One of the original Surf Report rules of thumb: Nobody cares about the weird dream you had last night. But I want to tell you what I’ve been doing for the past six or seven hours…
I was living in a rickety apartment building somewhere, on the top floor. Every time I set foot in the place, it felt like the room tilted slightly. On the roof was a hot tub, but it was half-full of nasty-ass water and filth. It was built on some sort of lazy Susan situation, so the whole tub could rotate. But the floor was crumbling, and I was terrified that I might fall through.
All around the rotating hot tub was mounds of trash, beer cans and empty potato chips bags, which I blamed on the previous tenants. I rarely went up there, because it was far too dangerous.
I came home from work one day (I guess), and called for Andy. But he didn’t come to me. “Andy!” I hollered again. The floor tilted a little, due to the force of my raised voice, but the dog did not appear. What the? Where he at??
I was then launched into a many-hours (it seemed) odyssey of walking the streets, looking for my AWOL companion. And all around my weird apartment building was a sea of basketball courts, filled with roughneck black guys, and scary meth-freak white trash. All were taunting me relentlessly, for no known reason. There was an abundance of gold jewelry and cruel laughter.
I walked the streets of this unknown city — industrial and Soviet in nature — for hours and hours. Nobody was friendly to me, and I felt unsafe at all times. There was a river at one point, and it was brown, swift-moving, and menacing. There was shit in the water, substantial things like trash dumpsters and Chevettes.
Eventually I went back to my unstable apartment building and decided to check the roof. Maybe Andy got up there somehow? When I stepped on the floor, it felt like balsa wood. And the hot tub was spinning at a high rate of speed, creating a breeze that sent some of the garbage flying over the edge. I could hear the basketball court people yelling in protest, down below.
No sign of the dog, though. So I returned to the apartment, where some dude was now sacked out on the floor, using a yellow backpack as a pillow. I think he was a guy from my current job, but it was a bit ambiguous. I woke him up, and asked if he’d seen Andy. He said, “Who’s Andy?”
I began walking through the crumbling apartment calling my dog’s name, and he came sprinting up a staircase, from god knows where. But he was skinny and tiny, almost like a ferret — a ferret with border collie markings, and Andy’s full-sized head.
The guy who’d been sleeping in the next room said he had to be going, and he and his backpack left the apartment. As he exited, the whole place tilted slightly, and I thought it might go over. But everything quickly stabilized. I could hear the rumbling of the spinning hot tub up above, and the crinkling of the chip bags flying around.
Then the real Andy started barking downstairs, and I woke up. Thankful to be delivered from that freaky-ass world…
What in the hand-rolled hell? Any idea what any of that means? I’d be much obliged if you could do a bit of amateur analyzing. Use the comments link below.
And we’ll lift the ban on talking about weird dreams for one day, as well. Have you had dreams that have stuck with you through the years? I dreamed that my parents were killed in a nightclub(?!) fire when I was a kid, and it was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever encountered. It still creeps me out, forty years later.
So, there ya go. Have at it, boys and girls.
I’ll be back on Friday.
I’m in a dark gymnasium with a large moveable wall separating a pitch black side (where the exits are) from the side all the guys are on. We’re all clustered around a woman best described as a classier Elvira. The only light is the muted yellow from a single candle on the black grand piano she’s playing. One of the other guys sneaks away to the other half of the gym. There are terrible screams and we all race over. The lights go on and the runner has been speared through on a broadsword held by a huge hairy warrior. The giant lifts the runner off the ground and slams the point of the blade in to a wooden wall so the runner is 4′ off the ground…slowly his body is sliced through by his own weight on the blade.
Others panic and run for the exits but the lights switch off and the room is again filled with screams. The lights fliip on the same impaling and mounting is repeated over and over with more warriors and victims. While all the warriors are distracted I make a break for the door and am outside in no time. Ned Beatty hands me a lawnchair and I wake up.
I have a dream where I’m naked, running around the second floor of a mall and donuts are chasing me. I stop in the food court at the corn dog on a stick stand and get a dozen to go (extra mustard), all the while crouching and hiding watching the donuts run by. Then I run the other way, go to the salon at Penneys, get a haircut and a pedicure.
***I made that up.
My dreams are pathetic…a subconsious reflection of life. Usually they are… I’m staring at a bowl of oatmeal and wondering if I should add another pat of butter. That one can last an hour or so. It’s usually in black & white. I like the one where I’m debating whether to add blueberriess or strawberries and decide both would be ok.
I have a recurring dream where I visit a website every day. And on this website is a funny ass rule not to talk about your dreams because nobody really gives a fuck. Then, to my horror, the rule is removed and all of the sudden the crazies are analyzing the shrinks, and vice versa.
My analysis of the dream in question is that someone likes to give head. Also, I’m drinking.
In real life, I have a recurring dream where my ass is paralyzed. I can’t move or talk but know what is going on. My eyes are open but I can’t move a muscle. There are always people fucking with me and I can’t do anything about it. It is always people I dislike. I always wake up sweating and tired. Now that sucks.
“I wouldn’t worry ’bout it none, though…
Them dreams are only in your head.”
