rotting world

I had another bad dream about the world rotting. In last night’s rendition, I was talking with a co-worker of mine but he was in exceedingly rough shape. He had big bags under his eyes, sallow complexion, face was covered in bruises but it didn’t look like he’d been beat up — it just looked like he had been rotting for some time. He was talking away to me as if everything was normal though, and I didn’t know how to bring up his appearance.

I noticed at that point that the ceiling in the large, dark room we were in (it looked like a room in a hotel where they host conventions) was all swollen and black with mould and collapsing in on itself. My co-worker saw me staring at it and said something like “yeah it’s pretty fucked.”

I went outside and saw my chickens were there in a large enclosure someone had built for them. I was relieved because they seemed normal, but then I noticed there were way more chickens than I actually have, and I didn’t recognize a lot of them, and there were chicks there which are impossible for my hens to have because I don’t have a rooster. I was confused. Then one of the new chickens squatted down in front of me and seemed like she was trying really hard to lay an egg, when suddenly she literally shat all of her guts out. I was like “oh shit, I need to put this thing out of its misery fast because that must be the single worst thing that could ever happen to a living thing” but the chicken basically just laid down dead on its own right then. It’s face never showed any emotion throughout this, because chickens never do, and that bothered me. It’s always bothered me (in real life, I’m talking now), like when you see photos of frogs being eaten by birds, their faces never change. Always the same blank expression, even when they known they’re being eaten alive or literally torn apart. I hate that, I find it really disturbing, so the chicken’s blank face as it shat its guts all over the floor got to me.

I wouldn’t call this a nightmare though, because I didn’t wake up screaming. I just felt bad, disturbed. So that’s, um, better than it could have been, I guess.

pre-Halloween bad sleep

Slept like shit last night because my back is sore. While laying awake between 3-6 am, I thought of four things I wanted to remember to do when I got up: add cheddar and oat milk to the grocery list, add some Polanksi films to a film list I made, download No Doubt’s greatest hits, and…I can’t remember the fourth. FUCK. Why is it our minds work so well when we’re lying in bed trying like mad to fucking sleep, and the second we get up our brains go to mush again? AND WHAT IS THE OTHER THING I WANTED TO REMEMBER TO DO??

While I’m here, I’ll recount a stressful dream I had last night. I dreamed Jenn and I were driving some electric van that wasn’t ours, and we were in a big busy city that I believe was supposed to be Vancouver or somewhere on the lower mainland. We were at a gas station trying to charge the van but there was a massive lineup of people both ahead of and behind us, and someone who worked at the station came over and told us we had to leave. It wasn’t clear why, we just had to go, fast. For some reason, at that moment I was completely naked and was like “please, I just need to get dressed, can you give us just a minute” but nope, we had to go. So I was driving our weird van naked in this giant unfamiliar city and we ended up in a massive building where a security guard was like “wtf are you doing, you big weirdo.” I had wrapped myself in a big clear tarp at this point, and was out of the van trying to explain the whole thing to the security guard. Jenn was like “no don’t talk, you’re only appearing even weirder,” but luckily the security guard was chill and lead us into some room. I don’t know why this was a relief but it was, I guess at least I didn’t feel rushed and would be able to put some clothes on. On our way into the room we walked by a dusty Kia Soul that had been extended out the front and became a kid’s bike there. Hard to explain — ok, like a kid’s tricycle in the front and a Kia Soul in the back. I thought it would be easy to find a pic of something like I’m talking about but I’m not having much luck. This is the closest I can find to what I’m trying to describe.

But the one in my dream was more child-like and less hot rod. And a Kia Soul, not a camper.

Wow, why am I even going on about this. Anyway, it was a weird dream. I also had a nightmare earlier in the night but can’t remember it now. I think there was something about mouths rotting in it.

Happy Halloween.

there is no good antonym for ‘immaculate’

Yesterday I read a news story about a guy who picked up a hitchhiker. The hitchhiker had a backpack, and either the hitchhiker or backpacker smelled awful. Long story short, turned out the hitchhiker had recently killed and decapitated a woman and her rotting head was probably in the backpack. Gross.

