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!"

Nope, No Time for a 7DRL

I will not be creating a 7DRL for the 2014 Challenge this year. I don't have the necessary motivation for that right now.

Instead, I think I'm going to stay up late and work on music for Selatria (which I should have been doing anyway, so...).

Null Terminator - In the Presence of My Enemies

As I've mentioned before, I am producing an EP and a full length album for Galactitronic Super-Space-Composer Null Terminator. The last track I posted was from the EP, which should be released first, though I still have no idea when it will be completed.

Anyway, I felt like officially sharing another track, though this one had already been available. I simply had never really pointed it out on this blog before. This will be the third track from the full length. I should add that while the EP will probably be 100% composed by Null Terminator, this track is in fact almost completely my own composition, so on the full length I suppose I will be credited as co-composer, which is good, obviously, because I have been wanting to get into the professional musicdom for a long time now.

Null Terminator - In the Presence of My Enemies

Interval Permutations

Drew F. Nobile has written an article called "Interval Permutations" about how interval sequences can be permuted in order to produce different pitch class sets that are audibly related. Of particular interest is his example 18, a graph that depicts all of the possible relationships made by such intervallic permutation between tetrachordal set-classes. I have created my own version of this graph to emphasize the natural symmetry present:

Null Terminator - Electrotechnics

For those who don't know, I have been co-producing (approx. 75%) and co-writing (approx. 25%) the first full length album of the talented Galactitronic Space Composer/Superhero named Null Terminator for some time now. Half finished with it, work on the album has begun to suffer from the stagnation of creative momentum. This is for a lot of different reasons, but it's actually kind of fine, since I really ought to be keeping up with work on the other thing I'm writing music for anyway.

So I asked NT to write six tracks for an introductory EP to gently make the world aware of his music. I reasoned that such an album would be more easily completed than the full-length, and it would probably help to flush our clogged creative buffers.

Apparently, it was a good idea. Just a few days after I made the suggestion, he sent me the first new score, from which the following track is derived. This is really just a rough preliminary mix. I'm not really sure how the final cut will sound, but it'll probably be pretty much like this:

Null Terminator - Electrotechnics

RE: Radiohead's "Pyramid Song": Ambiguity, Rhythm, and Participation

Music notation is descriptive. There is no single absolutely correct way of transcribing any piece of music any more than there is a single absolutely correct way to express particular fractions. 1/2 is 2/4 is 4/8 is 8/16. Not a single one of these is incorrect.

However, it behooves us to transcribe music in such a manner that it is readily understandable and indicates the correct feel of the music. A person reading and playing from the score, assuming they are reasonably capable on their instrument, should be able to reproduce the music accurately. With respect to this particular goal, certain ways of transcribing a piece of music are obviously better than certain others.

There have been inordinate measures of discussion concerning Radiohead's "Pyramid Song" from their album Amnesiac. It's an excellent song, definitely worthy of analysis, and given that the rhythm is relatively unusual for a piece of music written by a rock group, the amount of discussion is perhaps understandable. In fact, for as long as I've been aware of Radiohead, my opinion has been that, in spite of all the talk of their purported innovation and weirdness, the best things they have going for them are: first and most importantly, a firm sense of effective melodic and harmonic content; and secondly and slightly less importantly, a special talent for arrangement and production that lends their work a certain uniqueness and importance within the music world. They matter in a musico-historical sense, but not because they are weird or innovative (they aren't especially weird or innovative, in fact). They matter because of compositional prowess.

Having said that, "Pyramid Song" is a special example of a piece of music that uses nonstandard rhythms in an effective way that benefits the music significantly, rather than using them for the sake of being unusual. Melodically and harmonically, it is very well written. Rhythmically, it is also very well written, and unusual rhythms are definitely my compositional specialty. So to me, it is not surprising that it has generated so much discussion so consistently. The discussion apparently goes on even today.

In the March 2013 issue of Music Theory Online, Nathan D. Hesselink offers his thorough take on the song, compiling a comprehensive list of analyses of the song's rhythm. Unfortunately, the simplest and clearest interpretation in my estimation receives relatively little coverage. Two of the comments made under the mixed meter subheading hit the mark exactly, but none of the example images highlight these, though some are close.