B. Dylan, Talkin’ World War III Blues, @1963 Special Rider Music
.
It’s entertaining to read in the analyses here that you have too much anxiety in your life (some people said stress, but they meant anxiety). I certainly wouldn’t want to live a life in which I didn’t have desperate dreams like yours, Jeff, and, I suspect you wouldn’t want to either.
Most likely dreams are the byproduct of short-term memory moving to long-term memory, and long-term memory being reorganized and recontextualized to accept the new experience information. Somewhere along the way (say, 50-80 thousand years ago) the side effect became as important to us as its cause. It is entirely unclear whether eating just before bed induces more dreams or just makes us wake more often and, thus, remember more dreams.
Anyway, that’s my quick summary based on the work of Steven Pinker and his colleagues at Harvard, with the understanding that dreaming is not Dr. Pinker’s primary field of study. (Yup, Dr. Pinker is Canadian).
.
The guy with the yellow backpack was your new boss, cross-dressed. The yellow backpack contained your CD’s. You’re simply telling her, “Don’t fuck with my shit and I won’t fuck with yours”. A good message to send the new boss…after a war.
jtb
Jeff – sounds like you were living in the world depicted in this little seen but kick-ass movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477139/
It’s anxiety. Try to get some exercise before you go to bed tonight. A little walk in the cold will do wonders for your state of mind.
I live near UNC and one night about a year ago, I had a very realistic dream that I went to UNC to interview for the Head Basketball Coach job there. I met Dean Smith (HOF former coach) and Roy Williams (current coach).
The wierd part was that Dean Smith was acting really strangely. He took me on a winding route to the basketball offices, and at one point, through the women’s locker room (no naked girls though)! I thought, hey, this is Dean Smith he can do whatever he wants here. Finally I realized that the problem was that he had Alzheimer’s disease, and wasn’t thinking clearly.
So, a few months later when I heard that Smith actually has been diagnosed with Alzheimers, I’ve decided that I must pay more attention to my dreams because I can predict the future…
Everybody’s wrong about what Jeff’s dream means. The meaning is simple –
Life is a swirling, sucking, eddy of despair filled with brief moments of false hope in an ever darkening universe.
Wasn’t this one of Jeff’s Further Evidense Posts: http://sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com/
Whatever that guy is dreaming about has got to be freaky!
Evidence…duh
When I was about eight we were on vacation in the south of Spain with my folks and the grandparents. My parents and grandfather were getting ready for a day-trip to Morocco and had to get up at 5 AM to get the ferry.
I woke up from the noise and fell asleep again. I then mixed the situation in my dream. When I woke up later I was absoutely convinced I had overheard gramps, mum and dad whisper how they were going to murder “this guy” and were getting ready to start the whole operation.
After breakfast grandma took my brother and me to the beach and the whole time I wasn’t sure how to deal with the situation, and finally decided it was best to confront her and then try to analyze her reaction. Needless to say her laughter made the waves roll back into the see and my mom and dad made casual comments to eachother for the rest of the vacation on what their next hit would be.
It’s only a dream
I’d love to tell somebody about this dream
The sky was filled with a thousand stars
While the sun kissed the mountains blue
And eleven moons played across rainbows
Above me and you.
Gold and rose the color of the velvet walls that surround us.
When I was pregnant, I dreamed that I was hanging off the local news helicopter ladder mid air, singing “Pour some sugar on me” by Def Leppard.
I dove off the ladder and landed on top of a building, which was covered with thick mats. There were puppies there, which were half sick/half dead. I picked them up, put them in my nursing bra (?!), drove them to IHOP and fed them oatmeal (why not pancakes, I dunno). Then we went to NYC (from Raleigh), and I took them roller blading in Central Park.
I relayed this to one of my friends, who is a practicing psychologist. He asked me to NEVER, EVER, EVER tell him my dreams again.
It’s just a guess, but I’m pretty sure my dinner caused the dream. [The one weird craving meal during my pregnancy: 1# spinach, hard boiled eggs and ROOT BEER. Yes, all at once.]
The oddest dream for me happneded around the time my wife and I first moved in together.
I had a dream that I was trapped in a box about the size of a steamer trunk, and something in the bottom of the trunk was pulling me down through the bottom.
I was struggling to get free.
I still remember very clearly being on my hands and knees throwing punches.
The reason that I remember it so clearly is because I actually was throwing punches. Three hard ones, very close to my sleeping wife’s head.
I was partially awake for the second and came fully awake for the third.
Scared me a little, scared my wife a whole hell of a lot.
So the answer to the dream’s meaning comes when you ask what certain things mean. Like: what’s the napsack mean to you, and is that color important?
But here’s my take: the hot tub is your relationship with God, and it’s not feeling alive. Of course water sometimes equals sex, so have a go there. The crumbling house? That’s stress. The apocalypse setting? Social alienation.. the dog/ferret creature helps on that front.
I wonder if Andy dreams you’re running around with your head on a damned woods rat.
I had a dream last night I was boning Ally Sheedy, unfortunately I woke up with sticky underwear.
