I had "terrible" dreams tonight.

I first dreamt I was in a kill-or-be-killed situation. Two brothers, or two men that lived as brothers, were after me and I consequently had to be after them. I recall this scenario went on as in a video game, where I had multiple lives. I recall one of the brothers was hiding in tall grass and he'd jump out and surprise me. I'd run away, sometimes I'd escape and most often not. There's no recollection as who what would happen next, but he was definitely sociopathic and I'm sure my fate (for that life) was not good. Eventually I found his brother and since I died so many times in this scenario, he took pity on me and revealed that what I needed to do to end this scenario was to cut off his hands, which I did. Granted there was a reason for this, very much akin to one of the plots of one of the movies in the "Saw" franchise, I just don't remember it anymore. His brother, after some run-and-gun, submitted to the same treatment and I escaped. I saw, from the vantage point of a central controller, that there was more happy horseshit to come and I moved on in dreaming.

The second half had to do with scientists pushing the boundaries of ethicacy. I recall wandering around a field and seeing numerous mutated organisms. Apparently, they had been born without any skeletal system; just bags of guts pored into what resembled pantyhose, roughly formed into the shape of what they should have been (mostly pig-like). They could drag themselves along in a pitiful manner, and had a groveling attitude; I just side-stepped as best I could and moved on. Eventually, I ran across my research advisor and he advised me on some matters concerning botany. There were some plants which if harvested, carried horizontally, and sprayed by the extrusions of another plant would wilt. If held vertically, would maintain their Turgor pressure and not wilt.

The last third had to do with an execution...my execution. I was strapped to a chair and a mask was placed over my face. The mask emitted an analgesic and as I breathed it in, my vision blacked out and I got dizzy. Granted I was being spun in circles by the executioner, like on a barber's chair, to help with my blacking out. Keep in mind this wasn't the real execution, just a trial run (they would later administer the other drugs, as in a lethal injection). As I breathed in heavily from the mask and started to black out I thought this was cruel and unusual punishment, as my executioners knew that I would undergo this in the near future, knowing damn well that that time that I would face the same fate but knowing that I would never wake up...an encompassing, universal blackness is all I would face.

Commentary:

Fuck all on everything else these dreams may represent: I SO want to die awake, and at a moment of my choosing.

#1: I dreamt about attending what can only be described as a highly interactive concert involving pop music star Madonna, as well as using a public restroom. Both activities do not deserve a further response.

Commentary: I couldn't sleep and so I took some Valerian root to aid with that. This is what I get.

#1: You know that MP3 album I downloaded from you, the one that was supposed to be ethnic middle eastern or Indian music, but instead was clearly listed on the ID3 tag as Muslimgauze? Well bitch, Bryn Jones is/was British and the one track I actually bothered to play wasn't even him, it was the In Slaughter Natives' "Transcendental Carnation", which sounds ethnic but only an ignoramus would confuse the work of a Swede with real ethnic music.

Commentary: Yes, this was my dream. The Indian theme probably came from the fact that I ate at a dosa place yesterday, and the annoyance was directed at someone who wasn't my fellow diner.

#1: The dominant portion of tonight's dream has to do with how I spent a portion of Monday night/Tuesday morning: gazing at this year's Leonid meteor shower. Instead of being off by myself on a deserted road between two barbed-wire-fenced orange groves in a part of Irvine Donald Bren hadn't gotten around to ruining yet, I found myself in the driveway of my grandma's house in Green Bay, WI. The meteors were the standard fare at first, until I started seeing some that were red and had a diffuse glow that lasted much longer than normal. The celestial weirdness was interrupted by a very low flying two-seater airplane. The plane apparently was owned by the police, and was flying so low that it barely cleared the top of the neighboring houses. It kept circling as though it was looking for someone, and this erratic behavior caught the attention of my grandma's 'neighbor' Dora (who is actually my mom's cousin, and who never lived next door to my grandma) who came out to watch it with me. Eventually, the low-flying acrobatics catch up with the pilot when he passes overhead and gets snagged on the top of my grandma's garage, bending his tail fins all to hell as a result. Dora walks over to examine the damaged aircraft on the roof and appears fairly unconcerned by the events; meanwhile I'm freaking out and run inside to call 911.

