Huge alien machines in the sky, meeting god

I'm in the front yard of the OH house with my brother late on Halloween afternoon. Giant machines - miles wide - appear in the sky, leaving slow trails of smoke that eventually obscure most of the sky. I run inside to get my camera even though the event is so huge I know everybody will have pictures of it. I can only move in slow motion.

When I arrive back outside, one of the machines - the "bad" one - has turned into a giant grub. A new machine appears and shoots a slow motion laser into the animal. This ends the alien invasion.

God, a retirement age man, rides into our driveway on a large cow. He's drinking a Coke. The spectacle seems to have been a publicity stunt by the Coca-Cola Company. I'm too shy to ask someone to take a picture of God and me, but I put my cheek next to his and try to take a few pictures holding the camera toward us. He remarks to me that it will take a long time to develop the pictures, implying I may not ever have proof I met him. I'm surprised he doesn't recognize my camera as digital, but I say nothing.

I'm inside the house, my family is cooking dinner - many from my extended family are there. I go to my room to transfer the photos onto my computer, but I've installed a new operating system and am having trouble. I try to restart the computer under the old OS, but am called to dinner.

My mom tells everybody not to have pancakes if we plan on having ice cream out later. I chose to just have spaghetti. The spaghetti is not cooked well - it's clumped together and there are wildly varying sized chunks of low quality meat in the sauce.

We are all in a van driven by my dad - he seems to be driving recklessly fast, but the speedometer shows a reasonable speed for the road. We pass gigantic warehouse-like buildings. We come upon a gigantic mechanical elephant in the road - my dad can't stop before it picks the van up with its trunk. The elephant dumps the van in a huge bin in its back labeled "expenses" and drops everybody in the car towards a gigantic toilet foll of green water - also in its back - labeled "garbage". We all miss the toilet and fall to the ground, unhurt.

We're ushered into a dirty high-tech alien research lab. People with large sores on their bodies are walking around aimlessly. The researchers only care about babies and toddlers who are dipped in tanks of green water. The scientists, giant humans, are ignoring me. I feel like I'm trapped there forever and start to hum the bass line from a Devo song. I notice a wooden door to the outside and walk through to find most of my extended family immediately outside. I receive a text message on my cellphone which is blank. I try to call friend to ask if what I'm experiencing is real.

My cousin's husband has stayed inside with their babies, we know he and their babies are gone forever. I hug her. She sobs on my shoulder.

We are sitting around a pit with giant, dirty humanoid aliens. A child disturbs the alien sitting next to me and the child falls into the pit when the alien brushes him away. An alien in the pit swings an axe as if he is going to chop the child, but stops just short every swing. He throws child up towards my foot. I can't move out of the way quick enough - the child hits my foot hard and falls back into the pit and I feel guilty as if I kicked him into the pit.

Great art material

I'm playing guitar in front of a large audience. The strings are all screwed up and one of them is very rusty, but I'm making sounds one would never guess came from a guitar.

Later, I'm in a large warehouse full of art supplies. I'm working with a light brown material which is somewhere between oil pain and modeling clay. I'm making intricate designs on a gigantic canvas. The material is very flexible - with it I'm making both tiny delicate designs and large basalt-column like sculptures. An elderly woman is working with the same material - she takes a stick of it and flings it in the air, creating a sheet that forms fantastic patters and shapes, then boomerangs back into her hands.

A historic home run

I'm at a baseball game in a basketball gymnasium. I'm coming back to my seat, walking across the court when a baseball that went into the crowd rolls by. I pick it up - a historic home run was hit with this baseball. I make a mental note to get the hitter to sign the baseball with the date on it so I can prove it was the baseball involved in the historic home-run.

Alien invasion

I suddenly have to take shelter. I see a rock outcropping/shallow cave and run in. Inside is a movie theater, I'm sitting with a friend who cuts my hair watching the opening sequence.

There's no dialog throughout the entire movie. A lizard/amphibian-like alien attaches itself to a naked woman's genital area while the woman is standing on her head. After a moment it detaches itself leaving a smaller but morphologically identical offspring attached. A few other women have the same type of creatures feeding off them - the rest of the women seem to have been infected by spores. The aliens develop as parasites, attached with clamps. Their heads are cobra-like. The parasites make the woman feel affectionate towards them - they cuddle and nurse the disgusting creatures as the develop.

