The Domineering Baby

I was just hanging out in the bar at the hotel when this mafia boss who had somehow been transformed into a baby started threatening me. He kept saying "you'd better X" and "you'd better not Y" and so on. I didn't want any trouble, so I kept responding "okay, sure" and "okay, all right, no problem" and "yeah, I can do that" and "don't worry, I wouldn't do that" and so on and so forth. But eventually I got so fed up with this guy that I gave up and just started beating him up.

The bartender said, "are you sure that's a good idea?"

"What?" I said. "You think he has a gun in his diaper or something?"

"Well, he might."

"Psssh. In a size 3? If he had a size 5 on I'd be worried. But a 3? Forget about it."

Finally, I kicked him out the door and went back to the bar. But then I saw through the window that he suddenly transformed back into his normal, regular, plain ol', adult, non-baby self, complete with a suit and tie and everything. He pulled a pistol from his inside coat pocket and headed for the bar.

Crap. Well, I started running away. For a while he was chasing me all over the hotel, and I figured eventually he would calm down and the whole thing would just blow over. Or if it didn't I guess I could just hide out in a cave up in the hills with a diaper rifle. I mean, sniper rifle. Dammit.

Wax Michael Jackson and Funny Clothes

Last night I dreamed that I read this news headline somewhere: "Wax museum featuring figures performing 'Thriller' dance moves does not include figure of Michael Jackson."

I woke up and thought it was funny for some reason. Then I went back to sleep. Once I was again in the dreamworld I starting thinking, "I should really tweet that funny headline that I read in my dream. What was it again? Oh yeah, 'Museum featuring celebrities wearing funny clothes does not include Michael Jackson.' What a riot!"

The Joker and the Submarine

I dreamed that I was a crew member on a nuclear submarine. We captured the Joker and forced him to do work for us. You know, free labor, like the Suicide Squad or whatever that's about. Anyway, we sat him down at a work station and gave him clear instructions NOT to push the button that fires the nuclear missiles. But he did it anyway! Some people just don't listen, you know?

Actually, come to think of it, it would have been a pretty good gag if pushing the button just made a punching bag come out of the wall and hit him in the face.

*   *   *

This dream was obviously inspired by the scene in Batman: The Movie where the Joker is on the Penguin's sub and is the one who pushes the "fire torpedo" buttons. I showed this movie to my three-year old because he loves Batman but most other Batman media is a little too scary for him. He seems to have liked it a lot. Occasionally he asks me if he can watch it again.

Catching Up on some Short Dreams

Hi! Just a quick catching up post to describe a few vaguely interesting dreams I had over the past couple of weeks (dreams are what this blog is primarily about, right?).

I had a dream in which I was a policeman trying to stop four teenagers from vandalizing a closed store. When I say vandalizing, I mean that they were inside the store basically destroying all the furniture inside to the point that standing on the street outside the store I heard loud crashing and wood breaking noises. The youths came out of the store, and I told them to get on the ground. They did so, but soon they got up and started running away from me. I pulled out my gun and starting telling them to halt (I think I said "halt," not "freeze"), but they didn't, so I started trying to shoot them, but my gun wouldn't fire. Instead of a trigger, it had a power switch like you'd find on the back of a computer. Like one of these guys:

Eventually, I figured out that it was a revolver with an external hammer mechanism and I was failing to cock it manually, but by this time the hooligans had escaped me.

Another dream I had involved a duck being trapped in a large animal's mouth that looked like a second floor window. I mean, it was like a building, except I understood the building to be a creature of some kind and the window to be its mouth. Weird.

Anyway, the duck was afraid for its life and for the life of its egg, which it was holding in its mouth. I beckoned for the duck to simply jump out of the window to safety, which the duck did. But for some reason the duck neglected to fly and fell to the ground, slamming its head against the pavement. The egg fell from the duck's mouth and rolled away safe and uncracked, but the duck began dizzily sauntering about, clearly seriously injured. I felt bad for having recommended that the duck leap from the window, but I guess it sacrificed itself to save its egg? I don't know. Weird dream.

In a third dream my wife and I were sneaking into a high security warehouse district in search of the new textbooks for the upcoming school year. I guess we wanted a sneak peek? At one point I turned a corner and found myself looking directly into the lens of a security camera, and I was like, "oops." But whatever, nothing happened. We found the books, and I was very excited to look at the physics book. It had a pink cover.

