Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Analyse This!

I was enrolled in an Idol style singing competition where I was doing double duty performing and assigning everyone a song. This is apparently not a conflict of interest when I am the one doing it. Even though I had scrawled the song choices on the back of a folded up piece of brown paper bag, I couldn't figure out who had been assigned what (and most importantly what my own song would be). Ever ready to intervene and micromanage, my boss showed up. She then took my paper away from me and reassigned them all, giving me that awful Mariah Carey Hero song. This did not please me one bit and not only because I don't know the words to Hero, even if I have been unable to escape its lesson that a hero does indeed lie in me. Luckily, I miraculously remembered my original plan and changed everything back, so I'd be singing Bob Wills' Drunkard's Blues as performed by Kelly Hogan on the Pine Valley Cosmonauts Salute to the Majesty of Bob Wills, which is only true and proper.

Happy with my final choice, I headed off to the school cafeteria as an excuse to look for David Boreanaz at the salad bar. He had been flirting with me earlier outside, so it seemed the sensible thing to do. So, I toddled off to the salad bar to feign the inability to eat, because I was so nervous about my performance. This would allow me to be delicate AND advertise that I'd be singing without directly asking him to come. Unfortunately, when I tried to bump into him line, I learned that he would not be able to attend the competition. Undaunted, I offered to sing for him there. He declined, claiming he had work to do.

Apparently he was investigating a girl, who was turning into a demon and had to go to her room (probably to look at her etchings). In the end, as is so often the case, she exploded and then I was on a bus looking for her residence hall (and David Boreanaz). I never did find him, but her remains (the shredded plastic of an exploded blow up doll) were indeed scattered about her boudior.

After that, I hopped back on the bus and headed over to the campus information desk, which was made of bales of hay. The two information officers were very friendly, so I talked to them for a bit while I waited for my friends to arrive. They asked me if I knew anything about the anti-war rally on the 19th, so I gave them a poster sized flyer out of my purse.

Poster distributed, it was time to adjourn to the Underworld with my mom, a guy from church, and a small Chinese woman from work. First, though, we had to find a meeting room. We parted ways when Churchy went off up the stairs to look for it, while we looked in our area. It was then that I noticed a door to outside and immediately to the right of it, a door back to the inside. We took it, and ended up in a long hall that lead to a dimly lit sanctuary filled with demons with white, scaley skin. We walked down a long walkway between the pews they were sitting in, ignoring them, but afraid they would try to grab us. Then we went around another corner and into another even darker cavern that had rickety, rotting wooden ladders, over a pit of fire. When we got to the bottom, there was a narrow path between the coals, leading forward.

After that, we were in a very small movie theater alone. Strange beings kept coming in. The others were afraid, but for some reason I was not. Because I am apparently a hippie in my dreams, I told the others that all they had to do was medidate on the word "Peace". This would give us time to determine what to do and also protect us from the demons. My coworker (whom I actually DO like in real life) kept jabbering and interrupting the necessary quiet with her incessant prattle. I kept meditating and trying to ignore her as a group of spooky looking hooded beings in black came in. I tried not to focus on them and kept focusing on the word "Peace", they turned into black men in nicely tailored pin-striped suits, who asked if they could sit with us. I was just contemplating inviting everyone to join me in using one of the exits to the front of the theater, when I was rudely awakened by the alarm clock, which is a shame, because I suspect John Wesley Harding was waiting outside to fly us all to safety in his magic bus.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely brilliant.

In a serious mood due to having to do something I don't want to do, I got a newsfeed notice telling me you'd updated your log. I read it in awe (my god, you know Angel?), and wound up laughing harder than I have in long time. I still have a tinglingly, giggly feeling and and a big grin.

Thank you so much for that.

    C
  XXX

Leslita said...

I also loved the living daylights out of this post! Hee hee!

Jen said...

For some reason, one of my favorite things is that the information desk was made from bales of hay. These are the kinds of details that make it a dream to remember! hee hee hee!

Martina said...

Sometimes I have to wonder where it is that some of these weird dreams originate. I think their beauty is that they require no embellishment. I don't have them often, but when I do, they're very vivid.

CHRIS: I'm glad that it cheers you to know I'm mental. My acquaintance with Angel is fairly new (I never really watched the series when it was on), but now I am totally hooked. I'm trying to watch them all in order now (thanks to my dealers - Jen & Netflix) and am currently on episode two of season five.