Fast forward to last night. I had a nightmare that I was on some nice boat, and there was a rotted severed head just sitting in a corner on the boat. It was so rotted it was turning into a puddle of goop. But slowly, something was growing out of the muck, like the head was reforming itself. I sensed evil and was scared. It was the opposite of immaculate conception — rather than being conceived without stain or sin, this thing was being birthed 100% foul, impure, awful. It occurs to me now that there is no good antonym for ‘immaculate’ — immaculate means perfectly clean, without sin, but the closest to opposite we have for that is ‘dirty,’ or ‘not perfectly clean,’ or ‘with sin,’ and none of those are strong enough, because you can have like one spot, one sin and be considered those things. What if something is ALL sin, like, immaculately foul, perfectly impure? Someone help me out here.

Anyway. Next scene, I was in a big school and the rotted head had fully rebirthed itself into multiple complete human bodies, and they were following/chasing me. It reminded me of the film Possession from 1981, where (SPOILER ALERT) Sam Neill’s clone starts out as a bloody tentacled monster in a hotel room that slowly grows until it becomes his evil doppelganger.

Meanwhile, Jenn had a dream about an ex-boyfriend of hers being an idiot, and a bunch of his other ex’s coming out in court to give their accounts of him being an idiot too. They all started singing and it basically turned into the musical, Chicago. She woke up laughing about it.

I need my dreams to be more Chicago and less Possession.

more nightmares: satan in a rotten town and billy joel

Last night I had consecutive nightmares where random things I encountered were vessels for Satan. There were three or four of these, I woke up from each one and was like “fuck, that was scary,” and went back to sleep only to be tormented by the same thing. I can only remember two of the nightmares though. One was an abandoned seaside town where roads were washed away (but not covered by water now) and all the buildings were rotten, decrepit, derelict. It was the usual fare where I didn’t actually see or hear anything scary, I just felt an ominous, malevolent presence in the place. Woke up and was glad it was over. Went back to sleep and dreamed I was at a very intimate Billy Joel concert. He looked weird though (even weirder than in real life, lol), his head was like a giant peanut (still in its shell). He finished playing a song and was then chatting with members of the audience, then he started walking around and shaking the hand of each person there. When he got to me he just held my hand and stared at me while smiling, frozen in this pose. That was when I knew Billy Joel was actually Satan. I was scared but held his gaze for a while until I was like “when is this going to end” and let go of his hand and looked away. That’s when I woke up.

I told Jenn about the dream and she remarked for about the 1000th time that it’s fucked that I’m so obsessed with and terrified by evil/the devil. She asked about my childhood again and we decided we both had pretty similar exposure to Christianity and promises of eternal torture for not being groveling church-goers, so why did I end up like this while she couldn’t care less about evil and the devil? She said she just never believed the kids who told her she would go to hell for not being baptized, she thought it sounded absurd. I guess that was the difference between us — I believed all of it, and was scared as all get out. I positively loathe the term ‘trauma,’ it’s so fucking hip and overused these days, but I guess the best way to put it is that because I believed in all the bullshit I was being told, I was traumatized with terror. I was just too stupid to know any better, unfortunately.

I wonder if this plays a role in my hate-on for organized religion now. Because it’s personal, you know? It’s just a bummer that organized religion is an abstraction, it’s not something I can physically beat the living shit out of. And I can’t go around screaming into the faces of Jehovah’s Witnesses that stand on street corners, they’re not the individuals who fed me all that scary bullshit either so that would be a little misdirected. But I guess they’re feeding the same shit to other dumb kids, so maybe I actually should go scream in their faces. Oh boy, I shouldn’t have gone down this rabbit hole.

^{I can’t believe I just stumbled across this online. Holy cow, it’s a sign — I have to kill Billy Joel. Ok been nice knowing you all, one way or another I’m going to end up in prison soon.}

bad dreams

I slept like shit last night. I had a disturbing bad dream, woke up just before 4 am, couldn’t get back to sleep for hours, and when I did get back to sleep I had a nightmare.