In the next scene, I'm watching the movie from withing. I'm on the edge of a steep cliff with a body of water below. A few men are in a watercraft - one of them falls overboard into the crocodile infested water. The crocodiles aren't harming the human, but he seems in danger. A man standing next to me who doesn't know how to swim heroically jumps in to try to help the man overboard. The water is absolutely teeming with crocodiles - there is just as much or more crocodiles in volume as there is water.

There is a swifter moving crocodile-free body of water separated by metal bars. A gate in the barred wall opens and a few crocodiles cross over. I know this is a serious situation and think about diving in to shut the gate, but see the aliens have melted the latching mechanism on the gate to it can't be closed.

I turn my attention back to where the watercraft was. There are half a dozen or so mesh cages with gigantic living human heads inside floating in the water.

Visiting a friend's neighbor on The Lake of the Woods

I'm at the Lake of the Woods with my dad. Before arriving at our friend's cabin, we stop at one of his neighbor's houses. I want to just walk in, but my dad thinks we should knock. We both give all sorts of reasons for our positions, but I just walk in, thinking my dad will follow me. As I'm walking up stairs, my dad stops in the foyer to make a phone call.

On the second floor an elderly woman is exiting the den and meets me in the kitchen. "I hope you don't mind I just walked in, I'm a friend of your neighbor." The women enthusiastically responds of course it's OK to just walk in and goes back into the den, followed by a white dog. I follow her.

A second elderly woman sitting on a couch asks me, "This is quite different than your friend's place?" Indeed, it is - it is very plush with a shag rug, 70's decor and a modern TV - our friend's cabin is just that, an old wood cabin with bunks. The woman who greeted me has gotten into a pink heart shaped whirlpool and the dog is laying under water with her.

I suddenly feel awkward as the women are just watching TV and I don't know why we're stopping by anyway, it was my dad's mission. I think about asking if they live year round or go south in the winters. I can hear my dad talking on the phone and turn around to go get him. There is a young teenager who seems like he could be a boy or girl doing homework in a beanbag in a large cupboard in the kitchen.

I prepare to joke to my dad that it's probably less scary to find someone walking into your house and announcing themselves than noticing someone's talking on the phone downstairs, but he walks by me into the kitchen. There's now an older man in the kitchen. My dad picks up a phone book and says he'll prove we know their neighbor, but the man says "Good Lord, we know you know him. Your grandson (me) told us." My dad tries to present photocopied correspondence with our friend but the man starts some small talk - something about being from the middle of the US. My dad replies that most countries are shaped oddly and wouldn't balance on a stick if they were placed on it in the middle. The man says Canada's problem is it's being overrun by trees. My dad looks at me and I give him an "I guess so" look.

I'm looking out over the trees and water imagining that biodiversity probably would increase if one cut wide bands through the thick forest.

Shaking Obama's hand, flying with a device strapped to my head

I'm driving home from vacation with my dad and a childhood friend. We stop stop at a hotel to find our reservations have been canceled. I find out a celebrity bought out the whole place. As the celebrity gets out of his limousine, I confront him to complain. He offers me a stack of cash which appears to be all $100 bills. I spread it and it's all ones and fives in the middle. I ask for more money and he gives me more. I split the money with my dad and friend.

We drive on to another hotel and check in. My friend is disappointed a Wolfgang Puck restaurant in the complex is closed. Each guest at this hotel gets a Seguay. Obama carrying stuffed giraffe. On the way to our room, I see President Barack Obama. In the dream, he is known to be always carrying one of his children in his arms, but now he is carrying a stuffed plastic giraffe, holding one of its hands. I tell him I'll hold the hand so IO can shake his. We shake, and he doesn't let go of my hand for an uncomfortable amount of time as he walks on.

Our Segues have turned into headlamp like contraptions that allow you to fly. My friend and I fly throughout different amazing rooms in the complex which is like a mall/amusement park. We fly outside over a canyon with a mighty river flowing through it. While I go down into the canyon several strangers I'm carrying doubt my skill and are afraid we'll plunge into the water far below.

Outside our room is a sea which rolls in and out of a residential area. Most people are afraid to enter the violent current, but I jump in and the sea entirely recedes. While waiting for it to come back I wonder how all the people get to work as their driveways are frequently submerged in the sea.

