Criminals and Car Washes

Dream

Mark ‘Marky  Mark’ Wahlberg is a criminal, and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is a law enforcement officer. The dream starts just after they've had a battle of some sort and have now both retreated to their respective bases to recover. Jeremy ‘Doesn’t have a Nickname” Piven is Wahlberg’s senior accomplice, or crime mentor, or whatever. Anyway, he was captured and Wahlberg is worried that further pursuit is coming for him. Then he remembers that it's the day when the fire department washes there vehicles, so he doesn’t have to worry (the firefighters enforce the law in a sort of Fahrenheit 451 sort of way). Cut to the fire station were a raucous bikini carwash is in progress. It would seem that the fireman take there wash day very seriously and invite all the local attractive/exhibitionist women over to help (or maybe they were hookers, it’s not really clear). There is plenty of water getting thrown around, but most of it is getting on the women and not the fire engine.  The chief and some other senior officers are in a hot tub and their women are topless, or possibly even naked. You don’t see anything explicit though since two of the women are low enough in the water that it obscures their chests and the third is sitting in a guy’s lap and he is cupping her breasts (still probably enough for a PG-13 though). While this is going on an agent from internal affairs arrives with a troll enforcer (as in a full on fantasy troll: massive ugly dude with a large club). When the chief notices that internal affairs has arrived he starts to make a fuss, but the agent coolly informs him that he doesn’t have to worry, implying that he has already lost his job. The agent starts talking to one of the senior fire fighters about Mark Wahlberg. Apparently Wahlberg and Piven are ID Forgers. The ID’s are meant to allow them to pass at a younger age so that they can compete in the Hunger Games (what their motive is I couldn’t tell you). All young people are required to report to the fire station for volunteer duty, and a good way to check the validity of an ID is to see if it shows up in the fire departments records. Piven was caught this way, but two weeks ago Wahlberg had gotten into the records somehow. The agent accuses the firemen of registering him without sufficiently checking his ID, and orders the troll to attack. Suddenly the troll is at least two stories tall and is attempting to smash the firemen with its club while they scramble to avoid the blows. The firemen try to hide from the enormous troll and that is where the dream ends.

Analysis

As a movie idea, I see a lot of problems with this idea. For one, there is a startling lack of focus. Where was Johnson during all this? What was being done to Piven? What is a troll doing in a dystopian future movie? I guess the car wash scene is showing that the firefighters are incompetent, but I don’t see how that justifies the internal affairs agent killing them. Is the agent our true antagonist in the movie, and if so, are Wahlberg and Johnson eventually going to team up to take him down? I just can’t tell where this is going.

Auguries

Bikini car washes seem like fun, but they will end in tragedy.   

Educational Videos

So, I took a break from writing these but we're back now. These posts take more time to do than I would like, but I still have a desire to blog my dreams for whatever reason. I guess I'll just going to pick and choose the "good" ones and only do write-ups on them for a while. It seems like a biased approach, but I just don't want these to feel like a chore. Anyway, on with the show.

