psipsy

These zombie dreams I have sometimes get more and more comical. The latest one was like someone was filming a low-budget movie.

Premise was simple, there was an "oh shit" moment where people were turning into zombies, but not everyone. Then I found four objects that when placed correctly, they created a barrier that people could pass through easily, but zombies could not. In fact, attempting to pass through would spell doom for a zombie. The only sign it was there was a red laser line along the floor. So I set this up in a hallway, carefully concealing these objects. Also, the objects were enchanted brownies, and it wasn't the ingredients that made them enchanted (hooray for dream logic). Anyway! The horde of zombies were coming down the hallway, along with some that hadn't turned yet. Some of the zombies went right through the portal, much to my disappointment.

"Stop, you weren't supposed to go through the barrier."
"What barrier?"
"You see that red line there? That's the barrier. If you walked through that you'll drop over completely dead."
"But that one went through!"
"He's still a human. Now get back over." I clapped my hands loudly to get their attention. "Ok everyone, if you're a zombie and you cross through this barrier, you'll cease to exist. Anyone still alive can come through."
"What the- Nobody told us that!"
I waved a bunch of papers in the air. "Well you should have read the script."
Someone raised a hand. "What if we're not a zombie when we cross over, but we get bit beforehand?"
"Hm, I didn't think of that. I'll just say that it's too late for you then." There was a chorus of disapproval from the back.
"That sucks. Who wrote this?"
I was wondering that myself.

Begrudgingly, the zombies that had already come over went back, turned around, and went back to doing their zombie thing, except this time stopping at the line. Just past this barrier, there was a door to an auditorium, complete with catered food. Most people invariably headed there, including the zombies that had snuck over but didn't heed my notice HEY THAT INCLUDES YOU GET BACK OVER YOU'RE NOT ALIVE. Goddammit. Working with these people is like herding cats. Everyone's hungry? Fine. Ok, it's breaktime.

I eat my lunch, but I'm on the safe side of the barrier. I don't quite trust those zombies anyway, so I'm keeping this cast-iron pipe on my lap. Y'know, just in case they try something.

Had a dream where we were using kinetic projectiles to fight off some aliens. We were able to destroy a couple of their ships that were in a low orbit, but we almost missed.

The reason we were fighting the aliens? They had contaminated the world's supply of Mountain Dew.

We discover another one that's even further out, something of a supply ship. We can't accurately hit it from Earth, so we send a robot craft out. Problem is, that craft had already launched when it developed a problem with its projectile system. They need to send someone out to fix it. They pick me.

They briefed me about the project, explained what I needed to replace and where, and that the ship I was riding in was entirely on autopilot. Go up, do my part, get back.

"How low-profile is this? I understand about keeping my mouth shut prior to the mission, but how about after?"

"It's highly classified, but don't worry about feeling any need to post about it. You'll be knocked unconscious on the way back and when you wake up, you'll just think it was all some crazy dream."

Y'know how sometimes in your daily travels there's an invisible boundary? It's generally determined by familiarity; like say you take the same turn or exit to go to work or home or wherever, but it's a rare event that you continue on. The few times that you do, it's no longer mundane travel, it is now a journey and usually you're not coming back for several hours or possibly days. Well, lately I've been having dreams where I continue on a little past this self-declared checkpoint, just to flout it. Just to expand my ever-increasing recognizable territory.

This one's easy and self-explanatory to me: As I was growing up, there was always a particular range I would stick to when riding my bike (mostly because I knew that however far I went, I was gonna have to pedal it back), and when I would go anywhere with my parents, it was always to the same places, for the same reasons. It's true that there's more of those "same" places than I could possibly count, but getting to and from them held to a significantly smaller set of courses. Except for once in a great while, we would go outside of this range, and it would usually turn out to be a very long trip indeed. I always looked forward to these.

Nowadays, since I drive myself around, my range has increased dramatically but the rules are more apparent. For example, it's tempting to just up and go one fine weekend and keep going. Then I realize that while that would be fun, it would cease to be fun when it's late Monday morning and I need to be at work but instead I'm 900 miles away from home. So, the boundaries remain, a specific point of delayed return, to define when it stops being familiar and when it starts becoming unknown, uncharted, unexplored. A boundary just to let me know that I'm gonna be a little or possibly a lot further from home than usual.

A boundary that I'm always willing to stretch.

Past weekend was fun, saw lots of anime and friends and family and ate lots of food on Easter. Here's a rundown of what I watched:

Yaiba:
Low budget as can be, but rather than take away the fun, it adds to it. A kid learning to be a samurai to fight an impending big bad guy, lotsa laughs along the way.

Secret of Cerulean Sand:
So it's the 19th century Victorian England, and there's this young girl born into a wealthy family that must own half of England. Based on a Jules-Verne novel, it tried to be Miyazaki-esque, it really did. But the only one who can pull that off is Miyazaki himself.

Naaja:
Great, another "young girl on an adventure of a lifetime" gig. Main character is 12 years old, but at least she doesn't look disturbingly overdeveloped. Meanwhile there's a Tuxedo Mask-like character running about, doing a Robin Hood schtick. Set in the same country and time period as Secret of Cerulean Sand. Maybe the main characters of each show will happen across each other? I don't know.

Machine Robo Rescue:
Ok, a bunch of 10-12 year old kids that can pilot some mostly-sentient robots makes for a really long toy commercial. Obvious CG going on there.

Scrapped Princess:
Princess on the run from a world that wants her dead. I can dig it. Character design has a tried-but-true look to it; Studio Bones is using what works. Looking forward to more.

DNAngel:
Some kid with an alter ego as an angelic thief. Looks like something worth investigating further.

Ninja Scroll TV series:
Like the movie, but not as bloody, cause it's going on tv. But Jubei still kicks ass, and the supporting characters are no less freaky than in the movie.

Last Exile:
21st century technology in a 19th century setting. It looked like it took a lot of inspiration from Final Fantasy games. Animation style looks the same, too.

Dear Boys:
Slam Dunk, but with the bishounen settings cranked way, WAY up. Just what the world needs, more yaoi fodder. Although, it did inspire a new Anime Law: When fast techno music is playing in the background, the hero's chances of succeeding at his task increase astronomically.

Air Master:
Ok, the main character is a schoolgirl that's close to 7 feet tall. Ok, I have no problem with that. She can kick ass by using her mastery of gymnastics and air currents. No problem there either. But why the two-foot kid who's constantly bawling her head off? Fighting opponents who give speeches for (what feels like) days at a time? A girl who has massive breasts providing the sole comedic effect? Why?

Anyway.

Fixed my laptop. New keyboard and PRAM battery, took mere minutes to install.

Had an interesting dream the other night, where there was a mysterious disease going around, and the only symptom was that the victim's eyes would gradually turn gray over a period of several days. When the eyes turned completely gray, they would die. It spread randomly, and the only exception was that if the victim already had gray eyes, then they would turn blue, producing the same end result. So in this dream, I asked my sister what color my eyes were. She knew why I was asking. "Don't worry", she said. "They're gray, like they've always been."

After waking up, I looked in the mirror, at my blue eyes...

Fortunately, dream logic subsides rather quickly. Just not as quick that morning.