Again, I'm flying by the device strapped to my head. We fly by a fireworks display being set up and I worry the fireworks will shoot off and hit me. We notice what seems to be huge stacks of hamburger buns in the distance and fly over to investigate. We're surprised to find they are just a dozen or so of gigantic hamburger buns. We land and I'm propositioned by homosexual. I ignore him and walk on, taking to the air again.

We decide to return to our room. The batteries in my device seem to be wearing out, I'm having difficulty staying aloft. I find that I can keep in flight just barely if I heep the "headlamp" adjusted with my hand, but I go slow and can't control my direction very well.

Cat-sitting, Scarlet O'Hara extinguishes a fire

I'm cat-sitting for a friend. I'm plating a set of mini-CDs, each CD has one song on it and is packaged artistically, I'm finding it tedious to listen to an album this way. One of the singles has fallen behind a bookshelf - I tip over the bookshelf while trying to reach it.

Now, the spilled books are in the bathroom and the shelf is in the bedroom. A friend is helping me put everything back on the shelf. In the bedroom, I see a round piece of glass with a frog under it - it looks like one of my frogs. I lift up the glass and catch it.

I'm walking to my vivariums with the frog in my hand. I see another frog in front of me - it hops under a plant growing my a mailbox. I move a leaf to find my hand full of thistles. There's a group of old men sitting in lawn chairs around the mailbox - one says to me. "That's what he calls the old $2.01 treatment," motioning towards one of his companions standing by a red old fashioned gas pump that can't display a price per gallon greater that $0.99. The man doesn't speak English, but pantomimes to me that bark from a tree down the road will help me re3move the thistles.

The houses on the block have chasms instead of front yards - the front doors are reached by swinging bridges. When I near the tree, I see it's growing up out of the chasm with no way to reach the bark. Suddenly, the tree is gone - and so are the thistles in my hand.

My vivariums are lined up along the edge of a roof of a tall building. There are way too many frogs in the vivariums, especially some of them. I place the frog I caught into one of the less crowded vivs at the corner of the building. I get some frogs from an overpopulated viv to move to the less populated one on the end. When I return to the corner of the building, there's a small fire beyond the aquarium. Blue flames roll over the aquariums like rubbing alcohol is being burned off. I successfully blow out the fire, which I now notice was the bottom of a wooden flag pole burning.

Suddenly the dream shifts into a movie I'm watching. Scarlet O'Hara just blew out the fire and a male character from Gone with the Wind has just come upon her. They decide the best thing to do is throw the charred flagpole into the Mississippi, which runs to the side of the apartment building. They throw the flagpole over the ledge but it veers off course and lands on a cement basketball court below.

Television crews bother me

I'm walking on a bulkhead along a calm sea. It's chilly out and I see an extraordinary amount of garbage floating under the surface - the water is foul and cold. I fall in up to my thighs. The nearest building is a hospital in the distance - I walk towards it intending to get warm.

As I pass by bleachers, a news news crew breaks away from interviewing my mom and dad to interview me, making it sound like I'm seriously injured and it's a news story. They get my dad's name wrong as they explain they're going to interview his son. I don't want them to interview me - the first thing I say is, "I don't even know who Charles is." 'Charles' is the incorrect name they called my dad. They go back to interviewing my dad saying, "He said he doesn't even know you, your response?" My dad starts saying how I was a bad kid all along and it doesn't surprise him.

Stagehands and makeup artists are preparing me to appear on what seems to be a live entertainment show. There is choreographed dancing and I'm to follow the host through two spirals of dancers and I intentionally screw it up. This part of the dream loops a few times.

I'm on the bleachers, climbing up precarious stairs. I fall a great distance, but am not hurt.

Suddenly everyone standing under the bleachers is propelled back to prehistoric times. We are the only humans on earth. There are aliens in the distance. They've launched a floating stick to our group. The stick sprays powder on some people individually - this will alter human evolution.

Borrowing an iPhone

I've borrowed an iPhone from someone I just met in waking life. Its batteries are low. It's sitting on a table and a young man sitting across from me is blowing onto the screen - the screen is showing a blowtorch responding to his breath and there's also a blowtorch coming out of his mouth. I'm wondering if he's trying to recharge it.

In another part of the room, I see frogs - I think they are mine - laying eggs and letting them roll down leaves of wide-leaved grass. There are small piles of gray powder on the floor resembling insect dusting powder I recently spilled in waking life. I'm trying to remember what use the powder has.