The bad dream was very similar to one I had before and blogged about here. Last night’s version was that I had somehow forgotten about or neglected my chickens for a year or something, and when I was like “oh yeah, the chickens,” and went to check on them they were now at my dad’s place, and in the same pen and coop he had chickens in when I was growing up. But the pen was all overgrown with vines and weeds and shit, it looked like some kind of post-apocalyptic ghost town, and my chickens were all doing really poorly — some had died, some were obviously sick and in the process of dying, some had weird neurological shit going on (contorted body positions, repetitive twitching/ticks), and they had been laying giant eggs with no shells, just a soft semi-translucent membrane. Those gross giant eggs were all over the place and some of chickens were cannibalizing those eggs. I woke up and felt weird, bad, out of sorts.

When I finally was able to get back to sleep, I had one of my good old classic nightmares. This time, I was in a small but nice Greek vacation house, it was in one of those seaside communities you always see in ads for Greece. Like usual, the place looked fine but I sensed a great evil presence so I was scared as all hell. I tried to leave but the presence somehow prevented me from doing so. I feel like I saw the evil, like it manifested itself physically somehow or it possessed someone else in the place, but I’m fuzzy on those details. I just remember I couldn’t get out and the devil was there and I was scared. Same old shit.

some dreams

Two nights ago I dreamed I met Satan. It was scary at first, but I can’t remember why. But he was actually very chill, and explained to me that he wasn’t anyone special, that he was just a guy who used his brain to its fullest potential. Then his brain kind of unfurled out the top of his head like a sail or a solar panel, and he explained how in our heads our brains are all bunched up and crowded, and it’s not able to work well like that. So he just lets it expand outside his head so it can breathe and move and work way better, and anyone could do that if they chose to. It was pretty weird and stupid but it was a huge relief after expecting old Satan to school me in the ways of pain, forever and ever.

Last night I dreamed I was on a rooftop with Dustin from Stranger Things.

I had a tiny knife, more like a seam ripper for sewing, and I was trying to cut his head off with it. No idea why. I managed to make some grotesque flesh wounds but he wasn’t super compliant, and I needed him to stay quiet so we wouldn’t be caught by someone, so it didn’t get any further than that. The dream stayed like this for a long time, until eventually I noticed some janitor lady in the building we were on, and I was able to get her to help me sneak Dustin out with his head still on. Phew. Then I was on vacation in Europe and stressed about travel logistics.

i woke up screaming again last night

Had another bad nightmare last night. In this one I was in a big house, heading to bed at night. I had turned off the lights in a room and then walked out of it, but then the light in that room came back on. I had a terrible, ominous feeling then. I looked back in the room and saw a hand just inside the doorway at the far end of the room, like it had just switched the lights back on, waited for me to look and see it, and was now sliding back out of sight around the corner. That was it, that was when I lost it and started screaming in the dream. As I was waking up I could hear the weird sleep paralysis sounds I was actually making IRL and they weren’t screams at all. Jenn was just making fun of me for them, her impression of them sounds kind of like an owl purring. “Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo,” like that. Whatever, I was terrified. It took me a few minutes to settle down after she woke me up, it really spooked me.

Back in the saddle, baby.

Ps, wordpress says I’ve been blogging for nine years now. Nine years of this kind of drivel. Wow. That’s really…something.

great ideas I come up with in my dreams

Last night I had a dream about a few innovative movie ideas that I think are legit. Here they are.

The movie itself was actually broken into three separate films that all start as one and then branch off into different stories that are still tied together. In my dream it was about three kids that went into a House of Horrors at a midway or fair or whatever. The first film started with the three of them going into the House of Horrors and then getting separated, and the rest of the film followed the first kid through their journey. The second film started around the time the kids got separated, and followed the second kid on their journey. Naturally, the third film followed the third kid, but it also contained three different endings for the kids, and the twist was revealed that each ending was just the delusion of one of the kids, who were all actually trapped and tormented in hell forever — that was the actual ending.

Ok, the idea needs some major tweaking but I think the ‘three stories taking place simultaneously and tied together into one overarching story yet split into multiple films’ premise is neat and has potential, and personally I like the twist. I’m a sucker for unhappy endings and abstract endless torture though.

