Dream Scenario (2023)

Paul (Nic Cage) is a biology professor at a small college, who learns one day that he has started showing up in other people's dreams. His daughter's, old acquaintances, his students, complete strangers.

At first this brings him fame, and he thinks it will help him to publish a book about ant shared intelligence or something that he's been talking about for decades. But as things don't work out the way he wants - he doesn't want to use his celebrity to hawk products, especially not Sprite - the nature of the dreams shift. Instead of Paul just standing around, watching what's happening to these people in their dreams, he starts killing them. Turns out people take being murdered in a dream by someone personally, and Paul becomes a pariah. Which he exacerbates by being defensive and playing the victim.

I think you have to enjoy cringe comedy to watch this movie. The first half in particular is just an endless stream of Paul humiliating or embarrassing himself by being awkward, passive-aggressive, milquetoast, and so on. The thing is, I don't enjoy that stuff. It's painful to watch, to the point I almost gave up on the movie 50 minutes in.

The second half, once things start the downhill slide, is actually better. Things are actually happening, instead of people just talking about how Paul never does anything. Students flee from him and vandalize his car. Waiters ask him to leave restaurants. And at least it feels like Paul's reacting genuinely, even if it's him being aggrieved and focusing on how much he's suffering. He's an ugly, selfish man with a victim complex, but at least he stops hiding it. When he gets kicked out of the house because he makes his daughter's school play all about him by insisting on attending when he was asked not to, at least he actually did something, even if it was just about the worst possible thing.

What I Bought 2/28/2026 - Part 1

Had a dream early Monday morning where I was locked in an airtight room with a window in the door. I could feel myself running out of air as I managed to break the glass, at which point water started to pour in. Managed to tear the opening wider, which let in more water, but seemed to drain the hallway of the Gothic mansion I was in fast enough I didn't drown or asphyxiate. Nice when dream logic works in your favor.

I didn't find everything from January and February I missed, but I found most of it, so let's get started.

Spirit of the Shadows #1 and 2, by Daniel Ziegler (writer), Nick Cagnetti (writer/artist/colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Play something lively, my man, it'll be funny. 'Cause you're in a graveyard.

Erik Leroux is dead, and finally reunited with his love, Katrina, in the Sacred Realm. Or not, because he has to pass through the Spirit Realm first and be judged. To be judged, he needs a book that documents his entire life. It'll also help him remember, since his memories are a little fuzzy. Too bad a creature grabs his book and shreds it, but Erik manages to find some pages that show him and us his life.

At first, it feels like Ziegler and Cagnetti are going for the approach of starting at the end, then flashing back to how we got there. Except Erik's time in the Spirit Realm is interrupted with activity back in the living world, where a doctor buries Erik, only to be captured by a traveler that turns out to be a witch named Helena Hextress. She's after Erik because he's responsible for her sister's death. No, her sister isn't Katrina, but Katrina's fate is tied to what happened.

Erik being dead is only a minor inconvenience to Helena, who turns the doctor into a wooden figure, then resurrects Erik with a spell she originally learned to revive her sister. But you've got to use it quick, and it took her too long to learn it. Cagnetti depicts the resurrection as a giant, ghoul-mouthed, alternate color version of Spirit of the Shadows bursting from the Spirit Realm's ground and swallowing Erik. Gotta be up there with resurrection via enormous, wish-granting dragon in terms of unique ways to do it. That's where issue 2 ends, Erik alive again (and not for the first time), but not aware what danger he's in, with the book of his life (what he collected of it) still in the Spirit Realm, with Elizabeth.

I'm curious whether Erik will remember his life now that he's alive, or if Ziegler and Cagnetti intend to flesh out the rest of his life via Elizabeth continuing the search for Erik's pages. In which case, Erik's time in the living world would be focused on him trying not to be killed by Helena. The being that explained the rules to Erik within the first few pages of issue 1 asked him a question he said was the basis of the judgement: Did you lead a moral life? Based on what we've seen in the first 2 issues, the answer is no, so Erik probably needs to stay alive long enough to reverse that trend (if he can), while Elizabeth learns things that would probably turn her against him.

Cagnetti's art feels very Kirby-influenced at times, though maybe that's just Helena's hair. But the squared off buildings and blocky protagonist has a similar vibe. The shading on the faces, narrow smudges of black here and there, has is more what I associate with '50s horror comic (or Black Jack Demon.) Which makes for a contrast with the vivid, solid block colors of the Spirit Realm scenes, which feel closer to a Ditko Dr. Strange book. Like two different stories taking place in the same book. I won't say it doesn't work, if I take it that the ultimately Earthly motivations Erik had pushed him into this supernatural situation (somehow.) It's just noticeable in a way I find distracting sometimes.