Inheriting a coffin which was a gift to Lyndon Johnson upon Geronimo's death

My frog vivariums are outside near a lake, but "outside" is also inside a bus being driven by a coworker. The only other two people on the bus are two preschoolers - they are messing with the tanks and letting the frogs out. I become furious with the bus driver - yelling at him for not watching what the kids were doing. Some adults get on the bus and also start opening the lids letting my frogs out, I'm beside myself with anger.

I'm walking along a path parallel to the shore of the lake. I come upon a coffin which I know my mom and dad own. It was a gift an organization gave President Lyndon Johnson when Geronimo died. There are many interesting old books around too. People are walking by and I'm showing off the coffin, explaining what it is. "My parents have a list of furniture that goes to me and my brother when they die or they have to give up the home. I've always said, I only want the round oak kitchen table but I'm taking this too." I point out Lyndon Johnson's signature on it and also a shipping receipt that values it at over $100,000. "And that was in 1967," I add.

My dad is fiddling with the coffin and peels off the sticker with Johnson's signature on it. I continue down the path with my dad asking him why he peeled the sticker off. It's warm out, but the lake is covered with ice. A group of wild dangerous animals is out on the ice. A tiger is running towards us - we flee. My dad is carrying me in a metal rickshaw for a while, but I get out, knowing he's elderly and it must be very hard to run the rickshaw.

The dream shifts back to me being angry about people letting frogs out of their tanks. I turn around to go find the person who was driving the bus, who I know is in a dorm beyond the place where the wild animals were.

I reach the dorm which has an open wall several stories high. I'm running up stairs to confront the driver of the bus. As I near the room I know he's in, I come across a co-worker I don't know well who has borrowed my camera without asking and broken it. I'm suddenly confused in my feelings, wondering why I'm not angry at the person who broke my camera but furious with the person who let the children let my frogs escape.

Collecting my vivariums and taking them to my uncle's house

I'm walking up a driveway and realize my frog vivariums are scattered all around outside - "outside" is also a large department store. I decide to gather the vivariums into one place. I come across clumps of mowed grass and lift them up to find many offspring of my frogs. I'm catching many frogs and putting them into vivariums.

I'm carrying a vivarium to my uncle's house, which is an ultra-modern structure with an expansive patio. The vivarium is very heavy and I have to pause to put it down and rest frequently. In the dream, my uncle is married to a Chinese woman who speaks little English. I place the vivarium on the patio and my uncle shows me a huge pump the former owners - an elderly gay couple - used to power many large saltwater aquariums.

My uncle leads me down a steep fall-off on one side of the patio onto top of the massive pump. I wonder if I can adapt it to use to power waterfalls and misters in my frog vivariums.

A miniature Tyrannosaurus rex on a treadmill

I realize I still have my ball python and haven't fed it in years. I also have a baby albino python that turns gray in parts occasionally. I don't have anything to feed it either, but I let it out to hunt flies in my apartment. I decide to go get food for them and put the small snake back in the tank. When I put the cover on, it doesn't fit because there is a man sleeping inside, I don't know who he is, he might be me. He adjusts his position and the cover so it fits snugly.

I go to a Target in a mall which has a large pet section. They have no mice, but some crickets. I wonder if the baby snake would eat crickets. There are a lot of amazing reptiles for sale: a bright black and rainbow colored snake and a metallic snake.

I'm looking at a tank that has two lizards that are miniature Tyrannosaurus rex. One if them is jogging on a treadmill. They're not too expensive and I think about buying one, but decide not to because I don't keep reptiles and suspect the store may be unethical in the collection of wild animals. I stop a clerk to ask if they are carnivorous or vegetarian.

In an abandoned hospital

I'm in an old abandoned hospital that some people are squatting in. Some friends are with me. We enter the second floor and I'm alone in an apartment full of lush fabric. I curl up with a blanket to take a nap. The residents come home, and I apologize and leave.

I'm in a difficult to navigate stairwell. I make it to the second floor. I go into a room where a musician acquaintance lives, he has it set up really great. We're out on a balcony where I find an old violin-like instrument. It has two "strings" which are flat pieces of plastic. I find it quite easy to play and enjoy what I'm playing, but my friend says I'm pretty horrible and makes me give the instrument to him. While we're chatting, it comes up that the second floor is dangerously haunted. Alarmed that my friends are still there, I rush to go warn them. The stairwell is even harder to navigate. When I get to the second floor, I can't find my friends.

