A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

I am still having election dreams. They fit into the current timeline; early this morning I stubbornly hallucinated that I was following along with John McCain's continuing adventures, following his defeat. Unlike before, my mood about it was more merely curious than anxious.

Come to think of it, all my election dreams have been McCain-centered. I just can't let him go. Why, John. Whydja do it.

(This was maybe triggered by a pretty good 90-minute Frontline doc about Lee Atwater that I watched last night. It's being rerun about 50 times this week; check your local listings.)

Do you ever wake yourself up laughing? I believe this to be one of the most underappreciated activities humans can engage in, though it be involuntary. It happens to me once a year, perhaps.

Happened early this morning. In the course of my dream-self's travels, I encountered a machine which, after you urinated into a pocket in its side, dispensed ketchup. I'm sure this was meant to be some sort of unsettling psycho-sexual construct, but instead it struck me as so hilarious that the dream gave up and kicked me out. I continued laughing for several moments after waking.

---

Only a couple of weeks ago I had a more traditional dream, but one with an image so striking that it's stayed with me as if it were a memorable and surreal story I read long ago.

There was, you see, a certain monastic sect, who for time immemorial had run a school. The school itself wasn't very unusual, but for a single tradition: when one of the teaching monks achieved a singular level of age, wisdom, and respect, his brethren would recognize this by ceremonially decapitating him, replacing his head with that of a taxidermized stag - an animal which this sect revered as a symbol of wisdom. The monk so honored would continue to teach in this state for the rest of his life, which could sometimes involve several years, even though the procedure rendered him mute.

In my dream, I learned about all of this the same way nearly everyone else in the world had - through the Internet, because this sect happened to have performed this rare ceremony for the first time since the advent of blogging, with no anticipation of the level of surprise and lurid scrutiny that they would bring down upon themselves. As I woke, a couple of weeks had passed since the story broke, and I was only starting to wonder how it all worked, since as far as I knew they didn't transplant the brain...

Even though I'm not planning a trip any time soon my subconscious has been laboring to make me feel better about air travel. I don't know why this is... it's just been occurring to me lately that it might be nice to fly somewhere, and I won't freak out about it this time. Sounds like a plot device, doesn't it? Except that the VALIS wasn't programmed very well because I don't have any destination in mind so it's not like I'm actually doing anything about it.

I dreamed last night that classicaljunkie and I were waiting somewhere for something, and I entertained her by mimicking an airline pilot's intercom drawl about how we were in a holding pattern folks but we'd be comin' in pretty soon and here are some facts about the temperature and time down there, and it sure does look like a lovely day.

Had two dreams that seemed to be different faceplates on the same core anxiety:

1. I spent all my money on a beautiful new Intel Mac - but I forgot that it was a laptop that I wanted, and ended up with a perfectly redundant desktop machne!

2. I rented a Zipcar and had a jolly and rewarding drive - and realized, back home and 15 minutes after my time was up, that I had returned it to the wrong spot!

I had a couple of clear dreams earlier this week.

A: Several friends were hanging out in my kitchen. tahnan, in the voice he uses for such bon mots, responded to someone else by saying "You know, if Peter Jackson were here, he'd be lord of himself." This was hilariously funny in whatever the context was.

I think this is the second time I've blogged about dreams where tahnan says things that are (to me alone) parodies of how he talks in real life.

People were helping themselves to milk from my refrigerator, and I was surprised that it wasn't spoiled. You can interpret this in all sorts of scandalous ways but I think it's actually me being sad about how my fridge needs a good cleaning.

B: I had a paper bag full of little snacky goodies, and was trudging through the wilderness, trying to make it home with them. But a skunk was following me; it wanted the goodies. I couldn't shake it off, and I was afraid it would attack me. At least twice I tried sacrificing one of the goodies, tossing it to the ground, and the skunk would go after it and start pawing at it... but when I got moving again it would abandon it and follow me again.

It was quite disturbing.

I had a very detailed dream this morning. It actually came on the heels of what felt like an unsettling nightmare; I was on a bus or tram, and fidgeting that I had forgotten something important. But then the vehicle stopped and I found a good friend of mine waiting to greet me, and the whole tone shifted.

I think I was visiting her, and had not seen her in a long time. We were close enough pals that I wasn't shy about touching her (my way of greeting her was to muss up her short dark hair), and yet we had somehow fallen completely out of touch. While taking me to her home, she started to talk about her young child, and I was caught off guard, not realizing that she even had one. For some reason, I chose to fake it and act as if it were no surprise. When we arrived at her house I got to meet the child, whose name was Robin: a healthy, precocious toddler wearing overalls and short blond hair.

The thing has has me remember the dream was that my friend, as a single parent, had decided to raise the kid as androgynously as she could. Besides the ambiguous name and way that she dressed the child, she had taught Robin to answer the question "Are you a boy or a girl?" by saying "Relax!" In other words: it's not really important that you to know, so don't worry about it. Invariably the questioner, confused, would ask again, and the kid would repeat, emphatically: "Re... lax!" Smiling the whole time.

I was really bothered by this last detail, thinking my friend was taking a legitimate philosophy and applying it with very poor judgment by using her pre-sentient kiddo as a mouthpiece, but couldn't work up the gumption to say anything to her face about it. Instead I resolved to write about it in my LJ once I got back home. I remember thinking that I might want to refer to Robin as "he", and when my friend would object to this, I'd counter that Robin must be a boy "because boys have short hair," knowing that my friend (a through-and-through female who identified as such) had a boyish haircut. This may sound kind of acid but we were actually close enough friends that she'd take it the way I'd intend it. However that may have been; I'm not really sure, writing this now. I don't think I was quite myself in this dream. I found it very interesting anyway.

Had a subtly nasty nightmare last night. Were I one to write horror stories I would spin the basic premise into a story most terrible. As it is I feel the dream is wasted on me, so I'll just write about it.

( Zzzz )

For two nights in a row I have had dreams about the Celebrated Micturating Automata of Prague. I think in both cases someone had chosen to send me a message through them, and I was frustrated because I couldn't understand it.