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.

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...

Ghost Tag

I was trapped inside some kind of haunted mansion or castle or something. Trapped there with me were a small number of others with whom I had not been acquainted prior to my present predicament.

One of these others was some kind of military soldier. I can't remember his name now, so we'll just call him Smith. In any case, he seemed a very well seasoned soldier, potentially a valuable ally to me, and so I tried to remain on his good side.

There was also a young lady named Miss Laverne, who turned out to be an experienced lawyer. For some reason that I can no longer remember, she was helping me with some important paperwork that I needed to finish. I was very happy for the help, and she wasn't unpleasant company by any means.

As she was a lawyer, I can't help but compare her appearance to that of Ellen Parsons from the TV series Damages. But she wore glasses, maybe kind of like Gemma Taylor from The Rage in Placid Lake.

Miss Laverne looked kind of like this...

...but with these glasses. Ignore the guy on the right. He wasn't in this scene.

There were a number of others, but their details are all shrouded by the ether now.

The layout of the mansion itself was vaguely like that of my grandmother's house, but its actual features were more like the interior of Hogwarts. That is, there were portraits on the wall that moved and talked, just like regular people. The people depicted in these portraits were, in fact, spirits of some import.

For instance, one of them was a blonde-haired young lady in a dress. The label on this portrait read, "Satan."

The others and I systematically approached these portraits one by one and spoke with the spirits contained within them. Each time we did so, an apparition of some kind appeared and chased us around for a little while before vanishing without having done any real harm.

Well, after one such little chase, we noticed that one of our companions had disappeared. Soon thereafter, we received an anonymous letter informing us that he had been kidnapped and that the kidnapper was demanding four million dollars.

After we approached the Satan portrait, a ghost of a tall, old, balding man in a white shirt and jeans chased us around. After a while, I realized that one of those old-timey telephones that you see in cartoons was sitting on the dining room table, and it was ringing.

It's for you.

I ignored the ghost as it chased the others. I answered the phone. It was Miss Laverne.

"Hello?" I said.

"This is Miss Laverne," she said.

I looked around and noticed that both Laverne and Smith were gone.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"I have kidnapped Smith," she said.

"Why?"

"I will return him in exchange for four hundred thousand dollars."

"What?"

She hung up.

The ghost had disappeared by this time, and so I informed the others that the kidnapper had turned out to be Miss Laverne.

But then I started thinking about this little development.

Why would she kidnap somebody and ask for four million, only to turn around and kidnap another somebody and ask for four hundred thousand?

Also, why would she tell us who she was, especially considering that the first note was anonymous? It seemed the sort of stupid move that might be made by some thick-headed high school gym coach, not a sexy lawyerbrarian. Something strange was afoot, and I was going to get to the bottom of it.

~  ~  ~

Actually, I never got to the bottom of it. Sadly, I woke up from the dream. I like to think that Miss Laverne was actually being framed by the ghosts of the mansion. Actually, now that I think about it, it might have been one of those Scooby-Doo villains masquerading as a ghost who had tried to frame her. But I guess I'll never know unless I dream up a sequel.

As for whether or not Rose Byrne actually played the role of Miss Laverne in this dream, I don't believe she did. I believe it was just someone who looked kind of like her. A Rose Byrne lookalike, sort of in the same sense that Carly Foulkes might be considered an Anne Hathaway lookalike.

I mention this only because on occasion some of the characters in my dreams actually are portrayed by particular movie stars. For instance, once when I was in high school, I had a dream about the lost empire of Atlantis, and as it happened, the top ranking Atlantean general was played by Sam Neill. He had golden armor and wings and could fly.

Hyperspace-Innerspace

It's infuriating, my rotten luck. After an untethered space jump, hours of fighting my way through a space station shaped like a mushroom, and improvising a means by which I could cause the space station to induce a jump through hyperspace by tumbling end over end repeatedly, I find myself trapped in a distorted version of my own childhood.

I don't understand it. One minute I'm hurtling through space at well over three times the speed of light, and the next minute I'm stuck in a child's body trying to deal with these damn oppressive authority figures. They think they are providing me with well-deserved discipline, though in reality they are endangering the galaxy and all its inhabitants.

The big guy is bad, but the old woman is the worst. Yes, it's the bouncer with rectangular muscles that is forcing me into the prison cell. But it's the old woman who's telling him to do it. I wonder, if he were to be made aware of her corruptions, would he turn against her? Somehow I doubt he has quite enough brain cells to manage the justification of a moral upheaval on his own. I'm not sure...

Why the hell are they putting me in here anyway?

No, it's pretty clear. After seeing the alligator pit in the back of the room, it seems obvious.

So I calm down a little, feigning exhaustion, even going along with their prodding in a display of reluctant surrender. I wait until the opportune moment, and then I dart for the door.

The bouncer tries to grab me, but I anticipated that. I shift my weight the other way and circle around him. He's strong, but much too slow.

The old woman is shouting something behind me that I don't register. It doesn't matter now. Now what matters is getting the hell away from this place.

Out the door I go and I'm in a large hall. Something seems familiar about this place, but I don't have time to think about it. I have to keep moving.