Acting in an animated movie with Jason Lee

I'm in a movie starring Jason Lee, myself and three other actors. It's 3-D animated, but the characters are drawn to look like we actually are. The movie is a series of shorts, each parodying or mimicking a famous movie. The first is a Pulp Fiction style thing - the driver of a convertible we're all in drives up a stairway to pick up a glamorous girl.

The shorts switch very quickly, one second we'll be doing one thing in one character, the next we'll be in different characters in a different scene. Even we don't know what the next scene will be and we have to improvise as we figure it out. In one scene, we're cops, in another, we'll be the criminals. In a particularly surprising scene, we suddenly find ourselves hovering in mid-air as bees with long striped appendages where our penises would be. We figure out that they are a weapon and we're superheros flying around catching criminals eluding the cops.

The final scene is Star Wars, Jason Lee is Darth Vader and I'm his invalid right hand man - the other actors have to stand up at attention when Vader enters, but I just flop on the ground as I have no control over my body.

The credits start scrolling up the animated road we're standing on and I'm talking to the actors about the scenes we were in - not all of us recognized the movies that were being mimicked. Suddenly, the credits stop and a surprise scene starts in which we're running down a wildflower covered hill. Then the movie is really over. Nobody is sure what the last scene was supposed to be - someone guesses The Sound of Music, another The Wizard of Oz. I disagree with both, but add that it may have been the book version of The Wizard of Oz.

A dog on stilts and a two headed priest

I've just returned from vacation to the Edina house, where I lived in my parents' basement. I'm trying to watch TV and notice the table the TV sits on is far out from the wall with the TV balancing on it and resting against the wall. I try to push the table closer to the wall, but it all falls down - the TV splits open and is on fire in places. I successfully blow the flames out, then decide to spray it with the fire extinguisher just in case. My parents come downstairs and see what happened but don't mention it or even seem to mind.

I go into my bedroom - there are several plates of food on the floor I left out before going on vacation. Strangers come in my room and start eating the rotten food. I'm crouching naked behind my bed and tell them to leave.

Back in the downstairs den, a dog on stilts and wearing pants comes up to me. I know this to be my brother's family's' dog. On the way upstairs I come across a pet armadillo with red stripes which form a moiré pattern with the scales. I wonder how intelligent armadillos are and if they make good pets. Fuzzy spiders start crawling up my legs, I'm grossed out am am trying to brush them off. Someone tells me they're very nutritious, I'm horrified. The speaker assures me that you only eat the babies which grow like tiny mushrooms.

I'm back in the basement and notice that while I was on vacation, my parents have sold or given away boxes which had toys and other items from my childhood in them. I've very upset and start to cry. People who I first think are my parents, but are strangers come into my room. I start to explain why I'm upset when a two headed priest - one black head, one white - approaches me and pinches my nipples. Horrified, I ask them if they think I'm possessed or a witch. They say yes, they do. I ask them if I'm dreaming, they tell me yes, I am.

Living atop a skyscraper

I'm living on the very top of a skyscraper - from my bed I can look down on some of the tallest buildings in the city. I get a sense of vertigo.

There doesn't seem to be a way of entering the dwelling, only an exit, which is a roller coaster-like downhill ski area. The dream loops back and forth several times between me going down the extremely steep ski jump and being in bed looking down on the city.

Attending a convention

I'm checking into a convention that I'm actually attending in waking life the next day. I ask a woman where to go - she gestures towards an outdoor amphitheater area, then a steep grassy slope on the far side of it saying, "World famous celebrities sit there (the amphitheater) the rest of you go there (the slope)."

I'm walking down the slope which is riddled with recently excavated holes and piles of dirt. The woman catches up with me and accuses me of sneaking into the convention. I tell her I must have misunderstood where she told be to go.

Sex event

I'm entering a small stadium to attend some sort of an event. A worker is registering me and taking down a lot of information about me. I become confused with the questions about work and salary because I'm an 80% time employee.

Inside the stadium, I find the event is a swinger party where the guys get strapped into roller-coaster like chairs in a circle on the outside and the girls the same on the inside. The wheels spin around and stop based on the information given when registering. The women perform oral sex on the men.

