Wednesday, December 24, 2008 4:13am The Badger Bachelor
I am a participant/contestant on some sort of dating-"reality" show; on a bicycle I am racing at high speeds on surface streets, verbally declaring my intent to break records making it to Venice. I make it through yellow lights, the visuals resembling cranked camera speed to simulate velocity.
Finally I make it to a a cul-de-sac, around the left of which is a high dirt cliff, a few feet off the ground of which is a dirt path on which a few other bikers converge. Despite seeming relatively level, gravity seems to be stronger, as though the path is extremely steep. The path is also slender enough one has to carry one's bike.
Over the nearby rise is a concrete walkway, to the right a building, to the left below appears to be a courtyard and wide pool. I am tempted to jump down where there's some sand, stretch off to the ocean, but resist, suspecting I could twist an ankle.
The pool turns out to be part of my date with a short-haired blonde woman in her mid twenties or so. The pool activity would be swimming with sea turtles. In the water I rise to the surface and find there is only about six inches of space to a ceiling at which there's air.
Later the girl and I stand somewhat next to each other: facing the same way but my right shoulder is behind her left shoulder; she turn her head to me and we kiss to the point of making out big time. It then appears I am both participating in the show while simultaneously viewing it on air.
The next day the group of people, paired up, are walking to find the show's host/facilitator. I have no idea as to the rules of the "game," but my blonde is still with me and is holding my hand, so I don't know if we've been paired up as a team a la Beauty and the Geek, or whether we're individuals, still attracted to each other from our date, and that I could be paired up with another girl for another date. I realize I also have no idea how contestants are to be eliminated from the game.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 5:23am Birds and bus tunneling
(Seemingly tame) birds begin to fly around inside a large gymnasium, including but not limited to owls, who do not prey on smaller birds also flying about. One horned owl descends and I nearly automatically extend my arm on which for it to land, but a woman in a nearby lounge-lawn chair quickly reminds me that would not be a good idea. Remembering I lack any leather over my arm, I quickly take her advice, and the owl casually lands on the floor.
The environment casually begin to shift into the front lawn of the [New Jersey] Montclair house. A man in a bit of a hurry is getting into his car, despite there being so many birds nearby. I urge almost to the point of demanding he be careful, lest any birds be hurt. My mother quickly goes to the end of the driveway where I see the driveway blocked by ladders sticking horizontally from trucks. I realize they're not on fire trucks, they're film production grip trucks. I follow and the guy's car nearly hits me as it slowly progresses towards the road. I bang hard on his hood for him to stop, which he does.
As it runs along the north side of the house/property, Mom and I walk the driveway towards the backyard, which is filled with production people. I pass a small Video Village set-up and I begin to wonder where is Craft Services. I see Mom heading up into the house via the back door into the kitchen.
"Wow," I realize and say to Mom. "This is the first time I've been in here in years." Dream Memory has me believing my mother still lives here, despite IRL she lived another ten years in another house and now elsewhere. Once inside she walks through the alcove to the large formal living room as I notice the difference/s in the kitchen. Suddenly I get a slight but definite thwack in the center of my back, almost a push. I turn around to see both the back door and the door to the back stairway both are closed. "Hey!" I call to my mother. "I think our ghost just welcomed me back!"
Mom does not respond from the other room, as I observe the substantial decor of the kitchen. The large table is missing, and the chimney wall from hallway door to beyond the door to the formal dining room are covered with small pieces of paper. On examination, they appear to be various artwork done by children and possible report cards, et al, which I suspect is either of my nephew and/or niece.
Mom re-enters the kitchen and heads to the door to the hallway, when she suddenly collapses. Thankfully I catch her, quickly asking her what's wrong. After a few tries to articulate, she finally tells me she's pregnant.
"Uh... I don't think so," I gently reply to my 80+ year old mother. She insists it's true, and I wonder how to remind her of when she went through menopause, but I sit her down as I point out maybe she should get a second opinion.
Dream Shift or Dream Fade:
I am heading around the south side of the house to the back where the backyard is massive: it's as though that part of the property line and around the back of the house is now a through street. I am walking along the far side of the "street" when a Los Angeles MTA bus barrels by, which somehow I suspect is the 163 route. It bears left with the road and I see a bus stop into which at top speed it plows. Somehow this is the side of a tall dirt hill, similar to the hilly section of Cahuenga heading south into Hollywood before it becomes Highland.
The bus has smashed into the dirt face of the hill, but continues to drive itself forwards, until it achieves creating a bus sized tunnel through the mountain. I am amazed at this, even more so that people at the bus stop hastily rush into the dust-filled tunnel as though trying to catch the bus.
I walk up to the Dream Character actors and background artists in the backyard, all of whom have elaborate beards. As I "know" them, I point out how/that I lived in this very house from around 1977 to 1988 or so, and they are very impressed with the synchronicity.

Friday, December 12, 2008 5:10am Lucid dreaming of work
I arrive at work to find my work area completely different, so much so that, having had such similar dreams previously, I literally suspect immediately that I am dreaming (which is impressive as the imagery was so very vivid as to indicate a very deep part of the REM cycle).
Most of the shelves have been removed, and what shelving is left are farther back, rendering the room larger, and the back wall is mostly missing, a few metal beams and supports remaining to indicate it had ever been there. Different types of boxes are on some of the shelves, and for no good reason I make the successful attempt at levitating, essentially to get a better look at a balding man between the shelving and the missing wall.
Despite technically being lucid dreaming, the vividness keeps me from being completely lucid, just mostly.

Monday, December 08, 2008 5:44am Skyscrapers and sign-in sheets
Skyscrapers and sign-in sheets My work area is suddenly overrun with several women I've never seen before, along with my coworker ["A"] to whom I generally report. The women are going through boxes and such looking not for what's normally there; several elaborate colour maps are spread out across my desk and over my laptop. "A" uses a small silvery laptop, the size of a portable DVD player, which also has various maps through which they're searching. To the side under a metal folding chair there is a large tangle of power cords, which I work at disentangling.
Suddenly the basement lights turn off. The nearby construction crew have apparently flipped the wrong switch again. Knowing the room well enough, I get to the gate but discover that it seems the lights are on, but I cannot see. Praying my irises need a bit of a jump-start, I go to switch on my cell phone pen light, and my right eye can see, but my left eye isn't. The pen light in the phone is extremely weak and I cannot seem to aim it properly at my eyes.
Dream Shift:
I have arrived at some audition on a very high floor of a super tall skyscraper. A casting director's assistant of such is having the people who've been called back fill out all aspects of the sign in sheet from a previous audition session. While I always fill out a sign in sheet properly, I do not have to, but I indicate never having seen this practice.
The rising sun causes an orange glare on the windows from behind me, ruining the distant view of numerous buildings far below. Even with cupped hands shielding my face against the glass the reflection of the sun behind me causes the deep orange glare.

Friday, December 05, 2008 4:32am Phones, fountains and kings
I emerge from a building deep within USC to find lawn sprinklers going off everywhere on the grass, enough to soak out the sidewalks. The sprinklers are shooting fonts of water high into the air. I am wearing a suit with socks and no shoes, and from my knees down are drenched. I get a call while I am literally dancing to avoid descending water, and I check to find a message from who I suspect is casting director Jeff Olan, notifying me of two probable gigs. I get to the end of the water gauntlet and pass a large residential building at my left, onto its front lawn of which I run to find a smooth surface on which to write the information. In retrospect, it is an exagerated version of the Montclair [New Jersey] house. The message is now very faint and I cannot make it out. I hear a woman's voice demanding to know "what [I'm] doing down there." I quickly get up to apologize and simulataneously depart hastily only to note she and some children are addressing the floorboards of the front porch. Somehow I deduce they are addressing a family pet that somehow I know is a cocker spaniel. I quickly head to the street anyway, and find myself at the top of a tall water slide. Ahead of me two people are on their way down, so I follow, at the bottom of which is an alcove of sorts in which some elderly sovereign king lies dying. He seems surpised I am there, as he's not sure if he knows me (apparently those already there were invited). Whatever ceremony or event being held there is ending anyway, and I head back and where was the water slide is now a long ramp, but people are coming down, unable to find a way out. "That's the way we all came in," I point out. "There has to be a way back that way." Meanwhile while I am still trying to recover Jeff Olan's message, my phone is emitting a soft message that it has been disconnected as its bill hasn't been paid. Quick mental memory tells me the due date is either that or the next day: I wonder almost aloud, why shut it off so ubruptly? I've even been several days late paying before without even monetary penalty. I make my way through the descending throng to find my way out to find a working computer online to which I can pay my cell phone bill...

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 4:43am Emptied work and crashing trains
I arrive at my work to find every file box and shelf gone: the entire room devoid of all but the green rug, which has clearly has been cleaned. I am aghast, simultaneously puzzled as to where the boxes all went and as to why I wasn't assigned to move them myself. As I walk to the center of the empty room, I notice at my left the wall is considerably farther away, with a very wide rounded archway about twenty feet high. Down the hallway are a few people standing at what I realize is a train platform, considering to the left of the platform a large black steam locomotive is approaching rather rapidly. I deduce that this must be the end of that train's line as its path leads to the wall at the left of the archway and subsequent platform. Realizing the train doesn't seem to be slowing, and even though I am a relatively safe distance away, I squat and prepare for the inevitable impact. The train passes the people on the platform, who also hit the deck, and for a moment the train is eclipsed by the wall making up the left side of the archway. The impact is so powerful and loud, that I am astonished there is not so much as a mark on the wall through which one would expect the engine to come crashing. But I do hear the crash and feel the vibrational concussion that it literally slams me awake.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008 4:13pm Intimacy in the workplace
I am at work, and come across a lightweight, eight and a half by eleven block of wood, about an inch thick. On it is attached a piece of 8 1/2x11 sheet on paper on which seem to be project instructions. I realize they are questions from one worker to another about a project I'm to do, but the names have been whited-out and my name replaced, indicating a strange hand-written memo with inquiries, that has been reasigned to me, for me to answer. I have no idea how long it's been there, but Dream Memory tells me it's the work of my college Audio Visuals department boss. I go upstairs to find everything decorated out in holiday fashions of various theme; all the doorways and arches have various versions of bead curtains and such. Passing one office I see inside almost all the furniture has been removed, the entire room filled with as an Under The Sea type theme, with countless large fish mobiles and such. "Somebody went way out," I mention to a coworker. The breakroom is filled with more people than probably actually work there, as well as a food buffet line. I acquire a small dish and plastic utensils and move along the line. Apparently it is pot-luck, one tub filled with chow mein, the next seems to be Fettucini Alfredo. My plate somehow has some sort of strands of something, sloshing around with olive oil or such. I back up to get a fresh plate with which to get the Fettucini Alfredo, when a Dream Character coworker friend gets on me, piggy-back style. I can see round to see her and she is not heavy though Dream Memory tells me she is massive. Dream Geography has my work area just around the corner from the break room; my desk has a desktop computer (as opposed to the laptop I usually use), but a game program is at the next desk which Dream Memory tells me is my boss's. The office area is unlike any place at which is work. It is at the end of a corridor but the walls are all glass looking out over a grassy lawn and hedges: not the sight one normally would see over ten flights up. As clearly either everyone is one a break or it's some kind of official office party, I go to play a game on it but someone approaches from down the corridor. I hastily go to alt-tab to the game to close it but cannot find it. I give up and vacate the desk before being seen. I walk down the corridor to see two Dream Character coworkers doing Far More than kissing. While the petite woman is clothed, they are actively engaged in physical congress beyond the social mores of an office party, considering they are in the hallway and not behind closed doors. She is clearly enjoying her "oral exam," as it were, and the man suddenly lifts her. To keep her from falling, I catch her by her shoulders and help lift, feeling a bit awkward, but she also doesn't seem to mind my assistance.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008 6:11am Penguins, cats and carriages
At the snow-covered front-yard next-door border of my Pompton Plains childhood home is a tall mailbox of sorts, almost like a sort of birdhouse with an openable front. It's opening is at my eye level. Inside it is filled with softball-sized chunks of ice and frozen snow, which I remove and toss into the nearby street. As I finish I notice there is a lot of water still inside, and while it's pouring out in multiple streams from the back, I know it would take a while to dry. Near the front door of house two women discuss the same issue, one indicating wanting to use the container as a Zero Room. Meanwhile I simply walk behind it and push forward the pole, and the water all falls forward and out onto the snow covered grass. "That'll work too," the woman concludes. Dream Shift: I've attended or I'm about to attend some sort of function being hosted by Jason. Dream Memory tells me I arrived with others via black, very classy Victorian-era open horse-drawn carriages, and that with the cast we were in the second coach. We are now headed to some after-party, and as I approach the two coaches, I find the first in line is empty, and those who'd come in the first coach before are now in the second one behind the empty one. I go to hop on but before I can take a seat, the two carriages start up down the driveway. I am still standing on the equivalent of a running board, and the jostling makes it dicey to move around. I begin to figure out the best way to swing up and into a seat, as the black-garbed people in the following second coach observe me. The coaches are also black, and the seats I notice are not multiseat but several seats, each black cushioned. I am sitting facing the rear, and I can hear Jason instructing the driver to go on through: apparently there is some massive mechanical device that parks cars, and the coach has to pass through it and not worry about the mechanism trying to move. I disembark and enter a massive light-brown wooden house on an upper floor. Jason's cameraman Bryan escorts me in as I head to the stairs to go downstairs where I see a fireplace is lit. Once downstairs Bryan heads down the hall to the kitchen; though not exact, the layout is similar to my Montclair home: the front hall, door, but instead of a wall heading to the formal dining room, it's a wider room with the fireplace to my right as I face the door. I notice movement outside and on opening the door three orange striped cats are sitting. One enters the house, and the other two are curious about the man standing on the porch with an open refrigerator, on one of the interior door shelves on which stands a small penguin wearing a small set of boots on his feet. He appears almost cartoon-like but he is not any of the penguins from the Madagascar films. He addresses the man and me but faces inside the 'fridge, leaning back and turning when he speaks, and while he does cross his arms as he speaks, Dream Fade removes about what he spoke.

Monday, November 03, 2008 5:29am Glass inventions and Sarah Silverman’s monkey
My family is gathered together in a room of a house not our own. I am sitting on a sofa against the wall, in front and at my left is my late father, worriedly going over multiple bills and an apparent financial crisis hitting the family. He has acquired the services of some sort of financial advisement company, and the results are on a large widescreen TV opposite me, a man standing there: no close-up, just from his knees up, similar to a weather-man shot. I remain unsure if it's live like a conference call or somehow pre-recorded. We sit cross-legged in front as the man on the screen first addresses me. He begins by saying, "You should stop thinking about the government so much." Unfortunately this obvious non sequitor causes me to be distracted about Why Would He Say That? so much that I hear nothing else he says or suggests or recommends to me, or what he says to the others. Later I attend an Invention Workshop of sorts. Apparently I learned too late that to attend one must bring along one's invention. As I don't have one yet, I hastily bring with me a large glass gas-lantern-like tube-covering for use with large-wide candles. Outdoors near a railing facing a beach, the always lovely Sarah Silverman proudly tells me she has trained her monkey how to read. The little squirrel monkey ignores the green store name embossed bag and hops to the middle railing, outstretching his arm towards the people on the beach below, and verbally exclaims like a learned-by-rote recitation: "Good little monkeys never point like this...!" Coming up behind the little primate I notice he is using his middle finger as his pointing finger, even pulling the finger back and extending it again to reiterate he's using his middle finger with which to point. Not surprisingly, Sarah finds this hilarious. I go back into the convention hall with its thick red hotel carpeting, having to pass through a multitude of people celebrating some sort of prom event. I bonk into a young fellow with crutches, but not enough to have him lose his balance. Two blue pens however, fall onto the floor, retrieved by a Dream Character I know to be named Angelica. She hands the pens to me and I notice there are now three of the identical pens. I give two back to the young man with crutches. I pass the long empty tables that earlier would have been the registration tables, and head into and through the large empty ballroom back to the smaller hallway like room in which the invention workshop was being held. My stuff is at my chair, and I pull up my left pants leg where apparently I've had the large glass tube stored. My sock has been stretched over it as well. I take off my shoe and remove the glass from around my leg as Dream Memory has me recall how the workshop facilitator was impressed with it, and no one recognized it as something relatively easy to acquire at like a Big Lots type of store.

Friday, October 31, 2008 6:02am Impeded running and coffin commercials
My brother and mother are working background on a commercial somehow on which I get booked. All I seem to know is that the storyline involves a UFO for some reason. I am taken to a large white tent which has no ceiling where I learn I am to be very featured. With me is Daniel, a young non-actor with whom I've done a few temp assignments. The AD or such says there's a big scene with a helicopter shot, and tells me I'm the guy who's "going to be in the coffin." I have no idea as to what the scene entail, so I figure it's a big funeral scene. The AD tells us we have to get to set. He points to the sky, asking if we see the helicopter. Daniel claims he can, while all I can see is a silver-metal 1940s era wing-propeller plane, barely moving in the sky despite being extremely close. The AD quickly tells us to follow him and then runs pell-mell off into a large warehouse like building. Daniel and I take off after him but we have a tough time catching up.
We get outside and have to climb a steep incline to get to a chain-link fence gate. We get out into a parking lot; the AD is nowhere to be seen. The cars are parking with their backs towards the fence, so they're all facing out. "So we're not being driven to set?" I wonder aloud. "We just have to get to set and we have no idea where it is?" I finish, as Daniel and I look about at the parked cars.
I pass between two cars, one of which suddenly starts to move forward; I simply move aside. In my head I expect Daniel to exclaim in horror how I "almost got hit," but he doesn't. I look in the distance and see the very bottom of a large red helicopter, the sort with the big glass-globe front. I can see the very bottom of the helicopter through the bottom branches of distant trees. "There it is!" I say, pointing.
Daniel and I take off running down a very long stretch of grass, but neither of us can get any real velocity. I am annoyed and baffled at how slow I am going. For some reason I deduce not only that smart people are losing their physical strength, while athletic types are losing their intellect, and that one day I will be killed by athletes because I am smart but which renders me unable to defend myself against their strength. Daniel and I bear left to what seems to be a sidewalk; even in my bare feet I cannot seem to get purchase enough to gain any real speed. Daniel briefly stumbles and then stops, openly crying. I try to keep going but his crying stops me.
"Are you okay?" I ask from under a nearby archway. Daniel does not respond, just sitting there holding his leg so he knee is up near his face. "Do you want me to get some Bactine?" I ask, figuring there'll be some first-aid at the set which I can have sent back to him.
Daniel scoffs. "Bactine? Bactine doesn't work," he stresses in a didn't-you-know-that tone.
"It doesn't?" I reply, my eyebrows raising. "I always thought it did."

Thursday, October 30, 2008 5:49am Upset friends and bus delays
I am at a friend's apartment, sitting in a chair in the living room against the wall where normally the TV would be. Into the room my friend walks, obviously upset and getting increasingly agitated by the second. Beyond her the large front window is just wall, as is the archway into the dining-area and kitchen: just a wall now. My upset friend cries, rendering all and anything she is saying unintelligible. I just sit and watch, trying to make sense of our weeping mumblings. Dream Shift: From curbside I watch a woman getting on a bus, but at first she delays by looking for change, and se won't continue into the bus, remaining standing on the door-steps. Understandably the bus driver inside starts getting angry and not being able to close the door. I suddenly notice at her feet several open shoe-boxes, as she is trying on different shoes, still refusing to quit the stairs, neither getting off the bus or continuing inside. I observe this but do not seem to about to get on the bus myself.

Friday, October 24, 2008 5:56am Mice and celebrity driving

Backstory: Where I work an ongoing joke is there being rats around, despite my never ever once in the many months I've worked there, spotted any evidence of rodentia.

