Batch

10-03-2012 -- [Two dreams tonight, and no idea why when last few days have been so bad ... especially since 1st one was clear, detailed, and made internal sense, even though I dreamed it in first 2 hours of sleep, which is usually short, choppy, and impossible to make sense of. Can't fathom why unless imitation apple soda is as good as apple juice before bed, even though no real apple in it. Don't know.]

I'm in my 1st bedroom in the Hickory House. Kevin B and I are sitting around writing stuff, except very unusually, Kevin is not trying to write stories, but is trying to write a love song. Suddenly he bursts into two lines of song, and they flow, they sound quite musical ... he may well be on to something. The lines are something along the lines of 'thinking about you, thinking about you' and I think he may be on his way to a great song. [Didn't note it in the dream, but the fact I woke with the words "I can't live with or without you" running through my mind tells me my mind probably stole the tune.]

It does sound amazingly familiar, and I don't want to encourage him on trying to rewrite an already published song, so I am really trying to think of where I might know the words from, and I find myself thinking of a New York public service thing that was supposed to make New Yorkers think about making a good impression on the tourists or something. I even find myself remembering a red and blue circular sign with the wording on it from a New York trip ... and no reason why that shouldn't work, is there?

In trying to remember this and research it, I have somehow stepped into an office somewhere, and started looking at some books. One of the books I have somehow come across is a digest-sized book of Spider-Man comics, except it is about 6" thick and claims to contain all the cross-over stories or some such thing. I am flipping through it and seeing sections labeled Spider-Man and Superman and others, while the person whose office I am in is talking some sort of business deal on the phone.

When he finishes up, he turns his attention to me, and I am talking about the book, and wondering where he got it. Though nothing is said about how I got there or why I am in his office, he is very friendly and helpful. Somehow as we're talking, I reveal I am out of work and need a job. He is asking about my skills and encouraging me to talk about what I am good at, and I mention my computer skills and on the computer nearly every waking hour, but then admit I don't have a computer science degree because of the math requirements, and he doesn't seem to think that is a bar, though it will require a different angle of attack.

Then he is on the phone again, this time with a woman from Minnesota. Somehow she knows me, and he is wondering if I sent her an application sometime. I am trying to figure out where I know the person from, whether it be something Disney or some sort of balloon gig, or a research letter for a story or song or something connected with church. Whatever the reason, he has come across another person who thinks highly of me, even though I don't know them, which only increases his interest in helping me regarding job.

But suddenly there is a huge snake (about 4" around and perhaps 10-15 feet long) that slithers out of a bag on the floor by his desk and heads in my direction. It seems to pause, lifts itself off the ground like a king cobra preparing to strike and sort of sniffs the air, then drops to the ground and slithers at me remarkably fast. I kind of scream, bolt out of my chair as fast as I can move, and start running out of the office. The snake is right behind me, and I keep screaming and running, but oddly I almost seem to be composing an incident report or something in my mind, calmly, at the same time, noting that if I am running at top speed, the snake falls behind.

I run past an elevator and down a hallway, into a reception area, and the person sitting there is Joy (in charge of hiring for Mears, hired me for my original job there, and will not rehire me now). I am still screaming about the snake, and she is instantly on the phone to animal control or something. She knows it is the guy's pet, and harmless, but she's been wanting a reason to get rid of it, and she is jumping on the opportunity. The guy might have every reason to now hate me, but he understands that I was scared and surprised and doesn't hold it against me. Instead he just gathers up his snake and his stuff and takes it to his car to go home before they can come for the snake. I go with him to the parking lot to continue our conversation.

As we are talking in the parking lot and he opens the door to his car, it turns out he has a lot of other pets, mostly much smaller snakes, and one tiny little dog (was it a dog? It might have been a prairie dog or something odder like that, instead), all running around the area. I am sitting on the ground, and a small snake (perhaps a centimeter around and about 10 inches long) seems to be cuddling against the bottom of my bare foot. While I am slightly uncomfortable with this, it is nothing to being chased around by the huge snake, so I can manage to ignore it. Thing is slightly cute, after all.