Fishing

I'm om The Lake of the Woods with my family. We always went there in waking life with a friend of the family to fish, but this time we're not fishing, just boating to the cabin on the islands. I tell everyone I want to fish.

We stop to fish and the owner of the cabin suggests live worms as bait. I'm very exited to fish.

Instead of taking the leader's advice, I put a rubber wiggler on my hook. I don't have a pole, but a gun with fishing string coming out of the barrel. To everyone's surprise, I catch a walleye immediately.

Woody Allen dies, hunting butterflies

I'm preparing to hike the Appalachian Trail with someone who is a friend in my dream. The friend has to first give a presentation in a town near the trail. As the friend's dad is driving us there we discover she hasn't saved any money for the trip. Her dad asks me if I know if she has a credit card - I don't. I think about asking her dad for traveler's checks so I don't end up paying for my friend.

We arrive in the town where she is to give the presentation. In the building I learn that Woody Allen has died and that my friend will be reciting haiku in a group. The leader of the group says they thought about having me perform too but didn't think I'd be very good. I'm asked what stage experience I've had - I say I've done everything. The leader asks if I've shown worms being born and I reply, "Yeah, that was on the Johnny Carson Show - they were black worms," knowing that I had only dreamed of this.

While my friend is performing, I go into a yard next door - we had been planning on collecting six plant or animal specimens each day on the trip - I'm trying to catch one of several butterflies on a wooden fence. The owner of the house comes home, I explain what I'm doing and ask if it's OK. She tells me to leave, but in a very inviting way. As I start to leave she tells me she meant I could stay. The butterflies are gone. Her son tells me he'll check to see if they've gone into the basement. I return to the other side of the yard.

I see something slithering through the grass. I step on it - it's a Canadian goose with a brick and board on its back. I don't try to catch it as I don't like Canadian geese. I catch a butterfly on a woodpile, but it disintegrates when I place it in the bag.

Preparing for a hike

I'm in the Appalachians outfitting myself for a hike with two people who are friends in the dream. We're near the trail and I'm hungry - the small town has an open-air food court with only American food - several burger places, chicken shacks, a rib joint. I'm in the mood for Asian noodles.

We visit an outfitter - my companions don't have the basic hiking equipment. While they're looking for backpacks and sleeping bags, I'm trying on a denim jacket that has eyelets like a shoe. I have difficulty lacing it - I'm using frayed electrical wires.

Late for school, cuddling a blue sloth

I'm late for school and disorganized - I have sandals on even though I know I'll be running and have forgotten my wallet. I'm hungry and am thinking I'll have to borrow money for food. As I bumble along my way, I notice I put my wallet in my front pocket.

I'm in the cafeteria for breakfast, there's hardly anyone else there and most of the food is gone. I order the only thing I see I want, hash-browns with cheese. The cafeteria worker convinces me to take the two last slabs of ribs too, they're huge. He makes me memorize what they're called to I can tell the cashier. I want some fruit, put down my tray to get a cup of fruit, but can't find the fruit. This happens repeatedly, I feel dizzy and intoxicated. Someone eventually helps me put some fruit on the plate. I'm having a hard time keeping the food on the plate at all, I drop a few ribs.

I'm now in a commons type area, police are taking away a student for fighting. An extremely attractive girl is climbing in and out of a window and likes that I notice. Two files of students walk down stairs and I recognize one as being the class I'm late to. I try to file in line, but end up sliding down a very steep hill. At the bottom, my feet work like ice skates and I gracefully glide to the end of the path where I wait for the rest of the class. The gym teacher says I look healthy and well rested and doesn't mind I missed a lot of class.

There is a water-ride like chute we're to take. I step in first. At the bottom of the ride is the gym. Outside, the teacher is demonstrating a laser/energy beam gun. He gets interrupted and has to go speak to someone. He hands the gun to me. After I play with it a while, it turns into a baby blue sloth-like creature hugging the weapon. I cuddle with the animal and feel very relaxed.

For some reason, when the teacher returns I get to run laps inside while everyone else stays outside doing something less fun. There is a group rehearsing for a musical in the gym. Sometimes I need to run in between the actors and their only prop - a plush yellow couch.

Running into an ex-girlfriend

I'm walking slowly through a crowd of people, perhaps a street fair. Suddenly I come face to face with I girl I dated a long time ago and haven't seen in years. I have no bad feelings but nothing to say and feel awkward.