In my opinion, the best way to write it is as follows:

Consistent cycles of 3/4, 2/4, and 3/4 throughout the entire song. The lengths of the five chords in each cycle are two dotted quarters, a half, followed by two more dotted quarters. It is swung, so that odd numbered eighth notes are twice as long as even numbered eighths, as though we were dealing with triplets. Thus, in terms of the feel of the music, the 3/4 bars have 9 atomic note lengths, while the 2/4 bars have 6. What I mean is that if you divide the 3/4 bars into 9 equal pieces and the 2/4 bars into 6 equal pieces, this is sufficient to depict every note in exact detail. The first chord is 5 atoms long, the second is 4, the third is 6, the fourth is 5, and the fifth is 4.

Thus, you could theoretically describe the music as cycles of 9/8, 6/8, and 9/8 as some have suggested. However, this requires tying notes together just about everywhere and needlessly complicating the score. It is far simpler to use 3/4, 2/4, and 3/4 and then plainly indicate the feel of the swing at the top of the score. This requires absolutely no ties, and correctly indicates what's going on.

Compare and decide for yourself. This...

...is technically equivalent to this...

Which do you prefer?

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.

RE: Do you want Heavy Metal to survive?

This is in direct response to "Do you want Heavy Metal to survive?" from Poetry of Subculture, one of my favorite blogs. Anywhere I say "you" I am addressing Helm, the writer of that blog, and not you the reader (though feel free to pretend I'm talking to you, if you want, all zero of my readers).

~   ~   ~

This might be dangerously long and uncensored...

I play this game on my iPad called Outwitters. It's an asynchronous strategy game with no computer controlled opponents, meaning that I can only play it with other people, and since I don't know anyone in so called real life who plays this game, I must rely upon the continued existence of a community who plays the game online in order for me to be able to play it. Therefore, I want the popularity of this game to flourish, I want the developers of the game to turn a profit so that they can continue to support the game and release updates to it, I want the game to survive. If no one else plays the game, then I can't play it. The game would be dead.

There's potentially this sense that if Heavy Metal isn't popular then the game its fans play might die. There will be no more bands, and therefore no more records to buy (or pirate?), and therefore no more concerts to attend, and therefore no more game to play, and therefore, I suppose, they would then have to grow up or find another game. Is this the attitude that members of the modern heavy metal scene have? Hard for me to say. I don't talk to them. This isn't why I listen to metal. I'm not part of any scene.

So I'm not sure how much more I can say about that. So I'll speak about myself instead.

Obviously, the strict mutually exclusive dichotomy you present is a fabrication, and I'm aware that you are using it only as a tool (you said so, duh). But I find it difficult to speak about the ideas here without at least acknowledging the fact that there are parts of myself in each of the two camps. There are probably also parts of myself in other camps entirely, but I haven't really thought about that yet.

In the simplest sense, I want Heavy Metal to survive. This then means more and more music for me to listen to. I don't share your practice of not listening to new music. When I choose bands to listen to, I typically don't use their age or period of existence as a deciding factor. I don't usually think about it. In fact, it never occurred to me to do so, and even when I was young, I listened to anything and everything from any time period. My first two King Crimson albums were In the Court of the Crimson King and the ConstruKction of Light, at that time their latest. I didn't care about the time difference then. And I don't now.

Of course, lately I've been focusing on exploring subgenres of metal with which I had been previously unfamiliar, and therefore I have been primarily and specifically using categorization as the deciding factor for what I listen to. Time doesn't enter into the equation, except as it relates to understanding what happened historically.

In another sense, I want Heavy Metal to survive. I have this possibly quixotic urge to be the guy that opens the door to another broad substrand of metal's history. More on this later.

In a different sense, I do not want Heavy Metal to survive. This doesn't mean that I want Heavy Metal to die, only that I lack the desire for it to survive. I understand that the death of Heavy Metal does not mean the end of interesting music or art in general. There will always be something that I'm interested in listening to, even if it isn't metal. And that's fine. In addition, as you point out, the death of Heavy Metal doesn't mean its complete annihiliation, as its history remains, carved from stone. It may be forgotten one day, but not during my lifetime. So what do I care?

In yet another sense, I want Heavy Metal to die. I've long felt that the most enduringly human characters from fiction are those whose deaths are depicted in the text. You've said about a zillion times something to the effect that death is a necessary part of the human condition. That James Bond goes on and on and on forever and always comes out alive makes him a pathetic hero, because he is in no danger. He is immortal and impossible to relate to as a human being because he is not human. That Sydney Carton dies in Charles Darnay's place makes him a hero that can inspire heroism in the reader. There is nothing about him that places an impenetrable wall between fiction and reality. One might argue that Bond needn't be capable of death because it is escapist entertainment, not high art. But since we're talking about Heavy Metal here (I didn't forget), let's consider whether we want our metal to be escapist entertainment or high art. Perhaps this is a stupid thought on my part, and that's fine. There are stupid parts of me. Shall I deny them? The point is that the death of Heavy Metal somehow seems to bring to it a greater sense of importance and value. There is not an inexhaustible supply of it. The amount of music that can be written is finite, no matter how much they may argue against this.