I go through the double doors at the end of the room. I go up the stairwell there and open the door on the second floor, but I go back and hide in the corner. The others run right through the door, too hurried in their pursuit to think of every possibility for my escape route.

Back down the stairs I run, out into the main hall again. I remember now why this place was familiar to me. It has the same layout as the old church where I grew up. They've made it into something terrible. I see the old woman running on the catwalks above me now. Laughing, I cry, "This place could be good! It could be beautiful! It's neither of those things!"

~  ~  ~

I no longer know the exact date of this dream. I'm sure that it dates back to shortly after my last post, which was a little over a month ago. So given its age, the details here may have been ruined a bit.

When I wake up, I write down some notes about my dreams so that I can remember later when I have time to sit down and write a proper blog entry. However, these notes are usually pretty hurried and not very descriptive. They're generally intended to remind me of what happened, not provide a complete depiction of anything.

For instance, the notes for this dream read as follows:

Space Jump, Mushroom Space Station, Tumbling Hyperspace.

Spirited Away, Old Church, Big Guy Bouncer, Alligators, Running, Double Back, Get to 2nd Floor, "This place could be good! It could be beautiful! It's neither of those things!"

That's it.

Sometimes I wonder what someone would make of these notes if they found them lying around on a bus stop bench or something.

Subterranean Ether

I was visiting my parents' house the other day, and present there was a young man whom I had never met. He was upstairs in my brother's room, and as a lowly member of the military he was working on a puzzle as a part of his duties. As he worked, I spoke with him a little bit and tried to understand why he was in my parents' house. Eventually he became quite frustrated with his puzzle and gave up.

"The military is coming to get us," he said. "I'm getting out of here."

He left without another word.

With nothing else to do, I took a look at his puzzle myself. It was a large rectangular case with a glass panel on the front side that allowed one to see a series of rows of tiles with various letters on them. The tiles were attached to long rods that extended from one side of the case to the other, and by manipulating the handles on either side of the case one could remove the tiles from these rods and move them to new positions on other rods. In this way, the young man had been trying to spell the word mayonnaise at the bottom of the case, although at the moment it read, "mo unaise."

I figured that I could finish what he had started, and so I moved the "o" right out of there and replaced it with an "a." I found a "y" and tried to move it into place, but upon doing so the tile split into four: XY, YX, XX, and YY. Frustrated, I moved those out again and tried another "y." Same thing.

Around that time, I glanced out my parents' window and noticed that there was a large silver van arriving. I knew that this was the military that the young man had assured me were on their way, and I also knew that I had to get out of there. So I grabbed my things, mostly a stack of books and papers, and made for the back door.

I tried going around the west side of the house, but after opening the gate I saw that the soldiers were already getting out of the van and would spot me if I went that way. So I went back the other way and through a large arched gateway into the alley beside the house.

Proceeding southward down the alley away from the building, I glanced over my shoulder to ensure that the soldiers were not there. I continued past a small golf course and then a desert enclosed by large sandstone walls.

Eventually, I found a cushion evidently made into a makeshift bed by a hobo. So I lay down there and set down my things beside me. Looking back, I saw a hobo coming and immediately stood to apologize.

"No, it's okay," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "During the daytime I don't need it."

So I stayed put.

In a short while, I noticed the silver van coming down the alley, so I hid beside a corner and waited for them to pass.

Of course, they did pass, and I observed that luckily none of the soldiers inside were being quite observant enough to look around the corner, and so they didn't see me. Unluckily, they stopped a short ways down and got out to search the area. I clearly could not escape without being seen.

So I did the logical thing and lay down again, pretending to be a sleeping hobo.

I felt that my performance was really top notch, that even if they were to find me there, they would be fooled and I would be free. I snored loudly, lending further credibility to my charade.

The soldiers did indeed approach, and upon examining me they discovered my perfectly groomed fingernails.

"This is no hobo," they said.

Having seen through my act, the soldiers sent me away, back to my parents' house. Strangely, they allowed me to return on my own without an escort or guard. So I decided to travel back there by cutting through the desert I had passed earlier.

Making my way across the sand and amongst an array of large sandstone blocks, I came upon a woman with blonde hair off to my left. She was leaning against two of the large blocks, which had fallen and were lying lengthwise rather than upright.

As I approached, she smiled without really smiling, lending slight pronunciation to the subtle wrinkles on her face. She was neither a young woman nor an old one, but I felt that she was important.

"What is the meaning of all of this?" I asked her.

I don't remember now what it was that she said to me. Not the exact words. I believe that she said something about how the meaning was up to me. Then again, that might be what I only hope she had said, just a subsequent fabrication or reconstruction of my mind, created only in retrospect from out of the ether.

~   ~   ~ 

What is the meaning of all of this? Indeed. Who can be sure?

My name is Luke, and the narrative that just ended was a dream that I had last night. There are details that are gone, and some of the details that appear above have almost certainly changed from initial dream to subsequent recollection. But what can I do about that? Perhaps it doesn't really matter.

Subterranean Ether is a blog in which I record my dreams. I have been in the habit of posting snippets, mere snapshots of my dreams, as status updates on my Facebook Wall, but at some point the idea dawned on me to record them more completely in a blog.

So here it is.