Dream

I’m in a Geotechnical Engineering class being taught by Captain Sisko (of Star Trek DS9). We have a guest speaker in who is showing us some videos. The first video is supposed to have something to do with hydraulic pressure (which isn’t very Geotech, but whatever), and we lead up to it with some discussion about what would happen if the dam in Pierre (the town that I live in) broke. I do some thinking about if my apartment was about to get washed away and what I would take with me if I evacuated. We watch the video and it consists of the two Jedi from Star Wars Episode One riding a raft through a huge pipe. They are basically falling straight down and they mention that they are already going faster than the speed of sound (apparently the pipe is pressured in a way to get around terminal velocity). An enormous Crow T. Robot head is drifting through the water underneath the raft and when the pipe narrows it gets jammed behind them and blocks the flow of water. The water builds up pressure behind Crow’s head and this is supposed to be analogous to a dam somehow(?). The water eventually burst explosively past the blockage, but the Jedi have fallen so far ahead that it will never catch them, and I fail to understand the point of the video. I want to make a witty comment about how crazy it was so I turn to the people sitting behind me. I don’t know them very well so I’m kind of nervous about talking with them. When I start to make my comment someone else starts talking so I stop halfway though. A little later I get a change to tell it again but the joke doesn’t land. I feel like a jerk for putting so much effort into a bad joke and I hope no one realizes it’s the same thing I was trying to say earlier. Nick (a friend from college) starts passing out engineering paper to everyone (engineering paper is great, just FYI). Earlier the teacher had asked him to retrieve a few reams from the storage room so that everyone could get five or ten sheets. While I’m paying attention to Nick and feeling guilty about bad jokes, Rueben (who isn’t mugging me) asks a question pertaining to the specific way that we need to be formatting our notes on the videos. I realize that we are supposed to be taking notes to turn in at the end of class for a grade, but I have no idea how to do them. Luckily I have a copy of Nick’s notes that he put on my desk as he was passing out the paper, so I start to copy his formatting. The guest speaker notices me furiously copying. She seems mostly concerned and assures me that we have plenty of time and that I don’t need to rush. I thank her and tell her that it’s fine. Then Sisko notices me copying and thinks that I’m cheating. I tell him that I just need to copy the formatting and that I can take my own notes. He says that I should have just asked him how to format them. I agree that this idea probably would have been a better solution. The next video we are going to watch will be about Liquid Limit (LL), Plastic Limits (PL), and Plasticity Index (PI) for soil classification. For some reason this video is going to be projected on the opposite wall of the room as the last video. Before we start watching, the guest speaker asks if we know what LL, PL, and PI mean. I have a good answer ready but she picks someone else. Their answer is terrible and you can tell that they really don’t know what the terms mean and are just trying to bluff their way through it. I get mad because I can’t understand why you would try to answer a question when you didn’t really know the answer and imagine that they're making us all look dumb in front of the guest speaker. Sadly, the dream ends before I get to watch the second video.

Analysis

Science fiction references a plenty! I got Star Trek, Star Wars, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 all in the same dream. I was starting to feel guilty that TNG had made a few appearances in my dreams but DS9 hadn’t made any (since I’ve come to regard DS9 as a better show), but now I feel better. It’s funny that I put some Phantom Menace in. Especially a reference from the scene where they take a sub through the center of the earth. That is one of my least favorite scenes in a movie that has a lot of competition for least favorite scenes. I haven’t watched that movie in a while but seriously. A watery planet core makes no sense geologically; and how could that possibly be the fastest way to travel on a planet that is capable of space flight? If the Gungan (SP? but I don’t care) city was on the opposite side of the planet from the human capital then how did they get their (terrible) army there so fast when none of the vehicles moved faster than walking pace. At least Crow (or his head anyway) made an appearance to redeem things. He is my favorite character on my favorite show, so maybe the Jedi were just there for contrast.

There is some good example of my social awkwardness on display. The deal with the witty comment getting interrupted and then not working out has happened to me before. This is why I often have trouble approaching new people. My jokes generally have a high level of intellectual depth and often require the hearers to understand my personality so they can tell when I’m being facetious. It's terrible when I say something ridiculous and people take it seriously and don’t see the joke. You can’t really blame them when this is coming from someone who they may have never heard speak about anything but math problems before. The note copying event also matches past events of mine. I’ll often take a rougher path to get information that I could just ask someone for. I feel bad about asking for something that I could have gotten had I just paid attention. I don’t what to bother anyone for a problem that is totally my responsibility. The situation also carries some of that classic fear of an assignment that you didn't know what due until it's too late.

I was a real jerk about answering questions in school. People probably learn better if they get a chance to try to answer questions themselves, even if they aren’t right. Having me answer everything for them really doesn’t help anyone.

Auguries

I sure hope the dam isn’t going to break.

