Dreams

Night before last I dreamt (a) that Hillary Clinton managed to hijack the American political process and set herself up as a "presidential candidate" of the despotic ilk, i.e., she was a shoo-in to win. I was part of a large group of people who were rounded up and detained for expressing pro-Obama views.

The argument was that our blogs/media connections/etcetera were tainting the political process and making it impossible for "average Americans" to make decisions on their own. So, for the preservation of American democracy, we were being temporarily removed from the discussion.

I was first detained by South Wales Police who were pretty laid-back about the whole thing and somewhat empathetic of my situation, themselves being stuck acting out directions from MI5, who were stuck acting out strongly worded "requests" from U.S. authorities. I had my own cell.

"How long do you reckon I'll be here?" I asked my guard.

"Dunno," he said. "The 42 days doesn't apply to you, mate. It's June now; your election's in, what, November? Just get comfortable with it."

After a while I was transferred to Oak Grove, which had been converted into a detention centre. While being unloaded from a truck I managed to escape, outrunning the poorly trained National Guard soldiers who had been rushed into duty to deal with the Obamists. I made it down into Nine Mile Creek and lost their dogs by wading from 106th Street down to where the creek meets the Minnesota River. In those woods where I grew up, I knew I'd be alright. I built a shelter, found a large patch of wild spring onions and an old fishing pole (b), and lived there for several weeks. After a while, though, I got so sick with loneliness that I started thinking about turning myself in. Then I woke up.

Last night, I dreamt that the child bride wanted to leave me for Carlos Tévez, but, not sure of his feelings for her, was unwilling to sever ties with me. She wanted to get rid of me without getting rid of me. She didn't want me anymore but also didn't want to be totally on her own if the Tévez thing didn't work out, so held on just that little bit. I was a back-up plan to a back-up plan.

I was confined from being an actual part of our relationship -- not allowed to speak to her in public, required to leave the house when she got sick of me, etc. And I took it.

I felt sick with myself because I couldn't let go. I knew I was being pushed to the fringe. I hated it. But I couldn't stand to think about being alone. I accepted the alienation from my own life and held onto it because it was who/what I am. If I didn't have that what was there? I woke up when Fflur strangely sent me a text at 2 a.m.

The connection in those two dreams is pretty easy to spot. Loneliness: hating it, struggling with it, wondering how and if I can come to terms with it.

Writing this book is a far lonelier business than I remember it being. It is hour after hour of sitting in my study. By myself. Silent. Alone. And when I run out of creative energy, I don't really have the capacity/energy to chat about anything. Writing -- especially in a language that is not as innate to my thoughts as English -- leaves me dumb. There is a different mental process for words that come through my fingers than words that come through my lips. My brain locks in trying to switch gears and I'm not really good for much beyond watching soccer. But the feeling of loneliness lingers.

Today a man came to the door who was doing market research and asked if he could interview me.

"How long will that take?" I asked.

"About 20 minutes," he said.

"Awesome," I thought to myself.

And I made him a cup of tea.

-----

(a) Or is it dreamed? I hate to confess this to you, but I don't know the difference. I know that there apparently is a difference and one's failure to identify it makes you one of those your/you're retards, but, uhm... I don't know what it is.

(b) People who know me know that this is probably the most implausible part of the dream. I cannot fish.

Only slightly improbable

I woke up this morning in probably the best mood in weeks. Partially this was a result of the evening I'd had the night before -- getting to see your friends drunk can be fun, especially when they excitedly run around talking to everyone in the bar and dancing to music that can't really be heard -- but mostly my mood was brought on by a dream I'd had.

I dreamt that aliens came to Earth and this somehow resulted in a huge interplanetary soccer match being set up. The match was held in Mexico, because the country had expressed a willingness to ignore all kinds of health and safety issues for the sake of knocking up a stadium that would hold 300,000 spectators. The northern and eastern sides of the stadium were built into a hill, so thousands more gathered outside. From my vantage point, looking up into the smoggy Mexican late afternoon, there were acres and acres of people and banners extending forever into the haze.

My vantage point was from the field. I was on the team that had been selected to take on the aliens.

The aliens were large black creatures. Ebony black, about 7 feet tall and with heads (or possibly helmets) that looked a bit like the big water cooler bottles, they were particularly adept at defence. On offence they tended to be a bit slow and unwilling to put too many players forward.

