Hi Solilocey,

I don't know if you get any of the same tv and movies down under, but our American tv is increasingly, more and more (the moors?), loaded with blood and guts "reality." It's all "wax" of course, models of bodies or body parts made to look like every butchered kind of skeleton and hacked up body and murder victim and oh, not just murder, hospital nightmares with every limb having to be cut off, or person who comes in shredded or burned or having been dropped in cement which is dehydrating them and they only have twenty minutes to get them out before they die, and it's all graphic and all realistic, and all very tiresome, really.

I am old enough to remember when these kinds of things were just *suggested* and my imagination was quite enough, thank you. Now, I have to look at all that blood and guts and ghoulishness if I want to watch much of anything. Hospital shows, police procedurals, and forensic medicine shows are the worst! It makes me stop and wonder what kind of influence all of that is having on the world around us, because it seems non-stop. Yes, it's fake blood and fake wounds and it's all wax. But is it? What is the psychological effect of all of it, especially on younger people who don't remember when it used to be different? I think it creates a sense of a very threatening world out there.

If you look at a television set, it is like a little cave, one we're staring into, that appears to have 3D scenes going on inside of it. I've dreamed it that way myself, and also as an aquarium with people in it. It is a museum in a way too, as they bring up old news and old tv shows all the time, and replay old movies too.

Liz asked me to look at this. I don't know if that helps, but for me, that's what if feels like, and I know I have to limit those types of shows to the ones where I like the characters enough to get through the icky parts. They do have an effect on my dreams if I see too much of it, though for me, it's usually not so bloody in my dreams, as it is simply pointing out it's a bad idea to watch it. Maybe the moors also means you are seeing more than you can stomach?

I generally don't do nightmares for the simple reason that I very rarely have any. Some of the ones I read leave me totally perplexed! So, I hope that helps some!