Late to Work at the Flower Factory

Date Dreamed: 2014-02-18

Dream

I work at some sort of flower distribution business. We cut and arrange flowers in a sort of factory anyhow. I’m walking to work in the morning, and the weather is overcast and somewhat hazy. There are plenty of other people out walking and we are all converging at the bridge over the river. I stop at the pedestrian traffic jam formed by this bottleneck and the person in front of me turns around. He starts insisting that I take out some sort of loan from him. This guy is clearly shady and it looks like he has some henchman in the crowd. I refuse his persistent requests and get so uncomfortable that I leave the sidewalk and start walking away through the grass. It's very muddy and slippery and I have to work just to keep from falling down. I meet my friend Ryan, who also works at the flower factory. We walk to work together and spend some time outside cleaning our shoes before we go inside. When we finally enter we are late for work. A broadcast system announces that two of the workers who were supposed to be stationed at the gift shop haven’t arrived yet, so that department is understaffed. Ryan and I understand that the two missing workers are us, and realize that we are needed in the gift shop. The factory works on some sort of daily work rotation that is unannounced ahead of time. Before we enter the shop we make two new flower displays as a sort of excuse for what we were doing and why we are late. When we walk in the gift shop we find the two women who will be working with us (because apparently four people are needed to run this place). The gift shop consists of various fancy displays of flowers and other decorations scattered around the room on shelves and plinths. The women, one of whom is Alaina, tell us that nobody has been in yet so it doesn’t really matter that we were late. Ryan and I add our newly created bouquets to the other displays. Mine is a gift specifically for the parents of newborn twins. It consists of a tiny leather couch and some water balloons. The balloons have happy messages written on them. The big one in the middle say “We Wanted Twins and We Got Twins”, and a smaller balloon say “Two Wins” (as a sort of pun on the word twins). The shelf I set the couch on isn’t very stable and the balloons keep rolling off. After trying to keep the balloons stationary for a while, one of them develops a hole and starts leaking water. I start to panic and attempt to pinch the hole shut, but all my efforts just make the problem worse. Since the tiny couch is leather I’m making a big deal about getting it wet. My fellow workers tell me just to pop the balloon but I keep insisting that I can’t do that on the leather couch. The situation is getting increasingly out of hand and now water is spraying all over the place and not just on the couch. I try to direct the stream of water into my mouth as a way of containing it, but I only manage to get myself soaking wet. I pick up the balloon and start running for the bathroom. The water finally stops flowing right at the entrance to the bathroom, and I collapse from a combination of frayed nerves and a sense of defeat. At that moment some customers arrive at the gift shop. The others try to distract them as I dejectedly drag myself into the bathroom to hide. I hear the customers make and inquiry about why there is water everywhere and one of my female coworkers pokes her head into the bathroom to check on me. I’m lying curled up on the floor, broken and defeated.

Context Explanations

Ryan and Alaina are friends of mine from high school.

Plot Holes

That was an outrageous amount of water to be coming out of one balloon.

Erection?

Despondently Yes

Analysis

This dream might seem very downbeat, but it was actually played with a more comedic tone. It was reminiscent of an I Love Lucy sketch, where a seemingly small problem steadily escalates to absurd levels. My actions at the end were a deliberate overstatement of my emotions. Exaggerating my feelings was a way of getting in on the joke. Less reaction would show that my pride had actually been hurt, and trying to pretend it was a big deal would be a sign that my self-esteem needed to be shielded from damage. By playing up the situation I acknowledge that it was funny, and excepted that my behavior had been humorous if not taken seriously. The part with the unrelenting usurer was a combination of my fear of confrontation with strangers and my dislike for being in debt. I think the whole idea of the flower factory grew from hearing someone say they bought a cooking spice from a flower shop, and now my understandings of the limits of that business have been thrown into question.

Auguries

We had mud on shoes and water on a leather couch. This speaks of something fancy of expensive being dirtied or damaged. 