Moonlit Dreams

So I was thinking about the different dreams we see in Moon Knight #24. Specifically, Jake's dream, but let's take them one at a time.

Marc's dream - or the one Morpheus cooks up for Marc - is him living the suburban life. BBQs in the backyard with the family. His parents, his brother (a successful lawyer), Marlene, Diatrice, a couple of other friends. He and Frenchie have some sort of business together. The nature of it isn't clear, but his parents approve, so probably not being a mercenary. Everyone other than Marc's dad is wearing relaxed clothing, Sabbatini gives everyone a smile (but not a Joker-esque rictus grin), Rosenberg leans heavy on soft, golden light bathing the whole thing. Idyllic.

Though it's interesting Marc snaps out of it before Frenchie actually shows up. Everyone other than Marlene and their daughter are actually dead, and so far as I know, Frenchie's alive, just not on speaking terms with Marc these days.

Skip Jake for a moment, hop over to Steven. He's got the big mansion, the pool, the estate. Marlene's there, too, along with a couple of other supporting cast members, Nedda and Samuels. The help staff, maybe, although I feel like the lady might be his financial planner. They're standing at the table while Marlene sits and, honestly, looks like she's playing an invisible piano, but they're gone when Steven arrives, still in a tie, presumably home from a long day making big bucks. Because it's night out, dark outside, the inside lit with more of an orange glow, and not as soft. The power of bright, artificial lights. Just for Steven and Marlene.

No Diatrice, though. Does Steven feel no connection to the girl, only think of her as Marc's daughter? Maybe that's accurate, I don't know how that would work with a system. Probably depends on the system. Steven may have made peace with the idea he'll never get to be a part of her world, even in dreams, while Marc still holds some hope he'll get unfucked to the point he could be a dad.

What comes after Steven's not much interest. By that point Morpheus is flailing for something to make Marc settle down and enjoy himself. Thus, the Avengers welcome him back, or he gets a chance to just fight a lot of people forever. They're more simplistic, surface-level attempts.

So let's go to Jake. Jake's throwing a party at his favorite bar, to celebrate winning big on the horses.  How big? Big enough for this one party, or big enough to be set for life? Who knows, but Jake's happy because he could invite everyone he likes. They got plenty of food and drink and good music and be out of the weather and the danger.

He's immediately in contact with Marc, wrapping an arm around his shoulder with a big smile. Everything's the purple hue Rosenberg uses for Jake's scenes. Absolutely drenched in it, to the point it obscures the faces of the people at the party. Is that because Marc doesn't know these people, doesn't have access to Jake's memories, or because it's from Morpheus' powers? For all Jake's claims that it's a party, things seem pretty subdued. Most people are just sitting, staring blankly ahead. Maybe all these people, like most of the ones in Marc and Steven's dreams, are dead.

The thing I really noticed, though, was that Jake says this was what he always wanted, to be able to take care of everyone. Marc wants a quiet life with his family. Steven wants Marlene and the big house back (Jake's dream is the only one where Marlene doesn't make an appearance, after Jake once asked Marc if he really thought he was the only one who loved her.) And Jake wants to take care of people.

It makes think, probably inaccurately, of Jake as sort of the heart of the whole thing. That it's his compassion that makes Moon Knight want to protect people. Minus that, you've just got a guy who likes to beat the shit out of criminals, like the Punisher. It's not how I would have thought of it, but it's something the comic made me consider, at least.

MacKay's already touched on the question of what Jake and Steven bring to the party, how Moon Knight is operating with his hands tied when only Marc gets to be in control. But that was a surface level, the contacts and connections those two have. Moon Knight's supposedly unique among Khonshu's fists, at the minimum never having all the fighting techniques put directly in his brain, but the presence of Jake and Steven probably factor in as well. So they each much bring something as a person, that Khonshu thought would help.

That Far Away Galaxy Had Everything, I Tell Ya

I had this dream about two weeks ago that involved Ash Williams (Army of Darkness, Evil Dead) somehow landing in the Star Wars universe. I don't remember much outside it being him and Luke running around looking for something.

(I assume having Ash and Han Solo in the same place at the same time would have been too much dumb machismo for the the universe to survive.)

Knowing Ash, he screwed up reading something out of the Necronomicon and wound up in a galaxy far away, long ago. Which got me wondering if stuff like that even existed in Star Wars. Demons, other-dimensional eldritch horrors. Because if not, that might be a little something unusual for them to contend with.