...

Is there somewhere for metal to go that isn't merely a revisitation of what has come before? Is there something for me to compose in the metal universe that hasn't already been explored.

Absolutely. Probably.

I suspect that my ability to figure this out is both limited and strengthened by my relative lack of knowledge about Heavy Metal. I mean here that my knowledge, though not insignificant or unsubstantial, is by far incomplete. I am not aware of everything that has happened in metal (is anyone?). Thus, I am in danger of proposing a direction for metal that has happened but of which I am not aware. On the other hand, I am not aware of everything that has happened in metal. Thus, if I should suggest a formula (meaning a set of symbolic ingredients, not write a verse like this and a chorus like that and 1-2-3: you have a hit!)--if I should suggest a formula for a new direction of metal that has been implemented before, I may be unaware of the results and therefore uninfluenced by the nuances of that attempt. Therefore, my own attempt may be more effective, or effective in a different manner, or the ingredients may combine in ways heretofore unknown and unseen.

I suspect that there's somewhere to go in terms of how the ingredients are utilized. I'm about to be exploring this, or at least I feel as though I will be soon.

...

If you're still with me (sorry for the rambling length of that!), I have some questions for you...

1. I'm under the impression that you write metal yourself. In the context of the motivations you present above for entering into the metal scene, how do you understand the relationship between accepting the inevitable death of metal and simultaneously creating more of it? I think you've perhaps touched on this a little when you wrote that "we all have a death drive. To realize how it functions and to what imaginative ends it urges us is, instead, a delight." I wonder if you might be willing to elaborate.

2. Maybe I only had one question. Can't think of what else I wanted to ask or whether there was anything else.

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.).

Null Terminator

I have to preface this entry by explaining who Null Terminator is. Null Terminator is a composer, a sort of kindred spirit to myself, whom I have been working with on and off for some time now on a forthcoming album of electronic music. But there is another Null Terminator. He is the protagonist of the story set forth in the album. He is a sort of space age superhero, granted authority in the late twenty-second century by the Catholic Federation to use lethal force against any of a select group of evildoers, one of whom is called Sentinel, another of whom is called The Void Star.

A week or two ago I dreamed that I was Null Terminator, and I was fighting against both Sentinel and The Void Star simultaneously using advanced martial arts techniques. For some reason, I was also fighting against Batman and Robin and Jackie Chan. They had all ganged up on me in the hopes that through sheer force they might be able to take me down.

Nevertheless, I summarily trounced them, every last one.

~   ~   ~

I should point out that although this entry is very short, the dream was in fact quite long, and the battle was basically just one long sequence of them trying to punch and kick me, me blocking every last attack, and then at the end me incapacitating them with a single blow. Thus, I have tagged it as Important (Long).

New Year's Resolution

I am thinking of making a commitment to composing a new piece of music, however short, and posting it to the Internet every two weeks. Perhaps the time frame may need to be adjusted, but If I make this resolution, I believe I will try every two weeks to begin with and then adjust accordingly.

I have been posting my music to my soundcloud profile: soundcloud.com/erenan

This is the source of inspiration for this resolution.

The Sand Sub (Remix)

Many years ago, I used Adventure Game Studio to design and develop a point-and-click adventure game called The Bunker. It wasn't especially good, but if you're interested for some reason, it is once again available on Mediafire: Here. I can't guarantee that it will run on your computer, but I'm not sure of any particular reason why it wouldn't.

Anyway, one thing that I really liked about the game was... well... some of the music. But the game only made use of MIDI for that, and so its quality depended upon the soundcard in the player's computer, and thus it wasn't always particularly fantastic.

Well, to make a short story even shorter, I created a remix of one of my favorite numbers from The Bunker, namely the theme that plays when you meet the crew of the Sand Sub. That is, a submarine-like vehicle that travels under the sand. The remix can be heard at my Soundcloud profile, along with a few other tracks that I've written.

There is a guitar solo in it that isn't particularly great. I recorded it in like half an hour and with only a handful of full takes. If this were a more serious endeavor, I'd have spent far more time with it, but meh...