Things went back and forth and the waves and waves of humanity that extended on all sides were going mad. Above the pitch hovered a massive spaceship that was beaming coverage of the match to its home planet and I could somehow feel the billions of earthlings who were watching in homes and pubs worldwide.

Before the match, Earth had been tipped to lose horribly, so we were in a good mood moving into the 90th minute, having held things to a 0-0 draw. We were given two minutes of extra time, in which the aliens suddenly decided to mount a major attack -- moving forward all but two defenders.

The crowd (and myself) were shitting bricks, but then suddenly I came up on one of the aliens and took the ball from him, popping it with my left foot behind me and to my right, to Wayne Rooney. The two of us broke up field, Rooney drawing one of the defenders, and sending the ball back to me. I stepped around my defender and took a poorly-judged long-distance shot at goal. Instantly I regretted not carrying the ball further. What the hell was wrong with me that I would have only a goalie to deal with but choose to kick from 30 yards out?

I watched the kick roll toward goal, clearly going wide of the net, and the goalie confidently walking to pick it up. But at the last second, the ball hit a divot in the pitch and jumped right, catching the goalie totally off guard and sailing into the centre of the net.

The whistle blew and suddenly I was being carried around the pitch. I looked up into the brown smoggy sky and it was alive with people and banners and flares.

"Point to the people in the shit seats," Rooney advised. "They love that."

01101010010110001111

I'm not really a science-fiction guy. The only science fiction I've ever read has been Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams and William Gibson and none of it solely for the purpose of reading science fiction. I watch Dr. Who and spot the enormous plot holes (seriously, my bitches, when the pig slaves were attacking Hooverville, Solomon -- who had fought in World War I -- took up the weakest defensive position I've ever seen), and the episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in which Picard learns to play a flute* made me cry, but beyond that I don't really watch a lot of science fiction, either.

Yet, I find myself constantly thinking up lame science-fiction ideas. Case in point, the TV series in my head. And this morning I thought up something new:

Shortly after New York City is completely destroyed by a category 5 hurricane, the United States government finally decides to respond to climate change. Typical of American extremist mentality, it outright bans the use of oil and coal (except for its own military necessity). This move sparks a boom in the use of solar panels and soon the whole of America has an environmentally-friendly dark silver sheen. Western Europe is happy to follow along, as are a number of South American, Asian and African nations. Although it has yet to happen, it is implied that those slow to convert to solar energy will find a U.N. military contingent knocking at the door.

So, the world is becoming a better place but in a slightly uncomfortable way. Amid this, one of the main side-effects is that the cost of silicon jumps rather dramatically. The cost can be offset by using less-efficient, easier-to-produce silicon for the solar panels but the cost of the quality silicon needed for computers bumps up by 900 percent.

At about this same time, an MIT biochemist hooks a special processor to a live chicken's brain and is able to create a shockingly powerful computer, one with vastly more memory than most existing technology. The discovery goes over incredibly well: Chickens are cheap to feed and maintain, they don't require deadly chemicals to create, they are considerably easier to dispose of, and the only power needed is that for the access box (the processor device attached to the chicken's head connects via a simple cable to an "access box" that feeds to a monitor, keyboard and mouse). And, much to everyone's surprise, this bio-computer is impervious to computer viruses. Within a short time, "PC" comes to stand for "personal chicken."

The only drawbacks are this:
1) The chicken has to be alive.
2) Using the computer knocks the chicken unconscious. This has no lasting negative effects, but it does mean you have to shut the computer off so that the chicken will wake up and eat and continue to live.
3) Chickens have a short lifespan.
4) Chickens are difficult to interface.
5) Chickens are troublesome to transport.

These issues lead to further experimentation and eventually Apple develops a hip mouse-based bio-computer that is easier (and cuter) to carry around and, due to the way its brain works, easier to interface. The drawback is that the lifespan is shorter and your computer runs risk of being eaten by the family cat.

At this point, as almost always happens in science fiction, someone works out that human brains are the best suited to this whole bio-computer thing. The size and power of our brains mean that the bio-computers are, in effect, infinitely powerful, we interface brilliantly, and we take direction better than mice and chickens.

But there remains the issue of knocking the "computer" unconscious when it's being used. For the average user then, a person-based bio-computer is unrealistic. Getting a person to carry around your unwritten novel and Frank Sinatra albums in their head is tricky because you run the risk of them deciding they don't really like you anymore. Imagine asking for an extension on your master's degree thesis because your girlfriend is mad and won't let you access your files. So, most people stick to mice and chickens.