Thursday, October 16, 2008 4:57am Caveman improvs, work demotions and emergency plane landings
I am at work, religated to an office desk, if one can count same as being a elementary school desk in a ground-floor glass walled hallway (similar to a hallway in my high school as well as one at a Secaucus hotel at which Creation held New Jersey conventions), between the main office and what seems to be a lobby filled with glass-encased museum displays. I discover I actually have access to two such desks, so I use one on which to place my jacket and such, the other on which to work, despite having no computer or such. Collegues walk by, slightly surprised to find I am only wearing a t-shirt (which surprises me as well). Later a friend picks me up from work and as we round a highway entrance to get onto the highway, I notice on my analog wristwatch it is barely 2pm; I've left work hours early, and I can only pray no one at work noticed [interestingly enough, IRL I've not had a working wristwatch in many years]. The car approaches a left curve in the road, when suddenly a blue jet airplane lands hard at the curve as though making an emergency landing. It even comes in at a steep left bank, as though compensating for the turn. "Whoa!" I exclaim, as the plane veers off to the right and we get by it. Despite being a full passenger jet, it is actually small enough to land on a suburban street. We continue on the street, when I can see a growing shadow of another plane coming in, and I realize the car is matching its velocity. "Hit the brakes!" I yelp at the driver, who does, as another plane comes in and lands just in front of us. It continues to taxi as we approach, as I warn the driver to be careful about hitting the wings. Later I am in an office environment in which I have my own private bathroom. I go inside and find there is about two feet of water on the floor. A foot wide drain has begun handling the clear water, spiraling the water into a little vortex, though the drain consists of resembling a manhole cover with small holes around its perimeter. A large sheet of white paper floats on top, which I retrieve. It is a small promo poster for the play Peter and the Pirates I did in the late 1970s. I enter a bathroom stall which is angle severely, a la Cabinet of Doctor Caligeri or R'lyeh style. Dream Shift: I am playing a caveman in some sort of improv; I am even wearing a stereotypical one-shoulder single piece "caveman outfit." In a school cafeteria, a man in a skin-tight ape costume (a la John Landis as the Schlockthropus), sits at a table, and hands me a hollow plastic gorilla mask. In character as the caveman, I rap the plastic and peer inside, wondering aloud how they were able to scoop out the insides. I sit next to two Dream Character friends, and relate a story of killing a deer with a single arrow, and my pride that my father had lived to witness my feat.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 5:15am Film maker scenic drive
I am at work, and suddenly the normally locked gate door opens and some construction worker enters. I am more curious as to why the door opens outwards, but with the hinges on the wrong side. The guy demonstrates that the gate door lifts off its hinges and can be reversed, which also prevents it from locking as the locking aspect is not aligned with the correct spot. Dream Shift: I walk down a street bordering a suburban downtown area and residential area. I am seeking a theatre in which a friend is performing, but I cannot recall the address of the name of the show. I pass what may or may not be two avant guarde theatres but neither reveal what show is being performed. Later, in sort of a Dream Shift, I am with the same girl (who turns out to be a girl I met about a year ago with whom sadly nothing beyond some casual friendship developed). In the dream she is a film maker that Dream Memory tells me I have assisted with her projects and her director's reel. She shows me her reel which to my surprise includes what seems to be a seance which turns into a weird dance numbers that also includes Fraggle Rock muppets. Dream Memory tells me I drove here and parked nearby; she has errands to run or such and invites me along which would be in her car. I follow her from her apartment to the nearby parking lot to her small car. Geographically we're in New Jersey, just off Fullerton near Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair. She drives up past Orange Road and to my surprise, on a [IRL non existent] road between Pompton Turnpike and Upper Mountain Road. This is clearly some sort of off-road, not just a dirt road, but overgrown with grass and lined with tire grooves. To the right I can see down into the town, but we also pass tiny sets of houses that resemble model homes made of small boxes, like a miniature, forced-perspective movie backdrop set. To the left taller mountains still tower up, as though it's even farther northern New Jersey in the Mahwah area. Dream Memory insists I've always suspected this road was here, but have never known how to find it. I decide this is a place to which I need to return to explore.

Monday, October 13, 2008 6:39am Behind the scenes
I am outside at a small out of the way airport, sitting on a bench on the sidewalk in the dark; I notice there are several teams from TAR 13, and deduce that while I have no partner, I'm in TAR as well. I know from wherever we are to wherever we are going my confirmed flight is at 7:05 but it has just passed 7am and the airport hasn't yet opened its doors. I look at my flight info again and to my horror see it's 7:05pm not 7:05am. I will be delayed 12 hours while the other teams fly off to the next destination. I quickly leave to figured out how to get a better flight. Around the corner from The Boulevard near Birch (in Pompton Plains New Jersey), at a private home, Dawn Wells pre-orders an ice cream in which Good & Plenty pieces will be inserted; nearby on the asphalt of the eastbound direction of The Boulevard at Birch, a Coming Soon promotional sign for upcoming theme restaurant is painted. Nearby my friend Dave notices my work, which merely are the words Coming Soon, an implication that it's a restaurant, next to an already drawn accurate rendition of William Frawley looking aghast, all within a pre-existing shuffleboard triangle. Dave points out it almost seems like a warning that the restaurant is coming, rather than promotion. I put the paint materials into the backseat of a stretch limousine, which Dave plans to take back to a hotel at which we've been staying for some sort of a big science fiction convention. Dream Shift: During some massive celebrity event downstairs, I am being held captive in a small upstairs room by about ten pre-teen pudgy-faced South American children. I am not tied up or anything, and somehow I know I have the super-speed ability of the new character Daphne on Heroes. I notice each of the children are wearing various black hats, most the sort of derby like hats from Peru and/or Bolivia, but a few other designs as well, and I ask them what's the deal with the hats. I point out the standard derbies, but I have to wonder about the "crushed" hats that resemble top hats that've "had buildings fall on" them. I decide it's about time to escape. "I have to go to the bathroom," I state, standing up purposefully. As this is an authoritative declaration and not a request, the children aren't sure how to handle this and do not stop me as I step into a bathroom at my left. The actual exit to the room is on the opposite side of the room. Inside the bathroom, which is similar to the main bathroom of my Verona [New Jersey] house, with the same windows, I notice just outside is a tall ladder leaning up against a metal balcony to which I just should be able to get if I can get through the slightly snug window. Below I can see celebrities just having come off their red carpet. One tux'd one celebrity with short blond hair is enraged, and enters the building below me shouting in fury. I realize once he's entered that it was Bruce Boxleitner. I get down the ladder and quickly make my way past security which doesn't stop me as I'm leaving, not trying to get in. I know I pass Paris Hilton but obviously there's no reason to bother about that. Finally I get past the crowds and into a wide, dark warehouse like structure and I "disguise" myself by putting on a set of large, black, novelty eyeglasses without lenses. I know I am being followed, and shortly deduce it's a paparazzi photographer. I find myself soon outside in the parking lot of the Van Nuys Flyaway (as it was before the current huge building they have there now), and I confront the photographer who thinks he can blackmail me. "Really?" I decide to clarify. "You think you can blackmail someone who can do this...?" at which point I shift into hyperspeed to another photographer, open his camera and gently pull forth the entire roll of exposed film, go make to twist his head over 180 degrees to kill him instantly, but resist actually doing it. Clearly in an effort to maintain my not killing someone, the dream lets this sequence be a camera rehearsal for a scene being filmed. The director comes over and tells me I have it spot on, and for a while I can relax, while they set up for the shot. As I walk towards the Flyaway building, an extremely fey man comes up (wearing very 1970s clothing), offering me some sort of ascot to wear, which I politely decline. Dream Shift: An extremely dejected Jason Lee goes to do a scene for what turns out to be a Saturday morning kiddie version of My Name is Earl. Apparently he's the only original cast member to be in it. The others in the cast are being played by pudgy children who have the slightly passing resemblance to the prime-time case, each wearing a thick black wig that attempts to help them look like the adult counterparts they're trying to portray. Jason is disgusted but goes through the motion. Somehow I know he'd agreed to do this with the idea the whole cast would be working together, not him with a bunch of kids. As I sit, in the distance I see the bright sun seem to darken and I notice it's all a cyclorama, and the sun thereon is made of layered felt. I can't help joking to my friend Meredith suddenly sitting with us, "Hey look, the sun has 'continents'." The group sees this and laughs. As the light on the cyclorama fades enough to really see the felt-made sun, the felt on it isn't just laying flat, but extending outwards. A small firecracker rocket is launched from a group of nearby children in the street, and it lodges into the stucco wall of a building next to the cyclorama, and the wall quickly catches fire which spreads rapidly, as it's a facade on a backlot. This can't be good, I think, as I point out to Jason Lee the fire. The small cast of the scene disperses. I head over to the group of kids to see which one fired the rocket. They are being handled by a teacher/supervisor sort, who is also trying to learn who is to blame for the rocket.

Friday, October 10, 2008 5:39am Standard contrail death-dust
I emerge from a small bus-like van on what seems to be Bloomfield Avenue in Verona [New Jersey], having apparently parked on the southwest corner (just north of the Pompton Avenue intersection), albeit facing northwest. Once out on the sidewalk I notice flying overhead a military jet, leaving in its path a massive if strangely shaped contrail. I glance up again and the contrail is gone, in its place a large billowing shower of silvery sparkles descending in a widening arc. Okay that can't be good, I quickly realize. Noticing no one else has gotten out of the bus-van, I go to its side door which opens like a public bus. "Wakey, wakey, hands off snakey!" I can't resist saying, waking my sleeping brother and my Uncle Donald looking as it he in the 1980s or so. "We have to get inside," I tell them. I notice my brother is helping our (IRL late) Great-Aunt Carol; heading towards a house in front of us to the left where normally would be a used car lot's building. As I catch up to and pass Donald, suddenly taking him by the hand and simply telling him I love him. "Yeah, but you're always cutting me off," he begins to protest, as I quickly hasten my pace to catch up and get my brother's attention about the dispersed deadly dust descending from the contrail: we have to get inside....

Thursday, October 09, 2008 5:41pm Discrete snogging

Backstory sort of: This morning I went down to USC to audition for a classful of students, in hopes I will be cast in some of their projects. So to be first, I arrived very early and with an hour and a half to wait, I drowsed, acquiring the following dream...

Tuesday, October 07, 2008 6:02am Screening Crashers, College AV work, Greenhouse Train Crashes and Love’s Kisses
In my college AV department, my San Pedro friend Kara quickly and professionally unloads a one-time-use camera roll of film onto a developer machine, located in the AV Department waiting room where the chairs would be. Kara and I apparently been my supervisor in the AV Department for some time. She gives me another camera and directs me to put the roll onto the second machine. I look at the one on which her roll is working, and the one next to me, and I realize something as I point out, "Y'know, after all the years we've worked here, no one has ever shown me how these machines work." Dream Shift: Having been driving northbound on Route 23, I turn left onto the second parking lot road towards Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, New Jersey. It becomes quickly grey and slightly rainy, and the windshield starts to fog up big time. I slow down, hoping not to be struck by some car from the side. I reach the junction at which to turn right to head to the main section of the mall, and suddenly hear a police siren behind me, and I worry it's to pull me over. The siren vanishes as I notice that instead of parking lots to my right, I am passing tall rock walls similar to far northern New Jersey roads such as Route 202 north of Oakland on the way to Mahway, or even up in Riverdale and Butler; it is definitely semi-rural. The road evens out and finally I pull up outside the home of Pasadena friends, though the porch also has a rock-built rounded archway at the top of the steps. Inside (with a bit of Dream Geography), Los Angeles Film School graduate Glenn Thomas is screening something on a large wall-sized screen, possibly via a projector, "but" the living room is beyond where the kitchen wall would be. I can hear what seems to be a pounting on the front door, to which I go to answer. As I arrive at the front door, it is large and with a large clear pane of glass along the front door/s to the New Jersey home in which I lived in Montclair. Coming up the steps to the door are sevearal beret and sweater-vest wearing young black men carrying pillows. While they don't seem threatening, they are quite purposefully intending on entering. As we are not expecting anyone nor do I know who they are, I gesture to wait while I go get someone. As I go to return to the screening, from down the long hallway come several men with rather fierce looking military grade weaponry, and they race by me, running to the front door. From behind me I am called to the long dining table in the center of the kitchen, at the far end of which is Jennifer Love Hewitt, speaking to me as a co-star in something on which she and I are working. She close-to-complains (though not really), about her holding a spear that left slight indentations in her palm. I point out it was probably from the filligree. OUtside in the yard is a large greenhouse, and somehow this fits into the whole film project thing. The oncoming train is supposed to be evil and only good thoughts can stop it or such. Through a broken pane in one of the windows I watch it apprach, with a large drawn red eye at the front of the engine on its left (my right). I have managed to put something in its way, and as it roars into the greenhouse, I dive aside, expecting it to crash through the other side, but it does not; it halts within. On the opposite side of the greenhouse, I come across Jennifer Love Hewitt tied up, thankfully not on any sort of tracks of which there are none. Next to her lying on its side, beyond her head, is a potted palm tree or so, seemingly pushed by some force into the dirt. I go to lift it but the stalk breaks, leaving countless jagged spiked edges at its trunk. With the leafy part gone, I know the plant will die. Jennifer assures me its okay, and pulls me down to kiss me, despite long strands of her hair are over her face. "Well, this is certainly a 'Kodak moment'," lying on top her I say to her equally smiling face.

Thursday, October 02, 2008 5:34am Work music
I am at my day job; what normally would be the corridor outside my work area door/gate is a massive football-field sized room, with a wooden stage at the far end. While sorting through papers, I go to put on some music via the laptop on which I work, but the music is some sort of heavy-metal: loud, blaring, generally unrecognizeable as actual music, and I cannot find a volume to turn down, or a way to switch it off. Suddenly I get a call through some sort of intercom system, but the music is enough that I cannot make out who is calling, though eventually I deduce it is Human Resources, asking me why I am playing a song by Slayer. Oh is that what that is? I think to myself as I finally get it to shut off. HR starts to admonish me, albeit quite politely and kindly, implying I should not have on any music while working. The line gets too much static and goes dead. I head over to a long table between the stage and the door to my work area, and find the contents of nearly an entire box of Cap'n Crunch having been spilled on the floor. As this is the cellar, I am concerned this will attract unwanted pests, but after scooping up a handful or three, my concern over HR has me head to the main corridor to head up to the offices. At the corner I come across a Dream Character: supposedly HR, a strange combination of she plus anoter coworker. I walk with her as she continues purposefully to my work area, as I truthfully point out my bringing in music to play was the suggestion of several coworkers when they'd come downstairs. We go in to my work area where I/we find that several other coworkers have come downstairs. They are going through various file boxes and pretty much in my way enough I know I have to wait for them to leave to get back to my current filing project. On one of the shelves is a brown cardboard box, standing out from the standard white bankers boxes throughout. It's side sided top is pushing itself up, and I work at getting it to stay closed, as somehow the box starts to slide sideways as though it's on an uneven surface, despite it being on a flat shelf.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 5:42am Not exactly Comic-Con
I am on my way to some sort of comic-book show event, using an unfamiliar bus transit system. I am with a few Dream Character friends, and the driver of the shuttle-like bus is about as helpful as an Los Angeles MTA bus driver. The rope cord does nothing, so I verbally exclaim, "Ding, ding, ding; your stop request pull cord isn't working." I know our destination is to the right, but the shuttle turns left. My friends and I become actively displeased with our now going the wrong way. The driver makes another left down an alley, and another left down a less wide alley, where he finally stops and opens the door.
I get out, asking the driver how to get to the place I'm going, but he shuts the door and attempts to back up, banging into a metal dumpster. "Serves you right," I call out, still completely baffled as to where I am. I decide to enter a warehouse, the entrance to which is right there. On entering I see numerous sheets of papers on the walls of black and white line drawings. I espy a security desk, and the security guard is surprisingly helpful, offering to escort me to the western part of the building from which I will be able to find my way easily enough.
Eventually we emerge into a large, well lit, loft-like room, almost a gallery though nothing on the walls. I am carrying three large (and slightly heavy) cardboard tubes in which I know are posters of some sort. By accident I step on and tear a rolled poster artwork a woman on which has been working. I apologize profusely and as nothing really can be done about it, the woman artist is concerned about the damage but not furious about it. The guard points and tells me the door atop the ramp is the way out, where easily I should be able to get my bearings. He casually walks up and out the door, but the ramp for me is not a simple ramp. It is bent in the center, so the lowest part is about five foot high, at a near 45 degree angle, and I have to toss the heavy tubes onto the less steep part of the ramp beyond the bend. It takes a few times for the tubes not to slide back down at me. I literally have to take a few running starts to get the momentum to get past the bend of the ramp where it's less of an incline, but even then I have to really work at getting up towards the egress.

Friday, September 19, 2008 5:37am Fake fights and reality shows
I am outside with my producer friend. While she silently works on a laptop, I am trying to read some book on colour therapy she has lent me. The sun suddenly gets brightly in my eyes, and I use the book more as a shield than reading it. Later I am required to fill out a survey or quiz about the book, but its methodology is peculiar: the multiple choice selections are not only written across but vertically as well, so for the majority of the questions you have to select two variants of an response. Dream Shift: I am booked on what turns out to be some sort of multiple day reality-show shoot in which I'm some sort of particiant/witness sort of deal. It remains unclear precisely what is the show's concept, whether it's a single woman's dating show or about personal growth or what. At one point for no reason, some guy "hops into frame, as it were, blocking her path as she tries to hurry down a carpeted corridor. He is dressed like a hard-hat constuction worker with a traffic-warning vest, and as I watch, he pretends to take a swing at her, but it is ridiculously poor choreography, if it's even been choreographed. She swing back and he falls to her faked left hook. I find this a very WTF? moment, and the show's Host asks me What Did I See? (as I am there to witness the proceedings). I literally restage this insipid looking "fight," including my commentary who stupid across which it came, and how fake it was, even adding the posit of why would the guy be dressed that way, let along why "attack" her for no reason? And why would she swing back so "effortlessly," if it wasn't pre-planned. The host puts his arm around the woman (pretending to be still overwrought by the "attack"), and with a glare at me as though to say I should have repoted it as a real attack, he turns his head back and guides her back down the hall. I realize the woman looks very much like Chelsea Handler, though while probably isn't, the "action" of the two fist swings I realize came across like "acting" in a Chelsea Handler Chelsea Lately sketch. I find myself on a different floor and go to head downstairs during which I "fly," which as usually is the case, consists of merely floating/gliding along quickly, standing upright and my feet being about two feet off the ground. In this particular dream I can control my velocity, and I pass through what seems to be another, much more frenetic, game/reality show, in which the contestants are pre-teen kids playing video games, the black host calling them around for their next game. I have to quickly manuever around numerous people in this wide room, and I quickly deduce my people are the next floor down, so I quickly float down and back to the initial hallway. Where there was the fake fist fight, Camryn Manheim is thanking a young woman for being early to usher for some stage show, the doorway to a large auditorium (similar to the Chinese Theatre) is just beyond them. Camryn moves off as Dream Memory tells me I know this woman. She seems to be similar to Georgia Engles as Georgia Engles would have looked in the 1960s (but not being Georgia Engles); she has somewhat short modern hair, combed straight, the right side of her hair being blonde and the the left being a darker blonde, almost brown. We greet each other, and I point out "I have to get used to you as a blonde," at which point I notice the brown hair on the left. I notice some activity down the hall and I head over to find some young woman trying to relate symbols to Neil Patrick Harris who is transcribing them onto the wall in large red glitter paint. He concludes it's some sort of mathmatical formula, even though some of the symbols he interprets are a bit far fetched such as IT he decides means Italy...

