Dream Journal: In Soviet Union, Myth Busts You! / Night of the Living Mammoth

Tonight’s dream came in three major sections.

The first and second ‘chapters’ were connected by a similar theme. In the first part, I was on a composite of the various Enterprises from the various Star Trek series. The ship was under attack by various enemies of the crew members (Khan, the Borg, etc) who seemed all but undefeatable. In this part I observed more than interacted, and the crew eventually discovered that the phantom foes didn’t know anything their counterpart crewman didn’t. It was shown that these beings were manifestations drawn from their minds, and, as the source of these constructs was being found, I was kicked into another dream.

In this dream, I was in a massive building that was like many stores tacked one against the other, one of which was a giant country-and-western themed gift shop. It was here that I was confronted and captured by the cast of Mythbusters, who apparently needed me as a living subject to test some sort of explosive catapult. Apparently, Buster was unavailable.

In what seemed to be an odd continuance of the previous dream tacked on to a bout of semi-lucid dreaming, I engaged Kari Byron in conversation, explaining that I didn’t think she or any of the others were the real deal. In dream logic, this meant they didn’t have jurisdiction to try and blow me up. Kari asked that I put it to the test (keeping in character) so I asked her which was the right pronunciation of her name ‘Kay-ree’ or ‘Kar-ree.’ She wasn’t sure, and I pointed out that neither was I, but it was her name, and if she wasn’t sure how to pronounce it, it’s a good chance that she was molded out of my knowledge. A follow up in which she didn’t remember her own middle name proved that the whole thing was pulled from my subconscious brain. I was immediately released.

Unlike the crew of the multi-Enterprise, however, I was less concerned with learning the identity of my tormenter than I was with attempting to willfully amend my impression of Kari Byron into being the type of woman who would be interested in me.

The alarm clock didn’t cooperate and I didn’t find out if that worked.

Hitting the snooze, I decided to try and go back into the dream, a tactic that never works. This time, instead of being back face-to-face with a perfect simulacrum of Kari, I was in one of the business zones of the great city of the Dreamscape. Ah, the Dreamscape, recurrent environment of my subconscious mind since I was eight, how I’d missed you.

The people of the city, which included my friends Russ, Nathan, Shawn and Lacey. The city itself was under siege by wooly mammoths. The town had apparently been under mammoth attack for a long time, since everyone was used to just getting off the streets when the mammoths came. My friends and I were apparently on a school trip to this town, and when a mammoth came, we just ducked into a Quiznos and waited. Only the mammoth in question had a particular dislike of me, personally, and leaned against the front of the shop until it caved in. What followed was a typical monster/zombie movie scenario (small group on the run from relentless un-killable monster), but with a single wooly mammoth standing in for the zombies.

By the time we started stockpiling weapons to fight the mammoth, I awoke.

Flea Market Adventures

This saturday, Travis and I went to the flea market, as we often do. Once upon a time, the core of my Transformer collecting was the flea market. Around 1996, when I started collecting again, the line was lucky to produce 26 figures in a given year (for reference, the first wave of figures for a given line now approaches those numbers. Thankfully, I'm not a completist). And there was a lot of older material to pull together. So the flea market was a great place to go for TFs. It was also before a lot of nostalgia collecting hit hard, so figures could be found relatively cheap, and I had the sort of time on my hands where I didn't mind buying six figures in crappy shape to combine the good parts off them into one, good condition figure.

Now, the flea markets are primarily a source of raw material for the Pete Promethius film production. I buy a lot of helmets and nerf guns and broken electronics that wind up being costume parts, ray pistols and control panels for an imaginary spaceship.

Well, this weekend I had one of the better 'classic' Flea Market runs, wherein I go and I find stuff that I like for a great price. In this case, I found what amounts to about five sets of Heroscape, for four dollars. For the whole set.

All this in addition to three new nerf guns to make into ray pistols. A good haul indeed.

And now, to counterpoint that rather dull brag at my ability to find nerd-supplies on the cheap, I give you a routine by Dara O'briain:

Welcome to my nightmare, whoah-oh-oh-oh...

I've spent the last week in a period of self-reflection. In all honesty, I probably could use longer, but I'm not able to take more time off from work and money will become an issue if I linger much longer.

Ever since the trip to California, I've been weathering a lot of discontent. The majority of my ability to cope with the life I've been living has been due to a false assumption that the level of discomfort I had was largely universal. That there really wasn't anything out there that was much better. This is demonstrably false. I was inspired, and I've accomplished some great things since then.

But there's also been a bit of a slide. Hope, it seems, can be somewhat toxic when its held just out of reach. I'd also let myself have too much of my self-worth get tied up in elements of my life that simply don't matter. I'm looking to resolve these things, but it is a new war now. Last Monday, I lost a battle in that war, and I've been recovering. I don't know if I'm going to be able to weather, psychologically, that battle again, but I'll find out soon.

Alice Cooper put it well.

In unrelated news, I bumped the back of my bumper against a post, scraping the paint today. It is an irritation, but hopefully I can touch it up and it won't be so noticable.

-Trent

Slacking: I excell at it.

Ok, apparently, I've let the blog thing slide.

I'll preface my apology with an excuse. I've got a lot more on my plate lately. Video Projects (Actual Video you can watch will be up soon!), more comics (more details to come, Yo Joe!), secret projects (darn NDAs) and all the old stuff on top of that.

And yes, Champions Online.

To this end, I've been letting things slip and I'm sorry for that. The IP policing at work has been stepped up, so a lot of my 'type while bored' projects have been torpedeoed. If you've been feeling neglected, its not you, its me, and I'm going to be trying to keep up.

I promise an angry rant or three sometime soon, as well as the self-congratulating braggartry you've all come to know and love.

-Trent