Flash forward to another scene, I'm sitting with Dora in a room somewhere, eating homemade salt water taffy or somesuch that she keeps shoveling at me. Turns out this was no ordinary plane crash: Dora tells me she has been abducted by extraterrestrials her whole life, and that this was another of their visits. That's why she was so calm about seeing the plane stuck on the roof, she knew it was them and that in a moment they'd bring her up for examination. In fact, she told me that it's likely there was no plane crash at all: that the airplane scenario was probably a 'cover' memory they implanted in my head so that I wouldn't remember what I really saw.

Commentary: I'm actually a little freaked when I see owls around at night, since according to Whitley Strieber - an author who wrote a book of his own experiences with entities that may have been extraterrestrials - remembering encounters with owls is a common 'screen memory' used to block what actually happened. What made it more believable is that he was able to tie the owl imagery, as well as other aspects of the 'visitor experience' in with world mythology. If you need a good mindfuck before bedtime, I highly recommend reading "Communion". He clearly took the lessons he learned as an author of horror novels and kicked everything up a notch with that one!

#1: Bits and pieces, should've made notes when it was still fresh... The most dominant portion had to do with winning a $250 gift card to any restaurant of my choosing. Technically, my mom won it and was going to use it at a French restaurant but in the illogic of dreams I'm the one dining, not her. Anyway, I'm not sure on the actual name of the place but it's understood I've been there before, or at least I know there's one entree on the menu that I'll eat. From the look of it, it was some sort of breaded fish with steamed broccoli, served in small portion sizes as you see in parodies of Haute cuisine. Apparently my waitress has a photographic memory because after finishing the main course, she automatically served me the dessert I would have ordered. A flashback revealed that I had eaten there once before, and she simply remembered my selection. Naturally, I was impressed and was going to leave a larger than normal tip, also in part because I had to spend the full $250 in one go (I think I even offered to pay for the women at the next table over, just to use up the cash). Well, turns out the waitress has other plans because she brings me a second dessert selection, followed by several main courses. As I'm sitting there trying to get through the third main course - which had more than a slight resemblance to the spicy chicken and corn soup I ate in real life the previous evening - I wondered how close I was to the $250 mark since she hadn't provided the bill and I also tried to calculate an appropriate tip, which I fucked up by using 10% as the base. Why I didn't realize that I could just multiply by an integer to get the value for 20 or 30% is beyond me, but I felt that I needed to do the whole calculation over again.

After that I found myself in a 'classroom' - actually, it was just my lab with desks placed in the aisles between benches - and was asked by my ninth-grade English teacher about what things in life I hated. The desks were arranged in a circle and after others had answered, I decided my answer was that since I don't hate anyone or anything I'd answer that I hate, "the Amish, Mennonites, and other local craftsmen." For those who don't know, the Amish are a sect of Christianity who shun modern technology and live like its the nineteenth century, so they do not own televisions, cars, or other modern contrivances. They mostly make their living through farming or through traditional trades like woodworking, though some own stores. So...what was my warped logic behind hating them? Since they're serious about Christianity, and since Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek if you wrong them, you can treat them poorly and you don't have to worry about possible retribution. They're the perfect people to 'hate'...I mean, there's nothing forbidding a member of a minority ethnic group solely on the basis of being a member of a minority ethnic group for beating you to a pulp if you say you think they're crap. Religious types, on the other hand, have to answer to their deity for doing you harm....and of course, we all know that every Christian knows by heart - and slavishly follows - every last esoteric bit of their belief system! As happens all too often in real life, no one understood the subtleties of my joke and we moved on from there.

Commentary: My dreams tonight reveal how little I know about French cuisine...and how willing my brain, instead of just admitting that it doesn't know either, instead tries to fake it thinking I wouldn't notice. Also the line, "the Amish, Mennonites, and other local craftsmen" is from a furniture commercial that aired many years ago.

#1: I found myself in this dream initially interacting with some sort of 'invasion' scenario taking place on a war ship, or perhaps a windowless military installation. In the sort of hazy, shifting reality of dreams at times it was for real, and at others just an exercise. The persons I was fighting were not real flesh-and-blood, they highly resembled people and talked like them - they decided to go out for a break and told me so, which led me to the conclusion this wasn't for real - but I knew there was 'nothing' on the inside and therefore whatever you did to them didn't matter. In any event my rifle didn't shoot bullets but some gloppy brown stuff, so it seems likely that this weapon was slightly less dangerous than your typical paintball gun.

I then recall finding myself fishing in a small aluminum boat in some large body of water. The water had a greenish color to it, much like Green Bay in Wisconsin. Apparently, I hooked something and it turned out to be Lan's 'sister' who was...I dunno, swimming?...out there. Anyway, I hooked her just like a fish and her mouth was bleeding from the hook. She was naked and half-drowned, and I dragged her on board and some unseen person set a course back to land. We did manage to get her back in one piece and found something to wrap her in. She didn't have much to say for herself, but I suppose given the situation it was understandable.