Monday, September 15, 2008 5:56am Steams and dolphins, ships and lost roads
Below decks on a large wooden ship, someone is in the brig, being attended to by another crewmember. From the corridor a man in a short sleeved blue shirt enters through the cell door. The prisoner is on nthe floor and the man attending him stands up, as the entering man swings a large brass ring filled with large keys in such a way as to thwack the standing man as hard in the face as he can. Dream shift: I am above on deck, wishing I could do something about what I just witnessed, and I visualize the violent crewmember as being slashed across the face and thrown overboard when suddenly the alarmed cry of "Man overboard!" is raised. For a moment I can see the person in the clear water, but another alarm of "Shark!" is raised, and several yards out is a huge dorsal fin. The boat, I suddenly notice, is moving almost impossibly fast for a sailing vessel, the rolling waves smashing against the ship's bow. More dorsal fins imply for a moment we're passing through a massive group of sharps, but as some begin to breach the waters it is obvious we are actually now among dolphins racing alongside the boat, but even we are going faster than they. "Suddenly" the boat seems to be much smaller and apparently is the small boat with which one comes ashore. I know I have friends in a large group still aboard the big boat who have not come ashore with me. The bow of the small boat strikes a mini-sand bar and I am informed I can get out. It is a strangely steep beach at which are many sunbathers and swimmers. Beyond the short beach is grass and a forested tree line. I step into the water, ignoring I still wearing my sneakers and socks. I wade a bit in the water, then come up and begin to hike up a dirt road trail, finding myself alongside two taller men who speak some sort of European language I cannot understand. In the distance I can see what appears to be a standard grocery store, albeit without a building: just the shelves and products. One thing from the two men I do understand is that the large tarp like canvas at our left obscures a former tennis coart, now being used as a home by two women at least, one of whom is about to use the shower. The two men watch covertly from the side of the tarp. Through the thin fabric I can see the woman walking, and I have to find a small hole through which to see details. I cannot get a good angle but I notice the second woman heading around towards the road. The men vacate their viewing spot, and I pretend I am just arriving. I head back towrds the "store" ahead as the large woman shows one the two men a wide frying pan with several uncooked meat patties in it; she seems to be offering to cook for him. I turn off the road into one of the aisles and realize buying a DVD would be pointless as it wouldn't be in English and would be the wrong region. I also bein to wonder if what friends for whom I await have yet gotten to shore, and if I should head back so we can find each other... Dream Shift: I am in my vault at work and where normally I'd be alone, here the place is overflowing with people. Some scrawny, elderly woman brings in something she demands everyone see. Finally on one of the boxes she places a white paper plate on which is a lot of watery meat/tomatoe-like sauce, and on the plate amongst wide noodle is a large organic something that resembles the familiar profile sillouette of a howling wolf. A male worker is impressed but is unable to articulate what he sees. "It's a howling wolf," I manage to say as the man and old woman talk constantly. I attempt to add something but they won't shut up. My coworker Amanda manages to get them to stop long enough for me to point out it's called a simulcra, where an object forms a pattern our brains see. The old woman gives a loud whoops, noticing somehow she has spilled onto my tan slacks a goodly portion of the sauce. Amanda sympathizes as I examine the considerable damage. "I have to get this home and wash it before it stains permanently," I tell Amanda quickly. "I have to go to Central Casting tomorrow and these are the pants I need." Amanda agrees and I'm about to leave when I am called to the back of the vault. There are three women in their twenties who have somehow set up a large computer station for me. One woman stands between the tall desk station and the wall, making me wonder how she's going to get out from back there, while a woman sitting at the desk explains things. I notice it's a different type laptop, raisdd up on a fan-pad. I notice the woman against the wall is going through a box of floppy discs unlike anything I've ever seen before. They are similar to A: drive discs, but literally half the size, each hanging on an "adapter" like hanger that is the size of an A: drive floppy. I look at the side of the laptop and see the small slot into which one o'these tiny discs can go, but there's also a standard A: size floppy slot on the other side of the CD slot. Dream Shift: I am sitting on some sort of open railway car alongside a massive exhibit that somehow will reflect the entire Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull film. Dream Memory has me visualize sort of an elaborate DVD menu introduction, with various aspects of Indy. On the bench I am sitting between an elderly Chinese woman and her equally elderly husband. Beyond the woman at my left is Amanda and a variant of my friend Christine, though in the dream she looks much different than she would normally. Finally the elderly woman switches with me so she can sit with her husband, and Christine shfits so I can sit between she and Amanda. "How many times have you seen this?" I ask, unsure if I'm asking about the exhibit which we're approaching, or the film itself. They each indicate four or more times. "So you... wouldn't mind a bit of MSTie'ing, if it's called for?" Neither woman officially objects, while Christine adds, "if it adds to it." For no reason Christine begins to offer me these odd little peck-kisses, which I accept as Dream Memory eliminates my thinking of her being a Good Friend and/or her IRL great "ironically named" boyfriend Jeff. Despite the [tram?] moving along quite briskly, at one point to the left I notice we're alongside a forested dirt road, on which approaching is a surly looking tall, stocky man in blue sporting a long wide beard. "Whoa," I riff. "Zee-Zee Top is pissed." The ladies glance over and Christine laughs with my joke. Without hurrying, the man begins to pass us, his beard now longer just to the top of his rib-cage but now down to his calves, and massively thick but still straight and grey with a blun tint. We do not notice that he is merely walking and the vibration of the tram indicates motion that doesn't seem to be happening.

Friday, September 12, 2008 5:06am Dragons and dental issues
I am in bed as something approaches out of the darkness along side. The bed in is an attached garage of a house for which I am house-sitting. As it comes along side I can just make out enough to recognize it as the long bow of a ship, but very small like a very large model. It is silent as though it's a real boat in water. I try for a light switch next to the bed but the light does not turn on. I know the headboard is against the closed door of the garage. I am concerned at the normally inanimate object moving on its own, particularly as I can sense that there are other objects behind it, pushing it... and I do not know what is pushing them... Dream Shift: I'm in a comic book/game shop of sorts, rather sparsely stocked, though mostly gaming materials. Posters, many of which hand-drawn, are in the front room. I go through to the back display room which is large but very little in it. To the left and left again is a room in which small boxed D&D type game figures of various sets are available. One display shows, amongst small grey human figures, a larger, white-tipped green dragon with flat, tiny emerald eyes, touching at the center, as though one piece of emerald forms two octagonal eyes, the eyes being two are more visible seen close up... from farther back the dragons' eyes almost come across as cyclopean. Around a display wall is the doorless doorway into what seems to be a design room. Someone is working at the high design desk but enough clutter shields the view as to who it is. I quietly make my way past the desk to a larger archway back to the main room at my left. A row of theatre seats faces the back of the store; I sit in the center of the row and suddenly all of my top teeth detatch in a single go, like a set of dentures. With much concern I remove them from my mouth and the jawline and teeth are still together. Worriedly, I place them back and they still fit atop my jaw, but understandably loose. I test speaking and they want to drop down, making my voice sound like I've cotton in my mouth. I seriously wonder if super-glue may keep them in place...

Thursday, September 11, 2008 5:39am King Kong and Imperial tennis-ball grenandes
Two sets of movie footage are shown (Dream Memory keeps me from recognizing the footage as not being accurate), indicating arial shots from King Kong inspired footage for Star Wars dogfights. There are two reels, marked seven and six: each reel is about five minutes long, and reel six shows two massive WWII type military transport planes and a smaller bi-plane between them. Almost like a Max Fleisher animation, the three dive straight down with the bi-plane between the larger craft, out of which they pull an ornate maneuver, all to the dogfight music from Star Wars (when the Falcon escapes the Death Star before heading to the Vavin system). Another clip shows two large Star Wars ships and a TIE fighter, all Imperial, even though the larger ships are the "cucumber" type rebel ships from RotJ as opposed to Star Destroyers. The TIE fighter follows the cucumber ships, and fires on them, and I somehow know the TIE fighter is being piloted by Han Solo. With the slightest of Dream Shifts, I am on the surface of one of the Imperial (cucumber) ships. They have pulled up along side some large rebel ship and about to fire a small grenade like object through an open air-lock. Despite the extreme low gravity we must be within an atmosphere as no one is wearing an environmental suit. The grenade is the size of a tennis ball and somehow I know it denotates on its second impact, not its first. This allows it to be thrown or shot into an airlock, where it would hit a wall, and the second wall would take the detonation, usually a bulkhead or rendering useless the air-lock door. The gunman is dressed as an Imperial Officer, not a Stormtrooper. He throw it, and it bounces but comes back out; he catches it before it actually strikes something, and resets it. I manage to wrest it from him and throw it and it hits a long railing along the curved side of the rebel ship, and heads back for the Imperial ship. I launch myself up and the half-gravity carries me like a slow-flying Superman. The officer cannot catch the ball and it heads into and strikes within small outcropped ship's bridge. I catch the long railing as I notice at my right, another Imperial officer (the pilot?) has done the same manuever to escape the Imperial ship being blasted, now drifting rapidly away towards the planet's surface to crash. The pilot at my right, dressed in Imperial officer clothes, essentially is the rubbery Linguini from Ratatouille, though Dream Memory only has me recognize him for what he is: an Imperial. He sees me as a rebel and he quickly hand-over-hand heads my way. He allows the railing to let him slide effortlessly towards me, but I release downwards, to use the ship's concave surface off which to launch back up, as he passes me, now slightly out of control. I quickly head after him via the railing. He slides down the curved downwards railing and I expect he will lose his handhold and fall off, but he manages to hang on as the railing levels out, reaching a set of steps going down, the railing now acting as a staircase railing. Reaching him and somewhat irked he's still there, I step off onto the now-floor in order just to snatch him up by the collar and belt to toss him off the ship, when he hastily steps off and hurries down the stairs away from me. I head down the stairs to see a bare-backed woman in a colourful half-finished dress being made even while she is wearing (and/or being fitted for) it. "Linguini" is now at the sewing machine, working on the dress for the woman whose back is kept towards me. I cease my pursuit, less puzzled as to the scenario change as to a Dream Memory of my friend Marla conveying, "If you ever have the chance to see a real magickal outfit being made, take it." So I continue to watch.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 5:36am An accomodating film shoot
While unclear as to whether I'm background or a principal role, Dream Memory tells me I have been working on set for hours, sitting in sort of a cafe set, and that the camera has not yet aimed in the direction in which my table would be visible. Sitting with me at the table is a producer friend of mine, actually doing background work. I realize I am really supposed to be someplace important. We're deep into overtime as it is, so the production decides it can wait until the next day to shoot the reverse shot. My friend is silently snarl'y about being there all day, not being used, and that they are accomodating my schedule (which makes me presume I am probably a principal). From the all-white outfit I am wearing, I quickly change into my full tuxedo, and I head out. Some time later I realize I totally forgot to sign out, and I have to go back. I arrive and they're still wrapping for the evening. My IRL day-job coworker Amanda is the AD for this project, and as we meet near craft service, she assures me she properly signed me out for the day. A dark-green cooler with a white lid is nearby and I open it to check for a soda. It is raised up so its lid is at my chin level. Inside it is filled with cans under ice and water. As I look through I am not finding a Pepsi. Amanda thinks the good stuff is gone, but thinks there could be some ginger ale. I pull out one but despite having been submerged in ice water, the can is at room temperature, seeming warm compared to the ice water. I try another can closer and it's a Classic Coke, but it too is all but warm compared to the water temperature.

Sunday, September 07, 2008 1:26pm Dollar vending machines, pick-up kisses, Harry Potter and the Lifespring Courses Dream Memory indicates that it is a later day; that previously I have had sex with the lovely young woman Dream Character who normally with me is just plantonic. We are getting ready to go camping with friends or such. She stands in the bed of a large pick-up truck while I stand on the curb. She is hiding from others, and apparently herself, that she and I have been very recently physically initmate. Not wishing for it just to have been a One Time event, though unable properly to engage her in discussion about it, finally as our hands happen to touch, I gently grasp her hands. "What are you doing?" she asks. She looks up to see me gazing into her eyes. Her faces moves towards mine as though to kiss, but hesitates at the last instant. I move in the rest of the way and we do kiss. She accepts it, then even more so. She quietly vocalizes a moan of pleasure as I begin to caress her in a covert way that wouldn't draw attention to us. Dream Shift: During the daytime, I am in the vast and somewhat dark hallways of my Pompton Plains [New Jersey] elementary school, though the classrooms are filled with adult students. Dream Memory relays I am the equivalent of a Teacher's Aide or such; I've taken these adult course/s (similar to the Lifespring Basic), and this first day, these students are taking the Advanced Training. Senior to them then, I realize I am to be head of a Small Group, and I realize I have no idea to which classroom I am to go. I look into various ones with the thought I might recognize someone but I don't. I go out into the parking lot area and meet up with Harry, Ron and Hermione and seek their advice. "Did any of you get your course schedules?" I ask. Ron and Hermione report having received theirs, but Harry is sullen, stating he did not receive his, and he all but accuses Professor Dumbledore of having abandoned him. He tells us that he was left with a new family, the mother of which is so worse than the Dursleys that she makes [the book version of] Dolores Umbridge seem warm and cuddly. Ron and Hermione are aghast, but Ron suggests maybe Dumbledore hadn't yet learned of Harry being with the new family. Hermione and I remind Ron that Harry could always be found to which the school schedule could be delivered. Dream Shift: Inside a large brightly lit apartment house, the rooms and hallways of which resemble the science building of Ramapo State College, I go to a vending machine to obtain a can of soda. Dream Memory confirms I have placed previous amounts of money into the machine, as suddenly extremely wide silver dollar coins suddenly are returned through the coin slot, each about five or so inches in diameter. I realize there must be about twenty of more such coins that have fallen out.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008 5:56am Breach of privacy

Backstory: My immediate co-worker is named Amanda. When I leave at the end of my work day at my temp-assignment day-job, I let her know. In case I miss her (e.g., she's not at her desk when I come upstairs), I prepare little "contingency notes," as she and I call them: yellow Post-It Notes that don't merely declare that I've left for the day, they're all but mini-blogs about up to what I've been. Even if Amanda is at her desk, she happily accepts the genarally tongue-in-cheek-written Contingency Note, as they often amuse her.

Monday, September 01, 2008 5:51am Dawson cracks
I am standing on what seems to be a nature-overgrown bus stop on an intersection corner, on the opposing corner (e.g., if were on the SW corner, on the NE corner) is a building I believe to be an FBI-branch office building. An attractive if waif'ish young woman (sort of a Dawson's Creek era Katie Holmes, but not her), stands staring across, the intersection. I just have the courage to speak to her as she turns and asks me if that's the FBI building. I tell her yes it is, but to cross she has to go around. She walks to the back of the bus stop and departs but continues walking away, across a grassless area what seems to be a dirt-grit parking lot. Helpfully I following, indicating her destination is the other direction. She relays she earlier tried that building and its a coded entrance, and the phone number she has no longer works. In a lame attempt to stay in touch, I give her one of my contact cards, asking to be kept abreast if she finds a better working number. I proceed to walk away now myself. To seem less of a stalker I decide to walk under the seemingly desert-highway overpass as though to the previous bus stop to catch it there, but instead I head left up towards the underpasses support stantions. At its top is a small alcove in which I sit back to relax. Preparing to look out the back to what is back there, suddenly a large van drives, so dark green it can almost be mistaken for black. Two characters seemingly from Star Trek: Voyager dash out of the van and each hastily search the two sections of the stantion. The Tuvok'esque guy (not exactly Tim Russ) checks out me but doesn't really harass me. I realize I am wearing a green, very thick hooded parka, and he may be mistaking me for a homeless person. He goes to the other man as they check the empty part of the underpass, and I get into the back of their van. Not noticing me, they get in and start to drive, and their conversation is about the present as though its their history, so my deduction they've time travelled back proves correct. At one point I decide to join the conversation, quickly averting their concerns that no one would believe me if I said anything. They have one more aspect of their mission, and they drop me off at a private home. In its back yard I see the waif'ish girl again, and I follow her to the front, where on the driveway a scene is being played out by James Van Der Beek and Joshua Jackson, the latter of whom slips on some ice and lands splat flat on his back, a large pool of blood forming on the ice and into the splintered cracks suddenly appeared from the impact. Suddenly this accident begins to replay several times, always from a straight down point of view. I realize it is a DVD, the scene of which popping back to show Jackson crashing to his back and the blood pool forming. A group of people who may live at the house discuss Michelle Williams and Katie Holmes, each conveying their personal sorrow of Katie Holmes's plight/s. One of those in the discussion somehow is unaware of Katie's life troubles; only that she is married to Tom Cruise, not that she may have chosen (or been forced to chose) her bet-created, fictional "religion."

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 5:38am Castrovalvan cabins
I'm in some sort of multi-floor hardwood cabin. Its second story is almost more like an unrailed balcony, in the middle of which one can see down to the first floor. Essentially one comes up the stairs to the second level, then walks all the way around to get to the stairs to the third floor, instead of just having one set of stairs going up that high. As I get closer to the steps going up to the third level, just below my friends Amy and William are gleefully opening a present I have apparently gotten and has been delivered by messenger to William. Once he opens it it seems to be a colour washed-out 8x10 of a family portrait of sorts which Dream Memory tells me I ordered online. William points out it being rather washed out, and I explain online it looked much more clear. I reach the third floor, which turns out to be one of the two guest rooms on the third floor of the house in which I lived for about ten years in Montclair (New Jersey). I find my friend's dogs "C" and "D" inside, and suddenly four or five small black labradors enter the room from the landing. While clearly adolescent, the friendly labs are still filled with puppy-energy. "['C']!," I say to the dark chocolate lab (who's being busy play wresting with "D"). "You seem to have brought along some friends...!"

