Stray Cat

I dreamed the entire plot to a movie last night. I think the title was "Stray Cat." Even more mind-blowing: It was a dream within a dream. I remembered the story perfectly in the dream. Now, not so much. I remember the basics and the ending.

The basic plot was that an evil rock band with make up (think a hair-metal version of Kiss) was tormenting me and chasing me through a college library. Former fans of the band with creepy, expressionless faces (or maybe masks) were watching me all the time. Later, it turns out they were helping me. They told me to listen to what they were singing in order to defeat them (it was a musical). I defeated four out of the five members in the staircase. Luckily, the fifth member was going on stage... and lip-synching. He was defeated by constantly changing records.

Penny Farthing

This dream is from the weekend, so it's getting fuzzy. Anyway, the main part that I remember is that I was trying to ride a penny farthing. I got on it ok and was riding it, but then I dismounted and couldn't figure out how to get back on. When I dismounted, I realized I wasn't wearing any pants. I was in my parents' neighborhood, and there was a kid in his front yard (this was a kid from my childhood who lived one street over) and he was trying to instruct me about how to get back on the penny farthing. I pretended I was listening to him, but I really distracted and embarrassed about not having pants. That's all I remember - I don't know if I was able to get back on the penny farthing.

How Is Babby Drowned

Here's one from my aforementioned brother Michael.


I dreamt I was in my house at the kitchen sink, giving a hamster a bath.  Unfortunately, I left it under the faucet too long and I drowned it, then it dissolved into nothingness.  I cried horribly (because I love rodents), but regained my composure, pulled a baby out of nowhere, and started washing it under the sink also.  I also drowned it by accident and it dissolved, and I kept bashing my head on the kitchen counter hysterically.  Suddenly, mom showed up and told me, “Maybe you should go to the bathroom, that’s a nice place to take a bath… or kill yourself.”  Then I just bolted for the bathroom, immediately shouted “BLOODY MARY” three times into the window, heard a really horrible sound, and that was it.  Kinda anticlimactic, perhaps.

Imaginary Criterion Edition

For some reason, I let Michael (my brother) take me on a drive. He winds up taking a wrong turn and driving into a river. By this, I mean driving on a river. I beg him to turn back, and he tries, but he just winds up skidding out of control. I see a huge ship, and before I know it, the car is both underwater and under the ship. I brace myself for death as the horrible sound of a ship eating a car surrounds us.

This turns out to be a dream within a dream. When I wake up from the secondary layer, I make a note to write a surf-rock song about my dream, making the horrible metal-crunching sounds with my mouth (I guess this is a reference to "Dead Man's Curve" by Jan and Dean).

(Don't remember what happens here.)

I wind up in a town that looks exactly like my hometown of Womelsdorf, but everything is wrong. There is a building that looks exactly like our local Christmas Barn (a seasonal store), but it's something else. For some reason, Mom takes me to two religious schools. One is having a terrible craft show. At another, a preacher is giving a lecture about security. I play around with a fountain pen. Just like in real life, I have no idea how to use it.

Everyone winds up in a creepy, mostly-abandoned mall. I remember two things about it. There was a labyrinthine Giant (grocery store) which was small but had five floors, but the floor was made mostly of shopping carts, and it was difficult to get in because a lot of climbing was involved, and you had to be let out by a guard who threw you into a giant shopping cart full of groceries. Also, at the very end, there was a VHS vending machine (similar to the Redbox DVD rental kiosks). The only tape I remember was of a comedian giving instructions on how to use computer graphics in video greeting cards (the entire instructions consisted of pointing a camera at a video game).

Then I'm in a library. I find a forgotten corner that has old VHS tapes in bags. One of them is called "SCREW THE LIFE OF PETER SELLERS." I recognize this as a typo; the real title is "Screw: The Life of Peter Sellers." (This film does not exist.) I immediately envision a possible Criterion Collection cover: a picture of a small Sellers dancing on top of a giant screw. Oh, also, you could print pictures from old filmstrips, but it cost $129.99 to do so, plus an extra $2.99 to log off.

The Terrarium

In my dream, I had just woken up and gotten out of bed. I walked over to my desk, and found it in disarray. I figured one of the cats had jumped on it and scattered stuff around. I began to sort through the papers and other objects, and I found a tiny transparent container (the size and shape of a tub of sour cream) with numerous fish swimming in it. On closer inspection, it also housed tiny plants and insects. It was a terrarium. I realized that it was a perfectly self-contained ecosystem; even though it was buried and forgotten under junk on my desk for who knows how long, everything inside it was still alive.

I turned around and was surprised to see more of the same fish on the floor. Instead of flopping about like fish out of water famously do, they were hovering millimeters above the floor, making swimming motions, but not moving forward. Occasionally the would fall over sideways (presumably from fatigue), hitting the floor, and then would resume their futile, mid-air swim.