The last fragment had me prowling around a college campus. I was with my friend Nico, and we were walking down some steps in a parking structure. I found a service door when we reached the bottom landing; since it was unlocked I broke out my pocket flashlight to explore. It turns out to have been a passage into a dry irrigation ditch. The ditch was about six feet deep so it felt enough like a tunnel to warrant my exploring it, but it was during the day and I could see the lawn on both sides sloping down. Nico naturally wanted nothing to do with it - there were cobwebs and debris - so she stayed behind with an unidentified person.

Commentary: The second portion is strongly reminiscent of my fishing trip on Green Bay, when I was 9 or 10 years old. I never managed to catch anything, just drowned a few worms trying. I still recall my dream from that night, and it involved staring at green water, feeling the boat get knocked around by the waves (an exact replay of my day). One interesting thing I've noticed is how the body retains a memory of being tossed about by waves...after I've gone bodyboarding, I can still feel them whenever I lie down, even if its many hours later.

#1: I'm positive I had at least one, and perhaps as many as three, dreams tonight before the one I remember. When I briefly regain consciousness, I always manage to convince myself that I'll recall the salient points when I fully wake up...and yeah, it never works out. Anyway, the first element I remember from this one is being at some sort of career fair. It was in a courtyard with wood paneled structures surrounding it, enough to let some sunlight in but not enough where it was oppressive...very reminiscent of the location of UCSD's campus pub and radio station (KSDT). Lan C., a reclusive ex-labmate of mine whom I tried to date (with some success), was there and scouting for a job. We had a very brief conversation and stopped at a recruiter's table before things morphed into me walking along UCI's ring road on the way back to my lab.

Along the route I encountered Kristina S., who is a friend and fellow grad student when I was at Milwaukee. Apparently, one of her sisters had a job in Irvine and she came out this way to live with her as well as finish up her degree, when it turns out her sister bailed and moved elsewhere. She had been living alone in Irvine for months, was leaving in the near future, and I was either not aware of any of this or as is more typical of me, was tangentially aware but chose not to act on the information. The end result is that I felt guilty, but promised to hang out in the near future.

Fast forward again - now I'm in my lab. For some reason, I feel the need to remove my pants and am wandering around in my boxers and a shirt. I'm hanging out in one of the equipment alcoves and wouldn't you know, all these people come barging into the lab. It's a small army of grad students, and 4 professor/administrator types. Turns out a new faculty member has arrived and wants to set up her lab in this space RIGHT NOW. Of course, no one has bothered to inform me that I should have been packing things up in preparation for her arrival, so now I'm having this distressing conversation with her and her 10 grad students. They've literally and figuratively caught me with my pants down (I'm actually squating down with my legs pressed together to hopefully make it less obvious the position they've found me in). The tone of the conversation was civil, though I was annoyed by the suddeness of everything and all the while was trying to figure out how I could get my pants - which were across the room by my desk - back on without being so obvious about it. Another cutscene - I'm in a prep room across the hall struggling to put them on (how can it be this difficult?) and I look back into the lab and see a girl taking all my biological samples from the freezer and putting them on a cart, where they are quickly defrosting. I'm about to express my annoyance (bio samples go bad if you leave them out) when I promptly wake up.

Commentary: Lan will always be something of a mystery to me. She was guarded with what she'd tell about herself, though with time I think she would have opened up more. Unfortunately I caught Lan at an awkward moment in her life, right after she crashed her car and failed out of grad school - she was allowed to save face by earning another master's degree - but before she was sent packing to China. It's a damn shame because she liked to drink, was full of cute sayings, and from conversation seemed willing to make up for lost time spent growing up in a sexually-repressed culture. It's been my lot in life to catch the attention of women when I'm not in a mental state conducive to engaging in sexual activity. I truly wonder how things would play out if I had invited her up to my apartment and fixed us both drinks now that I've got my 'groove' back, for lack of a better word. But enough about my southern Chinese fetish. The appearance of Kristina reminds me of the fact that she contacted me on Facebook months ago and I let it slide. Finally, I'm still occupying my former research advisor's old lab space and I will have to let it go to a new researcher coming in winter, who incidentally is a woman. While I am friendly, even gregarious at times, I place a high premium on solitude and so intrusion in all its forms is something I constantly have to contend with.