A Portrait of the Clarinet as a Political Weapon

Last night I dreamed that I was working on a computer program of some kind, and upon achieving some measure of success with it, I was accused of being a hacker. Insisting that I was not seemed futile. My accusers persisted with their lies.

I found a clarinet somewhere and started to play it. I don't play the clarinet, really. I took a woodwind class years ago in which I was required to play one a little, but I don't actually know how to play it properly. Nevertheless, I discovered that I was not entirely terrible. Although I was only messing around with it, a crowd soon gathered around me to listen to my playing.

I stopped to explain to the kids in the crowd what the instrument was and its basic functionality. Knowing, however, that the kids would soon grow bored if I talked for too long, I jumped right into another piece of music.

Miraculously, this time I had a band accompanying me. I also realized suddenly that I was the greatest clarinetist who ever lived. We jumped right into it: at about 160 beats per minute, I played an extended lead part consisting of constant sixteenths with occasional triplets to mix it up. We ramped up the intensity and increased the tempo very gradually, until at last the band dropped out, and I finished off with two full measures of a relentless barrage of notes: sixteenth triplets first, finishing off with a flurry of thirty-secondths.

The band joined in again, and I tossed the clarinet to a nearby roadie. I started to sing. The lyrics are gone now, but they had something to do with finding a place where I could be at peace.

The melody was something like this:

After a single verse, the song was over, and everyone cheered until my accusers had no choice but to leave me alone lest the mob tar and feather them.

~  ~  ~

Ordinarily I reserve the label "Important (Long) Dreams" for those dreams that I flesh out into a sort of short short story. I didn't do that here, because I am busy. In any case, this dream felt important, and thus it should have been so fleshed out. I might have written some notes down for later blogging purposes, but usually what happens when I do that is that the dream never really gets translated into blog form at all. So I opted to write it more simply as I have done above.

I do sometimes dream about writing or playing music or both. What is interesting to me is that the music is usually not bad at all. I'm not sure what exactly this suggests about the human mind and how creativity is related to the subconscious, but it seems to suggest something. I don't know a lot about psychology or neurological anatomy, but as far as I can tell, the subconscious parts of the human brain are not altogether separate or distinct from the parts involved in creating artwork. Or the parts that create artwork are not turned off whilst in a dreamspace.

I also don't know why I played the clarinet in this dream. I play the guitar quite well, so why didn't I play that?

If one of my hundreds of thousands of readers who have extensive experience in the relevant fields would kindly give me some insight, I would be much obliged.

Quantum Faith

Sometimes we go up to religious mountain retreats. It's what we do. Or, at least, in my case, it's what we used to do. In fact, I'm not sure if I should still be included when I say "we." I haven't been religious for years now.

Anyway, we decided to go again to the mountains, for old times sake. We needed drivers to shepherd groups of people up there, and so I volunteered.

On the way up, I noticed that the roads had become much more precarious than in previous years, but I was fully confident in my own driving abilities, and so I proceeded with accelerated aplomb.

Aplomb, it turned out, was not enough. At one particularly sharp turn around a precipice, my car tore right over the edge of the road and plummeted into the chasm below. Amidst the shrieking of my passengers, however, I kept my cool. I depressed the "reset" button on my dashboard, and instantly

I noticed that the roads had become much more precarious than in previous years, so although I was fully confident in my own driving abilities, I applied the brake gingerly and took the next corner with caution. Amidst the complaints of slowness coming from my passengers in the backseat, I kept my cool. I informed them with authority that I was travelling as quickly as could be considered prudent. After all, an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.

Later, upon arriving at the campsite, I observed that we were evidently to be staying in a new building. The only problem, then, was that the building had yet to be constructed. In fact, the previous building was still undergoing demolition. Irked, I volunteered to help move things along and immediately began tearing planks of wood from the old framework with my bare hands.

Once the new building was ready to be constructed, I made that process move much more quickly with another trick: I showed the other workers how to file the materials down to the correct size using only one's own hair. Impressed with my knowledge and the time saved by my wisdom, they gave me the rest of the afternoon off.

My wife and I made for the music superstore that had recently opened nearby. We'd heard that they had absolutely everything. It was only a short drive from the campsite, and so we decided it would be a fair use of our newfound free time to take a look.

The place was a disappointment. Not the music, no. They really did have literally everything. The problem was that they didn't offer us any place to sit down. No chairs!

In retrospect, upon arriving once again at the campsite, I realized that there had been chairs all over the store at little listening stations where one could sit and listen to music before purchasing it. But I had continued to wander the store in search of a place to sit as though I couldn't find one. How puzzling.