We walk past some ladies in the parking lot, and seem to be heading for another building, when for a for seconds the scene changes completely, and it's almost like an entire different dream. I am in an apartment or hotel with Bonnie C., and somehow the key for the door lock is in the door kind of like a locker key. I take the key and somehow make a duplicate of it so I have one to keep. Bonnie is asking me about it, and says I have taken three keys, when I think I have only taken two. I feel in my pockets, and do find three keys, but one is from earlier, and has nothing to do with here. Weird and out of place.

So now we're in a parking lot on the other side of the building, and there is a landscaping guy blowing leaves with a blower. The guy I am with (looks like a thinner version of Christopher Bean) is determined to know if it is a gas blower or an electric blower, because in the dream an electric blower would be much better for the environment. So he unplugs a cord for an instant, and the blower starts to die. He plugs it back in, it starts to blow again, and he has his answer. Meanwhile, I seem to be glancing at a book by Rush Limbaugh about buying wholesale to save money or something odd like that (business, rather than politics.)

As we start to walk to the building again, I oddly find myself humming 'Jolly Holiday' from Mary Poppins, and the guy instantly starts to sing along with me. So we're both walking down the sidewalk singing "Ain't it a glorious day, bright as a morning in May; I feel like I could fly ...." But as we reach the point where the penguins start calling out ladies names, the names he is calling out are completely wrong, and don't fit at all. I am correcting him with names that are still wrong, but much closer in sound and cadence to the correct names. We're laughing, as others are just staring at us.

09-17-2012 -- [First off, this was not lucid, I did not know it was a dream while I was dreaming it, but part of why I remember the parts I remember so well is because I was recalling the details of what happened earlier in the dream in the dream, not trying to remember it as a dream, but for the possible lawsuit. Also there may have been more before this, and it may have been dull or interesting, but I can't actually remember anything further back than I tried to remember in the dream, except that I am certain that it did go further back. Takes a while to get to the weird, repeat dream, time travel parts.]

Somehow I am in a parking lot of a strip mall. Could be a lot of places, but I'm pretty sure it is on Colonial, near Highway 27 in Clermont. I have no idea why I am here, and everything seems to keep shifting, but I seem to be meeting mom here, and she seems to own a business.

For much of this portion, I am in the parking lot, along landscaped curbs, though it is a business, as well. At one moment, it seems to be a gym that mom owns (anybody who ever met my mom, who weighed over 400 pounds, would know this makes no sense), and at another, a sort of copy center. I am supposed to be doing some work for her, and my 'station' is a table, just sitting in this parking lot.

Somebody knocked the table over, and stuff is scattered on the floor. I am trying to get things straightened up again. Somehow this leads to some time cleaning up litter in the parking lot, and I am talking to mom's assistant, who is kind of cute, looks a little like Rosemary's friend Mary. End up picking up a small sort of alarm clock that has broken into three pieces and am putting it back together so it works.

I ask about it, and they are moaning that it shows the next three jobs we're supposed to be doing, and they are worried things won't get done because the alarm disappeared when the table got knocked over. I explain it was right underneath the table, and I fixed it, and they are happy about it. I am gently tearing what seems to be a page with three coupons on it out of a half-size coupon store thing like I once bought an ad in, as I wait for mom, who is talking to somebody else, inside the store, except that somehow it seems to be some kind of work order for us, regardless of the fact that it looks like a coupon.

Continue cleaning up scraps on the floor, and start to come across several old comic books (ones I have dreamed about in other dreams, within last couple of years) that are just randomly sitting half in the open, half under the tables (that are still out in the open in the parking lot). I am gathering them up to throw them away, except I halfway have some kind of idea that these are some sort of mid-range comic books that are kept under the tables to keep them out of the way. They aren't cheap enough to go in the regular bins, nor expensive enough to be put on the walls, but maybe $40 or $50 an issue. They include a lot of random titles, some old Green Lanterns, and a couple of old Spider-Mans. Somehow this leads to looking at some racks mom has of trade paperbacks, and I am glancing at the thick black and white archive editions of Green Lantern stuff that print 20 or 25 issues in a single $15-$20 newsprint volume, thinking when I have money and a job, I might want to buy a few more.

