More Of Dreams

This afternoon, after having eluded me for about 36 hours, I finally caught hold of a decent scrap of sleep. During that time I was transported away to the strange and magical, and occasionally terrifying, recesses of my own mind in the form of the vivid hallucinations that sometimes accompany the rapid fluttering of the eyes. I have made the point before that if dreams do indeed offer a rare uncensored look into the processes behind a person's mind, then what I am about to reveal to you is probably deeply personal and very embarrassing. However, the narrative of this dream is just too hilarious not to share, so whatever to all of that.

As before, I can verify that all of the key elements of the following story were present in the dream, with embellishments only for dramatic effect or to ease the transitions between scenes. No major plot points have been added.




TRANSCRIBED DREAM BEGINS HERE



So, I’m walking along the beach, when I notice something weird about the ocean. The last few feet of the waves come up about a foot and a half above the sand, and just sort of hover there, never crashing down to the ground below. Clearly, I figure, someone has fucked up the coast. I call out to the Coast Guard, “Hey idiots, nice job on the coastline!” Suddenly the boat changes direction, and begins speeding toward the shore. People are starting to shift around, obviously terrified of the maniacs in the Coast Guard. Some people actually flee. Looking back, maybe I should have run too.

I stand my ground as the boat hits the small jump at the end of the sea and boffs onto the sand. Three large men climb out, and begin to advance on me. I find myself surrounded. One of them pins me to the floor and begins to handcuff me. I allow him to, and the man drags me to my feet. As they begin to take me back to the boat, god only knows how they’re going to get it back up into the ocean, I position myself behind who I take to be the ranking Coast Guard officer. Instantly, I dislocate both of my shoulders and throw my handcuffed arms over my head, bringing the tiny chain down around my captor’s neck. Holding this man hostage, I demand that my handcuffs be unlocked. They comply, and one of the men returns with a small key. The second he turns it in the lock and the handcuff pops open I whip the newly freed cuff into his face. I then throw my hostage to the floor and proceed to summarily kick all of their asses. As I leave the beach, one of them croaks out a warning. “The Coast Guard will not forget. The Coast Guard never forgets.”

The next day I am visiting my old high school with my good friend Superman. There is a commotion at the front gate, and we quickly realize why. The Coast Guard has shown up in force to arrest me. Quickly we move to the back gate to escape, but they have cut off our route there. In an act of desperation, we duck into an English classroom.

The Coast Guard eventually find us. Superman pulls a gun on them, and I simply place a hand on his shoulder. He understands now, this was all part of the plan. You see, what I have not told you is that I am a secret super-spy, and my mission is to take down the corrupt and brutal Coast Guard.

A man walks in who I have not seen before and introduces himself as Agent Johnson of Coast Guard Special Operations. He explains that I am to be taken out of the country for “deep interrogation.” Superman pulls out his wallet and gives me a hundred dollar bill to cover my expenses while in captivity, and I go with the Coast Guard.

Eventually the bag is removed from my head, and I find myself walking through a South American slum alongside Agent Johnson. I have no idea where I am, but luckily we pass a guide map. I notice there is a Sea World nearby. I point this out to the agent, and he looks away longingly. He confides in me that he has never been to Sea World, but it has always been his wish to go. I tell him how great Sea World is, lying my ass off. In truth, Sea World is boring and dreadful, but I sell it as the greatest thing entire goddamn universe. I am trying to earn his trust here.

Catching my enthusiasm, he buys us two tickets, and we spend the day at Sea World. During the Shamu show, there is an unexpected appearance in the show by Superman. The crowd goes wild. Superman says, “You know what I love best about Sea World?” He pauses for dramatic effect.

“BASEBALL!”

The crowd cheers as Superman produces some baseballs, and a bat. He knocks several home runs into the audience, and they all fly directly into my hands. I shove the baseballs into my pockets, because of course they contain secret coded documents relevant to my mission.

On the way out of the park, Agent Johnson stops to negotiate with a prostitute. He asks me if I am cool with this. “Hey man,” I say, “whatever you want to do.” He does not seem satisfied with this, and tells me never mind, it was only a joke anyway, but I can see in his eyes that he was serious, and now he is embarrassed.

