth to Abe showing George his wooden leg (yeah, forget the history here), the smokestacks would spit smoke puffs. The order was paramount in the dream. First the two, then the one, then back. It was actually the entire Encyclopedia encrypted in the digital puffs of smoke. That was the point of the dream.

George and Abe got into an argument about what kind of wood was used to make the teeth and leg and when I suggested it was made of the tree George cut down the two of them got really pissed at me and I woke up before reading the end of the encrypted message. I woke up feeling very unsettled like I had missed the ending.

Posted at 07:20 AM     Read More  


Sun - November 16, 2003

Bounce and Squish


"It's all in how you look at it, really."

Well, you will have to learn a thing or two before this dream makes any sense. And then it is only the setup or catalyst that makes sense really. So what?

I think my dream was prompted by the Shrek 2 preview. See, I was thinking that the Shrek 2 animation really isn't as good as Pixar's. It is all computer-wonderiferous for sure, but they seem to sorta over-do it. Specifically, in Shrek 2 the mouths are way less realistic. The speaking seems to articulate the mouth less in every way and the approximations are ok on the extreme "accents" that there are (Shrek's specifically) but they are just a little loose. Woody in Toy Story was a LOT more engaging in terms of how the visuals seemed to go with the audio.

The real thing that was bugging me with Shrek 2 is the degree to which they over-use (my judgement here) the bounce and squish. In animation things don't look realistic if you just move them. If a rubber ball bounces, it is very unsatisfying to move it to the table top plane and then back. You have to have it squish a little (distort with the momentum) and then wobble as it comes to a halt. The way an animator uses that has everything to do with "selling" the properties of the thing moving to the audience. If jello falls from a table it is different than if an anvil does. Or, you can make an anvil squash and it looks more cartoonish. Get me?

In Shrek 2 the fish (that is cut in two) and the pig (bounced up on the table) both wobble WAY TOO much. The fish would have to be jelly and the pig rubber. It just bugged me every time I saw it in the previews.

That brings me to the wind up fish dream. Last night I had a dream that there were these fish that were made in segments of metal (silver plate actually) and they were clockwork. They were in this stream of a light grade oil (like 3 in 1) and they had to be wound up to swim from one end to the other where they were fed sprockets and springs and such and sent down a conveyer belt to the bottom of the stream again. The crank that wound them up went through the middle of the fish (below the fin on the side) and locked in a very specific way and then the fish was wound and let go.

In my dream I remember that the fish were really way too jiggly to be realistic even though they were made of metal. I was also obsessed with the idea that the metal would rust in the water until I was told by John Cleese (again Shrek 2) that the water was oil. I vaguely remember some reference to Osama Bin Laden here but I don't remember it well enough to properly comment.

At one point I was winding the fish and it started bleeding and at another point I was taking one apart and it shocked me. Finally Stephen Hawking who was playing the part of Richard Feynman started to explain to me that the fish had miniaturized brains in them and that I must have hit the brain as it was the only part that had blood in it to speed up the processing. I asked Hawking why he could talk all of a sudden and he said it was only because he had to to make it possible to play the part of Feynman. Weirder still is that he had to write that down on a chalkboard because the question had been put to HIM not Feynman....so, naturally, he couldn't talk to answer it.

I woke up in a sleeping bag with a cat chewing my foot.

Posted at 07:11 PM     Read More  


Wed - November 12, 2003

Drips


"ploink"