On top of film idea, the movie had a 3D movie poster! Not like “wear the glasses and see stuff jump out,” the poster actually had stuff sticking out of it. I think there was a ghoul’s head that was basically a Halloween mask coming through the poster, same thing with a hand sticking out of it. Isn’t that neat? I know no one gives a shit about actual movie posters these days so this would be a horrendous waste of money but it’s still a sick idea, I think.

^{Definitely not as sweet as an actual knife sticking out of the poster. Someone hire me, please.}

This isn’t the first time I’ve come up with stuff I like in my dreams. Back in 2005 or so, I was having a lucid dream when I decided I wanted to come up with an epic, doom-y melody. I immediately imagined a celtic-sounding thing that was ok. I woke up then, picked up a guitar and started playing melody. Then I kept humming that while I played some chords underneath it, and bam, I had one of the coolest things I’ve ever written. From a dream! Wild.

Good morning, world. What an interesting start to the day.

zero

I had a fucking weird dream last night. I awoke from it at 4 am and thought “wow that was good, my subconscious is smart and funny and cool.” I wasn’t sure I’d remember it so I jotted down some notes about it onto my phone before going back to sleep. Here are those notes.

Buddy movie. Mall. 80s nostalgia/modern world slagging. Old lady broken wire "why do I still hear that sound?" Uncaring biz ppl "gown her up, tube her up, make it look like we give a shit" sham. I don't feel like dancing. Bif Naked sharing contact lenses with the guy means they'll be together for a week but she won't have eyes. Piles of trees and machinery on sides of roads to be burnt. Classroom, Greg, sunscreen, someone fucking with my cat, they are hurting her?

That doesn’t do a very good job of communicating what the dream was about but I like the vibe that this stream of consciousness version creates, and it still does the job of pulling the dream back to mind for me so mission accomplished, no need to explain more.

misfits cover band stress dream

Last night I dreamed that my Misfits cover band had just played a show and it hadn’t gone very well — that part seems largely inspired by the real life events that occurred just a few weeks ago. But the dream began at the end of that show, and used that event as a jumping off point for more stress.

So after the lousy show, the boys and I were trying to pack our shit up and head to the next show which was in another city. I couldn’t remember if I’d packed my costume bag with my makeup. Dylan was getting drunk and I was pissed because he had been supposed to drive us. Sean’s girlfriend Alyssa had some play of her own that night and Sean was trying to juggle going to that and playing our shows, and the timing wasn’t working out. Some guy from Alyssa’s play gave me the weirdest camera and asked me to take some pictures for everyone in the play. The camera was huge, holding it was like carrying an armload of firewood, plus it was like a Transformer toy…

…in that to use it, you had to flip and twist various parts until it looked even less like a camera, and I couldn’t figure it out. Then everyone in the play went inside the weird venue and I was stuck with the massive Transformer camera but me and the guys were already late leaving for our next show so I was tip toeing into the venue trying to give the camera to someone but no one there was any help and because it was so big, there was no nowhere I could put it down where it wasn’t going to fall off something, be in the way, or likely to be stolen. I wound up basically leaving it on the floor by the entrance and I felt awful and stupid because I knew it must be really expensive but I also wondered why the fucking dude left his massive, expensive, weird camera with me and then just zipped off. I started making my way to our vehicles but stumbled across a ground nest of some really cute birds. That part wasn’t stressful, it was cute but I was still like “I don’t have time for this.” Then a bunch of our friends who had come for Alyssa’s show were by the ground nest and telling old stories about me, like “do you remember the time…and there was that other time…” etc, and again I was like “ok very nice everyone is reminiscing about me but I gotta go right now” and finally got in the car. Then as we were driving away I realized the roads were covered in about a foot of snow and ice, and that this was yet another hazard that drunk Dylan didn’t need. I wondered if we would even make it to our next show.

And that’s the last thing I remember. It was a bad dream but damn, did I sleep well. I feel so well-rested, which is actually pretty shocking. You think I’d be feeling frazzled and frustrated but I feel fine.