Santa Squid

Date Dreamed: 2014-02-13

Dream

A Santa is cleaning up the workshop after all the Santas were having a party (this is the secret of Christmas). As he leaves an evil grey candy cane comes alive and is threatening to cause problems. It is trying to steal some other special candy cane, possibly? The Santa races to grab the good candy cane and throws it out the door and onto the frozen lake. It fails to break through the ice so he grabs another handful of stuff and tosses it onto the ice as well. This succeeds in breaking the ice and the good candy cane is made safe from the evil one. Now stuff gets even weirder, and the Santa freaks out and makes a running dive into the lake. When he hits the water he turns into a giant red squid thing. It swims through the water and gets a feeling of being in its natural habitat and where it belongs. The dream then starts playing the dive over and over again; not as a replay, but more of a reliving, like the Santa is stuck in a “Groundhog’s Day” sort of loop. The Santa tries to dive in the correct way so that he won’t have to repeat it anymore. The focus is on trying to hit the exact spot where the piece of candy cane sunk into the water.

Context Explanations

It’s been over a month and a half since Christmas, so I’m can’t say where this is coming from.

Plot Holes

Absolutely everything going on made no sense whatsoever.

Erection?

Bizarrely Yes

Analysis

I wish I could say I was on medication to explain this one, but a heat pack is the most extreme remedy I’ve partaken in recently. The fact that there are Santas and candy canes is the only related part of the whole dream, unless you count a frozen lake as Christmassy. The ice lake could have to do with when I went ice fishing a while ago or with my weekly game of curling. Diving repeatedly and trying to hit a precise spot could also be curling, since it involves trying to slide stones onto the center of a target. The part about diving into the water and turning into a squid is completely beyond my understanding. The feeling of belonging seemed like a good sign.

Auguries

Something needs to be done just so, and then things will be where they belong.

Motel Murderer

Date Dreamed: 2014-02-07

Dream

I’m sleeping in a hotel room (I changed the title for alliterative purposes). During the night I get the impression that someone is in the room and they are threatening to murder me. The next day when I tell people about this they assume I was dreaming. I conduct research into some guy, who hates me for unspecified reasons, and find that he has access to the key card machine where I am staying. Motive and opportunity still aren’t enough evidence to convince anyone that I’m in danger. That night I wake up to the feeling of being misted with water in my bed. It's raining outside and my assailant has opened the windows in my hotel room. I stir but don’t open my eyes. He notices my movement and closes the window since he doesn’t actually want to wake me up. Assuming I’m still asleep, he starts talking to me. He's describing when and how he is going to kill me and reveling in his power over my seemingly unconscious and helpless form. I continue to lie still and motionless and wish that I had my tape recorder to gather evidence against him. As he leaves he opens the windows again and turns on a light to provide clear evidence of his presence, as a way of tormenting me. When he's gone I get up and close the window and turn the light off again. I consider bolting the door from now on, but that would tip him off and I still wanted to gather more concrete evidence. Later, I get a threat filled email from him, which isn’t a very subtle way to commit murder.

Context Explanations

I sleep with a tape recorder next to my bed. That is how I initially record these dreams.

Plot Holes

Power hungry sociopaths are usually depicted as criminal masterminds, but this one seems pretty ham fisted.

Erection?

Spookily Yes

Analysis

This wasn’t a nightmare since I can’t remember being scared at any time during the dream. I was exasperated when nobody believed me, and I was mostly intrigued by my would be murderer. The whole thing seemed like a hip TV show crime investigation, and I completely failed to act like I was the intended victim. At my old job I used to stay in hotels when working in the field. My boss once told me a story about another guy in the company who was continuously threatened by one of the workers on a field job. I would guess this is what inspired the dream, although an excavator was not the promised instrument of my demise.

Auguries

Maybe I should start locking my door, but nah.