But corporations, as they are wont to do, are perfectly happy to use people as computers. People are hired on to basically spend eight hours a day sleeping. Corporations choose candidates who are intelligent, relatively well-adjusted, live healthy lives, and inclined to be loyal to the corporation; a lot of Mormons get jobs as computers**.

And so we arrive at the protagonist, Milo, whose enviable life involves being paid to sleep, eat well, and live healthfully. It's a pretty good life. The corporation puts him and his wife, also a bio-computer, up in a great home and treats them both quite well. Thanks to advanced interfacing technology, they are even able to take vacations, albeit only to corporation-sanctioned locales.

This bio-computer technology is different than William Gibson's microsofts technology which allows a person to input information into their brain and use it. For example, with microsofts you can put a chip in your head and suddenly speak Spanish. With the bio-computer technology, the information is not accessible to the person carrying it. It's just there in their head and they know nothing of it. Occasionally, though, and for unknown reasons, the people serving as bio-computers will experience a "mental burp," in which some bit of data suddenly reaches their consciousness. For the most part, these are short, irrelevant bits of binary. For example, in the way that a smell can suddenly flash a memory of a girl you dated in high school, unspecified situations can suddenly cause the bio-computer to see a stream of binary in his or her head (the headline to this post is "Milo" written in binary). But sometimes, mysteriously, these mental burps will actually produce snippets of intelligible information: "...Davis and I contacted..." "...activates 29 August..." and on.

Milo has been experiencing several of these as of late, all coming from what seem to be the same document. His guess is that it is being accessed and updated frequently, but it's none of his business to bother about what they put in his head and he doesn't pay much attention to it until he wakes up one afternoon and five of his fellow bio-computers are dead, including his wife.

A weak explanation is given and Milo is given a few weeks off to mourn. In that time, he is tormented by the mental burps. He suddenly realises that the document he keeps seeing contains the true explanation of what killed his wife and co-workers, and that something important, something big is set to occur on 29 August. But all these things are totally unclear.

The novel, then, follows Milo as he goes on the run and tries to figure out the mystery of what happened. To access the information, he needs to find someone he can trust -- since he has to be asleep and defenceless when the information is accessed -- someone who can hack the corporation's security codes, and some way to access the information without it being immediately obvious to the corporation (the computers are so well integrated that as soon as the information is accessed, the corporation would know exactly where to find him).

This leads him to hunt down an old work colleague who lives in one of the remaining "carbon nations." Suspiciously, at exactly the same time, a war kicks off against the carbon nation and Milo finds himself pursued by the corporation, government agents from both the carbon nation and the United States, and possibly some other nefarious entity.

And that's what I was dreaming up this morning as I lie in bed staring at the ceiling. My only challenge now is, uhm, thinking up what the hell the big secret is and how Milo could save the world. You know, the plot. I've got an amusing premise and absolutely no substance. Typical.

*You know which episode I'm talking about. If watching that didn't make you weep like big baby, you have no soul.

**A nod to my favourite nutjob theory, that Mormons are behind an elaborate conspiracy to take control of the United States.

Bottlenose

I had a dream last night that I was in a romantic comedy with Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon, but I was living the film, if that makes sense. I was aware that everything was following a set plotline and that McConaughey and Witherspoon were, in fact McConaughey and Witherspoon, and not the characters they were playing, but I felt all the things that happened to me.

I was the comic-partner-sort-of-thing to McConaughey's wealthy and slightly arrogant character. He was trying to exact revenge from Witherspoon, who had fouled up some major business deal. Or some such thing. It was a romantic comedy, so of course strength of plot wasn't particularly relevant.

I was a homeless guy who hung out with five very large dogs that would keep me warm a night by sleeping on top of me. A number of my scenes involved having conversations with the dogs. I can now only remember two of the dogs' names: Benedict and Bottlenose.

Benedict (short for Benedict Arnold, of course) was so named because he was desperate to find a new owner. He would run up to people in the park where we lived and try to charm them into taking him in. When I caught him doing this, I would shout: "Traitor!"

Bottlenose was a muddy golden retriever who took incredible joy in finding plastic Coca-Cola* bottle caps and bringing them to me.