The first real sleep in days has brought with it the rains. It really did rain outside, but in my dreams there were lots of leaks and some serious drips. I ran from room to room trying to stop water that was welling up outside under the door-jambs. I kept throwing dishtowels to sop up the water and then I'd notice that the wind outside was blowing water through the window seals. I would put towels there and stuff them into the creases between the window and the wall. Then the ceiling would drip. The thing is, each leak was "discovered" by me in another room. I'd be in a kitchen room fixing a leak and then I'd have to run upstairs to block some other leak. I'd go through the living room to find water pooling in the fireplace. It was a super-panic dream. While I was doing that each room had some freaking thing happening in the background. Ted Kennedy and Johnny Carson were in black and white in the laundry room and Kennedy was in boxers and socks with suspenders. Carson was talking to him with a wireless microphone that he was going to use to show the audience the inside of an upright dryer. In the yard there were these circus people who would fall on their sides (into mud puddles) and pretend to be dead if they thought I was watching. Somehow I could turn that value on and off (them knowing I was watching) without actually turning away. They were all in colour against the brownish mud and bricks in the backyard. I got really worried about wether anyone had cleaned up after the dog. In the mud it would have been impossible to tell.

I had another dream that there was electricity in things it didn't belong in. Sandwiches and billiard balls all had electric charge and I had to sort out how to carry any number of odds and ends in a same bag. The concern was that a certain combination would cause a reaction and shock me. I think this is actually some strange fusion of the goddam Survivor episode last night (curse that show) and the section of Richard Feynman's book about Los Alamos and how they handled the enriched materials. How can you tell?

Right before I woke up (late because I managed to switch off the alarm clock during a snooze alarm) I was dreaming about horses that were bleeding where the jockey's legs rubbed. No one was stopping the race but at the photo finish they were retouching the pictures to hide the wear-marks from the legs. I did see a black and white photo of Seabiscuit yesterday in a frame shop. Maybe that sparked it. The blood, well, that's my own original work.

Posted at 07:21 AM     Read More  


Tue - November 11, 2003

My life is a blog category fusion


"Couldn't be any different"

Fell asleep for a snapshot of reality. That is, for that length of time. I may be sleeping now. I was up all night and spent the bulk of the day fucking up things at work. Tricky part is that work has actually been harder than usual (in all respects) and I have become less and less fit to deal all the way around.

But, in my splintered moment of sleep today after work I had one of those package-deal dreams in which there is no real sense of time, just a deep sense of plot. The entire story of the dream is there in a flash, but it is elaborated like it took the hours or days to unfold. Maybe it is a dream zip archive. Wait, I mean, stuffit.

I dreamed that I was working at the Monterey Bay aquarium when Ron dropped in with my kids and wife to ask me why I posted what I did about him on this blog. (I told you it is getting weirder to be me) He was playing with my kids and explained that he really WAS angry and that is why he spent so much time showing Janet the keys to joy and facing fears. Then he said he enjoys my kids because he always felt he had the wisdom of children.

Right in the middle of talking he turned to Janet and smacked her hard across the face with the back of his hand and then laughed and said, "yeah, like that!"

I guess I was working at the information booth because I was wearing a conductor's hat (as in train) and talking while looking at my pocket watch. Ron wanted to know why I commented about the impression his penis made. He demanded I mention Ray's tapering, bending penis. I told him it wasn't the right category for that sort of post and he hit Janet again.

Finally I handed him a brochure and said I was concerned that I had dropped below a certain threshold with regard to the comments about Curtis. I said I was going to give him some free passes to the park. Then it became clear that my subconscious is even more harsh than my waking, destructive-minded self.

In the dream Ron told me that I was wrong about him not calling Curtis back. He said his not calling Janet (or me) back when she was suicidal was because he didn't want to push her over the edge.

Still, the strangest part of all this is that the whole scene was jammed into my head in a flash. I don't think I nodded off for more than a minute or two in reality.

I think I'm starting to defy categorization.

Oh, thanks to those of you who wrote me back. I'll have a post later about the next project, for which I think I'm going to need to raise some cash. Animators, please apply here.

Posted at 07:02 PM     Read More  

Rape


"It was the anxiety that hurt actually"

I didn't dream last night. I was awake all night. Or was I? Last night I got raped. I tried to get away and then again and again. Still, I got raped. I had someone invade my body and when I said "no" I was the one who was evil. The rapist was insistent and wouldn't stop. The rapist kept pushing and trying to touch me. The rapist threatened me by saying there was "nothing to lose" and continuing no matter how much the rapist admitted that I didn't want this done to me.