A cursory internet search revealed that while there's no Book of the Dead specifically, there is a character named "Necronomicon", which, what the hell?! I'm hoping that's a name he chose for himself, because if his parents gave him that name, they need to be horse-whipped.

As it turns out, there are some ways to raise the dead. One involves some witches on a world called Dathomir, who have a spell for that. Then there's a Sith Plague that Palpatine dragged back out to have some scientists mess around with as a potential source of immortality. Well, if you consider being reduced to a nearly mindless, shambling entity, that happens to be hard to kill, I guess it worked.

I guess Skywalker and Co. might not be caught entirely flat-footed by Ash's screwups. The biggest threat might be Leia losing patience with Ash and just shooting him. Although if the creatures raised are as, peculiar, as the ones Ash normally deals with it, that might take some getting used to. His enemies can be cunning, but mostly they're kind of manic.

I'd Be More Wary Of Accepting Power From Him

I had this dream a week or so ago where I was creeping through this darkened basement of an abandoned and crumbling building. I was also Daredevil, though I wasn't seeing things in radar sense, if you were wondering. So maybe I was really Iron Fist, dressing up as Daredevil again. I reached a door which seemed to open into an empty room, albeit one with something glowing softly just ahead of me. I moved forward a bit, heard something behind me, and turned to find Dennis Rodman.

Yeah, I don't know, either. I'm pretty sure the dream was influenced by playing Dishonored, because as I was creeping along I was even holding the billy club the same way Corvo holds his sword when he moves in stealth mode. Which would make Rodman the Outsider in this, which seems appropriate. Otherworldly being with motivations and powers I can't comprehend? Sounds right.

"Hellish Wasteland" Got More Literal

Over the weekend I had this dream where I was in Fallout 3, roaming the Wasteland. It was the usual burned out remnants of a long ago destroyed society, but at least I wasn't getting attacked by Raiders or Deathclaws. Then doorways to Hell opened and there were demons all over the place. Which as a video game would probably not be all that different from Doom, except I didn't have a BFG 9000. I mean, I liked Ol' Painless from Fallout 3, but a .32 rifle is not necessarily the best instrument for fighting demons that are 25-30 feet tall. To say nothing of the swarms of moderately large - we're talking beagle-sized, as opposed to bear or car-sized, which is why I said "moderately large" - demonic insects that were this shiny black color, except for the parts that were a dull red.

I have a fair number of dreams that turn into gun battles, but this one didn't. It also didn't become one of those dreams where I'm being chased forever and just running over the same place over and over again. I didn't fight anything. I ran for a while, dodging demons as they clawed their way out of the earth. I slipped into an old one-story house through the back door to catch my breath, and watched 3 Super-Mutants as they peered out at the world through boarded up windows while they argued over what to do. You know things are bad when those guys are hiding and talking rather than running at something and trying to beat it to death with a board with nails in it.

Eventually I wound up in some large garage, or transmission facility, and was going to try and figure out the password for a computer so I could send off a radio signal. What that was meant to accomplish, I don't remember. I don't think I was trying to warn anyone so much as get a lift out of there, but I doubt Hell was only breaking through in the remains of the suburbs of Washington D.C. It didn't come to anything, because I noticed something crawling on the ceiling above me, and I was trying to decide whether it had noticed me yet, and whether I should keep trying or get the heck out when the dream ended.

What I found interesting was that the way things played out in the dream generally conformed to what I enjoyed about playing Fallout 3. I didn't get involved in any combat. Instead I spent my time running/sneaking around, seeing how the inhabitants were reacting to this set of events (that mostly involved dying, or hiding while trying to figure out a way to not die). So that was nice.

This Wouldn't Rank As The 100th Craziest Adventure Superman Had

Over the weekend, I had this dream that involved me reading an old Superman comic. I mean Silver Age Superman, Curt Swan art and everything, or as close to it as my brain could manage. In it, Supes had traveled to the future, and was trying to prevent a planet from being conquered. But he kept being stymied because the villain kept throwing alternate universe versions of Legion of Superheroes members at him. At one point, one of these types made plants come to life. Then the plants grabbed Superman and turned him in to a plant. Superman somehow changed himself back by making his (tree) limbs grow, and they got high enough in the atmosphere he absorbed enough sunlight to change back.

Or something, by that point, my dream self had started skimming the comic. Once I got to the next page, and saw Superman contemplating a giant map of the world - which had color representation of how much of it had been conquered so far - as he planned his last-ditch attempt to stop the villain, and that this plan involved him wearing a space helmet for some reason, I stopped reading entirely. My dream self refused to engage any further, and I woke up shortly thereafter.