The first dream (the one with the gun and the teenage vandals) was interesting in that normally when I use a gun in a dream, I don't actually have a gun but rather simply pretend to have one and make gun noises and then get frustrated that my imaginary gun is completely ineffectual. Of course, I keep trying, but it never works. In this dream, I had a gun in my hand. Perhaps the difference was that I was a policeman, and so it came with the uniform? Anyway, the gun was ineffectual all the same.

Physics in Motion

I own a small building downtown, and one of the units in that building is rented out to a fitness company that holds classes, the sort you might see taking place in a gym. Karate, cycling, Tae Bo, you know the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Well, the other day I was down there checking up on things, and a karate class was just finishing up. Now, there was an aerobics class of some kind called Physics in Motion, which was supposed to start right afterwards. Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, the instructor wasn't there. She simply didn't show up. Of course, the people taking the class were there, and they wanted their exercise!

Obviously, I too wanted them to have their exercise. I wanted their money! So I did the only natural thing that any reasonable property owner would do, which was to pose as a substitute instructor and lead the class myself. I gave a little spiel which proceeded in a manner similar to the following:

"So, everyone gather around, Physics in Motion is going to begin. Your regular instructor isn't here tonight, but apparently I'm some kind of fitness expert, so I'm going to lead instead. You see, in aerobics we move our bodies a lot, and I guess the basic idea is that you sweat a lot and therefore start burning fat or something like that. I don't know, but people do this stuff, so I guess it works. Anyway, today's animal is the speed leopard! Er... I think it was maybe the cheetah? Nevermind, let's get started."

So I started to jog very lightly in place, and the people enrolled in the class followed suit.

"This feels pretty good. Starting to feel the burn. Yeah, that's good! Getting in shape!"

We continued to jog in place like this for about a minute.

"Let's just keep this up! This is good! Nice form, everybody!"

Finally, someone said to me, "I don't think this is going to work."

What Happens When You Complete "A Man and His Droid"

My dreams last night were weird. It's kind of a jumbly haze now, or perhaps a hazy jumble, but the main thing is that it's hard to express clearly what happened.

I think I was driving in a car with Randall Munroe and we were trying to get to the top of an extremely tall parking structure. For some reason, it was necessary to collect a variety of different species of octopuses on the way, and in fact, I think collecting these cephalopods and organizing them in some important fashion was somehow the means by which we were travelling up the structure. Frustratingly, they were bigger than regular octopuses, and they were angry and mean and hostile to us and kept trying to attack our vehicle. And to make matters worse, Randall and I couldn't agree on the order in which the many monstrous mollusks should be gathered. It was a losing arrangement from the get-go.

And then at some point I think we gathered enough of the eight-leggers to be awarded a private concert given by Robert Fripp. Unexpectedly, he was a stop-motion animated clay Fripp. And he had five torsos. And rainbow colored hair. And his hair was in the form of large bundles of wheat.

So that was fairly normal, but otherwise, I seem to recall that my dreams were weird last night. I just can't really remember any of the weird parts.

The Tide is Coming In

Last night I dreamed that I was driving some kind of classic Cadillac down to the beach where I was going to pick up my wife and son. When I got there, I discovered that the tide had come waaaaay in, and the ocean was overflowing onto the streets. Furthermore, some people told me, "No, your wife is up by the train station," so I turned around.

Now, the water was getting higher by the second, and I needed to get out of there fast, so I decided that it would be faster (and probably safer) simply to carry the car and walk instead of driving it. So I picked it up and made my way up the pier to the train station.

At this point, I suddenly realized that the car was really more of a cart or some sort of dolly for moving large things (or like, one of those big carts at the Home Depot or something), so I leaned on it and kicked off the ground, riding the cart all the way over to the station.

Once I got there, I learned that No Doubt was playing a concert for the company I work for, and all my coworkers were there. However, for some reason, they were all dressed as though they were going to a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Also strange was that No Doubt was playing a bunch of slow and gentle contemporary Christian worship songs. The song I distinctly remember them playing was "Forever My Love" (forever my heart, forever my life is yours, etc.).

Post-Traumatic Math Disorder

Last night I had one of the usual "oops-I-forgot-we-had-a-calculus-test-today-wait-didn't-I-graduate?" dreams. Not a whole lot to say about it, except that I went through the test once and found it relatively easy, then looked at another student's test and realized it was harder than I thought at first.

