Strange Psyche Tricks

As you know yesterday there was another horrific plane crash. I was engrossed in this for a better part of the morning, and frankly a bit concerned as we are scheduled to fly to Tampa via Newark this Saturday. So this was on my mind.

Then last night I watched Monday Night Football. So I got to listen to Dan, Al, and Dennis blather on about truly mundane and pointless stuff, plus watch one of the most convoluted endings to a game that I have seen in a long time.

So last night I go to sleep, as is my wont, perchance to dream. Sure enough I am soon in a blissful little dream world. We get on our flight and I see Dennis Miller, dressed in a captain’s uniform, walk into the cockpit. Then he comes on the loudspeaker and starts to do a mix of the “Welcome to flight XYZ” spiel mixed in with his MNF schtick. I start to get worried and try to get off of the flight (through some backdoor like on a C-130 cargo plane), but I see that the plane has departed from the jetway. Now Miller is prattling on about this and that, and excuse him if things are a bit shaky but this is his first flight. I look out the window and see that he is now driving the plane down one of those spiral ramps like in a parking garage, and frankly there is more than a bit of scraping going on. I remember thinking to myself, “well, for his first flight he’s not doing such a bad job, perhaps we’ll live through this.”

It was about then that my logical thought processes somehow overruled the dream command center and said this is a silly dream, it can’t possibly go well and we’ll have no more of that. I woke up briefly then went back to sleep for an hour in dreamless bliss before my alarm woke me up.

Just thought I’d share and ask if this sort of thing happens to anyone else, where the days events come impinging upon your reverie?

Practically all my dreams are like that. Bits and snippets of shit that are in my mind and get put to gether in complete non-sequitirs.

Latest one was taking my mom on a trip to manhattan. We stayed on the upper east side for some reason (odd 'cause I stayed on the west side the one time I was there) in a vast, penthouse of a hotel suite that cost $103 a night. Pretty damn good for Manhattan if you ask me, I made that observation in the dream. I found my way trudging up Park Avenue at dusk, up a steep sidewalk. My feet were slipping so much I had to pull myself up by ethe hand railing. AT the top I found an illegal gun dealer in a booth that looked half maze, half chiken coop. The called my last name which startled me but he was referring to someone else. I walked over to the opposite side of the streetwhere it was completely dark and there qere several huge gnarled oaks. From high on the hill I had a terrific view of lower Manhattan, looking down on the tall buildings.

Hill? WTF there are no hills in Manhattan. I had that thought in the dream. Later I realized I was combining San Francisco where my brother lives with NYC.

I had a weird one. I had a dream I was playing Civilization 3. Things were going well, but then I realized I was dreaming and was about to wake up. Not wanting to lose my progress, I saved the game in my dream with the intention of reloading and continuing it later.

Usually when I realize I’m dreaming, I wake up shortly after, though not immediately - I get a few seconds, dream-time, before I come around.

Background: I rented a Soprano’s Volume I DVD this week. Mrs. ShibbOleth and I watch it late at night, just before we go to sleep, after the Olethlings[sup]TM[/sup] are safely tucked in bed. In the episode we watched last night Olivia (Tony’s mother) drops a friend off at her house. She warns her friend, “Make sure you jiggle the door first, you never know who is in there.” Then she accidentally runs her friend over with her car. Also, last night I had a volleyball game about 8 pm, so I was a bit tired.

The whole dream is a bit fuzzy, but I am staying at some house in a not so nice section of New Jersey. It looks a bit like Olivia’s house, or could be a house from a neighborhood near by. White clapboard on the outside, an apartment building with similar architecture next door. I am sitting inside the house and talking with various paesano types, but nothing overtly mob. There is an attractive young woman there, perhaps one of these guys’ daughters. I mention that I am tired, and one guy says, hey, there’s a whirlppool at the apartment next door, you should go take a jacuzzi. He sends the girl with me to show where I should go.

We walk over next door, jiggle the door, then push a buzzer to ask to get in. There is a long rectangular room with a TV, playing something like MTV. The girl points me toward the pool room. I ask isn’t she going to come along (what a lech!) but she says no, she wants to watch TV. I find that I am just wearing a towel, and am a bit concerned about this, so I read the pool and jacuzzi rules. It actually says that clothing is optional and something about not getting too embarassed if… well, nevermind.

I go to get into the tub, and only then notice that there are already four different young ladies in the tub. Now that I think about it they were similar in appearance to the women who dance in Tony’s club. The jacuzzi is L-shaped, and they are all wearing bikinis and sitting along one length of the L. I am a bit shy about being the only one naked, but decide to go for it and get in the tub. Just then I notice that Tony and a couple of his guys are also there and just about to get into the tub. I am vying with Tony to get the good spot on the corner of the L, next to all of the ladies. But I am also trying to avoid getting sat on by a naked, hairy Tony Soprano. Sort of an “excuse me, I was here first kind of thing”. It was about then that I wake up.

I really got to start having dreams that are a little less realistic and tied to my everyday life, and more symbolic.