Country Lobster

Date Dreamed: 2014-01-31

Dream

I’m visiting Dale at his house in the country. We are traveling by boat along the local canal system and he is telling me about his brother and his brother’s wife. He explains that they are very eccentric and then offers me the chance to meets them. I figure why not, and then I am at their house alone. I walk inside but they don’t seem to notice me. They are talking about Dale’s friend who doesn’t have a job, who happens to be me. Gathering wild egg comes into the conversation and they decide to keep everything they find since I can apparently use any extra food. I decide to leave since they are having a conversation about me that is embarrassing, and are also the kind of people who don’t notice a third person standing in the room with them. The instant I move they notice me, and don’t acknowledge that I had just heard their conversation. They offer to take me out to their lobster traps and the practice of catching your own food interests me, so I agree. We drive out, because apparently fish traps are easier to access by land, but the house is best traveled to by boat? To entertain me on the trip the wife is asking me riddles. The riddles are completely unfathomable to me, and I can’t tell if they are actually obscure facts or meant to have some clever answer. The only one I can remember is “What is the deadliest reptile in Los Angelis?”. I can't think of anything to solve the riddles, so I just don't say anything. She isn’t deterred by my silence and just keeps asking new riddles without answering the old ones. As we stop at an old corrugated metal pipe I’m told we’ve arrived at the traps. Seeing a crawdad on the edge of the water clues me in that these aren’t going to be true lobsters. The dream ends as the wife starts hauling in a line that leads to the mouth of the culvert.  

Context Explanations

Dale is a friend of mine from work. I’ve never met his relatives, but I have been in his boat.

Plot Holes

The part where they don’t notice me enter the room only really works with dream logic. I also don't require food charity. 

Erection?

Quizzically Yes

Analysis

The main theme seems to be gathering food from nature. I view the ability to collect your own food as a form of independence, since you wouldn’t be tied to grocery stores anymore. If I didn’t have to buy my food, the desire for an internet connection would be the only thing left keeping me in contact with society. The ability to feed oneself without any outside help is a power that I have a lot of respect for. It looks like I would be willing to eat things like crawdads and fertilized wild bird eggs to accomplish this goal, or at least try to eat them. Pertaining to the house scene, getting ignored while others have a conversation is not an uncommon occurrence for me. I don't usually thrust myself into conversations, and if I don't have anything to add I just keep quiet and think about my own things.

Auguries

Traveling by water brings neglect, while traveling by land brings a bountiful harvest. I should fish from shore more often.

Beach Capture the Flag

Date Dreamed: 2014-01-30

Dream

I’m in high school gym class and we’re trying to decide what game to play. The teacher is completely differing to me on this decision, and is being really obsequious in making sure that I’m happy with what is chosen. I decide on capture the flag, and then the teacher insists that I be one of the team captains. The picking isn’t shown, but I know that I end up with Ryan and Zach on my team. We turn around to find ourselves on a sandy beach and the other team captain (who I don’t recognize) has already set everything up to play. There are two ten foot poles set about 50 yards apart. Each pole has a pennant flag; my team is defending blue, and the other team is red. The objects we are capturing are colored bean bags with streamers attached. As the game starts, Ryan and I sprint to the other team's flag before they can defend it. The game plays similar to ultimate frisbee, so we are not allowed to run with the flags and defense consists of intercepting passes. I grab the red flag and Ryan is ready to receive it down the beach. In my classic skip the cutoff man move, I throw it over Ryan to Zach. My throw is short (I must have improperly judge the drag force of the streamer), but luckily the other team captain was guarding Ryan and Zach is able to retrieve the flag off the ground. We move the flag downfield back to our pole to score, and the rest of our team is able to keep Red from scoring with our flag. Our goalie (who might be A.J.) throws the blue flag into the far back corner of the field, because the beach somehow has a rectangular boundary expressed on it. The dream ends as I puzzle over the procedure for returning the red flag after we score.

Context Explanations

Ryan, Zach, and A.J. are kids I went to high school with. Ryan and A.J. (who was a soccer goalie) were both in my Outdoor Ed. class, which was a P.E. where we played various games outside. My rival captain seemed to be an amalgam of people I know, and the teacher was unrecognizable, which is strange because most of my gym teachers had pretty memorable personalities. I always skip the cutoff man in baseball.