We pass a door marked, “Employees Only.” The agent asks me if I’ve ever wondered what kind of crazy pumps they must need to pump all that water into the tanks, and haven’t you always wanted to see something like that? He takes my awkward silence as some sort of begrudging acknowledgement, and we begin to break into the backstage area of Sea World. We find ourselves in a hallway, and we hear footsteps approaching. The agent instructs me to hide, but it is a hallway, so the best I can do is to lie down on the floor. He places a small wastebasket in front of the door, and lies down next to me on the floor. The door opens, easily tossing the wastebasket aside, and a woman walks through. “Oh, Jorge,” she says, “somebody left a bin in front of the door, could you pick it up?” We look at each other realizing she somehow thinks we are the janitor, and incidentally one person, and begin giggling uncontrollably. She shoots us an annoyed look, and we look away innocently.

Finally arriving in the pump room, Agent Johnson is filled with a school child wonderment. He starts gushing about how he’s never seen pumps like these before, and isn’t it amazing, though wouldn’t they get more pressure if they were closer to the source, and on, and on, and on. It was starting to get really annoying, and I began to question whether it was really all worth it. I finally decided that it wasn’t, and I went home.



END TRANSCRIPTION

Dreams, a Window To the Soul

I had the most amazing dream last night, and it would be a crime not to share it. What follows is a full account of an actual dream that I actually had:

I am at a comic convention, and there is a booth where you can meet Jerry Bruckheimer. There is no line, and he looks lonely, so I go over to talk to him. He is very excited to see me, and says I would be perfect for a role in his upcoming Prince of Persia movie. He immediately calls Mike Newell over the phone and describes me, and Mike agrees with his assessment, so he offers me the part of “Heinrich the Space Nazi.” I refuse the offer based on three criteria: One, it’s a terrible idea; two, I’m not an actor; three, I don’t want to have millions of Prince of Persia fans hating me because I’m the goddamn Space Nazi that ruined their movie going experience. Jerry looks disappointed, but gives me his autograph and I walk away. I look at the paper, and notice Jerry has sketched a drawing of me shooting a gun, while riding on a giant gun, which is being shot by a third, even larger gun. The way he managed to actually depict this logic-defying concept in a way that was immediately recognizable impressed me, and I began to think that if anyone could pull off a red-headed Space Nazi in a Prince of Persia movie, it was Jerry Bruckheimer.

I took the offer, and was immediately flown out to Scotland. Jerry wanted to show me an old castle where they were going to shoot a scene from the movie. He walked me around, excitedly pointing out each step of the parkour choreography. “And here, the prince runs on this wall, jumps that other wall, and when that wall collapses, he jumps on another wall!” Jerry’s enthusiasm is adorable, but on a more subtle level, deeply alarming.

As we leave, I am following his car on a Scottish freeway through countryside that looks exactly like Southern California. I want to voice some concerns about the movie with him but, perhaps fooled by the scenery, I remember that it’s illegal to use your cell phone in California. I pull up beside him and gyrate my fist, the universal hand signal for “roll down your window.” As we speed down the freeway side by side, I shout at the top of my lungs how strange it is that we are shooting a movie that takes place in Persia in a Scottish castle. “Don’t worry,” he bellows back, “we do this kind of shit all the time!” He then instructs me to take the next exit.

We follow some sleepy mountain roads for a while, which eventually become dirt roads, which eventually become no roads. Finally Jerry stops at a disgusting bog and gets out of his car. He says we are going to have to swim here. “No fucking way,” I calmly explain to him, “we are going to get so fucking dead doing this.” He explains that if you float on your bag most of the way, it’s actually pretty easy to get to the other side without being sucked underneath into a slimy grave. “Why can’t we just take the freeway?” I inquire. He answers by removing his clothes, and duct taped all over his body are bags of pure, uncut, Scottish cocaine. “You can’t get this stuff in the states,” he explains. “In fact, we aren’t actually shooting the movie here, I just wanted to come here to get it.” I told him I wouldn’t help him smuggle drugs out of Scotland, and that I assumed there was also no Space Nazi in the movie. “Actually,” he said, “we still think that idea is pretty rad.” I told him I would have to think about it. I got home, and decided I would take the part after all. But then I completely forgot to call Jerry back.

Eventually the movie came out, and when I saw the Space Nazi I had to admit that he was, in fact, totally rad.