"Oh! That one is an integration by discs problem? I'll go back and fix it."

"Oh! This one is more complicated than I thought! What was I thinking?"

"Oops! There's three more problems that I skipped somehow on the first pass! What a dummy."

And so on.

The professor didn't seem to mind that I had borrowed my classmate's test, so I guess it was one of those oh-so-popular "open everything" tests. Side note: I took a class once that was basically "How to Use Maple," and one my classmates suggested that we should have a group final, to which the professor responded, "Oh! That's kinky!"

Is there anything sexier than 3D graphs?

I was also buying books for the following semester or quarter or whatever, and the bookstore had a promotion where the first person to spend precisely $118 (before tax) would receive a $30 discount.

~  ~  ~

I had another longer, more interesting dream the night before. I'm thinking about how to handle putting that one up. It's not something I can do quickly. We'll see...

Modus Promotion

Some time ago I dreamed that in one particular episode of Ugly Betty, it was revealed that a very peculiar tradition existed at Mode Magazine. At the time when an employee is awarded a promotion, it is customary that they should be wrapped in a bedsheet. If the employee had their clothes on under the sheet, it was called "modus ponens." If the employee was nude under the sheet, it was called "modus tollens."

You can go ahead and make of this what you will.

Weird Tales and Community

Last night I dreamed up a series of misadventures experienced by some of the cast of NBC's Community.

The gang were being harassed by an evil statue of a woman, and Troy decided that the only solution was to relocate the statue to a mythical island covered with landmines, where "no one could possibly be happy, except for someone who can't move, like a statue." Upon arriving at the island, Troy, careful to avoid the landmines, set about searching for a good spot for the statue. However, he discovered that the island was guarded by a legendary creature that he had to overcome. This creature was a female American Gladiator.

Everyone tried to play a prank on Pierce that involved setting something on fire. However, the random kid designated to ignite the thing accidentally ignited a small plant nearby that had been specially bred to be completely inextinguishable if inflamed. This led to the tragic burning down of the building housing the college swimming pool, referred to in the dream as the "Swim House." For some reason, Pierce was blamed for all of this, but he later diverted the blame onto Winger by revealing that Winger had inadvertently included Pierce in the mass text messages detailing the plan for the prank. This, by standard dream logic, did indeed make Winger responsible for the damage done.

Troy somehow captured a ghost by leaping over a pool of mercury. The ghost turned out to be the owner of a chain of steakhouses called Berther Werther, and his method of marketing involved haunting people.

On account of his sensitivity towards being excluded, Pierce tried to get into the college's Biology class, which was historically reserved for 8 to 10 year old blond boys. He claimed his motivation was "because the class leads to getting into Chemistry." The young kids were trying very hard to prevent him from enrolling in the class.

Indiana Jones and the Fruit Sherry

A dream I had last night basically took the form of a short Indiana Jones film. In the midst of a dry spell in the market for adventurous archaeology, Indy took a part time job as a Data Entry Operator. The company that hired him immediately set him to work typing the text of several books into a computer.

Having completed the work several hours later, Indy attempted to report to his supervisor only to find that he, along with the entire company, had vanished. He immediately realized that they had actually been con artists and that he would be receiving no payment.

Indy's reaction to this predicament, of course, was to seek out Sallah for help. Upon finding him, the two visited a local cafe for drinks. Indy asked Sallah if he could cover his bill, as he was a little short on cash, having just been egregiously swindled. Being the friendly type that he is, Sallah happily agreed. However, when Indy ordered a "fruit sherry," Sallah became immensely angry at his friend so blatantly taking advantage of his generosity. When the drink arrived, it was merely a plastic cup filled with pineapple juice and chunks of pineapple. Presumably, the juice was mixed with sherry, but I cannot verify this, as I did not taste the drink.

Indy informed Sallah that he had come into the possession of a rare treasure map, and he wanted to know if Sallah would be interested in joining him on an adventure. Sallah said he would, and so the two set out.

When they arrived at the site indicated by the map, they discovered that it was already being excavated by a group of Cuban treasure hunters.

Here I awoke, but that's okay, because this film was titled Indiana Jones and the Fruit Sherry, not Indiana Jones and the Cuban Dig Site.

