Something I’ve seen many times over the years over the years on television and the Internet is people saying that talking about one’s dreams makes one a bore. Basically what it all boils down to is the message that “Yeah, dreams are weird, we get it.” Well I hate to go against television and the Internet, but I am here to say that I totally like hearing about dreams. I often like hearing about dreams more than I like hearing about actual things that have happened to people.

Maybe somehow the complainers have just been so overwhelmed by descriptions of dreams that it has grown tiresome, but as someone who doesn’t do a whole lot of talking to people (and talking about dreams makes up such a small, small portion of that talking) this is not a problem for me. I love the surreality of dreams so much that my own occasionally remembered dreams are not enough to fill my interest. Hearing about good strangeness from the subconsciousnesses of others is the only way I can think to fill the void.

I’m not, however, one of those people who likes analyzing what the “symbols” in dreams mean. My dreams are typically so bizarre that I have doubt that any such meaning is in there. Plus, the oddness is what I like most about the dreams, so why ruin it?

With this in mind I’m going to repost something from the Contains2 era. Though the dream in question happened years earlier, I had discussed it often enough that the details were still fresh in my mind on Saturday 22 of June 2002 when I posted this:

The OJ Simpson Bus-Boat Dream

Okay, I had this dream once, years ago (I think it was in grade ten, so whichever year that was). I’ve had myself a lot of strange dreams (and it seems like 75% of them are set in malls, is there some sort of symbolism behind that?) but this dream is up there in it’s not being surreal, not just being wacky. I’ve told it to many people, and now I’m going to write it up here to prevent me from forgetting even more of it than I already have.

I don’t think it actually started at this point, but this is where my memories kick in:

I’m in my own house, and I’m a butler. I’m going through my various duties and I happen to look out my window. Just as it does in the real world the window has a view of the Atlantic Ocean. Out there, driving on the ocean at the horizon is a bus, which I immediately recognize as the OJ Simpson Bus-Boat. Not finding this at all strange, I go back to work.

But when I look out the window again, I see that the Bus-Boat has changed course. It’s heading directly for my house! I dive away from the window, and I hear the Bus-Boat crashing onto the area in front of my house.

Things get blurry right here again, but I think I talked to my parents for a few minutes about the Bus-Boat having crashed in front of our house. When my memory comes clear again…

A panoramic, birds-eye-view of the Bus-Boat (now that it is on land it’s a boat. A military ship actually, maybe even a carrier) as it is cordoned off by military personnel and helicopters circle it (military or media? I couldn’t tell you). It’s about the size that such a boat would really be, and takes up the length of my street (Himmelman Drive, Boy!). In the real world, the road is curved, but the boat manages just fine.

Things get blurry again and then me and a guy who I knew from school at the time are disguising ourselves as water deliverymen to sneak into the Bus-Boat. I don’t know what happened inside, but when we came out I had found a secret device: An Electric Arm!

I don’t think my memory is blurry here, I think the dream just skipped scenes and suddenly I was wearing the Electric Arm and leading a team of commandos or mercenaries or something. We’re fighting this ogre and he’s got us cornered on a winding staircase that has a big brass pole at its center. The ogre repeatedly charges at us and I hold him off by hitting him with the Electric Arm. Each time I strike the ogre numbers fly out of him and he moves back. Eventually we’re at the top of the stairs and the ogre is at the bottom resting against the brass pole. Brilliantly, I use my Electric Arm on the pole, sending a shock down and forcing the ogre to run away.

I think the dream went on, but that is all I can still remember. For a dream I had like six years ago, I think that’s pretty good. (Wow! I don’t even think I did the math wrong, I think it really has been six years since grade ten.)
If there is any meaning behind that dream, I certainly don’t get it.

Okay, so this is my second attempt at doing a post today, the first having been met with some sort of error that prevented it from working. What the chunks was that about, Internet?

Take note: with yesterday’s post we come to the rushed conclusion of the most recent SecGov story. That one kinda drifted away from where I had planned to take it and then, when it came time to wrap it up, I didn’t have much room left. My next story shall hopefully be better structured. That’s what this is after all, an attempt to learn how to do this crap.

But before I get to that next story, we’ve got something altogether different for SecGov next week. More on that, next week.

Haiku!

Why go to the moon?
I like it better right here.
I don’t want to go.

Man, what does that haiku have against the moon? I mean, sure, maybe it is a lot of effort to get there, there’s not much to see when you get there, and there’s a lot of risk of something going wrong, but… well, no, I guess I agree with the haiku now. Still, if we got our act together and did more space work, we’d have most of those problems fixed

So we definitely had some warm weather the last couple days. My apartment had the kind of sweltering hard-to-sleep daytimes that I associate with Summer. It’s cooler today, so my sleep was more efficient, you will all be glad to know.