Tuesday, August 19, 2008 5:13am Sheep Meadows and Unexpected Corridor Destinations
I arrive at work but find that using sheet rock, the construction workers have sealed off the door to the file room in which I work. Somehow I manage to get in and much of my desk has been cleared off and while the laptop is there, it is turned ninety degrees to the right, all as if to show me someone has been there in my absence and deliberately done all this. My Indiana friend Scott wanders past me through the room and through a doorway that normally wouldn't be there. Realizing this (the doorway, not really minding my friend has walked by), I stare at the foorway as Scott walks in about a ten feet to a corridor wall, and turns left. Somehow I know that doesn't go anywhere. After a few moments Scott's head pokes out a bit embarrassingly, as though to admit silently he doesn't know where he's goin'... The floor begins to vibrate: another earthquake and while far smaller than the one a week or so ago, this one goes on for longer. Later I head out but instead of to the bank of elevators the corridors I normally take emerge into an underground parking structure. I try to find the exit, passing at the end of one row of cars a recently used bed, as though someone lives in here. A Dream Character friend thanks me for helping him move, and insists I let his girlfriend take me for a ride. Thinking this will get me outside if not home, I accept. I find myself in a very rickety horse-drawn carriage, similar to but not exactly an old stage coach, high enough but no actual interior compartment: we on top where would be considered the roof. There are no seat belts or way to keep us secure, apart from a half "door" at my left I have to make sure is latched securely. I am way to the left and noticing the girl is right up along me with a lot of room on the wide seat, I ask him to nudge over towards the center. With no roof or other visual blockages, I easily espy that while at full gallop, we are headed towards some very rugged and uneven terrain. "Oh that's just great...!" I exclaim, certain we will topple over in moments, as begin to notice a flock of sheep we're passing. With a slight Dream Shift, I find myself down in the crunchy snow in the field, the sheep being nearby. One mother sheep verbally admonishes her young kid from eating "fresher" grass as it needs to mature, what with the snow the food supply being scarce. Several of the younger sheep notice me and vie for my attention, hoping I will pet them.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 6:04am Thompson Gazelles and Type 40s...
A bit of Dream Geography: I am in what seems to be downtown Montclair [New Jersey] though around the corner I come upon a group of Dream Character friends having something of a "round table" discussion at a wooden picnic table in the parking lot of the Sherman Oaks Sportsman's Lodge motel. The parking lot is devoid of cars, and the table is under what would be the valet parking area. The group has just finished their friendly debate and rise from the table to head back to where I had been, with the intent of exchanging elaborate gifts for some reason. Dream Shift has me/us back around the corner at the downtown Montclair storefronts, my bed being on the side of the street notwithstanding. Under its sheet is a peculiarly taxidermed Thompson's Gazelle that apparently I somehow acquired to give as my own gift offering. I say peculiar as the stuffed gazelle is in the sort of lying down position in which a dog might be (e.g., not lying on its side); its head lowered to rest between the outstreched front legs, its front legs and about half its head poking out from beneath the burgundy sheet. Dream Shift: I am heading out to the parking lot from a sound stage in an industrial area, but the wide doorway is block by fallen down flats. I manage to get by and outside I notice a very shallow but wide puddle, droplets on which lets me know it is beginng to rain, though no rain is visible anywhere else. Nearby what seems to be a children's ride train arrives at its little station. My day-job coworker Amanda is running the operator controls on the platform. The train stops and from the four or so double row, four-seat cars, two people get out. It seems to be a small shuttle from one place to another: Dream Memory implies that I've ridden this before, so I know it's going where I want to go. I turn around to hop in when a couple pass me and hop into the front seat. I get into the second car as it begins to move, Amanda admonishing us to wait until it comes around to its actual pick-up point. The train quickly fills and we head out of the small amusement park like train station. As we round the first left turn out into the wooded area, I hear screams from other riders. It turns out to be scream of thrilled delight as the way ahead isn't entirely clear: low hanging thin cherry-blossom branches are gently smacked out of the way as we pass. Suddenly the train banks a hard turn at a terrific velocity; its size (and our having no harnesses or seatbelts) notwithstanding, it's a steel roller coaster. As the g-force pushes me down into the seat I think, I don't remember this...! The tracks level out into very smooth bunny hops that are barely noticeable. The train passes other sets of tracks on which I see two other sets of coasters, having me at first deduce the ride is so long they can have three coasters going at once. Then the train enters a secondary station and comes to a gentle stop. I realize this is the End Of The Line, one has to disembark and be reseated for a return trip. I follow the hallway beyond where the tracks end, and find a large warehouse with grey cinderblock walls, a wide ramp leading up to the main section. As I begin to feel it appears to look as though it could be a control room for a TARDIS (the lack of roundrels on the wall notwithstanding), I suddenly recognize the fact that I am dreaming. with Lucid Dreaming being so rare for me, I am very careful not to "break" it. I slowly bring up my hands to look at them, a technique that's supposed to help with lucidity. My left hand is okay, I seem to be blind regarding my right hand, the right side of my vision goes white. I quickly lower my hands and "make sure my 'eyes' are closed." I try again, this time able to see both hands. I back up into the ante-room between the warehouse room and the train tracks. The room is large enough, I figure, and I will into appearing, the TARDIS. It appears slowly, complete with engine groans. It shifts from its regular blue Police Box look to that of a white refridgerator, complete with numerous notes on it. I ignore this dream distraction-attempt and focus on it being a proper Police Box. Suddenly through the swinging double doors that would lead to the train comes my back-east friend Dave. I immediately discern this is another attempt at trickery to make me forget I am dreaming. He comes around and to my right all but preventing me from opening the TARDIS door. I already have in my hand its key, but I notice on the door there is no keyhole. Dave goes to open the door outwards as he says, "You don't need a key anymore; not since the Man With The Tattoo..." He quickly stops himself as I glare at him: David is infamous for providing story spoilers by "not" providing them. "Oh that's right," he says, realizing I've not seen current episodes (there currently not being any IRL notwithstanding). I push open the door inwards properly and, Dave following behind me, we enter the TARDIS, walking up its metal ramp towards the control pillar level. I do not feel surprised I "let" it be the current "coral" theme, rather than the classic era look.

I do awake for a brief time before returning to bed.

Monday, August 11, 2008 5:54am Archived Dad footage and force-fed religion
On a college campus or such, I follow people who are seeking out the source of some delicious scent of food. I seem to have started this search from some practical lab, and the group has crossed a courtyard into another building. One woman that I'd seen earlier who had veered off suddenly rejoins the group, saying she took a short cut to get back with the group. Wandering the corridors, the scent begins to grow cold, and it is theorized the scent may have been coming from the opposite direction; I begin to wonder if it actually started at the lab. Dream Shirt: A weird sort of dream bi-location of sorts; I am performing for a film, simultaneously viewing the finished product with my brother. While performing, I make little side comments to my brother about the Making Of the avant guarde project. In the film, I have been taken into custody and dormed into some sort of a halfway house type facility, in which we are forced to watch psi'entology training films. "Wait a minute," I protest from my cot-like bed. "This isn't legal," I point out, indicating force-feeding a fictitious "religion" is unconstitutional. Towards the right beyond the foot of my bed is my late father, smiling widely and raising his hand as though wishing to be called on to ask a question. He is in grainy black and white and literally is a projected film. Noting his image is just a film, I get ready to speak again against the training film/s, and my father's image suddenly raises his hand more vehemently, as though able to interact with me anyway. At this point I witness myself as part of the avant guarde film again: I am in black and white and there is a quick series of edits that seem to convey my various moods and appearances (hair-changes as well, et al). I walk onto a long porch with multiple versions of myself and another woman who is my costar. As I am again simultaneously viewing this as a finished film, I point out that the woman and I had stand-ins to photo-double us while we green-screened much of it. The woman and I re-enter the building (which I suspect is my Montclair [New Jersey] home from its front porch), and we walk down a corridor towards a set of french doors, passing a maid who verbally greets us. While we're walking, under her breath my costar mutters to me, "And boy did she get in trouble for that...!" Dream Memory has me concur, my muttering back, "That she did." Even though we are performing, I can actually remember the director tearing the girl a new one for ad libbing a line [in the dream it doesn't occur to me but in retrospect I realize the maid was Freema Agyeman from the episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood]. Beyond the french doors is another porch, beyond which is a sprawling lawn slightly declining away, on the grass of which are dozens of people we know already to be "psi'entologists." "Oh well," I say, raising up a long barrel rifle or shotgun, and glancing at my costar. "Time for some 'psi'entologist' huntin'..."

Sunday, August 10, 2008 6:25am Nyder and McCall
Nyder and McCall I am packing the remains of my desk at an office job. I am down to a few office supply remnants I can add to thin boxes than have some paperwork. The boxes are the size of 100-sheets-of-labels kind, yet I know the few reports already inside will fit a few highlighter markers. I have nothing incriminating within, so when my supervisor enters (apparently Nyder from Genesis of the Daleks), speaking with someone else, I simply leave the lids off the two boxes and "casually" move off to the side as though making sure I have everything. Sure enough when I turn back towards my desk I see Nyder having completed going through the contents of the two boxes, making sure I am not making off with anything. The other man seems to be a 1980s era version of Edward Woodward, who belittles a worker at a nearby desk due to his having so few personal items on his desk.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008 5:17am Motorcyles and big cats; Warren Rogers and Dr. Moon

Back Story: in New York, late 1974 at one of the first real horror/sci-fi conventions, I fell in with a circle of friends, one of whom was New York based Warren Rogers. For years he and I were best friends, and were we to come across each other today, it is unlikely we would feel that any time had passed. Eventually Warren married and moved to Hawaii, though it is unclear as to whether he eventually moved from there back to the mainland, and/or his current location.

Friday, July 25, 2008 5:22am Warehouse and Battling Mothmen
I am at work, pretty much, but instead of multiple clean bankers boxes on shelves, the cellar room has all sorts of bizarre artifacts and such, along the lines of what a movie shows as a museum cellar. One of the top bosses, the company's CEO, comes down and starts packing up boxes with stuff while searching for something specific that he won't impart to me for me to assist. I return to the back where on a long table seems to be a laid-out parachute made out of a massive butterfly or moth such. I go to gently roll it up but its extended wings seems to leave a weird white sticky film on the table. The "material" itself begins to get tangled, so I put it down; the film on the table comes up like glazed sugar on donuts. Meanwhile the butterfly/moth thing or whatever has come alive and heads out, and I pursue it. On a walkway near a small seemingly man-man lake or large pond, it turns on me as we scuffle. The water below is solid, so as I go to try and go over the railing with my assailant, I end up managing to have its body fall first. The body itself ends up being flat and about the width and length of a shoebox, bright red and simiar in design of a chinese lantern. Yet somehow I know this thing will take over the world, so I hop over the railing to send it from the surface to under the water. My foot shoves it below the surface, as I fall sideways into the water as well. With the water now liquified, I realize it can still get out, so I pull on the netting which connects the body to its wings, and like a parachute, the wings rise up and flutter down to the water. The water suddenly reacts violently, presumably to the introduction of the creature as that seems to be the epicenter. I start to swim to the farther shore a few yards away, and the water literally heaves and with a large wave deposits me on the grassy shoreline near a street curb. I head back to the building, which seems to be a factory. My eyes hurt something fierce and I find an albeit filty mirror in which I can barely make out my reflection, though even there my eyes seem dark and pained. With the flashlight aspect of my cell phone I examine my eyes more closely: the right one instead of hazel is more of a icy blue, almost creepy Meg Foster eye colour. The left eye is still darker but both eyes' irises "close funny," that is, they do not close uniformly. They close with little wrinkles as they as a separate component, like wrinkled fabric. Oh now that can't be good, I think to myself. I call my temp agency to ask after it, and I am told I "have 'navnapnia'," or some such, and I have to get out of there right away. Inside the main part of the warehouse like building there is an apron-wearing woman behind a counter (in retrospect I realize she is very similar in attire to my friend Toni as she was for the movie The Prestige). Somehow I know I can get from her the medicine I need for this: I tell her I have navnapnia, and she cannot understand it, or pronounce it, having a strangely thick Slavic accent. She has a coworker woman look it up, but neither can pronounce it so she cannot find it listed in a large book she consults. I begin to get confused as to whether the peculiar occular condition is called navnapnia or maybe its napnavia. The rest of the warehouse is running in panic from the apparently highly contagious condition, as the two woman casually wander about as though nothing is wrong, as I begin to wonder if I should just call back my temp agency and let them speak to these women.

Monday, July 21, 2008 4:28am Felines and canals
I go to help someone out of a backseat of a two-door car. Out of the front hops my late cat Mickey hops out, much to my understandable concern, as she was an indoor cat. She casually wanders over to what seems to be the start of a long drainage canal, though at the time I don't realize it would be quite an impractical drainage: were any water to be in it, then right into the street would the water exit. But I am concerned with my cat becoming lost, and I am able to close a gate so she cannot escape if she does not travel down the dry, deepingly canal "hallway" as it were, with its white cement walls slowly rising into the distance. Towards me she comes, around an abandoned shopping cart; I see she is about a third covered in fresh deer droppings as though she found a large concentration of the moist pellets and rolled around in them. They are pretty well stuck to her fur. I carry her back up, where I come across the Cowardly Lion arguing with the Tin Man. While generally closer to the MGM classic film than the Baum book illustrations, they are not the actual Bert Lahr and Jack Haley versions in make-up. The Lion points out to his companion that (for some reason), going to the wizard would be pointless as he will not remember them, but the Tin Man almost vehemently disputes this.

Thursday, July 17, 2008 5:52am Dr. Bell and Mr. Bug

It should be noted that before turning in last night, I spend nearly hour hours viewing the engrossing BBC TV movie Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle, immediately followed by the subsequent first two episodes (The Patient's Eyes and The Photographer's Chair), of the BBC series Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 5:46am Local meteors and envelope stuffing girlfriends
A former girlfriend (the third of the five I've had), comes to where I work (while not my current day-job, this one is in a cellar in the same part of downtown). She decides to help me stuff envelopes. Shortly there is enough sound from above that I realize people from upstairs in the offices are coming down to my area. I hasten my girlfriend to the secondary exit, a steep ramp heading right out onto the sidewalk. Through the open doorway one can see sunlight, reflecting on the ramp is moisture and a bit of rubbish. I quickly tell her the location and how to get to the nearest McDonalds, assuring her I will meet her there presently. I return to where she was sitting and find she has left her jacket and purse and some other stuff (such as a very large flashlight). Up the small set of stairs to the main door to the hallways the sounds dissipate: no one really is coming downstairs. Relieved, I head up the ramp to the sidewalk. Outside, I happen to glance up just in time to see a thin, brilliant white streak of light thunder overhead. Even as I realized it's a meteor it is already slamming into the ground in the distance. The immediate impact is enough to throw me to the ground, and in the distance I can see what seem to be orange sparks hurled high into the air. By its direction I immediately know it to have struck somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, but I cannot deduce or hazard a guess as to where.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 5:26am Interrogation
Dream Detachment: Keifer Sutherland is running an investigation in which, true to Jack Bauer's more brutal nature (and according to the current government's regime of torturing its own citizens on the flimsiest of excuses), includes violence and intimidation. Some nebbish'y man in his late 20s or early 30s is in custody. He is trying to see the badge giving Sutherland the authority to treat him like this. The "badge" seems to be a DVD cover cartridge with white paper beneath the outer plastic. "I don't see your name on this," the harried man starts to say. "Yeah well, if it doesn't have my name on it, I'm not the subject of the inquiry," Sutherland snarls in reply, snatching away the DVD case off the table. He spins the guy's seat around to face him; having had enough, the man literally offers Sutherland to "do it, do it!" Sutherland calmly and deliberately appears to begin to "massage" the man's throat and just below the jawline; from my POV (the man in the chair has his back mostly to me with Sutherland facing at a right oblique angle, the metal table between "me" and the two of them), I cannot see exactly what Sutherland is doing with his moving thumbs, but based on visuals, it is not a pleasant sensation for the man he is torturing. The scene shifts; with photos of a small plane on the table, Sutherland is now shouting at a seated woman around the same age as the previous man. "Where's he flying? Buenos Aries? North Korea...?" he barks, slapping the flat of his hand on the table for emphasis. "Owl Lake," she manages to stammer (when he comes closest to taking a breath), trying to explain her father only flies locally.

Monday, July 14, 2008 5:43am Making the light
My roommate and I are on the north side of Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, headed west. I run across the street, the light turning yellow as I am halfway across. Headed east and making a left to go north onto Woodman, is a tall, square, green van-truck. The doorway of a building into which I head is about two feet off the ground so I have to jump to get onto its doorsill. My right leg bent and my left leg dangling off the sill, I notice the green truck has just missed me, having driven half of itself up the turn of the sidewalk, presumably in its haste to beat the light. That jerk almost him me, I think to myself as I notice my roommate is still across the street waiting for the light.

Friday, July 11, 2008 5:58am Cellar girls gone wild and PotUS admonishments
I am with a young female Dream Character at some sort of large outdoor party. All in their 20s and 30s, most everyone is dancing, and many of the girls are thrilled that some hunky-handsome celebrity is dancing with them (not I). My friend and the nearby girls are slightly disappointed when he moves off, getting ready to leave. Some security people (white MIB [Men In Black]...) come over, looking over the dance floor, as it were. The girls all are aware the young celebrity guy is just hearing impaired enough to need a hearing aid, and apparently he'd just lost his. The MIB guys are looking for it, as immediately so do the nearby girls. The MIB have moved off, My friend finds the small one-piece hearing aid and smartly does not reveal excitedly that she has it. She grabs my arm to bring me to the guy, who apparently has gone from actor to prince or such. She wants me to give it to him in her name, which I don't understand but have long since learned there's no use arguing with a female's "concept" of logic [bg]... We walk from the dancers up the road which clearly is the border of Montclair and Verona [New Jersey], where westbound Claremont Avenue comes to merges briefly with Bloomfield Avenue, right at the crest of the Bloomfield Avenue hill. The man gladly accepts the found hearing aid and thanks me greatly, as well as thanking my friend. (In the context of the dream), his character morphs into [a fictitious version of] the President of the United States. Slightly older than he was a moment earlier, suddenly as PotUS, he all but begins to pontificate, at one point asking me if I've ever read the Constitution, My Dream Character friend has morphed into a real-life best friend and she visibly groans silently at the PotUS giving me such an opening on such a subject. While not the current tyrant war-criminal PotUS, this PotUS is either new to his office or still naive. I proudly tell him I've read it and understand it far more than politicians who moment-to-moment violate its government restricting directives. I am enpowered by having noticed there are no MIB or Secret Service or FBI or police to murder me from speaking my mind. As I urge this PotUS to read the Constitution every day himself, my now greatly embarressed friend gently pulls me away, southbound on Bloomfield Avenue, while the clearly baffled PotUS stands on a bench within covered bus stop, the glass back of which has water running down it as though it is raining heavily, albeit nowhere else. "Do you... vote?" he asks with confusion, his arms slightly out, his hands palms upwards. "I can't," I point out, still being led away. "I'm not the property of the State: I'm a first-class, sovereign American; you know the system is now rigged so only 14th Amendment defined, second-class 'US Citizens' can 'vote,' as well as those sovereigns who are defrauded into claiming they are 14th Amendment defined, State-property, second class 'US Citizens'," I just manage to add before I'm out of range. He continues to watch me as I am close-to-dragged away, clearly too incompetent to understand the corruption of the country he falsely claims to 'represent'... Dream Shift: My brother and I are in deep cellar hallways of some building. It is late and to sleep we must make do on floors at the bottom of a few steps, the bottom of which can be used as a pillow of sorts. I hear some sounds nearby and investigate, finding several young girls in their twenties or so wearing long t-shirt like nightshirts, and they seem to be showering with slender green garden hoses. Nearest me, one black-haired brunette notices me observing them, and turns the end in my direction, watching me with somewhat steamy eyes. I stand there, being hit in the face with a gently spritzing of water, at first thinking she is trying to get me to leave, but her face reflects less annoyance at me as much as she conveys Great Interest. I notice she and the nearby girls are behind her are all soaked. "How are you even getting wet?" I ask her, as the hose is facing me. I suddenly notice there are small holes throughout the length of the hose. "Oh," I say, answering my own question. "It's some sort of garden watering hose." The girl smiles as she lets me approach. I put my arms around her shirt, my hands touching her wet shirt against her smooth back. She glances down at me, my being fully clothed. "You might want to lose your shorts," she says, even though I am wearing long denim jeans. I decide to ditch my clothing, as doing so will also protect my cell phone from water damage. Back at where my brother is holed up, he notices I am extremely wet, and asks what happened. I start to peel off my wet clothes as I relate what's just around the corner. He gets up and starts down the hall despite my protests. I am also curious as to why he is wearing fully decked out cowboy clothing, including (but not limited to) those weird, massively wide leg chaps. I get back to where the girls had been to find the area empty. Even my brother is gone. A little investigation I find large, slightly off-hinges door, behind which is a large classroom in which the girls are in class. Somehow I know it's Catholic, but later than high school. Unable to interrupt the class, I continue on and find an area of what seems to be a mansion. Hallways are wide and almost shopping mall-like, and one large room is extremely Tudor in style, and inside on a small side table there are numerous objects such as old wooden carvings of birds and animals. They are slowly moving back and forth on their own. I sit on a nearby bench to observe this and the bench begins noticeably to rock. I deduce I am witnessing the most paranormal activity than even I have ever experienced. Wondering if whatever entity is moving these items is upset, I speak aloud that I mean no harm, though that I am impressed with the amount of telekinesis being demonstrated.