LESLIE: I'm so glad you have been visiting lately AND I'm glad that I thought to post my dream. It cracks me up. I think sometimes that I amuse myself perhaps a little bit more than should. At least I'm not as bad as the German professor I had in grad school who loved to tell the story about meeting Jacques Derrida, telling him how his last name sounded like "der, die, das" as he giggled like a giddy school girl. He managed to work that story into just about every seminar I ever took from him. If I ever get that bad, I'll know I've gone too far.

JEN: I enjoyed the bales of hay as well (not to mention that I just happened to have anti-war posters in my purse - just in case). I think my favorite part was Churchy McChurcherson ascending the stairs to go do his looking closer to heaven, while I and my friends ended up going DOWN into the Hellmouth. Well, that and that the girl I lost out to was actually a blow-up doll.

Well, I'm off to get ready to see Varekai. There should be some fertile weird dream seeds there, I would think!

SYL

Anonymous said...

<< My acquaintance with Angel is fairly new (I never really watched the series when it was on), but now I am totally hooked. I'm trying to watch them all in order now (thanks to my dealers - Jen & Netflix) and am currently on episode two of season five.>>

Me too! I don't watch television at all, but from charity shops and eBay I built up a collection of Angel videos, upto halfway through Season Four. I have watched all but one of those episodes, trying to avoid the withdrawal symptoms that will ensue when I have none left to satisfy my cravings. It seems a waste of money to get the rest on video when I will, at some stage, get the whole lot on DVD, but that isn't going to happen until the later series get cheaper and I have some money.

Do any of you have opinions on Firefly, the more recent Joss creation? I don't think it's reached Britain, but being TV-free I wouldn't know.

    C
  XXX

Anonymous said...

You make sneaky internet surfing at work sooooo much fun!

Seriously, our dreams should get together for drinks sometime.

Jen said...

Man! blogger ate my comment!! (I will probably come back to find that I have somehow triple posted it.)

Chris -- I thought Firefly was great, but if you have a low tolerance for movie-western tropes you may not like it. It is funny and smart, but still maintains an edge of danger (they're crooks in space being chased by the government -- you know, THE USUAL) and is full of Jossy goodness. I would recommend getting your hands on the series (available on DVD) before watching the movie, Serenity... I think it makes the movie even better to have the series under your belt, although it probably doesn't make that big of a difference.

Martina -- you will have to put Angel: the Series on your list of things to watch when you're done with Buffy! (unfortunately, I don't have the DVDs ... YET). It is more noir than Buffy, but still big with the Vampires.

Martina said...

CHRIS: I never have seen Firefly. Perhaps it is something for after I finish watching Buffy and after I start and finish Angel. Once I've seen it, I'll be happy to share any thoughts I have. Meanwhile, Jen's pop culture expertise will have to be be our guide.

SONYA: Have your dreams call my dreams and we'll work something out. I just hope the bar is made of bales of hay. Hay or not, it sounds like even your dreams could use a drink after putting up with your coworkers! There are times when I wish I'd stuck it out there (especially lately as Captain Killjoy, a.k.a. my neurotic boss, has been out of control).

JEN: I HATE when blogger does that. Clearly someone needs to feed it more, so it stops attacking innocent posts. You'd better it step it up and start working on your Angel collection. I'm already up to season 5 of Buffy. There's not much time left... :-)

Martina said...

A dreamy update (mostly for those of you people who know Bec or are her sister): I had another bizarro one last night, but don't remember a lot of the details. One of the things I DO remember, though, is that my house was under surveillance and that I had a framed picture of Bec and me sitting side by side at a table having dinner. I was laughing and she was wearing a big piece of prosciutto plastered to her forehead.

Jen said...

OMG! I didn't realize anyone took pictures of that at your birthday party...

Anonymous said...

"I thought Firefly was great, but if you have a low tolerance for movie-western tropes you may not like it."

Jen, you have correctly surmised my life-long antipathy to westerns. That means that I might have a problem with Firefly in the same way that my disdain of the horror genre and abhorrence of on-screen American teenagers made Buffy unbearable. No, wait. That can't be right. I'm the guy with the Buffy and Angel mouse mat. Well, there was a big cut-price pile of them and I needed a mouse mat and, okay, they're cute together. How she can go from him to that tosser Riley can only be explained by an adjacent hell mouth.

Joss can make me like anything. As well as his creative genius, he seems to ensure he always works with the best people in every field of his medium. Throw Marti Noxon into the mix and you've got me hooked forever. Anybody know where I can get a Marti Mouse Mat?

CD