Anyway, there was probably more to have said, but I’m not going to bother, instead opting to end here and find out if it post this time.

I have, in the past, put more thought than is necessary into the topic of superheroes who were probably just created, used, and forgotten by their creators. The previous ones were used to decorate a box of tissues, but today’s offering is a couple of superheroes even more mercantile: They’re from ads.

Working, as I do, in the industry of putting paper with ads on it into people’s homes, I occasionally pay attention to those ads. Basically this is only when they have superheroes in them… Anyway, over the couple years since that last post, I’ve bothered to take two of these superhero-using ads home and I will now introduce you all to those heroes.

(I won’t be showing what the ads were for, though. I’m not getting paid, why should I?)

First up:

This man is basically Superman. Anyone can see this. This is Superman, but blonde. And he has a different symbol. A fiery symbol. This guy is depicted lifting the world (though this is probably metaphorical. Or at least a model world. I’m ruling out that he is giant. I won’t allow it.) he probably has Superhuman strength on a Superman level. He can also clearly fly. It would be easy to assume that this guy has your basic Superman Powers powerset.

Except fire is apparently enough of a recurring for this guy that it is his chest insignia. This implies he has more than just heat vision. This could come in the form of fire-breath replacing the ice breath of superman, but I’m going to assume more. I’m guessing this guy has full pyrokinesis. So what we have here is this guy who can fly, is super strong, can probably go really fast, and can generate and control fires. Sounds like a pretty heavy hitter to me.

Secondly:

This second guy looks less stereotypically like a superhero. Your typical superhuman guardian has a strong square jaw and impossibly muscular physique, but this guy, owing perhaps to the cartoony style he has been rendered in, looks like more of a goof. The smile isn’t helping. It’s also worth noting that this guy is the first of the ones I’ve discussed so far who is actively pitching the product he was designed to pitch, instead of just looking superheroic on an advertisement. This guy is actively looking the reader in the eye and pointing to say: “Check out this deal here. Maybe you’d like it?”

I get the feeling of a normal man in a costume from this guy. Just some athletic man who wore a costume to try to improve his community by crimefighting. But in a world with guys who can fly and shoot fire, maybe this guy finds it a hard job, as he would. And because of that it isn’t quite so insane that this guy would have to resort to taking advertising jobs. He probably also does exhibition shows at carnivals and public service announcements where he tells kids not to talk to strangers. He’s the workaday hero who can’t help much, but does everything he can to help. But I bet there is some drawbacks. He’s bound to feel some resentment, and I doubt he personally enjoys every ad that he has to do. But bills need to be paid, even for a man in a cape.

So there we go. Two more superheroes who I am probably the only person who has ever discussed them on the Internet. I win again.

A conversation between Kiiip and myself has recently made me realize that God existed before the Earth, so he is extraterrestrial, and thus an alien. Kiiip amended it to make it clear: He’s an Illegal Alien. God has no legal right to live here on Earth and he is taking our jobs and our women (our virgins, even). And then he had a kid, an anchor baby, to give him a credible claim to humanity. Go figure. We shoulda built a fence.

Haiku!

I see frankensteins.
They’re coming for me. Oh no.
I must run away!

Not much of note just now. Trying to get more things done at once than I’m actually getting done. To make things worse, Marq is again Internetless. I’m going to have to find some superior way of making us millionaires. A quicker way.

At this exact moment I’m weighing the pros and cons of taking a nap. Cons are currently winning, but my eyelids are really filibustering here.

Hey, a few days ago was Groundhog Day. I didn’t consciously know it was coming, but I must have subconsciously, because my dream the night before had Bill Murray in it. So that’s neat.

This is gonna be pointless, so don’t bear with me. Yeah, don’t. Just ignore this.

So, two weeks ago, while cutting my fingernails, I missed my left ring fingernail, right? I noticed a few hours later, or even the next day, but I figured “Screw it, I’ll cut it next weekend” and just let it be. By the end of that week I was actually looking forward to cutting my nails again to get it all synched up. So then I did. Fascinating, no? But anyway, I realized later that this is the same finger which I got caught in a machine at work a few years back and had the nail completely pulled out. It took months for it to grow back. So now, in the course of my life, I’ve cut this one specific fingernail probably a half-dozen fewer times than all my other ones. And now this fact is on the Internet! Hooray for technology!

Haiku!

See the golden fog.
See how it rolls over there.
Fooled you! It’s not there.

Yeah, I don’t actually have much to say. I kinda messed up my sleeping habits over the last couple weeks, so now I’m up in the daytime trying to right it. But I’m spending the time trying to get a ton of SecGovs done so I have a nice comfortable buffer. We’ll see how I do.