Thursday, July 10, 2008 5:49am Gunmans’ picnic
Walking towards a large brick building, as though a university, I pass a man with a woman, the two kneeling as though at a picnic. As I pass I notice the well dressed man has a gun and is looking outwards, wary. The girl also seems to be looking about. A few yards I come across another black-suited purposeful man, a black gun in his hand as well. He opens girl on the kneeling couple as the kneeling man returns fire (both guns have silencers), and as I am not armed, I instantly drop and hit the desk (though actually a lawn), and wait for the melee to end or move off. This so can't be good, I think to myself as I lie facedown in the grass, wondering whether to make a dash for it.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008 5:53am Sleep paralysis disguised with false dreams
Recently I have had the strange experience of being asleep enough to be dreaming, but dreaming I am still lying down in bed, and that while I can get up, everything begins to become confusing. Essentially I dream that I have "awakened," but as my vision is fixed on a single point and that I cannot blink or move my eyes, I become disoriented. I can get up and raise my dream hands up in front of my face but I cannot see them. My vision (based on results), is locked on whatever my physical while-sleeping open-eyes are facing. Having dreamt I have gotten out of bed, I find moving about being slow and sluggish, and I become concerned regarding my unmoving vision not following/seeing what should be visible as I walk. Most of the time in this situation I can actually deduce I am still abed, and/but that my body/mind is still asleep enough that I cannot manage to rouse myself nor be able to get myself into a stable, fixed dreamscape. My theory is, despite at the time being in a R.E.M. dream state, as my open eyes are not moving may be what is the "problem," causing my synapse to short circuit, as it were.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008 5:50am Glass Elevator Snogging and Tree Torture
Family and friends, along with my [late] father, are taking turns literally torturing a vicious tree along the lines of Whomping Willow. Normally it will grab someone with its branches, the very end of its twigs being rounded thorns like as sharp as (and in shape resembling) fish hooks, and once catching someone, rends the person apart. But, sitting around in lounge chairs nearby, the group has a black remote which causes the tree unbearable pain. This seems to have it "being trained" not to harm people. My father's longtime friend John Walsh has just had his turn; followed by my sister-in-law's father walks to the tree, the branches of which move down, its twigs latching hard into his back, as my father casually touches a button on the remote. He doesn't even pick it up, it sits on the arm of his lounge chair. The massive tree literally snarls in sudden pain, showing long white, sharp teeth. It releases my sister-in-law's father who walks away proudly, but the tree is still in agony. My father watches almost passively, the remote on the arm of his chair. I quickly go and press it, infuriated that they would be no better than cops with tasers. "If you torture this tree just for the fun of it," I warn the group. "I'll use this on you lot myself." For some reason I do not take the device but leave it where it sits. I walk away from them in disgust, passing the tree, which doesn't attack me. While later I'll wonder if it's actually sentient and understood my position on the matter, I can overhear the voiced concerns of those from whom I've just left departed. "Would he really do that?" one man wonders (to which my father replies "Oh yes he would"), as another replies, "Can he get us all at once?" Despite my distance already I call back to them, for some reason not only feeling highly amused but wish to sound funny enough for them to laugh: "I figure it can at least hit two of you at once." Dream Shift: At my work building the elevator arrives. I step in, while the person also waiting does not. The door closes. I turn around to see there are no operating buttons whatsoever as the doors softly thunk shut. Before I can knock on the door for someone on the outside to open it, I find myself centrifugally pulled to the side as the elevator begins rapidly moving sideways. After a few minutes the walls of the elevators now contain glass panels such as an MTA elevator (not a Willie Wonka type glass elevator). With no supports, the speedy floating elevator heads over a wide field towards a wide set of trees. At the tree line, it gently lands about as softly as any elevator coming to its descended stop. With me in the elevator is a very attractive black Dream Character woman, seemingly in her early 30s or so. Meanwhile due to her sudden appearance, I nearly suspect I am dreaming, even so far as slyly asking her how she got into the lift without my noticing, and my realization the solid elevators have glass paneled walls now. The girl distracts me by becoming amourous, an offer I characteristically accept. Dream Memory indicates she and I have been super close for years but never got physical. We snuggle and cuddle and begin to kiss as several vehicles pull up nearby. From a long black stretch limo steps a short woman who walks casually to the front of the elevator whilst to the back wall a very tall either cop or army officer (he's in some sort of uniform), begins to shout orders, and not in a good way (such as how to escape the elevator); he is shouting in a bullying officious way that makes me automatically want to resist him. The girl and I begin to kiss, during which I manage to whisper we should continue to keep kissing (e.g., deliberately ignore the guy), if only to piss off the screaming guy, the elevator walls of which are thick enough to muffle effectively what he's actually screaming. The shorter woman reaching the front of the elevator, however, calmly presses the button to open the doors and release us, accepting our thanks. Dream Shift: The girl and I enter the property of (what Dream Memory claims is) my family's house. There are on the lawn numerous small puppies and kittens and such, along with several children each around five or six years old. I am puzzled as to why they are inside our property line, around which is a tall wooden fence (my girl and I entered through open wooden-door gate of the driveway). "What are you doing here?" I ask a young, frilly-dress attired girl on the porch near the open front door. She tells me she had permissions to use the house for the pets. Dream Memory confirms this, but only just, to the point I relate that that permission was for One Time (apparently a few days or a week or so earlier). Clearly these kids were taking advantage and pretending the permission extended beyond that one time. Inside I find dozens of small pet animals. As I prepare to admonish the children for trespassing, I notice an extremely wizened elderly man on the sofa, covered mostly with a thin blanket, as though he's been there for quite a long time. I am surprised, but before I can even inquire as to who he is, he begins vehemently cursing me out about having (he and) the children leave, but more in an offensive than defensive way: I realize he's being a squatter, and I find myself extremely irritated he's taking such an attitude when he's the one doing wrong. I decide to give the kids a chance to get away with their animals. "I am calling Animal Control," I tell the girl as I ignore the loud protests of the old man. "And I'm calling the police to remove this guy," I warn as well. The girl from the elevator follows me as I walk out the front door, the shouts of the old man fading behind us. We walk to what seems to be a version of the Pennsylvania cabin my parents owned when I was a child. Inside is my mother and brother who greet us. There is a bit of Dream Geography, as there are rooms also from the New Jersey house in Verona in there as well. I take the girl's hand and lead her to a set of stairs up to the second floor. (The original cabin had no second floor, and these stairs are unlike any set of any house in which I've lived.) On our arrival on the second floor on which I expect to find a room of my own, I notice its hallway is quite wide, maybe fifty feet, at the far distant end the wall has a mirror. I carefully walk the hardwood floor, the girl close behind me, as we pass a few of the open doors on either side. Technically they are arches, as the doors seem to have been removed if they had ever previously been there.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008 5:54am Counting the shadows

As always, when I experience "nightmare" imagery, I do not experience fear, a personal aspect of dreaming I've always found a bit puzzling.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 6:01am Wheelchairs and parties
I'm attending some sort of film festival party, either pre- or post, I can't be sure. As the dream progresses it seems to shift into being a just-post college graduation or alumni party. Either way, the party generally is filled with Dream Characters (none of whom I know IRL). It comes across as though I sneak in, though no one really stops me, so I seem to know where I'm going and why. Inside as I sit on one of the many "tall bar stool" like seats, though they have small metal backs, such as for sitting at home at a kitchen breakfast counter, I notice that one woman is rubbin the bottom of her foot on the top of my shoe. She notices I realize this and she says simply, "It feels good." The background scenery shifts into a white apartment as I point out to the woman and the male owner of the apartment that once I enjoy massaging women's feet, particularly one in a wheelchair, albeit that story being from a Dream Memory. The white apartment is slightly large though not official ostentatious. The doorbells rings and the owner goes to the door and outside is a group of people too far back for me to see, all clamouring for someone to come out to join them. Somehow I know they are all in wheelchairs. Suddenly a guest I'd not previously noticed, a wheelchair-bound man in his late 20's or early 30s, departs, to which the group outside slightly cheers at his joining them. The host explains that the person in the wheelchair is their group leader or such.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 5:53am Double-D dog dares and listing boxing rings
I am sitting on the sofa at my friend's house, when Dumbledore (one of her two dogs), comes up to me from the right for attention. Suddenly from the left, an identical Dumbledore dog walks up as well. Even Dream Memory cannot think up something to make this make sense, so I pretty much instantly deduce I am asleep and dreaming. I bring up and look at my hands; everything is extremely vivid as I actually manage to remember that I am in bed asleep, but I also comprehend I am deeply asleep, with little concern of waking up. Ironically I neglect to "take advantage" of the lucidity as I head outside. The front of the building is that of a dark-brown house, not of the apartment from which I just left. The two Dumbledore dogs follow me, not even bothering with leashes, which is enough to distract me from it being a lucid dream. Dream Shift: I am in the corner within a boxing ring, apparently at which a Dream Character I know is one of the contestants. I lie down in the corner to relax while he's busy. I begin to suspect we are actually on a large cruise shift, which lists strongly, strongly enough that I actually begin to slide on the mat past the ropes. I all but casually reach up and take hold of the lower rope and hang on, preventing me from falling out of the ring headfirst. Utterly unconcerned, I barely bother even to open my eyes. Dream Shift: At another friend's place I head to the bathroom but as I approach, he heads inside first, albeit to shave. I gently knock and open the door ask request, as he's "only" shaving. Inside the bathroom is laid out differently than the same IRL bathroom. he is at the far right wall standing at a small face-level mirror (normally where would be the shower stall); he turns around to look at me, his lower face already covered with shaving cream. In the dream bathroom, the toilet I know is at the left wall (instead of to the right of where my friend is standing). He grunts an affirmative that I can use the toilet. I turn away for a moment, but on glancing back, I notice my friend is no longer there; where the mirror had been is a sort of 8x10 box which would seem to be useable for toiletries, but actually has a magazine standing upright in it, open and turning its own pages.

Friday, June 13, 2008 5:50am Fighting cats and losing time
I am already at work, prepapring to to go out for to a late morning audition. Nearby building construction workers' voices are audible echoing down the halls as always. Somehow without my seeing them do it, the workers have cleaned out two cluttered rooms down the hallway, and while stacking a massive pile of detris and debris outside in the hallway, they have managed to remove the gate to my doorway, brought it several boxes of clutter and put them on the shelf unit nearest the door, and even though no men are inside the room with me, they have managed somehow to lean two medium sized children's bicycles against the inside of the gate. Concerned someone from upstairs will come down and see it, I figure I can place the stuff out in the hall with the other stuff, but my pager (which I still use as a timepiece and alarm), is malfunctioning. Its numbers make no sense; I suspect a weak battery though I've never seen the readout look so baffling. Eventually I can get it to imply it is after 1pm, which I cannot accept as my audition is just past 11am, and I would not have missed it, and could not have lost track of that much time. I look down at the time on the laptop and see it also says 1:06pm. As it makes so much no sense that the time is so late, to prevent my realizing I must be dreaming, it becomes a nested dream: I "wake up," apparently "having drowsed in my chair," and the room is cleared of the stuff. But my pager is still being unreadable and the laptop now claims it is 2pm. This has me again so unravelled about losing track of time that while part of me knows I have to call my agent to explain that I didn't make the audition, I am also close enough to discern I must be dreaming, so I am faced with a... Dream Shift: I am at an outdoor patio table, sort of like those at a sidewalk bistro, with my lovely friend Raven, who I've not seen in a few years. She's chatting away merrily with my mother as a nearby white w/black cat gets my attention. In the dream I know the Dream Character cat, though for some reason it fur is extremely cold. It hops down to check out a toddler sitting on the sidewalk nearby next to an open chest of toys. After walking around the chest and the child, the cat comes back to my right leg and looks up at me, making sure it has room to hop up onto my lap. I notice laying across the table right in front of me, pretty much ignored by Raven and my mother, is a large California Spangle (a specific breed of house cat). While resembling my brother's late cat Mickey, I know this cat as well. "This is 'Mandy', right?" I ask Raven, who agrees and continues talking with mom. The former cat has hopped up onto my lap and it and the table cat immediately go into a fighting-clinch. Neither of the women at the table even acknowledge this, as I realize one of my hands is close enough to being in the middle of this feline confrontation, and when they break to have at it more intensely, I could have my flesh raked pretty good. I wonder how best to move my hand out of harm's way without distrubing their current prelude to out and out battle; moving my hand incorrectly could easily have them start out fighting in earnest sooner than I can extricate myself.

Thursday, June 12, 2008 5:48am Chimerian birds and tree branch transplants
At my Pompton Plains [New Jersey] White Birch Avenue childhood home, my father and I are in the front yard next to a tall and slender young (possibly maple) tree has an awkward outgoing branch, a two-foot long offshoot of which at about five feet brushes my dad's face. "I'm going to snip that off," I tell him. "I'll put it into a water vase until I dig a hole; maybe it will grow in another part of the yard." I can see my brother mowing the lawn at the eastern end of the property line as I turn and head to the two-car garage, The left garage door is open and hung up against the wall are various tools, including (but limited to), a foot off the floor, a small, clean silver spade and bucket I notice I can use. I figure it will be more practical first to dig the hole and water it, then prune off the branch and place it inside the damp hole (the two large leaves at its end several inches above the surface). But where to plant the small branch, I wonder. There are a few trees in the front yard, so I decide to plant it pretty much equidistant from the others. I walk to the eastern part, the street at my right. I look down to pace out the distance from one of the trees there to the property line; I notice I am barefoot and where my brother hasn't mowed yet (he's by the shrubbery dividing the front yard from the back yard, behind which is the pool area), while clean, the grass here is bright yellow and dry. I pace out twenty-seven steps to the property line and figure thirteen steps from the tree will be fine. I turn around and step off the curb onto the street. The curb turns out to be about two feet high. To my annoyance a relatively small (about three foot high at its shoulder), adult ostridge rushes up, insisting on attention as though it were a puppy. It keeps turning, revealing a peculiar, long almost lionine tail, which thwacks me inconsequentially (as would the tail of a dog, hyper-happy to see me). Dream Memory keeps me from questioning this creature's appearance, and I start to believe it is a pet of my brother’s. A young, blonde Dream Character woman is suddenly standing nearby, and I know she means well but tends to get in my way when I'm doing something. Down her right cheek to her chin a small worm or caterpillar, less than an inch in length, rolls sideways down her face, leaving in its slow wake a wet trail of some king. She goes to remove it as it just lies there stuck to her chin line, but she doesn't have a tissue. "I'll get one from the garage," she says, and heads west along the curb-line towards the driveway. "There's also a small wastebasket at the front of the garage by the door," I point out as she's walking away, to indicate she can drop the used tissue in there when she gets the tiny invertebrate off her face. "Are you afraid I'm going to steal something?" she asks in a suspicious tone. "What?" I respond, unsure from where that idea would come, but it reminds me why I'd prefer she be elsewhere.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 6:10am Lady and the Workers
I walk into my bedroom to find my dog Lady (predictably, Dream Memory has me not recall that IRL she passed away about twenty years ago). I am puzzled when I see someone has tied her leash to a hook in the wall. I unhook her leash and she follows me; we emerge the front of a strange congromeration of the [New Jersey] Montclair and Verona houses. To my surprise two workmen are working on something to do with the front of the house or the front door. They tell me my brother (who apparently has already left), unlocked the door so they could work. I have no frame of reference for their being there, but Lady lies down casually on the cement porch amongst their tools, so she's not concerned. I request they just keep an eye that Lady doesn't wander off (as she's fine off a leash and generally stays when she knows she's being monitored, but occasionally will risk leaving the property if she believes she can get away with it).

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 5:39am Helpful cops [!], gangsta threats and plush effigies
For some reason a gansta type [rapper?] is out to get me. I answer the door of my Montclair [New Jersey] home to find he and his cohort making verbal threats. The guy is wearing the equivalent of a bling-outfitted zoot suit. He departs angrily, demanding I meet him at some club where he will kill me. His smaller cohort remains a few moments longer to reiterate this threat. I go to a tall set of knick-knack shelves and find a small box with nested boxes within. At the center box is a tiny gun, similar to an old sleeve gun of the Wild West. I consider using it, but I am certain it only has one bullet and I cannot guarantee the ancient weapon will even fire properly (or safely), so I am forced to dismiss that option. To avoid this confrontation, with my friend in the passenger seat, I am driving her SUV. She is concerned I do not know the vehicle's dimensions, even though I pull out of a parking space with ease. While it's a road, we seem to be more at the end of a long curved driveway than a street. It seems to be dusk but I cannot get the headlights to come on. My friend is freaking out about this, and they finally come on as I reach a stop sign. Ahead is a sprawling wide vista, no cover and no other traffic or cars, just a small traffic circle, with a wide road straight ahead, and one to the left and one to the right. The small circle's island is merely a raised bit of road, the height of a curb, and apparently only about ten to fifteen feet wide. The SUV does not stop at the sign properly, and literally passes the stop sign and comes to a stop the length of the SUV. To my left I see what I know to be a cop car, despite its ominous military'esque look: all dark with small, square, sinister looking roof-lights. I have already backed up so the SUV is at the stop sign, but the cop, dressed in dark highway patrol type clothes (with a "mountie" type hat), walks to my car. Uncharacteristically, he is there to help, aware of the death threat against me. He has a black cell phone that resembles a common pre-streamlined phone, from which I hear some detective at the station hoping I will testify against the gangsta guy, so they can bring him in. I relate where the guy can be found, and I am instructed to go there. Dream Shift: I am driving along a similar driveway'esque back road. To the left are a few large wooden abandoned houses, dry-wood grey and massive sections of wall missing, as though they were torn out like paper. I assure my friend that ironically such houses are rarely haunted, despite their look. At our right we pass a large set of wooden timbers set as a wide rectangle with two horizontal beams, so with the top beam there are three beams. From each of these beams there are several large plush animals literally hanged up via nooses. "Odd choice of effigies," I mention as we puzzle as to why they're there.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 5:48am Crutch Stilts and Jumbled Navigation
In just pre-dawn hours, I am driving my mother's car, with my brother riding shotgun. Dream Geography has the Montclair [New Jersey] streets rather mangled up, but in context the jumbled geography make perfect sense, and I know where I am. Driving southbound on Greenwood towards Bloomfield Avenue, on arriving at Claremont, Greenwood at Glenridge is blocked by what seems to be a firehouse. I make a right (which now seems to be Walnut), and cross Fullerton. With large white painted direction arrows on the road, I reach Mountain Avenue after only a block (instead of about a mile), the area combined with a different part of Fullerton, near the train tracks. I go to make a left and despite the arrows pointing straight, it is not a T-street but a Right Only. Trying to make a left has me bang into a curb and a small pedestrian sidewalk; a small flower garden rests in the raised street island. "Well that isn't going to work," I say, as I back up to make the right, the only available turn open to me. The street becomes an area combining segments of Watchung Plaza and Grove (as opposed to Park), albeit the part of Grove at the Glenridge border [still New Jersey. Completing the turn I notice a white police car ahead; I am concerned my maneuver has not gone unnoticed. Sure enough, as I come to a stop, albeit now within a higher-than-street-level parking structure, the two clean-cut police officers come to my left side. The car seems to be missing most of itself; no roof or car door, and my brother and I sit on static office chairs as the cops, with uncharacteristic politeness, simply inquire as to the turn. I am not asked for any ID or registration (it is here that Dream Memory tells me I am in my mother's car, with her permission). I explain how the straight arrows on the road led me to believe there would be a left turn when in fact there was none, and that had the arrows indicated a Right Turn Only, I would not have made the error. The two policemen make similar expressions that clearly indicate they agree with this assessment, and they head back to their car. I notice the one closest has a small sheet of blue note paper than may have the license plate number, but I proceed. There is a slight Dream Shift in which my brother is no longer with me, and I am apparently on high stilts made from what appear to be very tall crutches. What seems to be far below me are children, albeit apparently the size of Easter Marshmallow Chicks. I have to be very careful to maneuver around them on the thin crutch-stilt legs. Outside the only way I can get back on them is to use a small gully. The bottoms are in the gully and I am on a street level ledge. I manage to get on, and as the asphalt gully slopes upwards, I am able to hop up a foot or so at a time until the stilts have emerged from the gully. Dream Shift: I am walking (without the stilts) and pass Jay Leno, literally on his back on the sidewalk, laughing and explaining as though to a studio audience. He is attempting to sit up as he does this, retelling some story about a musicians strike, and about some executives who couldn't understand Jay's ideas about music. "I say, 'Look, I have a Bachelor's Degree in Music Appreciation!', I tell'em" he adds, laughing at the memory. I pass Jay as he just manages to get back to his feet. The curbs of the sidewalk indicate road construction going on to repair them. I make a right at the corner and as the street shifts into a corridor, I head to a hotel room, the door of which is unlocked. Near the keyhole is one of those little magnetic word magnets that simply says Door. Inside is our luggage and stuff, piled up rather haphazardly a few feet beyond the door, at the foot of one of the beds. Dream Characters follow me into the room, one of whom complains that our luggage clearly has been searched by "the government."