The Hand that 30 Rocks the Cradle

Several nights ago, I dreamed that the final season of 30 Rock found the show reinvented as a "Political Intrigue/Science Fiction Thriller Serial Drama." The secret behind Jack Donaghy's success was revealed to be the fact that he is actually a set of identical triplets posing as a single person. Each Jack's personality, of course, was fashioned according to the treatment he received from his dear old mother, who for some reason deemed it appropriate to pick favorites. At the beginning of the final sequence of episodes, Liz Lemon and Good Jack were on the run from Evil Jack, who presumably intended to take over the world or destroy it or something along those lines. I cannot recall whether I knew the whereabouts of the third Jack or whether he was good or evil, but I have an inkling that Evil Jack killed him. Of course, this means he's probably going to do the old deus ex machina thing and turn up alive and well in the final episode so he can help Liz and Good Jack save the day.

I can't decide if I actually want this version of the show to exist or not.

The Gospel According to Virginia Woolf

Last night I dreamed that Virginia Woolf wrote a set of four novels, referred to as companion novels, that all depicted the same set of events from the perspectives of four different people. Two of them were titled Virginia and Ophelia. I cannot remember the titles of the other two books. Within the dream, my father remarked that the first scene was very accurate between the four books.

Car Crash Hill

Last night I dreamed that there was a hill with a particularly dangerous road upon which many cars have crashed on account of the drivers misjudging how fast they could go. People would actually come to this hill in order to watch the cars crash. Most of these people were attorneys who intended to represent the drivers in court.

You see, the road was so incredibly dangerous that there was actually a local law explicitly stating that the driver could not be held legally accountable for crashing on it. The city would be at fault in all cases.

I also dreamed that there was a giant tortoise at the San Diego Zoo or the Wild Animal Park on top of which babies could ride around. The babies seemed to like it a lot.

Bad Movie Better Butter

A couple nights ago I dreamed that there was a brand of butter called Bad Movie Better Butter, the claim made in their advertising being that the spreading of Bad Movie Better Butter upon bad movies would make the bad movies better. The product's slogan was "We make the bad movies better!"

Me Vs. The Mom -and- The Most Perilous Jungle in the World

Okay, so... a number of things:

Last night I dreamed that my whole family and I were participating in a family game show in which we had to compete against another family in a number of physical challenges. The first of the two that I remember involved all of us strapped up to a big apparatus kind of like a giant version of a mobile that you'd put over a baby's crib. We were all swinging around, slowly descending, and we had inflatable plastic hoops attached by velcro to our backs. We had to try to remove these hoops from the backs of the members of the other family. By the time we reached the ground, there were only two of us left: Me and the mom of the other family.

So they devised a tiebreaker for us: They separated us and gave us different tasks. To test my resolve, they were going to pour hot water mixed with fiberglass over me, and I would be required to endure this for a full five minutes. I put my hands over my mouth in shock, and the host of the show asked me if I was vomiting. He'd asked me this same question several times before, so I said, "No, I'm not vomiting! Why are you obsessed with vomit?"

I refused to do this ridiculous task, instead going over to the other wing of the building to see what they were forcing the other family's mom to do. Turns out they were forcing her to wrestle a wild beast. It appeared to be the missing link between killer whales and pit bulls.

The night before that, I dreamed that I was travelling through a jungle. At some point I came across two girls, one probably about four years old, the other probably about seven, who needed an escort through the next particularly dangerous stretch of jungle path.

As a matter of fact, it was the most dangerous part of any jungle in the world. As we progressed along the path, I constantly had to swing my sword around us alternately in virtually every direction in order to make it through alive. There was a neverending flow of red snakes trying to sneak up behind us. I decapitated these as they approached. There were also swarms of bugs that occasionally tried to descend upon us. I swiped my sword so quickly that these were reduced to piles of mush. We slowly but surely pressed forward towards a door through which we could see only a blinding light. Reaching this door, we knew, meant safety.

Unfortunately, I awoke before we got there, so I don't know what was on the other side.

~  ~  ~

The other thing is that I'm toying with the idea of making a blog post every Friday no matter what (unless I'm out of town and can't get to a computer or something). So if I happen to have a dream to report, I'll report it. Otherwise, I'll make some post about music or computers or something that I'm working on. Don't know. We'll see...