McConaughey recruited me to pull all kinds of boneheaded stunts in an attempt to embarrass Witherspoon, but, of course, they all fell through.

I can't remember exactly how the love story of McConaughey and Witherspoon went, but predictably it involved a life-altering fall from wealth that resulted in McConaughey hanging out with me and the dogs. And something hinged on Witherspoon becoming Benedict's new owner.

In my storyline, after Benedict's departure, all the other dogs leave as well, one by one, until it's just me and Bottlenose trudging through a cold rain. As you will have seen coming from a mile off, Bottlenose digs from the mud a Coca-Cola bottle cap that is from one of those look-under-the-cap competitions. The cap is worth £100,000.

McConaughey and Witherspoon end up together, and me and Bottlenose become millionaires -- having invested much of our winnings in Coca-Cola stock. The end.

*My dreams have product placement.

One weird thing

You've probably seen that meme that has a person list six weird things about themselves. I am stuck for a blogging topic, but too lazy to be arsed with six things, so I've come up with one.

Of course, the question of what falls under the category of "weird" is a bit of a trick. I speak Welsh, I think medieval fayres are awesome, and I follow EastEnders so religiously that I refer to characters as if I know them personally (I am about two dead brain cells away from writing them letters of advice on how to solve their problems: "Stacey, you know that nothing good will come of this thing with Max!"). So, I'm not 100% sure* I'm qualified to judge "weird."

Perhaps that I am so taken with iTunes (a half decade after everyone else) is a bit odd. But for the most part, I don't tend to think that things I do or think are all that weird -- probably because I am the person doing and thinking those things. It's a bit like Catch 22; people who are crazy don't know they are crazy. If they think they are crazy, it's almost certainly a sign that they are not.

So, the fact that I don't tend to think of myself as not weird may be a sign that I am, in fact, very weird. Most likely, though, this is wishful thinking. More likely, I am one of the most boring people on Earth.

In terms of what other people might think is weird, I am either so boring or people are so used to my quirks, that I ceased surprising people years ago. I could list just about any odd thing and people who are close to me would think: "Yeah, sure -- that's not all that weird coming from him."

So, here's my totally un-weird weird thing about me:

I have a science-fiction TV series in my head.

It's about a border-line suicidal space fighter pilot. Because of the accessible nature of electronic information, his branch of the military (which would have to have a cooler name than the usually lame "Space Force" or "Space Marines," but I haven't thought up the name yet. Most likely it would be an acronym) starts putting important information on paper again (written in Sioux). The fighter pilot -- nicknamed "Witke," Sioux for "crazy" -- is given the job of hurtling unescorted (so as to not draw attention) across vast, cold, dangerous stretches of space, delivering various ultra-important messages.

Recognizing that he is already more than a bit psycho (he gets this assignment after being pulled as a squadron leader, having led his group into one too many mismatched fire fights), the yet-to-be-named military branch he works for fits his ship with a beta-version navigational/operating system that is designed to develop a personality of its own. The idea is to give him company on the long, cold (to preserve power and to help avoid detection, most of the time his ship does little more than circulate oxygen, so he's almost always weighed down by cold-weather gear [hence the connection to Heather's kittyhead hat]).

The system learns at an immense rate, so it tends to know everything that can be known, or can learn it in a pinch by gathering information from the future incarnation of the Internet. It is also designed to make itself as compatible and personable as possible to the user, so in short order it develops a female voice (probably with an accent) and Witke names it after some girl he had a crush on as a cadet before she was killed by some habitually-evil alien race that have been warring with Earth for 100 years.

Partially because his mood is erratic, and partially because the software recognises Witke actually enjoys arguing, the two have long, bantering philosophical/humorous conversations as they hurtle through space. They are occasionally interrupted by the need to blow stuff up or narrowly escape certain doom or save the universe. You know how it goes.

Needless to say, this culminates in all sorts of philosophical questions about the nature of reality as Witke "falls in love" with his ship's navigational/operating system, and vice versa. Neither will admit this fact.

At about the same time as this man-software love that dare not speak its name is coming to fruition, the military branch with a cool acronym name decides through other tests that the software -- hard-programmed to be so accommodating and protective of the user -- is a bad idea all around. They order it removed from Witke's ship and all existing versions of the software are deleted.

That's the end of season 1.