In the end I ran away. Then the rapist told me, in so many words, I was overreacting. It was my fault. I shouldn't have worn the short skirt or been available. It was my fault.

TheRapist...no, not really.

I woke up already being awake and decided that today was a day to leave alone. In the end I almost called the cops to stop The Rapist from self destruction. Cops are a credible threat I suppose because all talk ceased upon the mention of authority. I haven't had a peaceful moment since. The cops can't stop TheRapist. It is a tangle.

I can just run away.

Posted at 10:57 AM     Read More  


Wed - November 5, 2003

Auctions and Swashbuckling


"He's the guaranteed eternal, sanctuary man."

Spent all night in some freakish world outside. It was something like Big Basin park and something slightly darker than that. There were definitely lots of big trees and the ground was composite soil, that sort of thing. I was in this weird sword fighting/adventure thing most of the night except that there was this underpinning that was all about eBay. I'd go get my weapon or outfit from this auction page and sometimes I was actually attacked before the auction ended. I had to run away then. I also snuck up on some people inside and outside this fort-like area. There was Yoda with a light sabre and knights from Monty Python. Some of them were action figures and turned out not to move. So, I got hold of this branch/antler thing and went to the castle area. Everytime I killed someone I got feedback on my eBay seller's feedback page. The thing is, on eBay there is a notation on how old the comments are. In my dream the columns were for how old my victims were. There was also a column/distinction made between good and bad guys killed as well as how well I killed them. It wasn't actually a dream much about killing or adventure or violence. It feels more like a dream about order or organization. It was very complex and as if this was the ONLY way it could have been. The killing and running around was more about the content that needed being put in line.

Posted at 06:04 AM     Read More  


Sun - November 2, 2003

No survivors


"There's a plane down. There's a plane down."

Night two on the floor in a sleeping bag. There is something reassuring about a sleeping bag that I think comes from being wrapped so tightly in a cocoon like that. No matter. It was a night of many dreams, even a replay.

First dream had me on the freeway watching a mini-airplane flying overhead. Janet was in it flying it. It was a fully formed or designed airplane, but it was super small in real life. It didn't matter in the dream that it would be impossible for a person to fly in it. Anyway, the plane hit a tree along side the freeway and I pulled over to see what happened. The little airplane was broken and sitting at the base of a tree when I got to it. I had parked my car on the shoulder and when I looked for the pilot (Janet), the plane was empty. I looked up in the tree and noticed that a bunch of Star Wars characters were placed all in the branches. I spent some serious time looking to see if there had been a pilot and collecting Star Wars figures. Eventually I saw that Janet was hanging up in the tree branches but by that point the cops had come and were towing my car away. I had to drive backwards down the freeway to the substation. Don't ask how it is that I was driving to go get my car. It just worked in the dream. I had to exaggerate that there was a plane crash to get the cop to let me have my car back. That sounds odd, but really, I had to exaggerate (I knew this in the dream) but what I was telling the cop was actually what had happened. I just had a sense that I was blowing it way out of proportion to get they guy to listen. I got my car and filled the trunk with Star Wars guys.

I had a repeat of the dream in which the bully is messing around with the helpless kid with no pants. Just like last time, the kid was scared and the bully was doing some non-descript thing that made me know that he was molesting and hurting the kid. The kid started to urinate on the guy out of fear and I woke up again.

Last and certainly not least, I had another fishing dream. This time the fish were huge (as they always are) and I was trying to catch them from in the water. I mean I had a pole and all that but I was in the water swimming. I noticed that I could cast in ANY direction this way. It was like I could fish "up" from my point or left or right or even down as usual. It was fishing in three dimensions. The fish were gigantic and their mouths were frightening, but I was trying to catch them. There was some undertone of museums too, but I can't figure out if I was in a museum or if I was catching the museum's fish or what. I just remember thinking of brown leather and glass cases with alarms set in case you lean too close to the exhibits.