Riding my mom home from the hospital on the handles of my bicycle

I'm looking at my frog vivariums. There are a lot of other animals in there - a ball python I owned in college, baby birds, large and small insects. I realize I must have forgotten I owned the snake for decades and it must be very hungry. I go out to buy it some mice to eat.

The pet store doesn't have any mice. They have a lot of mushrooms to put into tanks but not much else. They are brightly colored and stacked symmetrically. I think about getting some bird seed for the baby birds, but the store doesn't have that either. I return home to find my mom lying on the kitchen table. She has a notebook over her face with large indecipherable letters on the cover. She says she's sick - I see sweat beading on her throat and feel she has a fever. I say we need to go to the emergency room.

At the hospital, there is a doctor assigned to us, but he stays behind a fast-food like counter. He is preoccupied with paperwork and other tasks as he says my mom's symptoms are too general for him to do anything. I'm angered and unsuccessfully suggest he could at least prescribe something to make her feel better.

We return home, my mom riding on the handles of my bicycle.

I'm going through a box of my old papers and find a folder I don't recognize. It has color photo copies of me in my football uniform and has many official looking certificates in it, with many signatures. It seems to be an honorary or gifted membership in an elite club. Many famous people are listed including President Reagan and retired governors. It seems to be a membership packet to some sort of beer tasting salon. It's dated two years after my high school graduation, but I just don't remember it at all. I show it to my dad, asking him if he knows what it is. He indicates he does, but doesn't tell me in detail, just says he knows who the people who signed the certificates are. I'm frustrated he won't explain the packet to me.

Christmas church service

I'm in church - at Christmas Day service with my mom. There are bleachers inside the church. I see an attractive very freckled redhead sitting in the last row with her mom, so I sit next to her. We chat throughout the service, she asks me how old I am, I tell her I think I'm 17-19. She says she's 39.

The minister asks, "Can I get three girls up here?" Three young women dressed in the same red polka-dot shirt come up. The minister asks, "Can I get seven girls up here?" Seven young women dressed in the same blue polka-dot shirt come up. The minister asks, "Can I get thirteen more girls up here?" Thirteen younger women dressed in the similar red polka-dot shirt come up. The polka-dots vary in size and density and the shirts of all 23 woman standing there make a striking display - almost like a fractal. It seems like they are going to sing, but they don't.

I continue chatting with my new friend. I am naked and have an erection. There are toothpicks, pins and rusty pieces of metal under the skin of my penis. I pull them all out and show the pile to the freckled woman.

The service is over, I find my mom in the aisle and ask her if she has a pen, I want to get the freckled girl's number. I walk up to her and she has already written her number down for me. I tell her I don't know her name and tell her mine. She's coy and flirty and gives me three guesses. I guess outlandish names, and she still doesn't tell me her name.

My mom says she's leaving and I ask the woman and her mom if they'll give me a ride home, they agree. There is a male giant, dozens of feet high. I wonder how he can get enough to eat. A woman is explaining that she will put her brain in her daughter's body and let the giant eat her body. My new friend and I go to a record store in the basement of the church. I can't find anything I want to buy.

I'm outside of the church near my junior high school in Ohio. I decide to run my old paper route. Some of the houses are the same, others have been knocked down. There are many huge trees which weren't there the last time I visited.

Buying fireworks

It's late afternoon on July 4th and I've driven to Wisconsin to buy fireworks to bring to a party at a friend's house. The store is sparsely stocked, I'm looking for one of the big fountain boxes, but don't see any. I ask a clerk for help, but she can't help me find one. I collect a variety of small stuff - bottle rockets, fire crackers, spinners.

I'm checking out - the total is $25. After my purchase has been rung up, the owner comes up from the basement with a piece that looks like a fabric daisy shaped bean bag. It has a dial on it that goes from "one block" to "two blocks." The owner says it's the biggest thing they have. It's $38, I decide not to get it.

When I return to my car, I see that I've left both front doors open and the motor running.

In an underground apartment facing a tidal wave

I'm in a large chambered underground warehouse part of which seems to be my apartment. The apartment manager tells me a maintenance worker has thrown away a Pepsi can that he removed the entire top from. For some reason, it's really important to me I find this can. I enter a room generally only used by maintenance workers and start scrounging through trash bags. I'm making a mess. I hear the manager coming and don't want her to see I'm looking for the can or making a mess. I can't get all the trash back in the bag, but she walks by without being concerned.