By this time mom's gym or printshop or comic store is closing for the day, and they are preparing to lock it up. I walk out of the store (finally inside) and head a little north in a mall the store is in. (Almost seems to be the Buena Park Mall). I think I am a few doors down from Sears, and am passing a bookstore that I decide I want to look through. When I first glance at it, it looks exactly like Waldenbooks, but when I look again, it seems to be a different bookstore.

They are probably about to close as well, but they say nothing as I start to browse. It is a long, narrow shop, like Waldenbooks was, and I am walking back the main aisle, looking at the displays on the right side as I head all the way back. As I get to the back, I see these strange mannequin-like figures that seem to be slightly moving or swaying. There is an incredibly long line of them, and they almost seem ready to go down like a row of dominoes.

By this time, I am driving down somewhat narrow roads around some attractive houses while looking at all these mannequins, and soon I am not driving, but being driven. Soon it seems like I am being driven around a very nicely landscaped seaside community. I am seeing people walking their dogs, and somehow I am recognizing things that I drove around or saw years and years ago, though I'm still trying to piece together exactly what it is I am remembering.

We are on our way back, and are getting close to the front of the store again, when I see a small red pick-up truck parked along the curb, and I am suddenly certain I remember that truck. Wasn't that the truck that Ashlyn Gear did a sex scene with some black guy in it? Wasn't it one of the hottest scenes I ever saw? The truck is quite an old model, from the late 70s or early 80s, but it looks brand new. As we're driving past it, I see a door in the building open, and a very young, vibrant Ashlyn Gear walks out and is heading for the truck, followed by a black guy, and everything kind of falls into place.

Back almost 25 years ago, when I was just barely legal, I somehow got a couple of video tapes. One had one pornographic scene on it, Ashlyn in the red truck. The other was a worn video tape of some kind of TV show that had been recorded (poorly) over a tape of porn scenes, and you could catch tiny bits of the porn flashing in and out of the newer stuff. The thing that had been taped over the top of the porn was a drive through the small, well-landscaped community.

I start to confront them about how I saw these tapes 25 years ago, and yet they are only filming them today. And somehow they have an Ashlyn Gear here that is about 25 years younger than the Ashlyn Gear of today. Obviously there is some kind of time travel going on here, and I want to know what is going on. They try to distract me by driving me through a different part of the community, showing me the route I actually remember from the video tape, yet denying there is anything odd going on. I'm asking them to drive slower as we pass the red truck, and am even considering stopping and trying to get into the act.

Soon I am back to the front counter, trying to demand the speak to the manager, except it has turned from a bookstore into a car dealership that sells old classic cars that seem to be absolutely brand new. I keep trying to demand to know about their time traveling method, and they keep acting like I am insane, while trying to sell me a brand new 1980 brown pick-up truck in the year 2012.

We argue for a little while, and I am threatening law suits, and am reminding myself of the entire typed-out portion of this dream in my mind so I can remember it to tell it to the lawyers. Soon I am in the brown pick-up truck, and seem to be kind of stealing it while the sales manager is threatening to call the cops. I tell him he calls the cops and I'll blow the whistle on his whole time-travel thing. I drive the truck out of his lot and on to Douglas Avenue in Altamonte, turning left to drive toward Altamonte Blvd.

[I have no way to prove it, but I am almost sure I had another dream that I was remembering in this dream of driving around the community, waiting for people to cross the street with their dogs, and so on ... though it feels like I dreamed it 10-12 years ago, and not 25 years ago. I can't remember if there were any hints of sex in that earlier dream. I can't remember any, but it kind of feels like it. Weird stuff.]