Posted at 04:00 PM     Read More  


Tue - October 28, 2003

Fucking mice


"When the cat is asleep"

Last night I was trying to put a little white mouse in a baby sleeper. It was fleece with a little opening for his head. Thing is, I set the little mousie down on the floor to look at him in his outift and he popped out and started scurrying along the baseboards toward the orange cat. The cat was Lisa's cat in the dream and she was very worried (she was there off screen). I kept running at the mouse to catch him, and then the cat would run at the cat and I'd have to direct my attention to scaring the cat, which would scare the mouse. The mouse went for the heater vent (the one from the place where Tom and Adrienne's shower was actually). I went into a panic and something that hasn't happened since only once before...years ago. A boom mic fell down into view and I started yelling at the sound guy and woke up.


I guess filming had to stop.

Posted at 08:23 AM     Read More  


Mon - October 27, 2003

Too scary to face the light of day


"There are things in the night that are better not to behold"

No entry except to say that last night's dreams were too disturbing to relate. ALL FUCKING NIGHT! Enough said.

Posted at 11:27 AM     Read More  


Sun - October 26, 2003

Broken dreams


"Broken line, broken dreams,...streets are paved with broken beds"

Last night I had a dream I broke my leg crawling down a hole to get TR out. I got him out and for some reason I had to break his and Syd's legs to make them match mine as a family. Weird and traumatic stuff too. They were doing what any kid would when told that legs must be broken. And I did it. I put them both, one at a time, on this gap between a fallen tree and a rock and jumped down with my elbow hooked over their knees. It crunched like when you take the turkey leg off the turkey at Thanksgiving. I did Syd first because she was wanting to leave and I told her it would be easier to stay if she couldn't walk. I didn't want to hurt them in the dream, but the rules of the dream were that I had to for whatever fucked up reason. TR was crying when I yelled at him to stay still. My legs were broken and I don't quite get how they allowed me to break the kids' legs. But, once broken I put them in a shopping cart and we rolled it down to this fabric store where they have ice cream that serves up in little squares. We ate it and no one minded that we had just gone through hell. TR did at one point call us the "broken leg team" and we laughed at the weird people who didn't have broken legs.

What a brainfuck.

Posted at 06:30 AM     Read More  


Sat - October 25, 2003

Planet of the Apes and Howdy Doody


"I'm a puppet, a puppet in a Hollywood movie, and it's not even a good one"

Slept so much too much that all I did was dream last night. Wish I hadn't. Didn't have nightmares, per se. I did have disturbing dreams. I will surely get the order wrong because it was as close as you get to a lucid state without being there. It was that heavy dreaming that wakes you up with all sorts of residue all over you. Dream-lag or something. I think Jon Carrol called it dream creep. No matter.

Last night I was in some weird show that was driven by a big computer that was controlled by these large, tear-off sheets of paper on which illustrations gave the characters and the alignments and temperament of the creature. There were all sorts of autographs around the things too. When the machine would go, it was run like an exhibit at Marine World or something like that, it would light up and smoke and do any number of loud things and I'd be in some scene with these creatures. There were Marines, monkeys, big robots. It was all about being chased or having to kill these things. I had one particularly disturbing dream in which I caught the thing only to have it look pleasant to me. It was kind and was crying and told me it was having a dream that I was chasing it. I had to kill it right up close and personal, but it kept insisting I was a monster from the drawings that had come out to get it. It was actually kinda feminine, so I'll say 'her'. Anyway, I killed her. She screamed and it was pretty horrible. Hey, it was a dream, I was under contract. Actually, that is exactly how it felt. It felt like I had to for whatever reason. (armchair psychotherapists get your pens going) Thing is, when I killed her I was back at the beginning part. I was looking at the big machine and at the papers. I realized I hadn't signed some of the papers, not that I had previously signed any of them. I started signing my name in a big sharpie and it really stood out as being "added on" compared to the other signatures. I was in a sort of panic that I'd be caught doing it when a monkey (like planet of the apes mokey) came out and yelled at me for making the whole thing a forgery.