I'm back in the central and largest chamber in which the dream started. In the center is a sprawled out and sparsely stocked grocery store. I'm thirsty and looking for a drink. I think I may treat myself to a sugared beverage and figure the maintenance worker bought his Pepsi here, but I can't find any drinks. I'm in the check-out line and want to buy something, so buy a brick of chocolate covered over-sized Fruit Loops displayed right by the cashier.

I walk to another chamber of the complex. I see a tidal wave coming beyond a side of the complex opening onto the ocean. Realizing the chamber I'm in will completely fill up with water, I run towards a chamber that has no ceiling and no wall opposite the ocean. I make it there just in time and am swept up in the tidal wave.

Recording in a basement studio

I'm arriving at a basement studio with a girlfriend to record music with friends. My friends explain that we'll have to wait a bit because the owner is using the studio equipment to film a porno.

I have a guitar and am tinkering around on it, jamming a bit with the others. I can see in the back room there are people having sex below the sheets of a bed. I notice my guitar is strung up wrong in several places and the nut is cracked so the high E string doesn't work. I have some ideas for songs, but the bassist doesn't want to follow me.

We can use the studio now, we start recording. I notice my guitar is very low in the mix and can hardly hear it. I also notice my girlfriend isn't playing drums. When she notices I notice she walks up to me and tells me our friends have other friends coming at 10:30 to replace us and she's not playing in protest. I'm a bit hurt too as it's already 9:45, but I continue playing.

Making a Kim Jong Il slacker movie

I'm on vacation at a resort on the Mississippi in Georgia. It is early in the morning, before dawn. Everyone is sleeping on mattresses outside, there is snow but it's warm. I get up to move my mattress somewhere where I can see the stars better.

I'm wearing ice-skate-like shoes which allow me to glide across the snow, but the blades are huge and flexible and allow me to fly. I realize I'm dreaming and make a note to patent the flying shoes when I wake up. I'm carrying a gun in my pocket.

I'm walking on a porch overhanging the frozen river looking for somewhere out of the light to watch the stars. A naked toddler stops me and starts climbing all over me. She tells me that I'm "the one who named that cat moonshining" and that her uncle wanted to offer me a job because he thought it was creative and he wanted someone who could name things like that for him. She calls her cell and gives it to me. The uncle, who has a foreign accent, wants me to direct a movie for him. I leave the conversation knowing it's funded my Kim Jong Il but will be a slacker genre movie, will pay "12 stone" and I'll work in Hilltop. I'm unsure if he'd want me to quit my job to do it. I look up Hilltop on Google Maps and find there are three: one near where I'm vacationing, one near where I live and one on the western shore of Alaska.

I'm still on the same porch, but now I'm dragging a bundle of fire hoses across the porch, weaving them in and out of posts so it will leave places for people to walk. Suddenly, I come to a section where there is an unconnected joint in the hoses - there are cloth ribbons that seem to be meant to connect the joint, but I don't know how to do it. I hope the movie guy doesn't find out I don't know how to connect the joints.

By this time, dawn has broke and I realize I won't be looking at the stars. Somehow the dream shifts and I'm working with the movie making guy. He has a huge house, slate on the outside, wood on the inside which is both his home and production studio. He has just come back from the high school across the gully and has paid them to change their sports team's name to promote the movie. I realize he's eccentric and spends his wealth unwisely.

My job for that day is to doodle in the snow with extremely long colored pencils - several yards long. I'm by the side of the road, seeing how far out into the road I can doodle while remaining on the side. A vehicle approaches and I motion that it's OK to run over my drawing.

It's a bus covered in naked girls either taking one to have an abortion or taking her to a religious ritual to get her not to have an abortion. Either way, this is suddenly part of the movie and the characters one by one rip paper off the outside of the bus to which the girls are clinging, making them fall off the bus.

An elderly character launches himself head-first into the bus off a spring board. He falls into a steep ravine and seems seriously injured. I run to help him, he tells me to arrange a party at his place that night. I ask him if he's going to die because if he is, we could call it the "kick-off party." He says he won't die.

On the way to the party, I stop to watch the completed movie. Afterwords someone on the staff asks me what I think of it. I say that genre is fun to watch and I might pull out a quote from it a month from now, but I'm not a great fan of the genre.