Craps and Music (and Independent Game Development)

I haven't had a really solid narrative dream to blog about for quite some time now, so that explains why I haven't been around here too much lately. I know all you readers are probably just bursting at the seams trying to restrain yourself from saying something disapproving, but have no fear! I am still alive and sleeping every night, and sooner or later a good dream is bound to come along.

Actually, the truth is that I have a couple sheets of dream notes that I need to blog about, but I lost my steam a little bit with this blog. I don't think it's quite dead at this point. I think I am still going to keep up this blog from time to time. But I don't think it'll be particularly frequent.

Last night, I did have two dreams that I can vaguely remember. Though most of the details are gone, I do remember a couple really basic concepts from them, so let me share...

The first involved learning to play Craps. I don't gamble. I'm good enough at math to know how bad an idea it really is. So I'm a little hazy on how exactly the game of Craps works, but in my dream world, I was learning how to play it. It seemed to be a bit more like Roulette in the dreamspace, except not so entirely up to chance. There was actually some significant element of skill in placing bets, and in fact, it was not really that hard to win. I got myself ahead quite easily and started to develop a crowd of old ladies who were impressed by my ability.

Then, somebody was being mugged in another part of the casino, and I alone sprang into action. When I got back from rescuing the victim, the old ladies had stolen my winnings.

Upon waking, I realized that my subconscious does not understand Craps at all.

The second dream involved a former college peer named Matt Glickstein visiting my apartment for some musical reason. I think he was listening to rare Avenged Sevenfold B-sides on my computer.

You might remember that I've mentioned Matt before on this blog. He was the other Music Composition major in my year at the University of Redlands, and I've always admired his music because he has such a knack for writing effective songs. I usually don't write songs. While at University I think I never wrote songs, and although I probably felt at the time that it was because I didn't like the traditional song-based structure for music, I think now that part of it might have been that I wasn't very good at it. Matt is good at it. You should go listen to his songs, and then buy his album.

I think he was listening to Avenged Sevenfold because yesterday I was reading about Mike Portnoy's departure from Dream Theater and trying to figure out why some of his fans were upset with something that he had said. I couldn't find any reference to what he said or did to make them mad. Anyway, until recently Portnoy was also the touring drummer of Avenged Sevenfold. I don't listen to them really. I used to listen to Dream Theater a lot, but not so much now.

The other reason that I haven't been blogging very much is because I'm trying to complete an album of my own. Once that happens, I will probably link to it from this website, but it'll have its own website, and I expect I will focus more on that one than this one.

I'm also trying to get myself solidly into independent game development. I've been inspired by two guys mostly: Terry Cavanagh and Jonathan Blow. Their games have had a deep effect on me. Particularly, three of Cavanagh's games: VVVVVV, Pathways, and Don't Look Back. And Blow's Braid, which has affected me in a way that no other game ever has.

I'm starting to write down all the ideas I have for small games that I might be able to complete without too much difficulty. Usually my ambition defeats me. Even projects that start small eventually become huge and are subsequently abandoned. This will not do. So I'm trying to force myself to keep my ideas small, and when I attempt to create them, I will do so as quickly as I can. Getting a few projects done, whether or not they are particularly good, is my current goal.

Of course, as I am presently working on a Computer Science degree, it may be slightly difficult to find time to work on that stuff.

I think I might be spreading myself a little too thin.

A Computer Framework for Algorithmic Music Generation

For the last three months or so I have been developing a piece of software that algorithmically generates music. The program works pretty well, but the algorithms that produce the music are still a little bit rudimentary. There is still a lot of room for improvement. The music it generates is usually not quite coherent.

I am giving a presentation about this project at California State University San Bernardino tomorrow. It should be good, because I won't really have to do very much other than explain how the program works and then run it.

Last night I finished up the program, cleaned up the code to make it presentable, and then put together a short PowerPoint presentation.

And then I went to bed and dreamed about another feature that the program needed. "But!" I kept telling myself, "I already finished it! I can't change it now!"

I woke up this morning, and for a second I thought about rushing to the computer to implement the new functionality.

After that second was over I realized that I had no idea what the feature was that I had dreamed about. So I went back to sleep for another fifteen minutes.

I think I might have dreamed about it again.

If so, then I forgot it again the second time I woke up.