WHERE IN THE HELL ARE MY BOX SCORES!
Who’s Alan Sheedy?
ALLY Sheedy. Think she was the actress who played the wacko chick in “The Breakfast Club”.
I know, I was just fuckin with him. And you’re right, she was the kook chick that snorted her own dandruff in “The Breakfast Club”.
I think he’s the dude in today’s bunker cam.
Hahaha fucking guy is a weirdo. What’s with the coyotes everywhere, nevermind his “outfit”?
Jeff promised he would never use that picture of me on his site
That looks like one hell of a retirement plan. I hope you and Wile E. are enjoying your free time together.
I frequently have a dream where I’m driving and it becomes hard for me to see (my eyes get blurry or it rains real hard) and I drift off the road while on an overpass, or my car just floats away when I go up a hill. It’s always very realistic and I wake up freaked out but happy to find out it was just a dream.
It’s caused some mild anxiety on long drives. And I even had a Tony Soprano style panic attack while cruising down the highway. My dreams are trying to kill me.
The tub of fetid water on unstable footings is concern about your dodgy plumbing, and all the unsavory characters around your apartment are the plumbers who will be robbing you to fix it.
Don’t know what’s going on it the Upper Perogies but down in the Lower Cheesesteaks it’s starting to snow like a mofo again. Please stop. Please.
More snow? Crap. Normally I wouldn’t give a single dingle about the weather in the Lower Cheesesteaks but I’ve had a pallet of wire sitting in Gomer Pyle Truckings warehouse since Wednesday. Some shit about a foot of snow in West Chester making it tough to get around, I figured y’all had snow plows and salt in the Philly area?
I’m from Lower Cheeseteaks (love that, by the way), and I can tell you, they’re not accustomed to snow of this magnitude on a regular basis. Maybe they’re gonna hafta start now, though.
This is neither here nor there, but I used to work in West Chester, PA. Kinda weird place. Nice little college town by day, chock full of crackheads by night. At least back in the 90s that’s how it was. I’ve also frequented West Chester, Ohio. Never been to the other West Chesters though. That is all. At this time.
Well West Chester, OH is full of Boners (when they’re not playing golf or applying fake tan).
Please tell me it’s A Duie Pyle!
It doesn’t get better than a dooey pile.
Yes it’s A Duie Pyle, what a name.
I dream of Jeannie
I dream of Will Shatner.
I had too much to dream last night.
I won’t eat the cobbler!
This is nifty:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/on-the-records-a-well-preserved-roadmap-to-perdition/?hp
I had a dream that I had been abandoned at a crossroads.
Very subtle Nurse Ratched, I was considering something along the lines of “we’ve been abandoned so Jeff could confer with his snooty literati friends” but I didn’t want to stir the turd. I’m glad I didn’t because I hear he is under the weather.
Feel better soon Jeff.
So he was run over at the crossroads. Get better soon, Jeff!
I went down to the crossroad
fell down on my knees
I went down to the crossroad
fell down on my knees
Asked the lord above “Have mercy now
save poor Jeff if you please”
.
R Johnson
I would like to report my box scores as missing.
Would somebody please tell me when it’s safe to click on the Bunker Cam button again? Yikes!
Thank you.
Crikey.
Is Jeff unwell, or is he recovering from an encounter with “The Coyote” (pictured), sore meep meeps etc?
http://www.thatsphucked.com/post/2010/08/Man-arrested-after-ejaculating-into-a-female-co-workers-water-bottle.aspx
It wasn’t me who spurted. (NSFW)
When I see exceptionally good writing out here, as I frequently do by Chuck, Bill, WB, the Dude, Jeff (naturally), and many others, I just say what I think. Nobody, to my knowledge, thinks I’m flirting with those guys. I just think good writing ought to be acknowledged and celebrated.
By verbal agreement, I only comment on your consistently fine writing once a quarter, and then as obscurely as possible. I’ll likely next comment about your prose sometime after spring training. I will try to word the comment so it’s not too effusive nor a cause of paresthesia.
jtb
Holy Christ on Sunday JTB. They repeal DADT and you’re talking about flirting at a sausagefest? This ain’t that kinda party. Just jokin’ Obi Wan.
I know you don’t want to be the subject John but I’ll say that I do hope your back is coming along well.
I have a question for you and others if they want…. what actors don’t act? Morgan Freeman is always Morgan Freeman no matter the role. I like his charactors ergo, I like Morgan Freeman. Same for Denzel; Adam Sandler when he’s not the waterboy. Always the same. Clint Eastwood, Al Pachino, John Malchovitch all play different characters when it calls for it but the others no so much. You and “the lawyer….” (said in my best John Houseman voice) are the closest to Hollywood so I thought maybe you’d be able to comment? Are there others? Mathew McConahey’s bare chest is on in a movie the girl is watching and it got me thinking – he should be paid by the hour when he’s performing as himself.
(this is me bored and procastibating studying…)
jtb, your vocabulary is exceptional.
Still drinking rye in Ottawa,
Kevin
Hmmmmm stolen ideas or coincidence?
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/020111/