The second season starts with Witke in the bar, receiving the equivalent of a text message. The message contains a backup file to his ship's navigational/operating system -- it was sent by his ship, and had been bouncing around the corners of space, making it impossible to trace.

And it goes on from there, with all kinds of possibilities:
- The ship becomes too reckless in actions, because it can always provide a backup of itself, and almost kills Witke.
- An evil-twin version shows up, based on a corrupted version of the file that was bounced around space
- The ship starts to project a hologram of an attractive woman, so it messes with Witke's head even more.
- Through either Star Trek replicator technology or William Gibson microsofts technology, the OS becomes a tangible female form.

*The phrase "100% sure" is there only because I wanted to use the percent sign.

Ladies' man

I dreamt last night that I was staying at Eric and Kristin's cabin and playing Kubb in the yard when Kristin drove up in a white early 90s Renault; her passenger was an ex-girlfriend of mine.

She (the ex-girlfriend, not Kristin) had Kool-Aid red hair, so I had to stare at her for a second, but then it registered and there was a rush of excitement as I lifted her up in one of those "Oh, my gosh, I haven't seen you in ages"-type hugs.

It was actually her, not an amalgam of female features attached to a name, as can often happen in dreams. My memory of her was so strong that I could smell her as we hugged. Her smell is scored deep in my memory.

Dr. Handy once told me the technical term for a person who remembers based on his or her senses, but I have since forgotten that term because it was mentioned in an e-mail conversation; I couldn't smell her when she told me.

Either way, sensing that this "Oh, my gosh, I haven't seen you in ages" hug was lasting just a second too long and becoming an "Oh, my gosh, you still smell so good" hug, Eric piped in loudly with a comment about Rachel, putting emphasis on the phrase "your wife."

Not missing a beat, Kristin added that almost every column I write is about how stupid I am for Rachel.

This particular dream featured Sarah McDaniels, but it's one I've had countless times.

The dreams are little morality plays of the subconscious, and they almost always go the same way: I meet some girl I haven't seen in a coon's age and am too patient/accepting/happy to see her than perhaps I should be, and then Eric comes in as the voice of reason*.

It's perhaps an odd thing that Eric features as the metaphorical angel on the shoulder in my dreams. But of all the people I know, he has one of the most defined and clear senses of what is right and wrong. Remember that knowing right from wrong is different than choosing right from wrong. But he is still considerably beyond me. I often fail to identify that things I do are insulting or hurtful or inappropriate. It's probably not coincidence that the people who are closest to me are so thick-skinned.

My subconscious works like a poorly written Victorian novel, so these lessons in fidelity usually end with a sort of karmic reward for good behaviour -- I discover that while I've had seven and a half years of happy marriage, the ex-girlfriend has experienced a slow and steady emotional decline since parting from me.

Of course, the side-effect to these dreams is that I end up spending the next conscious day wondering what has actually happened to the featured ex-love interest. The thoughts bring a deep and wistful melancholy. I can feel it pushing against my ribcage; breathing feels laboured. I'm not totally sure why the feeling is so strong, and what it says about me. Most likely is says I am a big girl.

But it's strange to think that out in the world right now there are all these women, all these souls, who have been close to me, and the odds are quite high that I will never see or hear from them again.

"All these women." That makes it sound as if there are thousands upon thousands of them; as if they could all move to the Aleutians and set up a semi-autonomous state of jaded ex-lovers: The People's Republic of Fuck-Chris-istan. But, you know what I mean -- there are more than three.

They are women who actually liked me -- even if just for a tiny space of time -- enough to be close. They saw me as better than I have ever seen myself. They kissed me. They wanted to hold my hand. And, to varying degrees, I tore myself up over them. It's hard to accept that two people could have existed in such intense moments and emotions and then just sort of fade away and never know if the other is even alive.

I often wonder what happened to this person or that person. So much so that I will work their name into a blog post**, making their names Google searchable for all eternity. I have this stupid quiet hope that these little internet snares will lead to the person e-mailing me. But there's probably a reason I don't know where they are or what they are up to; perhaps they have no interest in hearing from me. I'm hardly a recluse; if Jeni Rodvold were to ever find herself wondering what the hell happened to me it would take less than a second to find out.

*His wife, Kristin, will often serve as a second voice of reason. Both are capable of speaking in the blunt way that is necessary for communicating to me.

**I have mentioned Sarah a few times: here and here.