Plot Holes

There isn’t really a good way to return the flag after a score. You can’t stop the game because the other flag is still in play, and forcing the team to run it back doesn’t really make sense. Without physical defense, there is also nothing stopping someone from standing at the pole to grab it as soon as it’s returned. This game is broken.

Erection?

Physically Yes

Analysis

I took a gym class every semester in high school, so a dream about this isn’t surprising. Capture the flag was always one of my favorite games as a kid, and I guess I was trying to create rules that would make sense for a gym class setting (and failed). Other than the fact that I show myself actively captain a winning team (they’re my dreams, so it's only seems natural that I’m the hero), the only analyzable part seems to be how the teacher was referring to me. What this resembles is when the gym teacher I always had in high school would direct math questions to me during class. He followed the school's math competition and would always bring up how well I did in front of the class. He was just a really cool guy like that. We had a good relationship; we used to talk about the benefits of cutting our own hair, once when I bloodied both knees and elbows in a sledding accident he complimented me on spreading the impact to four points of contact, and I would warn everyone not to bet against him performing amazing feats to make us run extra laps because he never failed (he used to sit in the bleachers at half court and swish basketballs one handed). He always tried to raise me up and make me feel good about myself, and that is the reason why I spent one eighth of my high school career in gym and don’t feel bad about it.

Auguries

Blue triumphed over red on the beach. I should wear my blue swim trunks next time I go swimming.

Summer Camp Showoff

Date Dreamed: 2014-01-27

Dream

I’m at summer camp and some friends and I are messing around on the docks of the idyllic canoe lake. I have my eight foot pole, and am trying to balance on top of it. I stand it up straight on the dock, shimmy to the top, and then try to poise on the end. I keep losing my balance once I get to the top, and fall into the lake. We all think this is hilarious, even after I’ve done it two or three times in a row. Somebody thinks this is worthy of some unscripted humorous amateur film program that is transmitted via radio waves to visual and audio entertainment equipment in citizens homes. I’m annoyed by this suggestion.

Context Explanations

I have an eight foot pole that is technically a wooden closet rod (a 1.5” dowel in other words). It was originally supposed to be six feet long and I was going to use it as my bo staff. The hardware store only had eight foot dowels, and didn’t have any use for the two foot trimmings so they just gave me the full eight feet. I never got around to cutting it down to size (I kind of want to turn it into a big spear, as one of my hobbies is making medieval weapons out of wood). I’ve never shimmied up it, but I did use it as a pole vault once and took all the skin off the front of my big toe. I don’t use it as a pole vault anymore. Also, I’ve never been to summer camp. Sometime I feel guilty because the dreams are short, so I fluff up my posts with a lot of boring personal details.

Plot Holes

If I know anything about summer camps, they are all about being terrorized by murdering psychopaths, learning lessons about self-esteem, or having sexual misadventures. They are not about circus antics. Plus, I’m assuming the setting was in a time period before YouTube.

Erection?

Acrobatically Yes

Analysis

I’m just going to skip the obvious phallic imagery, because this is a classy blog. What I want to talk about is the fact that I was willing to degrade myself to entertain people (I gathered the impression that falling into the water was the whole point, as standing on top of an eight foot pole wouldn’t be all that entertaining after the novelty wore off but someone falling into a lake is always funny), but was put off by the suggestion that it should be filmed. To use this as an excuse to self-analyze (and to use my self-analysis as an excuse to be self-derogatory), this speaks of my dislike of cameras and camcorders. If something is fun, I prefer to just let it happen and cherish the memory that I store in my head. Trying to capture it on film just seems to spoil the moment, and adds a layer of artificiality as everyone assumes a persona and their actions become a performance. I also find still images of myself to be uncanny.

Auguries

I’ve got the number eight, a lake, and the season of summer. Eight happens to be the limit for walleye in my area. Next summer, I will go spearfishing in the lake and take my limit. It is foretold!