What I found amusing was that my brain wasn't rejecting it for being too nonsensical. It was, but in the dream I was completely unsurprised by this. It made exactly as much sense as I expect Silver Age Superman comics to make. I just don't tend to enjoy them very much, and that carried into the dream as well. Still, within in the context of the story, I accepted things as making their own kind of sense. A guy who animates plants, and the plants can make other people plants? And then plants taunt the poor schmoe they changed? Sure, that sounds like it fits perfectly in this kind of story. Which makes me wonder if a lot of the stories of that time period weren't based on writer's dreams. They have that sort of logic where things seem to make sense from the inside, but viewed from the outside, we're left scratching our heads.

I also remember that in the dream, I wondered where the Legion from that universe was, and I half expected it would turn out the whole thing was an elaborate scam they were pulling on Superman, probably as part of a birthday "present". I suppose it's also possible they'd all forgotten their identities, to the extent they also forgot how their powers worked, and were able to do things with them they shouldn't have been. Can't rule that out either.

2013 Comics in Review - Part 5

Last night I dreamt I was reading Ms. Marvel #2, which is funny since I haven't read the first issue yet. There was an island lab, intelligent murderous monkey with an eyepatch and a flower in her hair, exploding volcano, stuff like that. But the art was horrible. I was so confused. "Where is Adrian Alphona?" I wondered. Ah well, just a dream, nothing to worry about.

This is the part where I list things and talk a bit about them. I took Best Anthology out because it would have been a category of one, and outside of the Batman Beyond  stuff, I didn't enjoy Batman Beyond Unlimited enough to feel it merited the distinction.

Best Ongoing Series (minimum 6 issues shipped):

1. Daredevil
2. Dial H
3. Avengers Arena

Daredevil wins for the 3rd consecutive year! What a surprise! I sure hope the impending cancelation, relaunch, and move to San Francisco doesn't throw it off its stride. Dial H's attempt to unseat it was undercut by the necessity of its rushed ending, and the fact I enjoy Chris Samnee and Javier Rodriguez' art more than Alberto Ponticelli's. Angel & Faith would have been 4th this year, but I felt the gap was sizeable between it and the Top 3. Hawkeye fell way off.

Best Mini-Series:

1. Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe
2. Rocketeer: Hollywood Horror
3. Atomic Robo: Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur

The top two are very close, but I think being set in the Marvel Universe gave Longshot a little bit of an edge. I care more about that fictional setting and its characters than the Rocketeer's.

Best One-Shot:

1. Empowered Special: Nine Beers with Ninjette
2. Atomic Robo Free Comic Book Day 2013
3. Justice League 23.3 - Dial E

I figured Dial E could count since it really has nothing to do with the title it's borrowing numbering from. As it is, the disjointed feeling of the story due to the constantly shifting artists hurt its coherence. Between the other two, Robo's story was nice, but slight and shorter, and Empowered had the advantage of Miyazawa's art.

Favorite Trade (purchased, not necessarily released):

1. Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin's Bandette Vol. 1: Presto!
2. Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&! Vol. 12
3. Kathryn Immonen & Valerio Schiti's Journey Into Mystery w/ Sif Vol. 1: Stronger than Monsters
4. Tony Cliff's Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant
5. Doug TenNapel's Power Up!

I usually consider manga separate from tpbs and such. Not sure why, just one of those things. But, I figured what the heck. Since I don't normally do a Favorite Manga list, I needed to get Yotsuba&! in here somehow. Volume 2 of the current Deadpool title was what got bumped, though it was close between that, Power Up!, and Delilah Dirk.

Deadpool: [What?! I got bumped for some story about an adorable kid who is amazed by everything?]

Sorry, Wade. Volume 3 is our early frontrunner for Favorite Trade of 2014.

Deadpool: [Great, the one where I remember I had a daughter only to find out she died in North Korea. Thanks.]

I am almost certain she's not dead.

Favorite Writer:

1. Kathryn Immonen
2. China Mieville
3. Ann Nocenti
4. Mark Waid

I didn't buy anything Immonen wrote in single issue format, but I bought at least 4 trades of things she wrote, and really liked 3 of them. Even the fourth (Pixie Strikes Back) wasn't bad, I just don't particularly care about Pixie or her family history. Waid's in 4th because of how disappointed I was in Pulp Friction.