Others had arrived at the campsite when we got back. In particular, the guest speaker had arrived and was intent on speaking to me. It seems that someone had tattled about my... ahem... recently acquired heathendom.

No worries. I am quite willing to speak about my present state of religious limbo, and so I welcomed the chance to get another's perspective. After all, the guy looked kind of like Richard Jenkins and sounded exactly like Harry Dean Stanton. So naturally I thought maybe he might have some ideas that were worth something.

So we walked together--really, I slid down the stairs on my socks--he and I and the other religious group leader who was, as always, present. I told him about my past, how I feel, where I am. How I neither believe nor disbelieve any particular idea about the nature of God's existence. How I do not believe that I have a personal relationship with God. How I do not believe that I know anything at all about God. How I wish that I did know something about him. How I wish that I did have a personal relationship with him. How I wish I could believe some idea about God's existence.

He told me that often prayer reduces to asking for things, and this can be a little petty.

I told him that my prayers usually only have to do with knowing God.

He said, "If he told us we know, then we'd know." The other leader seemed unimpressed by this, but I assumed that the guy was just trying to be cryptic. So I started trying to reason what exactly he meant.

He continued, saying, "Your computer programs are your messages to God."

I'd never thought of anything of the sort. What could he have meant?

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.

Assorted Throwaway Dreams

The night before last I dreamed that I was Kevin Arnold from the Wonder Years. The family and I were sitting at the dining room table, and Karen was complaining about something, although I can't remember what it was.

Last night, I dreamed that I was setting up my equipment for some kind of talent show or competition or something. I was going to play a CD of a piece of music that I had written, and I was quite sure that I'd win the $250,000 prize. My only real competition in this competition was this guy who looked like he must have been a member of the royalty of Yemen or Jordan or some such place.

But then I realized that the CD I was putting into the CD player was not my music at all, but rather that of Matt Glickstein, an old peer from my days as a music student. He was the only other person in my class with the same major as me, Music Composition. Now that I think about it, I don't think it would be fair to win the contest by playing his music. But at this point the contest was forgotten anyway, and I simply told Matt, who was suddenly present, that I really liked his album.

Later, Tracy Jordan from 30 Rock set up a fun house with colorful rubber bouncy walls and floors that allowed people to jump really high and far. Mr. Jordan was also on a throne in a prominant position in this fun house, from which he was throwing large inflatable rubber bouncy balls at the people in the main area. I don't remember what he was shouting as he was throwing the balls, but I'm sure it must have been pretty hilarious.

TJ: Get outta my fun house!

Later still, my wife and I were putting gas in our car and using squeegees to clean the bird poop off of the windshield and rear window. Suddenly, a small Asian girl, about nine or ten, appeared out of nowhere and starting helping us clean the windows. We thought it was very strange that she would do this. Then, she was in the back seat of the car, and we said, "She's stealing our stuff!" I told her to go home, and she wandered off.

Aliens and Robots and Pianos

So last night my dreams were pretty unremarkable, mostly just involving gunfights with aliens and robots. I mean, don't get me wrong. I enjoy that kind of dream action as much as the next guy, but it makes for pretty uninteresting reading in a blog, wouldn't you say?

It's pretty straightforward the way these dreams go.

Run, shoot, shoot, run, dodge, shoot, run, dive around corner, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, run, shoot, shoot, and so on...

I was battling aliens. And I mean the aliens from the movie Aliens. One of my teammates was a Predator. You know, like from Predator. So one could say that it was like an Aliens vs. Predator dream. But I never saw that movie. I never wanted to see it. Why am dreaming about this stuff?

There was, however, one pretty nice moment where I was standing on top of a door frame and shooting straight down into the head of the alien mother queen. She didn't like it very much.

An angry alien

"Walter was right about you," she said. I don't know who Walter is, but I think that he must have been another alien that I'd fought in another dream on an earlier night. They're conspiring against me.

Anyway, I awoke early this morning with only this to go on, so I went back to sleep hoping for something a bit more bloggable. What I got was more shooting, except this time with the Big Daddy robots from Bioshock.

A big daddy. Is this better or worse than aliens?

Run, shoot, shoot, run...

Back to sleep again, and this time I got something about helping the secretaries at a temp agency move their stuff from their old office into a new one. In particular, they had a baby grand piano that needed transporting. I could tell they were waiting for me to volunteer to move the piano myself, but I didn't want to do it unless they were going to pay me for the work. My services aren't free, darn it.

Come on, subconscious. I need some good dreams here. You know... good ones.