Turns out, my dreams are not authentic.

Posted at 08:11 AM     Read More  


Fri - October 24, 2003

Homestar Runner


www.homestarrunner.com

In a sweaty state of fever and pain unlike any other I was awake off and on today. It was a migraine unlike any I've had in weeks. I laid down. I fell asleep and didn't. I also dreamed a panic-state sorta dream in which I was afraid being brought so low with a headache meant my friends at work were seeing the new Homestar Runner cartoon without me. I then sorta had a shift in the dream-y state in which I couldn't figure out if the new cartoon was due out THIS week or next. I mean, the preview said, "see the new cartoon next week" but I couldn't come to any comfort about the real meaning of "next" in that context. I guess it was clearly the confusion of dreaming and no level of confusion or fear was anything compared to the feeling that my brain was twice its size. I also had a similar dream about making Aram sandwiches and how to roll them. Do they roll toward you or away? Is there a proper end for viewing them? Is it different in the Norther and Southern hemispheres? These are the thoughts of my doubly-large, swollen brain on no food, Imitrex and a migraine.

Posted at 10:36 PM     Read More  


Wed - October 22, 2003

Computer mice


"furry green eyes, in a furry green hole, it's a furry green atom bowl."

I was volunteering at the school last night in my dream. Seems to me I have an unusually high number of dreams that involve little kids and their fingers getting hurt. I have the dreams where they make little kids pick up hot things bare handed and the dreams of factories that look like Brazil (the movie) in which kids get fingers caught in gears and smashers of all sorts. It just seems to be something I frequent in my sleep. Last night was a new twist. I was in TR's classroom fixing the iMac that wasn't updating the escrip server properly. Actually, at the walk-a-thon the escrip website wasn't working right. But, anyway, I was taking it all apart and unscrewing the panel like you have to do on the older iMac. It was quite the detailed dream in that sense...very accurate. I pulled out the long memory cards, like the older iMacs have. Then I stuck my fingers into the shell of the computer to grab the Airport cable so I could unplug the card to remove it. The little wire looks like a mousetrap (really it does) and I have always though that so I suppose that is where the next part comes from.

Inside the case a mouse scurried from one side to the other. It was that startling kind of thing where you see a lot of motion and can't fix on the thing. It terrified me in the dream and I couldn't get my hand loose. It was stuck in the little wire of the Airport card mounting. I pulled my hand but it just wouldn't come free and the whole while the little shadowy figure inside the computer case kept scurrying and scampering in and around the tube CRT and the board and all the wires. It kept running up to my fingers and biting me and then running back and then coming around again. It was maddeningly frightening and it hurt. I kept pulling and trying to get free but then I realized that if I dropped the iMac off the desk it would break my arm when it fell to the floor. I couldn't panic physically and I couldn't get free. It was a lot like the build up in a shark movie. You know, the guy is in the water, he can't possibly swim out fast enough, and the fucking thing is coming. Sure, in my dream it was a mouse, but I'm a sensitive guy!

I never got free before I woke up. When I did wake up, though, my arm was under me and I had fallen asleep so hard on it that it was TOTALLY asleep. NO circulation at all. I was actually in a panic from the dream, but once I realized what was up I then realized I couldn't get my arm out from under me. I had to pull with the "awake" arm on my hand which I couldn't feel AT ALL. Very scary. I pulled and sorta jumped to let my body roll off me and then went through the pins-and-needles while my arm woke up. I thought of Sam's friend who had taken too much of some drug and had passed out, only to have his blood settle in the lower half of his body which eventually crippled him. It freaked me out a little so I sorta wiggled around to keep the blood going.

Posted at 07:30 AM     Read More  
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