Favorite Artist (minimum 110 pages):

1. Chris Samnee
2. Kev Walker
3. Rebekah Isaacs

Honorable mentions (for artists I liked with less than the minimum page count): Javier Rodriguez, Scott Wegener, David Lopez, Emma Rios, Timothy Green, Amanda Conner, Norm Breyfogle, Cliff Richards

I have the page count because I figure it's one thing to draw 20 really nice pages, but the key is in the artist who can maintain the level of quality while producing work on a regular basis. I still feel weird putting Conner and Rios on there, since each is below 10 pages.

I Might Be More Attached To Steph As Batgirl Than I Thought

You know how Wednesday I talked about Stephanie Brown's return to DC comics, and that I was OK with her being Spoiler because that's the identity she kept most of the time, so it's the identity I associate her with? My subconscious had to put in its two cents, so that night she showed up in a dream as Batgirl. I'm not sure how she was related to the start of it, when I was wandering through a downtown area that was deserted, save for all the assorted food cart vendors setting up. I thought they were getting ready for a football game crowd or something, but there was no one else on the street. Not even any already drunk college kids.

At some point I spotted Steph striding purposefully down the street in her Batgirl outfit, in broad daylight, which seems like a Steph thing to do. Or maybe a Bob Haney Batman thing to do. Stephanie could do a lot worse than emulate Haney Batman.

My Subconscious Doesn't Need Any Help Killing My Childhood

Two nights a go I had a dream that involved me settling under a tree, wrapped in a bear skin that had been conveniently left draped nearby. Then I settled in to watch roughly a dozen bobcats appear and stand around for a few minutes, with me futilely trying to get my camera out while the ground beneath turned to ice. Then a black panther appeared and was very happy to see me.

I spent entirely too much time today trying to figure out why a panther would be so glad to see me. There wasn't anything forthcoming in the dream. there was something about it being separated from its parents, then rescued by some lady, which guaranteed its parents would never come back for it, but I wasn't involved in that.

For some reason, I've been thinking about Tale Spin recently, which took the characters from The Jungle Book and put them in a world of roughly 1930s-ish sky pirates. I like the theme song. It's been awhile since I watched either of those, but I remember Baloo being pretty good pals with Bagheera, the black panther. Which makes me wonder if the panther came over because I was wearing the skin of its best friend, and the scent confused it.

I hope that isn't it, the panther probably represents stress seeking me out no matter how I try to disguise myself, but with my brain, I have to consider the possibility.

Spellbound

My dad loaned me a mess of books and movies over the weekend, so I guess we'll be making our way through that for the immediate future. Possibly also the intermediate future.

So, Spellbound. He must have bought this recently, hadn't even been unwrapped yet. Lucky me. I went in expecting that Constance (Ingrid Bergman) would struggle to prove that "Edwardes"/J.B. (Gregory Peck) was not who he said he was, that he didn't even know who he was, and that he might do anything to maintain that secret. Instead, his amnesia was revealed in the first half-hour, and Constance helps him to recover his memory, and elude the police in the meantime.

Constance herself has it pretty rough. At the start of the film, she's chided for being an ice queen, too detached and clinical to really help her patients. Granted, this is coming from another doctor who's interested in her, so the accuracy is questionable, but that doesn't make it less annoying. Then, once she develops an attraction for "Edwardes", the doctors all start kidding her about blushing when she hears his name, or being too emotional. She gets it coming or going.

The movie does slide dangerously close to that territory of the weepy female character, who sobs and asks a male character to fix things a few times, but mostly, Constance is in the driver's seat. She chooses to find Edwardes, to keep treating him, even when he gets loud or abrasive. She won't let him turn himself in, she prods him when he needs it, practically carries him at times when the strain gets to be too much. And she's the one who saves him in the end, with her mind, and what I'd suspect is the same detached certainty she was being criticized for in the beginning. Which is why I like Bergman more here than in say, Casablanca, were I felt like she was just tugged back and forth between Rick and Victor.

Peck, for his part, carries an intensity that's a little frightening, which makes the viewer more doubtful about him than Constance is. Usually in movies, characters don't look directly at the camera, they look to one side or the other. That's what all the other characters do in this film. Peck has several scenes where he's staring directly at you as he speaks, typically in a frustrated voice that carries a hint of anger beneath it. Since you aren't certain what exactly he's angry about, it's unnerving. Especially because Constance isn't looking directly at the camera, it creates a sense she's not seeing this like we are, which makes you worry she's missing something critical.

It wouldn't be a Hitchcock film if he didn't do try something with the camera. In this case, he likes to put it in a fixed location where a character is, and leave it there while everyone else moves around it. He does it a couple of times, each time with a potential murder weapon in the foreground. It's that thing he likes to do with suspense, the bomb you know is under the table that might go off at any second. The camera swivels so that the other character is always in the shot, but the weapon is always there, too. You can't ignore the threat, and it leaves you dreading the moment something in the foreground changes. A hammer being cocked, a step being taken, something you're sure is coming.