Monday, June 02, 2008 5:42am Actor filled set location
I am on set for a pre-filmed sketch for Mad TV, though it seems more as though it's for Saturday Night Live; via desert rock strewn mountainous roads, I have been driven to the location by someone in the crew. We are filming at night, at someone's actual home, not on a set; in a small suburb. From what Dream Memory indicates at the time, the scene is some sort of running gag involving mail carriers. I am outside, talking with Seth Green, who (in the context of the dream), is currently part of the show's cast. He and I speak about his work not only as an actor, but as a director and the comedy genius of Robot Chicken; I point out that nearby character actor Jeff Garlin (at the border of the front yard, practicing his lines), would make a good voice for a Robot Chicken sketch. I also point out I'm friends with Leah Cevoli, and (noting one of the sketch's leads at the doorway), that Seth has used Alex Borstein on several episodes. Seth is impressed with my knowledge. Seth is called to set and he goes inside. Suddenly a massive stream of people begin to emerge calmly from the house, the majority of whom carry film equipment, which they proceed to bring across the street to the sidewalk, where the stuff is randomly left at the curb or on the stone wall of that home's front yard. Nearly across the street myself, I get hard bumped and knocked down by actor Stanley Tucci, who apologizes and helps me to my feet. (Though IRL he and I have never met), he recognizes me and he's pleased to see me. He heads off as I notice lined up on a small section of shelf on the high stone fence, are countless tiny TVs and monitors and such, most with screens small enough to be tricorders from Star Trek TOS.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008 4:55pm Catspaws and getting Sheen away
I've been hanging out with a Dream Character woman who turns out to be a little crazier than I would prefer. She has a suddenly outburst in a small cafeteria of sorts. It is after dark so there is hardly anyone there, but still, her sudden shout at me is unnerving. Another Dream Character friend borrows my keys, and with my round-end bicycle lock key, he is able to open a soda-can vending machine to remove a few cans of soda, as well as some of the quarters inside. Another friend helps me slip out unnoticed to get away from the nutty woman. I know in which direction is a house in which I live, but my knowledge of the bus schedule late at night is sketchy at best. I also worry that the woman may be able to remember how to find my place. We notice an ominous red glow in the distance. The friend thinks it could be the sun but I know it's in the west, which we eventually deduce means there's a large and dangerously nearby brush fire or such. I end up in some sort of jitney/tram-like conveyance, with Martin Sheen, who is also acting rather wildly peculiar. I soon realize he is behaving as he did in his guest star role as Rose's father on Two and a Half Men. I manage to get him to get off the tram when it slows down under the Sherman Way underpass, under the Van Nuys Airport runway, even though the start of the tunnel is the wide-doored side of a barn. Dream Shift: I am cutting through a college cafeteria or lounge, in which seemingly a production of some Shakespeare play is taking place. I go around the tall black curtains at the side and at the front I see numerous people in green satin (or silk) hooded robes, standing as some sort of chorus, but blocking the main performers. Some sort of bloody massacre is taking place, the lead(?) spouting lines or such that in the dream made sense and were familiar. I began to wonder if it was Titus Andronicus, MacBeth or what. But I was more annoying the main carnage was being blocked by the green robed players. Either the play is ending or a Dream Shift takes place, as a pretty college student co-ed friend of mine in the play, a Dream Character has come down not as much for notes but for compliments. For some reason I am reclinded on a futon-like lounge chair, and she sits next to me, though close enough my head is all but now in her lap. This amuses a few oeople around us, who point it out. "It wporks for me," I quip, not inhibited by feeling her softness of her leg and lap at the side and back of my head. A friendly cat rests on the top of my hip as I am on my side. I go to get up but the cat slides and instead of just hopping down, it tries not to fall, and ends up digging two of its front right paw claws into the back pocket of my jeans. They are long and sharp enough to penetrate the jeans and get stuck, and I can feel them all but starting to cut into my buttock. The claws are so stuck. and the cat in a position it cannot retract its claws, I cannot work out how to remove them. When I try to pull them out manually, it must give just enoug pain to the cat that it places its sharp teeth around my finger as though pointing out It Will Hur Me if it erally bites down, if I don't stop. No one comes to my aid, and for some reason I cannot just kneel on the floor (for better leverage), nor can I seem to remove my pants.

Friday, May 09, 2008 5:10am No Erector Set
I walk into a darkened room, on one wall on which is a massive plasma screen. It goes blank for a few seconds, then starts to play what seems to be an episode of Greatest American Hero. Behind me I can hear my roommate laughing, as though he's been watching the show a lot and finds it as funny if not funnier than Reaper. But as I watch the scene, and its famous music plays, Something Seems Off. William Katt's character lands on a large plane but it's unlike any kind of plane that could even fly, let alone ever been seen before. Its wings are shaped like a bat-kite, and there are countless nuts and bolts and pipes all exposed in a very unsafe way. Dream Memory seems to have me actually recall this as an episode, as Katt picks at something he thinks it out of place and a large section of the opposite wing detaches and begins to fall to earth. Desperate, he flies after it, ignoring the main fusalage portion on which apparently is a large group of passengers ironically terrified of flying anyway. The camera keeps up with the flying Katt and the falling debris, which all comes loose so now there's dozens of large and small metal bits falling, the buildings on te ground getting closer and more in focus. I all but notice what seems wrong: the special effects are far superior to the original show, even though Dream Memory insists this is the show. The scene cuts to a bizarre radar beacon made of three large flexible hollow segmented tubing, whipping about in a strange snake-like manner (as it monitors the immediate inevitability of the tons of crashing weird-plan parts), small collander like holes on the sides of each attached segment. Beneath the beacon are image flashes of small house neighbourhoods, one house into which we go. The scene seems to be similar to te animation of Robot Chicken, but not as coherent. Here is seems to be a household of Rockem Sockem Robots, in the kitchen of which the scowling faced Blue sits and holds up his fist to the nearby standing Red, but Blue somehow has his fist with the classic extended middle finger; behind him a somewhat slender beige female-seeming Rockem Sockem Robot-Spouse seems to be shouting something, her mouth opening and closing, but the words come out as gibberish.

Monday, May 05, 2008 5:40am Pools and schools
Heading to class, I am in my own Pompton Plains [New Jersey] high school. As I reach the end of a main hallway to turn right down a corridor, the hallway is a wall-to-wall swimming pool, about three foot deep. Sensing this has something to do with a movie or TV show being filmed, I op down without hesitation, the water coming up to just below my rib cage. In my left hand is a TiVo remove; while I have anoter small device in my right hand I do not recall what it was. I am careful not to let them touch the warm water, as to my right I pass an AV room (not the actual AV room that was in school). Inside I see through the open door, characters and Martin Starr from the one-season TV series Freaks and Geeks. They are the same as they were in the 1998 show. I wade in to the room, as the floor is the same level as the pool floor; they're sitting on chairs raised up, so the water doesn't reach the table level. The bottom of the TiVo remove barely touches the water; I set it down on the workbench table. Samm Levine points out the certain strangeness of the school of late, though the only one I recall is his indicating a wire shirt hanger that's "been on the wall there for years," meaning one of the nearby corridor halls. Not sure either why it would be left there, I make a mental note to look for it when I go by there next time.

Thursday, May 01, 2008 5:08am Elevated directors
I am within a wide-roomed, cubicle filled office environment, heading past the office cubicles as two Dream Character co-workers end up pacing me and also entering with me into an elevator going down to the ground floor. The pleasant girl Brandi chats with me, and I relate something about my acting, and just as I notice the girl is looking down, the guy muttters something along the lines of the girl's name being Bryce or such. I am rather embarressed, with no idea as to why I'd mistake her name that way. She seems to shrug it off as happening "all the time." I exit the lobby, which appears to be a well-lit building lobby in some large university, but seem to have forgotten something, so I return and, along with several various people already inside, I step onto the elevator, which now seems to be not only a wide freight-like elevator, but it even has two large vending machines at the far wall. Suddenly from behind me I hear a slightly familiar accepted voice: I turn to find Teresa Paoli, director of her student film 100percent, on which I worked. "Your pager service no longer works!" she tells me with slight but noticeable exasperation; I inform her about my new cell phone and number, which relieves her immensely. I notice standng behind her with his hands on his hips is black t-shirted Alvaro Ron who directed me in his LA Film School student film Behind the Curtain, also on which I worked. He doesn't say anything but clearly indicates from his body language he is pleased to learn I can be contacted again.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 5:00am Back-east late-night hiking and snow-problem driving
I am walking at night to the grocery store or such. Crossing one street my way is blocked by presumeably a horse-drawn carriage. While I do not see the carriage, which would be to my right were I to look that way, I do see in my way two light-brown horses, one in front of the other, each with long reins. The lead horse is in my crosswalk, and I have to walk betwen them; I stop over one of the reins which is so slack as to be lying on the asphalt. After a few yards I "realize" I am on Pompton Avenue in Cedar Grove [New Jersey], heading south in the direction of Bloomfield Avenue. A nearby time-sign indicates it is 10:53pm, so I deduce I am not only too late for the store, I have no idea as to whether there are any more buses. Dream Shift: An anouncement on the radio of the car I'm driving declares Woodman Avenue to be closed. Somehow I know this specifically means the area north in Van Nuys, somewhere around Roscoe Boulevard. I am driving past Tyrone on Moorpark in Sherman Oaks, which is tricky due to a lot of snow on the unplowed road. I suspect there is a cop car nearby, shadowing me. At Van Nuys Boulevard I make a sharp right to go north, but the snow is so thick I start to skid into the lanes of oncoming traffic... and then not only does the steering wheel all but lock, I cannot get the car to decelerate. Numerous cars wildly veer to get out of my way. Gods, I sure hope I'm dreaming this, I think to myself with great concern as I struggle to regain control and get back into the proper lane/s without hitting anything.

Monday, April 21, 2008 5:23am The stars are right...
I am with two Dream Characters in a clothing store. There is a set of hats with thick fleece linings. As I go to get a cap, I see a grey deerstalker hat. "Y'think I'd look good in a deerstalker?" I ask them. One barely listens, and the other just turns towards me for a moment to say, "Oh yeah, sure, Sherlock." As I walk through the store aisles I glance down to see my left sneaker somehow has had its front area by the toes torn, the sole flapping away from the top. I wonder how it happened, and find it irritating that I have to get a new pair. I do not notice they are not the type of sneaker I wear or would normally wear. Dream Shift: An ancient set of several people have been seeking some section of the infamous and evil Necronomicon tome, with plans to bring the Old Ones back to destroy human life and/or enslave what few survivors may remain. A lot of Dream Fade has me lose some of the details, but somehow I was the protector of the section of the book, and somehow these evil people manged either to wrest or trick me into letting them get it. A soul so positive and pure that for the villains to see it will destroy them, has for centuries been trapped within a the world behind mirror reflections. There is a full solar eclipses, which is terrifying some elderly wise women, who hide in the "shade" of an apartment building, lying on their backs, their heads up against the steps leading to the door. "The book is being Sought," one of them manages to weep. "The book has been found," I mention with some annoyance, wondering how to set things right and stop the doomsday cultists. I notice somehow the solar eclipse somehow powers my wrist watch and the solution comes to me. I find myself in an old building's main room, a dark and dirty sheet across the wall at my right as I calmly face the robed and hooded villains with the book. As they revel in their plans to commence their ritual, I reach to my right and give the decades old sheet a yank. It tumbles to the floor, revealing a full wall mirror. The presence of the book releases the soul from the mirror; as he steps through and stands triumphant, each of the horrified villains explode with a small but effectively bloody pop, leaving on the dusty floor nothing but gore and the book. He picks up the book, and pushes it through the seemingly still pliable mirror, where on the other side it falls to the floor in the empty room beyond the reflection, and the mirror shatters. He tells me with the book in that world, it can never again be used here. I can't help wondering, "What about anyone in that world finding it...?" "They can only use the original, and for that world, that's just some written-in-reverse copy," he explains.

Friday, April 18, 2008 5:34am Badgers and crackers
One of my best friends and I are walking along and suddenly to my surprise I see a live badger of all things, wandering along by itself on a lawn. "Whoa, take a look!" I say to my friend, who glances casually over and continues walking. Meanwhile I've stopped and bravely approached the badger as I would any such wild animal: carefully and with much respect (which always came in handy with my wildlife handling back in my Animal Control Officer days back east). The badger notices me and stops, unsure of what I am doing but it clearly grasps I do not fear it, but exude great admiration for it, so it doesn't get defensive. I pull from my pocked a packet of peanut butter crackers, figuring if raccoons like peanut butter, most likely will this badger. I kneel down on the grass as the badger tentatively approaches me. For some reason I lie on my back in the grass as I call to my friend, not merely to see but to come close so I can toss to her the disposable camera I have for her to take a photo. She stands along the wall where we'd been walking, now standing in the shadow of the sidewalk pedestrian-walkway construction-platform. She doesn't hesitate out of fear or concern, but of apparent a sort of apathetic distain, as though she couldn't be bothered (and/or irritated to see yet another animal take to me so quickly). She almost moves to walk on with me and as I call to her again, the badger suddenly hops up on onto my stomach, becoming impatient about the cracker I have in my hand. Surprised, and now a bit concerned, I drop the cracker, which falls on my chest right at the base of my throat. The badger turns around, now facing me, looking for the cracker. Now I start being even more careful, to retreive the cracker and to give it to what I know is a rather dangerous animal. It glares at me and opens its mouth and slowly moves closer to my face, not in a nasty snarly way, but clearly demonstrating it wants either the cracker or will perfectly accept as a substitute, my nose. As the badger lies lazily down flat on my chest, its weight of which I can feel ever since it hopped up, its muzzle is merely cetimeters from my face. I manage to get the cracker into its mouth; it bites down, catching two of my left fingertips in the process. There is no pain but I cannot pull away: the flesh of my fingertips stretch like cotton glove fingers. I hastily wonder if a second cracker from the packet will get it to open its mouth again. I am already preparing to roll caefully onto my side for the badger to drop off onto the lawn.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 5:02am Bookstores and blocked kisses
I am working in a second-hand bookstore. In one of the aisles are a mass of newpaper pages strewn about. I know I am supposed to clear it up, but I keep avoiding it. There are workmen out on the sidewalk. Although the store is not open, I open the front door to find two very cute dogs, each seeming an amalgam of a dog I know named Chico, though these dogs seem to be elongated like dachunds, not Chihuahua-mix dogs as is Chico (and not as roundly fat as Chico). One is able to stand on its hind legs to kiss me, but the other has trouble with its legs. While it doesn't make the dog any less friendly, and by its expression it really wants my attentional affections, it is wearing a strange belt of some kind which I seem to interpret as being something helping the dog heal from an operation or such. I also notice the front door to the shop is recessed: to either side are thrust window display cases, beyond which is the sidewalk itself. After playing briefly with the two dogs, I go downstairs and meet up with a Dream Character co-worker, who insists I take a nap. We stack flat items covered in brown wrapping paper for me to use as a pillow. As I go to lie down our boss comes in with some stuff for us to store away. I carry several of the brown-papered items to a room down the hall a it, in which is a lot of film equipment such as tripods and such; there is little floor space on which to put my stack of items that won't block something. Dream Shift: My current roommate and I are in my Verona [New Jersey] home; he is upstairs and tells me its time I let in my girlfriend. I open the front door to invite in my [Dream Character] girlfriend. She and I are both dressed warmly, for winter. She comes in and I tell her my roommate wants her to come, which for some reason I find highly amusing as it seems to be some sort of running joke between us. In the mini-foyer at the base of the stairs, she and I embrace (my facing south, the living room, with her facing north, my parents' bedroom); the girl hugs very well. She is not skinny, nor actually fat: a bit "chunky" in all the right places ("thick" is the term many personal ads use). No matter, as I go to kiss her willing neck, but I cannot seem to move into position properly to make contact. She is not resisting, even moving her hair out of my way, so she clearly anticipates the physical pleasure involved, but I cannot properly move to make contact with her neck.

Monday, April 14, 2008 5:09am Working dog
I am at work (another flippin'work dream!), but the boxes are a shambles. There is also far more room in the place and more aisles and shelving units than normal, but I don't notice any of that. One of the higher-up bosses comes down and I let him in. He makes some suggestion of sorting of which I can't make sense. I make the radical suggestion of combining everything by its file number not by its category. He seems suddenly confused and distracted and gives me the go ahead, but noticing my back seems to be paining me, he suggests I lie down. I lie down and stretch out my back; moments later as I open my eyes I find a very lage doberman standing over me, simply looking at me. He doesn't seem overly malevolent, and gently but politely, I begin to rub the dog under its chin, which the doberman accepts, but it also doesn't take its eyes off me.