Brainf***

Last night I dreamed that I was programming in a little programming language called brainf***. It was really frustrating, as though I just couldn't quite get the program to do what I wanted it to do, or as though the problem I was trying to solve just didn't lend itself well to a language consisting of only eight tokens. I think, now that I'm trying to remember it, that I was attempting to use brainf*** to develop a proof for some stupid theorem or something, but the theorem was really trivial and intuitive, and therefore proving it requires the use of brainf*** to make it more challenging, so that you don't get bored and subsequently die from said boredom. Or something like that. It's very hazy now.

In any case, the reason that I was dreaming about brainf*** is because on Tuesday (in real life) I spent an hour writing a brainf*** interpreter in C++. It works really well, though that's not saying much as it's such a simple language to implement.

Is there some subtle subconscious message coming out of this? I wrote an interpreter for brainf***, and then I dreamed about brainf***. How can I find more meaningful interpretations of my dreams? Et cetera.

In unrelated news (or is it?), I watched a film called White on Rice this week. It is the funniest movie I have ever seen. I recommend it for the whole world.

Old Dream Papers

So I discovered a number of old papers with dream notes on them under the table beside my bed. Some of them are a little unclear about the dream they initially represented, but I think I can put a few details together. Most of these are rather short and unimportant dreams. Let's start with those.

On the night of September 25, I apparently dreamed that I was babysitting a tiny toddler. I don't remember that at all, but that's what my notes say.

Same night, I dreamed that I accompanied my brother and sister to a shopping mall in order to purchase my brother's Halloween costume. For some reason, he was looking for hummus shoes. We tried to visit one clothing store that sold clothes that were too expensive to look at. The doors were angled and had wooden slats, kind of like the doors on some changing rooms. They didn't let us in that store.

I don't remember this, but evidently someone said, "Radar?" to which someone replied, "It's not instant," to which the first person replied, "Huh?"

Now, my brother actually was Radar O'Reilly for Halloween, so I guess this had something to do with that, but I cannot recall the details.

We continued wandering this mall, which was strange in that although it was made up of many different stores throughout, there was a single checkout area at which shoppers would pay for all of their desired items, procured from any of the stores, all at one time.

Then I was using a huge invisible sword to battle a big guy with two huge knives. During this battle, I was an acrobat of tremendous ability, jumping and flipping and blocking a lot.

At some point, I had this conversation:

"Where are you going?" someone asked me.

"I'm not going anywhere," I said.

"Be careful. It seems like you're almost going to go somewhere."

"You make it sound like... 'Be careful. You're almost going to fall off a cliff. You're almost going... somewhere!' "

I felt rude.

The dreams ended with a scene in which I was talking to a couple of people about class statuses. Like... "Oh, I'm a first year," or "I'm a second year," or "I'm a transfer student." One of these people looked a little like Jessica Szohr. She was wearing white gloves, had a weak handshake, and was complaining a lot about something. I think she said her name was Sona, which I thought was weird because that's the name of the company that created the product used for the University's Department of Psychology Research Participation System.


Then, on the night of September 29, I dreamed that I was trying to drive my sister's car, which was parked in front of my grandmother's house. I needed it to go pick up my own car somewhere else. The only problem was that it was blocked in by another car and blocks and plants. I had to open the garage door and move a chair in the process of getting things untangled enough for me to get the car out.

I don't understand it, but apparently my sister was honored, because that's what my dream notes say.

I drove the car to a pizza place, and the person working there was some middle-aged trucker lady. She probably looked like Large Marge from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. She created a Sonic pizza for me. As in, Sonic the Hedgehog. She used a blue fruit rollup for Sonic and a gumball for his eye. Otherwise, the pizza was pepperoni. There was a special narrative to this pizza made clear by moving scenery. It was the most incredible pizza-oriented work of drama I had ever seen.


Many days later, I had a more substantial dream that really requires a post of its own, and so I shall leave that one for later.


But last night I dreamed that I was some sort of winged warrior doing battle with an enormous two-headed wolf. But the second head was the head of a slug. And the wolf head had an extensible neck. And the slug head could shoot laser beams from its stalk-eyes.

I cut off both heads, and the creature died.

Then, the lord of the manor carried his crippled wife downstairs, singing a song to her. I don't remember the lyrics, though I do remember that they didn't rhyme, but I was nonetheless impressed with my subconscious for spontaneously producing lyrics to a song at all. Of course, it was probably garbage.

I said goodbye and went outside. I picked up my own wife and flew away. She asked me to sing her a song, but I told her I was watching for enemies in the skies above and around us.