There's also a dream sequence J.B. has that incorporates designs from Salvador Dali into it. When I actually watched it, I thought it looked silly. People falling off roofs, guys with some sort of cloth stretched across their face, walls of eyes. The more I think on it, though, the more I like it. Nowadays, you figure something like that would be done with CGI, probably look incredibly slick. The fact it's done with real sets and props makes it more solid, which makes it more strange. The guy with no face is all the weirder because I know that is a real guy, he does have a face, it's just hidden. Someone actually made the misshapen wheel he dropped after he stepped out from behind the chimney. It's a physical thing, which makes a noticeable sound when it's dropped. The man on skis pitching off the roof looks so silly and awkward, it's more like how I think a dream should go. The farther away I get from my first viewing, the more effective that dream is at sticking in my brain. It's impressive.

I've Handed Concerns About AvX To My Subconscious

Three nights ago, I had this odd dream. I was reading a comic, definitely one from the '80s. Drawn by John Romita Jr., during his '80s stint on Uncanny X-Men. So somewhere in between Logan's marriage to Mariko that wasn't, and the Mutant Massacre.

There were two plotlines. One was someone either impersonating Wolverine, or controlling him, as a way to kill Xavier (who had use of his legs). There was definitely a panel of Wolverine sitting calmly in front of a roaring fire with his feet up on a footstool.

The other plot involved Cyclops being very confused and getting into it with the Avengers. Either they shot down a Blackbird with him in it, so he was kind of concussed, or he shot down a Quinjet because he was confused. His thought balloons were this run on stream of nonsense, mostly related to the idea of there being nothing left. It was as though he had a vision of a terrible future, and it turned his head inside out. Anyway, Cyclops decked Monica Rambeau, I guess because she was in a solid form, and he was still confused.

Everything lines up, timewise. Romita's style, the costumes, you could argue Cyclops confusion would fit if he's dealing with the conflict of whether to focus on X-Manning, or being a husband and father. Or, if we go with the future vision thing, he saw Magneto taking over the school and it freaked him out. There's just one detail that doesn't work: U.S. Agent showed up just as he knocked out Monica.

That was something I was very certain of in the dream. It wasn't Steve Rogers as The Captain (which didn't happen until a year or two after Mutant Massacre, anyway). It was definitely John Walker, because I saw him and thought to myself, "Things are going to get completely out of hand with that hothead."

My best guess is I was working out some things about AvX again. The story incorporates a Captain America figure you'd expect to behave like an abrasive jerk.Wolverine's the one trying to kill Xavier, which would seem more likely than Cyclops doing it. Besides, Logan's probably being mind-controlled, which is pretty normal for him, and it implies there's an actual malevolent force behind all this hero fighting, rather than it happening because all the heroes are big jerks.

The part that spooks me the most is my subconscious' apparently sympathetic reaction to Cyclops. The dream made it very clear he wasn't in his right mind, and wouldn't have struck Captain Marvel if he'd realized who she was. I'm not sure I approve of my subconscious doing that, though I can't argue with its conclusion.

In the Mouth of Madness

Going back to third grade, I can remember having premonition dreams. It's never been for anything important, merely flashes of me doing something mundane, but with a particular detail that's sticks in my memory. The first time it was a girl in my class wearing a yellow sweater, which she did the next day. Another time it was sitting in class watching the teacher explain some mathematical concept, but my grandmother was sitting next to me (my elementary school had a Grandparents' Day). Sometimes I remember them when I wake up, other times not until the event takes place. I'm sure there's a scientific explanation, or perhaps it's just coincidence, but it's kind of groovy nonetheless.

Over the weekend, my coworkers were watching some horror flicks, what with Halloween fast approaching. By this point we were watching In the Mouth of Madness, the movie was nearly done. Sam Neill (as John Trent) has finished relating his tale to David Warner. As they sit, regarding each other, one of my coworkers opines that she doesn't believe Trent could draw those crosses so neatly in black crayon on his own face. And there's the flash. Her saying that, as I sit at a very particular angle watching the screen, looking at a guy in a straitjacket with crosses on his face. I can't recall every seeing the movie before (or even having heard of it). I've certainly never watched it with my coworkers. Yet here we are.

Like I said, probably an easy explanation. Still, it's a little creepy to have it happen when you're watching a movie where the main character has to question if he has any control over his life at all, has to question his very notion of reality. I think my coworkers were more spooked by my knowing the correct age Charlton Heston died at without looking it up (he's in the movie, too). I don't know how I did that, either. Luck, I suppose.