Thursday, April 10, 2008 5:59am Pick-ups and Purloined Parties
I am in a parking lot with a large group of students, either from my high school class or college, or possibly a combination of both. One of my current and Los Angeles-local best friends offers to take a group photo, and everyone quickly clusters about to fit into the shot, and I find myself in the "second row," as it were, with two men in front of me so tall the top of my head barely reach the to of their shoulder blades. I have to reach way up to their shoulders and lift myself up between their heads, just able to get my face clear for the camera to see me, and just in time for my best friend to take the shot. My best friend and I drive to a large party at another friend's apartment, despite the layout resembling closer aspects to my Verona, New Jersey home. I take one of my friend's dogs for a walk, but passing where the car should be, I discover it is not there. Understandable concerned, I hasten back to the apartment as a pick-up truck pulls up, its cab filled with more people than should fit. They are all laughing and generally just enjoying themselves, and they glance at me walking the dog. They continue their laughing merriment without comment and drive on. Back at the apartment I'd only just left, I discover everyone has left, my friend as well, without any word as to the location of the car, or my friend. I decide to walk the dog back to my friend's place to see if somehow we were simply overlooked. A pick-up truck pulls up, its cab filled with more people than should fit. They are all laughing and generally just enjoying themselves, and they glance at me walking the dog. They continue their laughing merriment without comment and drive on.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008 5:50am The Price of eggs
I seem to be simultaneously on the set of a commercial being filmed (and viewing the finished version), for some sort of product in a plastic squirt bottle. It is unclear as to what it precisely does, but the spot conveys a secondary aspect. I am standing at the commercial actor's right (so by my point of view he's in profile), and to demonstrate, the man with the bottle holds it straight out with his left arm and squirts just as Vincent Price begins to walk by (his face and hair as he looked [as himself] as Dr. Phibes). It is at this point I notice the background is a wide cemetary. The actor with the bottle is under a roof-only tent (such as those on a set: no walls just thin poles), and the stream from the bottle fires far enough to be just short of actually hitting Vincent Price, who seems to be just walking by. And here is the product's more poisonous aspects, I think to myself as though watching the finished commercial. Like a film-edit cut, I see Price falling sideways into an open grave, as though the bottle's liquid has killed him, or implying it also kills zombies or something. Dream Shift (e.g., later): the shoot is over and Vincent Price I are in a vehicle, apparently a film production shuttle van, and he's growling he's not getting principal work on this, only Day Player. His comments remind me of various gigs I've done as Featured Background in which ethically I should have upgraded to Day Player, but "remained" Featured Background. I am aware Vincent Price is long since dead, so desperately trying to keep me from realizing I am Dreaming, Dream Memory has me simultaneously knowing this is Vincent Price, but also another actor. Either way, I begin to point out to [Price] that one of my favourite characters he has played was Egghead. He finds this mildly amusing and merely gives a wan smile.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008 5:39am Ghost Story and April Fool suicide
A young husband and wife, apparently in Europe, have had to move to a new small town. The man is a former photographer but had to take some new job he detests. For some reason the townspeople are just about tolerating the couple as new arrivals. Driving at night, the husband seems to lose control of the car, which, on a lonely mountain road's curve, crosses the oncoming traffic lane, crossing but not hitting an oncoming car (which one can see doesn't have on its headlights). The couple's car doesn't actually hit anything. but now is off the road. They get out and the man examines a small cassette tape recorder, at the back of which the battery compartment door has fallen off and there are no batteries inside. The man ejects the black cassette tape and examines it. Through its tiny window one can see the tape is slightly loose. The man mutters, "What this town needs... is a photographer." A few feet behind him, his lovely young wife misses the statement and asks, "What?" "What this town needs," the man repeats louder, rather epiphoniously, gazing at the cassette tape. "Is a photographer." The man quickly pulls out from his pocket a large photography and unfolds it, explaining as he does: "I think it has to do with when the cemetary was pulled up," he suddenly expositions. "I didn't see it until I developed the photograph." She looks at it. In the window of their room, at a small Tutor-style inn, photographed from the wide lawn below, is nthe face of a child looking down, as though at the photograph's viewer. Dream shift: My parents and I are staying at the small Tutor-style inn of the photograph. We're sitting in the kitchen with either another guest or a staff member, and we've been relating either ghost stories or stories about the inn being haunted. My father (who in real life died just over 17 years ago), begins to poo-poo the idea that the inn is haunted, when there is an extremely loud retort from directly above us. Everyone in the kitchen instantly knows it was a gunshot, and we all look up to the white stucco ceiling in time to hear (and just about feel the vibration of) a body falling heavily on the floor of the room above us. After a ghastly moment of stunned silent I say, "Okay well that can't be good..." The staff member indicates the room is that of the owner. It is dark and we head out to the main front room, which turns out to be something of a sunken living room. As I turn right to face the stairs to the next floor, I find my left foot stepping off the rise, hastily warning the others, "Whoa: careful!" I do not fall, but somewhat drift/float down the two feet or so to the hardwood floor. My mother is ahead of me and I can see her at the wall, about five steps leading down to where I've "fallen," continuing up to the second floor. As we walk along a balcony, I uncharacteristically ask flat out: "Where is this place, anyway; where are we?" "Silver Lake," the staffer says from ahead. "On York Avenue." At hearing York, I instantly visualize a map and feel confident I now know where I am. Upstairs I reach the group at the room, the door to which is risen up a few steps from the hallway. They have already had the door opened to the room from which we heard the shot. A thin young woman (eastern European?), with long dark hair stands there haughtily in a thin possible silk flower-designed robe, indifferent to her small right breast exposed between the robe flaps. She and the staff member are speaking heatedly to each other in Russian or Romanian or such. I am complelled to go into the room, convinced there is Something I Must Do regarding the dead body inside, which cannot be seen from the doorway. The room clearly is small and a bed is just beyond the door, and the know the body is just behind the bed in the center of the room. "He's twenty-eight years old!" one of the two women declares to the other, as I walk forward, impeded by my mother who has crooked her finger in a back belt-loop of my pants to prevent my entering. She insists I not go in. "I have to," I say to her sharply. "There's something I need to do." I seem to think I can prevent the suicide from haunting the place. She finally lets me go, and I walk past the girl as she closes the door. She gets into a second bed at the opposite wall, in which waits a young man who welcomes her, as from the floor rises up to a sitting position then up to sit on the bed near the door, the middle aged man, highly amused at having tricked those downstairs into thinking he'd shot himself. Speaking with a seemingly Germanic accent, he seems surprised but not upset to see me in the room. He extends his hand and we shake, as he introduces himself. I do not hear it clearly and clarify: "Matthew?" "You insult me," he says, sitting back. "No no," I hastily explain, pointing to my ear. "I just didn't hear you properly: what is your name?" "Hündt," it sounds like he says, relaxing from my apology. He repeats it as Hans, and we shake hands again. I drowse awake before he can explain why he would think faking a suicide so much amuses him.

Friday, March 28, 2008 5:36am Insti-dogs, dolly riding and missing buses
I park a car at the curb near a small picnic-like park, the lawn of which is slightly lower than the road. Several groups of people are down there, picnicking, et al, and a small baseball game is going on. A large trailer pulls up beind me, and a larger trailer in front. I go to pull out, but the two trailers are too closely parked or such. One of the two normally would be attached to a very large pick-up truck or maybe even an 18 wheeler, and I naerly try to drive under the section to which the trailer would attach to the truth. The people in the trailer beind me shriek with concern I'm going to hit something. In a nearby hotel with a large, ornate lobby, I seek the elevator which is near a large auto-player baby-grand piano. For some reason I think the button on a plague-like display on the piano is for the elevator. On pressing it, the piano starts playing an annoying, banjo-like country song. Fortunately pressing it again shuts it off, as I understand why no one is letting it play. I find the elevator, but it is partially blocked by wide deep house-keeping laundry baskets. On reaching it, the elevator button is ivory coloured, wide and soft, as though made from a women's diaphram. Upstairs in the halls I whiz about riding a dolly as though it's a Segway; a friendly dog, trying to kiss me, follows along side, as do two little girls skipping along side me (to whom I sense the dog must belong). The girls laugh pleasantly, and after a few yards a man in his late 20s/early 30s (who I presume to be their father), retrieves them. I enter a large room that contain several boxes. I hear women's voices outside the window. Looking out I see the wall outside is a corner: one woman is slighly higher up, seemingly standing uo outside the window next to the room in which I am, and another woman at the next window, facing the wall. I can only see her black-hair, her body eclipsed by what seems to be a black, rusted air-conditioning unit, as though it's been hollowed out and its top is missing. Both women seem to be cleaning the bricks of the building. The woman closest to me turns and see me looking through the screen at her; I say Hello and she seems to glare at me, and I turn away into the room. Outside leaving the parking lot back to the street to head back to the car, I realize I have a dog with me, on which are two leashes. One leash is attached to the collar, another is one of those extendable leashes, attached to a halter te do is also wearing. After a bit I suddenly begin to wonder how it is I have with me a dog. Rather hastily, Dream Memory tells me some Dream Character friend I know on MySpace had asked me to care for her dog through Craigslist. As we approach where I had parked the car, or at least where I thougt I had parked the car, the geography seems wrong. Not only cannot I not find the car, the picnic area park is also not to be seen. Dream Shift: I rush to get on a large, slate-grey bus, but before I can get on, the driver shuts the door. I politely but firmly tap, then knock then pound on the door as the callous driver begins casually to pull away north on Van Nuys Boulevard from the Carl's Jr. at Moorpark, even though Dream Memory insists it is a bus that will go to or is on Topanga Canyon. I run along side and actually overtake the bus, which has had to slow for traffic, and running on foot I make it to the next stop at which the bus should stop for me. Despite my making it before the bus, the bus blows by the stop, even though I can tell the bald driver knows all along from the previous stop I am trying to catch it.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 5:52am Library Angel and corrupt-cop killings
Library Angel and corrupt-cop killings I am working at what would appear to be a private library of some sort, sorting books in a manner similar to the filing project at my day job. In fact, the door is the same bank-vault gated door as at my day-job. Dream Fade eliminates the reason but a male and female cop have arrived and I know they're corrupt and the only way to stop them for my own safety is to kill them. The woman is inside with me, the male (large and bulkier than actually fat), is in the hallway behind the locked gate. The woman and I struggle for her gun, discharging two shots, one of which manages to hit her partner. Somehow he's now within the gate and lunging for me. I get off another shot at him, and he leans on the end of one of the bookshelf aisles. I gently push him so he can fall onto the ground so no blood hits the books or stacks of files (similar to the day-job...). I suddenly notice the copy resembles character actor Kevin James. He finally drops like a bag o'hammers, thankfully away from the stacks of paperwork and of books, while the woman stands a few feet from me down the aisle. Instead of a gun, I have a switchblade and she seems surprised and all but allows me to slide it under her ribcage: I can feel the point seeking her heart and she gasps in pain. I am very clinical and feel no emotion about it: no joy or horror -- it's just something that has to be done. Very Dexter'esque. I am a bit surprised there seems to be no blood: I glance at the blade and there is barely any blood on it. I slide it into her gut again and she finally drops to her knees (still no bleeding). I can now get back to my work. There is a wide area to get to another section of aisles. In a library it would contain chairs and such, though here it's just a carpeted space. I sort more books and get them shelved, and I start to hear sounds back towards the front. Heading back I see several people as I think to myself Oh great: more people I have t'kill. Turns out my Dream Character boss is giving a tour to some people, and none of them are concerned with the two dead bodies on the floor. My boss isn't sure I'm doing the job properly and while I explain how I'm doing it, I notice movers have moved some of the bookcases away, leaving stacks of books on the floor. I find this rather annoying as it complicates the project considerably. I head back to where I'd been working as the men all leave. A Dream Character janitor who Dream Memory tells me has been a consistent source of irritancy, stands in the wide area, calling for me and generally being bothersome. Suddenly I notice on a pedestal behind him stands a Lonely Assassin: a Weeping Angel "statue." Realizing I can get rid of this guy finally, I set us up so he is between me and the Weeping Angel, and true to its nature, it takes the janitor when I deliberately blink. Unfortunately with no one else about, this now leaves me vulnerable, I race to the gated door and close it (which auto-locks it), before it can catch me.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 5:39am Work violations and giantess actresses

Another effing work-based dream...! This dream was so vivid, it's a shame for its lack of lucidity therein.

I am at work and I've somehow having fallen alseep at my desk; on waking I find the light are all out. I neglect to notice that the lights are not operated from within the room, but before anyone finds I was alseep, I switch them on by the only light switch that only conencts to a single light. The others normally would not turn on from that switch, were they off. After a few minutes two men from upstairs come to the gated door and I let them in. One of them heads to the file box shelves while the larger seemingly more important one points out there's a small portable DVD player that apparently open and playing something silently on the shelf behind where I sit, so I didn't know it was there, nor do I know how it could be on and playing. Meanwhile the laptop on which I work seems to be playing media of some kind, though the moving image is behind the desktop icons. Dream Shift: I am at some sort of outdoor cocktail reception (brick walls seem to imply we're behind a building in a wide parking area/alley), and despite the woman looking like character actress Missie Pyle, I know she is Daphne Ashbrook. I had "met" her IRL at a recent live performance she had also attended (at which I hadn't been aware, at the time, as to who she was [I was informed later]...). Daphne and I briefly chat during which she strangely becomes more and more very friendly to me and I admit to her that the other night at the theatre I wasn't known as to who she was. I ask her if she is open to having a photo taken of her with me, to which she agrees. I only then notice somehow we have been dancing in each other arms, and I also notice the otherwise slight actress is far bigger than I recall... in fact substantially taller. So much so that, in her arms, my feet no longer are touching the ground, I have to look up just to see her head, a full two feet above me now, her large arms holding me up. "Um... pardon my asking," I say. "But... exactly how tall are you...?" "Six fifteen," she replies simply, to which while surprised at her height, I do not notice the peculiar-worded measurement (eg., 6'15" normally would be said as 7'3"). My not noticing possibly could be as her hands are getting a little... intimate as to where they are moving about on my body (meanwhile, despite her Roaming Hands over my body, somehow I am still being held slightly aloft). Dream Shift: I am carrying around a stack of papers. Another guy comes downstairs, seeking a file that Dream Memory tells me he came down but couldn't find the day before. This time he has with him some tie-wearing supervisor or such that I've not seen before. They proceed to look for the file, the tie-guy asking a few condescending sounding questions of me. Dream Shift puts me (carrying about with me the same stack of papers), in a room upstairs with several computers, like a training room. One has a massive screen on which, as before on my laptop, is playing a DVD of some kind (I think a [non-existant] MST3K episode). A few times I go to stop it from playing, but its software-control panel is so transparant at the bottom of the screen it's nearly invisible. Even when I am able to make out the eject button and click on it, it doesn't work. For some reason I am made aware that Frank Conniff seems to have changed his name to Frank Kell. Dream Shift: Still carrying the same stack of papers, I am waiting for the 180 bus to Pasadena, at a place at which the 180 does not pass. Somehow I know the young man swaggering by is the bus driver, and he is walking to the bus (which will be on a detoured route or such), so I decide to follow him so when he gets to his bus I can get right on. Despite my knowing he's the driver, he is not wearing anything to reflect working for the MTA: he's dressed very hip-hop "fashion:" all-loose clothing, sideways baseball-cap, etc. Another Dream Shift me from Hollywood to downtown Los Angeles as I continued to follow him. He is joined by two others, and while I do not know on what street we are walking, I seem to know we are closing in "on Second." Several yards ahead of us are several gang-banger types also walking the same direction, two of the group holding out guns in our direction as though to keep us from "following" them. I hold the stack of papers to my chest, hoping it might stop a bullet if it comes to it. We pass a few young people on the sidewalk who are sliding shut a right-to-left cyclone-fence gate, which have the green strips to prevent seeing what's beyond the fencing. They glance at me as I pass them; I am still a few steps behind the "bus driver" and his friends. Eventually they pass through an office and now I figure I shouldn't be carrying around the papers. I could lose them and they're important at work. Next to a door through which they walk, I find a horizontal filing cabinet and put them in the bottom drawer, where contents already inside make it difficult for the paperwork to fit. I hasten through the door, knowing somehow that I've passed into an Employees Only area.
Dream Memory tells me I'm on the tarmac of Burbank Airport. I begin to suspect we are not going to find the 180 bus. I also come to realize it's still March and that I don't need to be heading to Pasadena until April, so I go to start walking home.

Thursday, March 13, 2008 5:17am Wind-blown paperwork project
I am outside in an enclosed courtyard of a stately university of some sort. From the top of the landing of a small set of stairs, I have been watching some poeple doing something (a smidge of Dream Fade eliminates what they were doing); I turn around, expecting to see a white bankers box of paperwork/files, the contents of which I've just sorted, but the box is not there, just the concrete floor of the landing and the short stone wall surrounding it, leading down the steps to the grass. I go down the four or five steps and make a u-turn left once on the grass to see the box... open and the folders and paperwork on the grass, the wind tossing about the looser papers. I leap at the stacks of paperwork, wondering how they got in this condition. It is clear the wind hadn't just picked up the box and tossed it over the wall onto the grass, but the almost still-neat stacks of paperwork belie random causality. This reasoning does not assist me in recovering the paperwork to start re-sorting it: I am actually tempted literally to "scream" for somebody to come assist me in catching the loose paperwork, and preventing the stacks from letting fly anything from them as well. I deduce also there is more paperwork than what would have fitted in the one box. I rush inside, up a flight of stairs and get another empty box. I run down the stairs and outside, now to find the courtyard clutteringly filled with stacks of furniture and such, and the grass on which the paperwork had been has been covered by such as well. Wondering how this all could have gotten here, I turn around to see a large series of stacked folders, several stacks of papers and folders, each stack about ten or so feet high. I am aghast, wondering how I "overlooked" this much paperwork in my filing project. Then I notice I don't recognize these files: they're not part of my project.

Monday, March 10, 2008 5:26am When Works Collide
I am at work, apparently all of them at once. I am caring for my friend's dog/s, though while still both of them both seems to be one single dog now. I seem to be in a storage room of sorts, near the exit to outside. People are in and about and I get that they're filming something, a project Dream Memory tells me on which I've already previously worked. I deduce some of the people nearby are background, coming by from holding. An AD comes by and sees a few people, standing somewhat near me while I hold the composite dog, caressing it to keep it calm. "You, you, you," the AD says, pointing to various people to come to set with her, and she points at me as well ("And you..."). The AD hastens out as I try to tell her I'm not booked on the shoot, "I work in here: filing... stuff." I figure if she notices I do not come, I can tell her if she returns to try to retrieve me. As I hold the dog, who occasionally licks my face (and is getting a bit agitated by all the film crew and background people traipsing in and out), I notice a large open chest-like trunk. There is also all sorts of seemingly random stuff in it. For a moment I think I see silver coins, but at second glance I see the lights are making such an illusion: what seemed to be coins were drawings of silver discs on the front of a greeting card or such. I also see some pieces of Cracker Jack which Dream Memory tells me is mine, and fresh. I cannot find its bag, its a small bagful, and I quickly consume it before the dog notices it.

Monday, February 25, 2008 4:55am Upstate New York cultists
I am on a road trip with my mother and brother, somewhere just north into New York state, and we've stopped at a quaint little village, apparently for a few days. The look of the food is not to my liking, and sitting in a booth in a large pub (with a Irish-heavy atmosphere), the others are eating some unordered dish the contents of which I cannot identify... sort of a weird light-coloured baked bean dish or such. The plate is removed just when I decide to take a taste, as I've become curious as to whether it is a form of baked bean. Nearby are seated two Irish-accented musicians of sorts, with instruments but not playing; Mom begins to clap in time to which they start to her beat some rather unpleasant music. I gently place my hand over Mom's to stop her clapping and politely but firmly tell her, "No: please. Stop that." The two men come over, one of whom shifts Mom over, and begins to eat the food from her plate. The other man sits next to me (my brother sits on a chair at the end of the booth). The two villagers have standard lilting Irish brogues, and to the one next to me I ask if there are any restaurants nearby where I could get something I can eat. Mom makes a vague reference of wanting to stay longer, and the implication arises after three days in this village one might not wish to leave. Dream Shift (and/or Dream Fade): Somehow we've uncovered that the villagers are all cultists of some sort, and we are making our escape. Clearly it has gotten to the point we know we are to be captured. As we make our way up an ancient stone staircase carved into the hillside (similar to steps at Garrett Mountain in Clifton, New Jersey), for some reason we have with us one of two dogs (a chocolate lab), who normally belongs to one of my best friends, who isn't even with us. The dog is not pleased with our wishing to go faster than he wants to go, and soon he all but digs his heels in an attempt to go no further. "Don't try to force him," I tell the others. "He'll go at his own speed." I realize we have to go around to get to the car. Down below are several modular type housing units, like larger versions of office containin "trailers" one sees at construction sites. We make our way around, and I have a leather duffle bag that someone is albe to text like a phone. To avoid our speaking aloud, I write out text via the leather the warning that we have to escape, or be willing to fight. The word fight does not seem to want to spell properly, as we reach the corner of one of the modular units. As we carefully look round the corner, a handful of cultists are seeking us. They are dressed normally: these are religious cultists, in regular attire. I turn to quietly suggest we go back, to see Mom and my brother already well up the stairs, running as quietly as they can. I quickly head back to the stairs, but as I begin to cross the lawn to the stone stairs, four of the searchers emerge from between two units, and I quickly lie face down in the grass, just behind a very small wooden decorative bridge. It doesn't really cross anything: it's one of those "fake" bridges one uses to decorate a landscape and such, its center barely leaving the ground, so I lie still, hoping they will not notice me. One of them, wearing a white fedora, walks past me, gazing up the stairs. He makes no move so I conclude Mom and my brother have made it past the summit and are long gone, or at least have enough of a head start that I delay the searchers if need be. The fedora wearing man goes to rejoin the others, and he notices me. He calls to one by the name of Gareth, pointing to me. Knowing it is futile to run, I nonchalantly reset myself into a cross-legged position to demonstrate I am not a threat (also in hopes I don't get pummelled). The one called Gareth comes to me, and Dream Memory has me know him already, possibly from the "lost scenes" that were Dream Faded. "Where are your mother and brother?" he asks me politely. "Hopefully halfway to Albany by now," I reply casually. Gareth takes this in stride, preparing to convert at least me to their cult. Somehow I am already aware the procedure involves reading an ancient book of magick of some kind. My cell phone is placed on a nearby rock, and some lacky goes to smash it with another rock. "Wait!" I say quickly, which pauses him. Gareth looks at me quizzically. He wants to destroy my phone to prevent me contacting him. "I presume, once I am brain-washed into a mindless anti-America liberty-hater who eschews freedom and slavishly bows to the whim of my tyrant masters: essentially... turning me into a Democrat," I begin, and Gareth is not offended as I speak the truth. "You will want me to lure others to your evil, and that phone contains the only way I could do that." Gareth concurs (I neglect to add I would still be billed for its monthly fee with no way to cancel the account). Remaining intact, my phone is simply pocketed by one of the lackeys as Gareth hands me a dark-green folder. I open it to find messy handwriting written in black flair pen, so the letters are thick and have bled black-flair ink all over the paper, making reading extremely difficult. Gareth rather urgently tells me to give him the key; I quickly note there is a key on a string within the folder, which he takes, apparently symbolically unlocking the dinky presentation folder, despite it already being open and no lock associated with it. At first glance the folder pages appear to contain merely a set of rather standard, innocuous rules for living within the village community. "What th'... this — this is it...?" I exclaim, nearly disappointed in the anticlimactic state of affairs. "I was expecting something along the lines of the Necronomicon or De Vermis Mysteriis...!" Gareth has no response to this.