I don't have a lot to say about the movie. It was a mistake to show so much of the "old ones" in the sequence where they follow Trent down the path that leads back to his world. They were distinctly not terrifying. Hideous, yes, but hardly the sort of thing that causes ones sanity to recede into the darkest corners of the mind as a defense mechanism. Effective use of shadow would have helped a lot. Other than that, eh, it was all right.

As someone who likes the believe we're all ultimately responsible for our own actions, a film where a person's actions are controlled by the whims of some hack writer is not really one I'm going to dig. Though I guess it's up in the air whether Trent made the decision to watch the film at the end, or if he was written that way. I suspect that latter, if only because it was awful convenient how he wasn't killed, even when his door was ripped loose, and there was clearly something watching him as he left the asylum.

Leningrad - Anna Reid

Anna Reid's Leningrad: The Eipc Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 showed up as part of some book club order of my dad's. It is what the title suggests, a history of the Siege of Leningrad, focusing primarily on the people inside the city, though it also includes letters and journal entries from a German soldier stationed as part of the besieging force.

Reid's purpose seems to be to present the experience as honestly as possible. In the last chapter she expresses the opinion that many of the earlier descriptions of it have been skewed, focusing on only the good things the ordinary citizens did, or being too kind towards the Party officials in charge. Reid focuses primarily on the first year, when things where the worst (by the second, less harsh winter, the Party seems to have gotten its act together), it's more than simply looking at the Soviet Party, its corruption, incompetence, or perhaps outright indifference to the plight of the people trapped within Leningrad. While using the records left by people who spent at least part of the war in that city, she highlights both the good and the bad of the regular citizens. The ones who made up fictious jobs at their places of business for a friend, so that person could have a worker's ration card, rather than the more meager dependent's card, or hiding them from the NKVD, which was still rounding up people on the typical bullshit charges*. The people who stole other's bread as they left the store, or bought starving people's possessions for a ridiculously small portions of food. The difficulties families had, once evacuations over Lake Ladoga were possible, about whether to bring weakened loved along, and risk their death on the trip, to stay and hope they could keep themselves and the loved ones alive, or to split up, with maybe one person staying behind to look after the elderly or extremely young.

Reid also looks at the situation from the military perspective occasionally. What the Soviets were doing to open rail lines to Leningrad, Hitler's absolute insistence that the city be taken and utterly destroyed, which at least drained off German soldiers that might have been useful elsewhere. It's a sad situation, because I had the feeling Leningrad, despite having a Baltic sea port, wasn't really strategically that important. But Hitler really badly wanted to make a statement, and for a long time, the Red Army was too poorly trained, equipped, and perhaps most critically, poorly run to do anything. Except get killed in staggeringly large numbers, of course.

Having not read any other books on Leningrad, I can't judge this one against others. I found it highly informative, and Reid uses the entries from people who lived through it to good effect in describing what it was like to live through. Also, the book was affecting enough that I had a deeply detailed dream that seemed heavily influenced by what she describes. It's a little staggering to realize, though, that the conditions in my dream were significantly better than what those people in Leningrad went through. Either my subconscious can't match up to reality, or it didn't want to try.

* One man, Ivan Zhilinsky, was arrested in March of 1942 for 'slandering Soviet reality'. He was initially supposed to be executed, but then received only 10 years in prison. Apparently relevant quotes includes stating the Brits and Americans were supplying the Soviets just enough to keep going, but not enough to launch a counter-offensive, and that even if Russians aren't natural Bolsheviks, they hate invaders. Another man was sent to prison after the war, when Stalin cracked down, for 'advocating the revolutionary idea of "art for art's sake".

Maybe It's A Sign of A Bibliophile?

Can you read in your dreams?

When I was a kid, I watched an episode of Batman: The Animated Series called Perchance to Dream. In it, Bruce wakes up and his world is perfect. He's married to Selina Kyle, he's not Batman, and his parents are alive! Naturally, there are some things that don't seem quite right, and the one that keeps bugging him is he can't read anything. Road signs, books, sky-writing, everything is gibberish, and this eventually leads him to the conclusion that he's in a dream. As opposed to him just being crazy. Turns out the Mad Hatter hooked him up to the technological equivalent of the Black Mercy plant. Poor Jervis, he couldn't understand why Bats wouldn't stick with his happiest fantasy. Maybe Hatter should have just hooked himself up to it. Or would it not have worked because he'll know he did that?