Sunday, February 24, 2008 5:06am Tape thefts and casino friends
My friend Amy has become a dealer at a very California-local casino, the area geography of which, however, closely resembles the outskirts of West Caldwell, New Jersey, releatively near the intersecting of Bloomfield Avenue and Route 46. I "visit" her at work, knowing in advance I'm not allowed to gamble at her table. Down a nearby hallway is a small elevator. Two or three others get on with me. I mean to press 2 to bring us up to the main level, but hit 3 by mistake. Instead of reach a regular floor, the box raises up, and reaches what at first we expect to be the roof, but instead of actually open ground. Remaining closed, the elevator then proceeds down a track for maybe a quarter of a mile to what seems to be a composite local-bus station and [im]mobile trailer-park. I wonder if this is an easier way to get back, busing to this "stop 3" for the elevator and just riding it back. Dream Shift: Somehow I am working for the TV series The Biggest Loser, presumeably in the capacity of am intern and/or gofer. Down in an alley is a tall cyclone chain-link fence, in front of which is a podium-high table on which is a VHS VCR, into which I slide a tape for the contestants to view. Dream Memory has me aware the area is under video survellaince, and after doing my job I head back to the main road, passing two teenagers heading back into the alley. As they notice my leaving, they become seemingly curious as to what I was doing back there. Concerned that there is no one actually back there watching the equipment (beyond the survellaince), I stop at the alley's opening, and turn and head back. Sure enough, the taller of the two boys is carrying the contestant tape and a second VHS tape. I give them a verbal challenge, but they refuse to back down. For a few moments I find myself unable to coordinate myself into actually grabbing either of them, and manage finally to grab the second boy, about my size, who struggles. I realize I cannot call anyone on my cell and hold onto him, while his worried friend seems perfectly okay with mostly likely having to abandon him to make off with the tape that would actually be useless to him. With the taller boy gone (at least I no longer notice or see him), I know I have to get the caught boy back to basecamp. In a way I could never do IRL, I manage to swing him around until the centrifigal force has me holding him by the knees, the boy outstretched away from me as I spin. I move over so his head crashes into the corner of a brick building, rendering him unconcious (I check his neck and find a strong pulse). The area outside the alley is a combination of Van Nuys, California (on Sepulveda, the alley being where would have been the Orange Line busway), and Watching Plaza, in Montclair, New Jersey. I suddenly realize having knocked out the boy (and he'd been too dead-weight for me to carry for very long), I'm not quite sure how to get him to basecamp (unsure of its location notwithstanding).

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 4:58am No receipt required
Lost a lot via Dream Fade, but generally I seem to be working with a gang of con artists (possibly due to back-to-back watching all of season four of the UK series Hustle), and while I cannot recall what was the set-up, somehow there has been a falling out and I've been excluded from the scam or such. However, somehow it has been overlooked that the mark's payment is coming in directly to me; I receive a fax (via a machine that resembles the bulky 8mm celluloid-movie projector of my youth), that I am receiving two payments: one for one million dollars and the other for a hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars...

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 5:14am Clearly that doesn’t make you look fat...
Clearly that doesn't make you look fat... As I enter a room, a (IRL since-moved-away) good friend of mine has seemingly just finished having a massage, and upon rising from the table on which she has been lying face-down, it turns out she has been having some sort of surgical procedure, and her flesh has been cleanly cut away. That is, she still has her flesh from her collarbone up, and her hands and feet, and there is no blood anywhere, but the rest of her body's flesh is still on the table, having been neatly slit up the back as though she'd had it removed as though her flesh had merely been clothing of some kind. My friend obviously experiencing no pain about any of this, and actually asks me if she looks alright. Still a bit surprised as to why one would agree to (or even possibly consider) such a procedure, I really have no response to this inquiry.

Monday, February 11, 2008 5:08am Lucid dream work

Some Background: My day-job is a long-term temp assignment, in which I make order of chaos from dozens of various boxes of files/paperwork, et al. Initially I worked with another, but for some months now I've een on my own, alone. The file room is quite remote compared to the main offices, and have nothing to do with medicine. Generally I've felt dreams about work(ing) infer I've been there too long...

Thursday, January 31, 2008 5:05am Steep hills and space shuttle flights
Riding on a train, a Michael Caine'esque man makes some basic calculation on a notepad (generally this is viewed from over his shoulder). Elsewhere in an office, a man in his late thirties or so, rises from his desk and checks out a globe on which are tiny legends of cities, though some seem to be names of star constellations, and it becomes evident the star references are above the globe. Across the surface of the glove is a thick yellow line with smaller circles within, conveying the trajectory of a satellite either in orbit or one being planned to be placed in orbit. The trajectory is deliberately zig-zagged, the only straight lines are between angles, indicating that for a few hundred miles the satellite would move north-east, then for a time south-east, etc. It turns out instead of a satellite it is a large, commercial space shuttle, in which is much of the cast of the TV series Lost. It is unclear as to whether the passengers are in control or if it is the pilot planning to dock the shuttle briefly with a space station, and feeling confident no one would even notice the bump of docking. The scene "pulls back," as it were, and I have been watching all this via my roommate's computer through which he has the cable connected. Later: Walking down a downtown area of wall to wall stores, in one window I espy a cute little puppy, standing with his paws on the glass on seeing me. It is a light brown dog of mixed breed, and on the flat of its back by its tail is a dark-brown circle within a circle, giving the impression of a dark-furred Target logo. Somehow the pup is on the sidewalk with me, licking me rapidly, but with the stinkiest breath: I literally have to mouth-breathe, and yet have to be wary as the happy dog's quick tongue, as it continues to lick my face, tends to slip into my open mouth, which elicits noting the dreadful puppy breath again. Later: My producer friend is driving us someplace while discussing Nicolas Cage's personal assistant or such, but I become a bit too busy noticing that what at first seemed to be a winding part of Mulholland Drive, appears to be more along the lines of some rather high-altitude mountain road, the mountain to our left, and distance to our right beyond the snow lined, grey metal guard rail. My friend is merrily chatting away as we get higher and the road, seemingly cobblestones, starts getting far and noticeably far more steeper as we round a bend. Now my friend starts paying attention to the road, particularly as it's now so steep that she strongly concurs with my remark that this road would be rough to traverse just walking it. "Hold on!" my friend says as we simultaneously notice a thick stetch of ice running a right oblique across the road (as though from mountain uphill across the road to the the guard rail side), like a quick-frozen stream. Her car manages to get across without slipping or skidding, but it's clear it won't be the only ice across which we come. The mountain road becomes so steep I half-seriously suspect we're about to be upside down. "No kidding," my friend says, both in awe and concern. Suddenly I am relaying all this as a story to someone at (my temp day-job) work; my co-worker finds it amusing.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 5:55am Bus beds and Vulcan madwomen
I am attending a film festival of some sort; the "auditorium" is filled to capacity. It is small and cramped, resembling the small UCLA classroom in which one of my student films was screened when it was complete. I quickly claim the last available seat, but it becomes evident nothing is going to start for quite some time. Later: I am sitting in one of several "directors chairs," in the middle of Cahuanga, just north of Hollywood Boulevard. In front of me, a bit to my right, is Strictly Background director Jason Connell; to my left, behind railings, are countless press photographers taking photos. We are either working on a film or awaiting the start of a Hollywood Boulevard parade in which we're about to take part. I notice in my hands in my lap is a one-pound package of ground beef, as one would get for Hamburger Helper or such from Ralphs. I realize I've holding it in a manner that could be... "misconstrued" within photograps, so as casually as I can, I place it on the pavement between my feet. Later: My roommate wakes me up, calling me by name saying, "It's time to go." I rise up and my roommate is already gone, I discover to find we've arrived at the end of the bus line, and the bus is being cleaned at its bus depot. I turn back to my bed and before I begin to wonder why my bed is in the back of a route 217 bus, Dream Memory distracts me by my coming across a pair of burgundy coloured bowling shoes. "Oh that's where those went," I say almost aloud, despite IRL my never having owned such a pair of shoes. In a seat near me is a sleeping man. I don't want to wake him as such, but I use the bus seat's arm rest with which to raise my foot to tie my shoe. I look down to the front of the bus, which seems quite a distance away. Even though I "know" I'm in Montclair [New Jersey], and at the end of the road is Clairidge Road (the immediate left of which would bring one to the post office), I see a large stone fountain, similar to the one at the outskirts of Griffith Park, though this version has a large stone column straight up through the middle of the jet-spraying water. I wonder if the bus, when it starts its route, will make a left by going around this large fountain. Later: On TV is airing some prequel version of Star Trek TOS, like an origin story. Two scientists discuss another scientist, from whom they've not had a response to their calls. Suddenly a portly female (Vulcan?) runs up with some sort of miniature black unlit flame-torch and uses it to stun each of them from behind, having to touch them with it like an insti-taser. "That looks like a response to me," I chuckle as I pass another monitor with the episode playing. The woman is wearing a tall black conic hate, similar to those worn by Vulcan guards in the episode Amok Time. Two men in loose-fitting, prison-orange clothing walk along aside of a building. Just as I marvel at the production values copying the classic Trek series, the woman rushes up behind them to stun them. But behind her comes one of the two previous scientists, (now?) a Vulcan as well, and he warns her off her attack. She makes a move with the torch to touch him with it, but he very clearly tells her, "Don't try it." Suddenly he has spasms, even though it would appear the torch hasn't actually touched his chest. He drops to his knees but before he loses all physical control he brings a small blow pipe to his lips and blows, presumably hitting the back of her neck with either a tranc dart or an acupuncture needle In That Special Spot to render her helpless.

Monday, January 28, 2008 5:12am Mistaken identity and accepted pleasures
Somehow I end up in the bedchambers of either the Queen of England, or the First Lady of the White House; not quite sure which. I realize I'd better get the heck out o'there before I am discovered. Willowy thin white drapes billow softly in the breeze, despite the numerous ceiling high windows are all closed. A man crosses past the windows on what would seem to be a porch. I am sitting on the floor near the wall, a drapery passing in front of me as the man glances in, and sees me and, thinking I am someone else. gives a sort of Whoo hoo sort of greeting (a simple sing-song'y greeting, not the enthusiastic Homer Simpson type of whoo hoo). The man opens the door and enters, and at first I think he's a cleaner, but he continues to address me under the impression I am the female in residence. My hair is uncharacteristically long, almost Goth-like length, so I let it dangle enough to keep mostly covered my face. I realize this is a personal masseuse, and that he expects to massage me. Having not had a good massage in about two years, even less time than since I had had sex, I decide to accept the offer (plus being face down, he won't realize I'm not who he expects), and I lie face down on the bed (there's no massage table).

Sunday, January 27, 2008 5:33am Paint sauce
My late Uncle Bill and I are heading to a serving area of some sort of food service place. Without warning he hands me what seems to be an open paint can, minus the wire handle, so I end up grabbing it rather clumsily, spilling a dollop of what appears to be a thick red tomato paste, similar to spaghetti sauce. Before I can lean over to try and clean it, a female food server quickly scoops it up with a flat doggie scooper, but clearly readies the dollop for service, much to my surprise, horror and disgust, but at least, I realize, it isn't going to be attempted to be served to me....

Thursday, January 24, 2008 5:50am Naked haunting
I am in a house similar to the one in which I was domiciled in Verona [New Jersey]. I suspect the place is haunted, and go into a room that seems almost like a sun deck. A woman stands there, and it turns out she is a tenant in the room, despite it seeming like a greenhouse, with the ceiling and the wall to my right being glass. We have not yet met and she is surprised to see me suddenly walk into her room, which mostly is made up as a kitchen, and no bed. She introduces herself as the tenant and I relate that there could be ghosts. She quickly points out she's seen a naked spirit. "Naked?" I say with surprise, without thinking taking a step towards her. "The ghost is naked? That's new," I say, then notice her back up from my coming forward a couple of steps. I raise my hands and I quickly back up, assuring her I was just surprised to learn she'd had a visible apparition.

Friday, January 18, 2008 5:39am Game over
Shifting between Dream Detachment and through the perspective of Alice of the Resident Evil films, Alice is in Las vegas, though the sands of the third Resident Evil film have not covered the place. At one point she is chained to a corner post of a boxing ring, being left for the zombies that are nearby attacking the building. She somehow manages to get loose, and evade the zombies, only later to learn scientists in white environmental suits have a pit in which the main strain of the virus is stored and they plan to seal it off. Discovering she is really one of the cloned Alices, not Alice herself, she sacrifices herself by jumping into the pit (at the bottom of which are numerous [squishy] fetuses), just before the pit is sealed. For some reason this action (of jumping in), contains the virus from spreading.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008 5:41am Movies and nostril flowers
I am with several close friends on line to go in to see a movie. One of my friends leaves the line for some reason, and of course the line begins to move. I grab her things and carry them and just before we reach the door, she shows up. My friends William and Amy are ahead of us, and I realize we're going straight in, and I've not acquired tickets. Amy shows that they've already bought tickets for everyone (in our group). We go into the auditorium, but the seats face the wall to the left of the screen; to watch the movie we'll literally have to sit and turn to face to our right. Despite the distance, several yards away from us, we can clearly see a small red flower up one nostril of a woman who is getting ready to take her seat. The flower is similar to tropical island, wide-petal style variety. We are amazed at the sight; Amy makes some sort of comment that it may have something to do with Al Gore (?!), to which William word-play replies if there was Gore, there'd be blood everywhere. As it resembles the sort of flower one might see on a Hawaiian shirt, I point out, "Maybe she just wanted to be lei'd..." My friends laugh appreciatively.

Saturday, January 05, 2008 5:39am Arrows and Airports
I am at something of a garden party in the backyard of the home of Kenneth Branagh, witnessing thousands of arrows flying through the air from behind a large hedge. Branagh has some sort of device that can shoot so many at once, used in his Henry V film. A second volley is launched before white-robed Keira Knightley can get to the straw targets to retrieve some arrows. None actually hit her, but one catches in the long willowy sleeve of her robe. Dream Shift; I am outside a cabin the yard of which is covered in snow, and (domesticated?) wolves wander about, fearlessly and casually. Dream Shift: In separate cars, I am driving to the airport with my mother. We are either meeting (or seeing off) the President of the united states (not Bush), but I miss a turn-off which apparently I always do. My mother is speaking via either a loudspeaker'ed phone or through the radio, but I hear her admonish I missed the left turn. I realize this too late, and cannot get into the left lane as a little girl in a frilly dress is riding a bicycle at my left and won't yield for me to get over, even when I honk the horn at her. The road is similar to Sunset from West Parkway in my hometown heading to my high school. She comes to a sudden halt, as do I, as the road is blocked. I got out to find a very small one-man earthmover, its top half strange shaped like a metal dinosaur skeleton sculpture. It is just small enough I can move it out of the way enough to get my car (now a bicycle itself), around it. I am able to find my mother inside the terminal, which is the hallways of my old high school.

Thursday, January 03, 2008 5:42am Confectionary canine
Having caught a very small dog, loose on the street, I carry it to its home, across the street from my childhood [Pompton Plains, New Jersey] home, despite the streets being strangely angled. As I approach the door, Dream Memory tells me the dog's name is Tiny, though after a few moments it implies that normally the small brown dog is not as pleasant as it is being in my arms. I open the door to the house and find it's the lobby of a bank, with wide marble floors. So I "bowl" the dog inside, a right shove that harmlessly sends it upright but skidding across the marble, its feet and claws unable to find purchase so I can close the door before it returns outside. The door closes loudly, to my shuddered embarressment. Later I join a group of people, a matronly woman for whom I realize I am something of a gofer. Despite this, I lie down on a recliner chair as suddenly a large black and white thing pops up from the floor. At first I think it's a skunk, but the hard-angled edges of its black and white head stripes are wrong. It jumps up like a cat and nestles into my lap. My "boss" and the women with whom she is talking, remark about it being the dog of the visiting woman. I now notice it is massive, as the women (pretty much ignoring me), discuss its breed. The women says "It's a..." and says some harsh, Germanic sound word I cannot recall, but she clarifies the dog doesn't have a "specific" breed. I pet it and realize that despite its now dark brown and white, that it resembles a collie (it's blond segments being dark brown notwithstanding). I mention its resemblance to a collie, as my boss begins to say Orange a few times. I realize she wants me to get one for her, but the dog will not surrender its spot, sitting on my lap. I cannot get it to hop down, so I just let my knees go apart, and the dog appears to sink, as gravity lowers it to the floor. "What are you doing?" its owner asks me. "It's chocolate," I jest, stroking the dog's fluffy head. "So it's melting."

Wednesday, January 02, 2008 5:30am To stalk a welcher
Driving an empty school bus, I have gotten lost. Apparently having a police scanner, I can hear the police are handling some big problem elsewhere, which is a good thing as I find myself driving across an enclosed pedestrian bridge just big enough that the bus doesn't get stuck, though it's a bit dicey driving on the stairs. Later: I am in what appears to be an ornate hotel lobby. It seems I have an oppointment with some of authority along the lines of the Wizard of Oz. I get a psychic glimpse of sorts that he wants me to name some superhero version of himself that he's designed. I see the design, and verbally liken it to an adult version of the Tar-Baby from South of the South, though it wears no clothing beyond that of a red cape. Nearby, college students are using vertical file drawers as beds in which to sleep, shoving aside various books and file binders. The cabinets are actually made of flimsey wood, and under the weight they are splintering and thereby threatening to collapse. I am less concerned with the two young men in the cabinet on the left than the cabinet at the right in which is my first girlfriend Marie (IRL of whom I've not seen for many decades). I move items around that are on top of the cabinet in an effort to make them less top-heavy. Later: Along with several others, we are awaiting the arrival of another, who we plan to waylay, for betraying our group somehow. Many of the group are Dream Characters, but there are a few I know IRL: William, Paul H., Bob E., et al. We have been waiting at the motel at which I know our target has been staying. Somehow I know its interior is the Verona [New Jersey] home in which I was domciled years ago. Paul and I wait and watch the motel door from the across-corner, that is, the corner of the building of doors facing the doors from which he should emerge. We stand, inconspicuous, waiting. suddenly the door opens and its one of my former roommates: who lied in court, and whose behaviour caused me to lose a grand apartment. In this venue, obviously, that years-ago situation doesn't come into play, but being he, at least I understand his unreliability. Dream Memory implies he took (or hoodwinked) from us a great deal of money. William and another fellow sit nearby in a very racey sportscar, while Bob E. and another guy sit in a nearby pick-up truck. I decide there must be a way in from the back, and Dream Memory supports this theory. I head to the back of the motel building and find from that direction it's heavily done up with security, including (but not limited to), massive thorn-bushes within tall wire-gates, locked walk-through gates, etc. I can see through the courtyard an open gate on the far side, for cars. I briefly consider running around the whole property to get to those gates but would have to wait for a car to pass through. But I try another set of thin patio type doors, which opens easily, revealing another. In fact I have to open about five or seven to find myself and eventually find myself in something of a courtyard that is enclosed, doors to various apartments of various ostentatiousess surround. I head to the far side, passing a few people who give me no notice (I figure once inside, anyone thinks I must belong there). I turn back to head to the back door of my target, passing a tuxedo'd butler pushing a large pram in which is a large infant girl with a large-headed ventriloquist dummy resemblng Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. I have been trying to get my cell phone to call the rest of my fellows at the front, but I cannot find the contacts list. Suddenly William is with me and we steathily look through the windows to see the guy is still packing (in this case, VHS tapes from below the TV). William agrees if we burst in, we should do so on both fronts, but he cannot get my phone to call out either.