I think for a long time I took it as fact you can't read in dreams. Batman said so, and animated series Bats was a smart guy (It's so weird to realize I do like Batman at times other than when he's having a bad day. Or when he's Jean Paul-Valley). He was always using some obscure bit of geologic or botany knowledge or theater lore that he'd gone to the trouble to learn*. Somewhere along the line I actually had some dreams that involved reading that I remembered (I had one last night, not that there was a lot, but it was there and it was legible), so that confused me. Was Batman wrong? Or were those not actually dreams? I wonder about that sometimes. I know lucid dreams are dreams, but it seems strange that I'm aware enough to interact with the dream, but I'm still asleep.

I thought I'd ask my audience. A little informal poll.

* Or he'd hooked up his computer to relevant databases. Unless he compiled all the information in those databases, which would be pretty impressive.

If You Don't Want To read About A Dream I Had, Come Back Tomorrow

I figure I at least owe you a warning.

In the dream I became annoyed with these salespeople were trying to sell me something pricey and unnecessary when I came in to buy some perfume*. I ended up telling them they'd cost the store a sale, and walked out in a rather snooty fashion. I think I held my nose up in the air as I spun and left.

That's not too weird, because while I know salespeople are just doing their job, and they need those commissions, I hate the hard sell. It riles up the contrarian in me, because I know what I wanted, and here's this person trying to convince me I don't really know what I want, I should want what they tell me to want.

Anyway, the entire sales staff of the store took umbrage with that, so they opened fire as I left the store. Not unusual; Dream Me is not real great at making friends (at least not in the dreams I remember). At least Dream Me is cooler under fire. I returned fire, and actually hit the two I aimed at, which is strange, because I'm a lousy shot, whether in the dream world** or the waking one.

They gave chase, and I was actually running well. Usually it's like being in slow-motion. Or worse, I turn to look over my shoulder, and start doing these pirouettes I can't stop. It's gotten to the point some part of my mind won't let Dream Me look over his shoulder while running, because it knows that'll happen. This time, though, I was zipping along. Not super-speed, just running at a good clip, and not feeling winded or hampered. Maybe that real-world jogging is paying off.

* I think this means I've played too much Persona 3 recently, since perfume is something you can buy for a girl you're seeing, though not all the girls like perfume. That, and the dream started in a bookstore, where I was browsing the shelves with a character from the game. Well too bad subconscious, I'm not going to stop playing Persona 3!

** In dreams, this doesn't extend to people I'm observing shooting. They can be quite good shots. But if I'm the person doing the shooting, yeah, the target is more than likely got nothing to worry about.

My Subconscious Needs To Stop Teasing Me

You ever have dreams where you see or hear something that seems really intriguing? Like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer needs money, and he has a dream where he invented some revolutionary device that would make him millions, but he never gets a chance to see what it is, or what it does.

Last night, among other things, I dreamt I was reading a post discussing something about changes in writing in comics from the '80s to now. In the post, there was a graphic novel used as an example of the older style called Domino: Heart of Arclight, with a cover that looked drawn by Tim Sale*.

I have no idea what the story was about, though the gist of the post's text suggests it was a typical sort of '80s story, with a focus on current issues, but not handled in a particularly subtle manner**. Still, I want to know. If I had somehow managed to make the image on the screen into a tangible copy and opened it, what would it have been about? A love story? A tale of morality, difficulties in choosing between good and evil (since Arclight was a member of Mr. Sinister's Marauders back in the day)? Maybe it would be a quest story. I really have no idea, but it's frustrating.

There was a dream a couple of weeks ago where at the end Alex and I were watching a musical with his parents, and I think the song may have been something I came up with. It wasn't great (not much lyrical variety, as I recall), but better than I'd expect for someone as tone deaf as myself. How about you?

* Doesn't make much sense, as Domino didn't exist until the '90s, and I just now learned by looking it up that Tim Sale was drawing comics in the '80s. As far as I know that I knew, he started in the '90s. The reason I think it was him was the style for Domino's face reminded me of some work of his I saw in Spider-Man: Blue.

** From which I infer my subconscious thinks such things are discussed with more depth and less broad strokes today. I'm not sure my subconscious is right in its assessment.

A Connection That Spans Everything

While I was reading Jeffrey Carver's The Infinity Link, I had deja vu. There's a sequence where one character describes tachyons to another. He talks about how something moving at sublight speed can never reach light speed, and something moving faster than light speed (tachyons) can never be slowed to merely light speed. As I read that, i had the strangest sense that not only had I read that exchange before, I'd blogged about it, and had a discussion about it in the comments. Which is impossible. I've never read the book before. I think it must have been one of my premonition dreams, which I have periodically*.

Anyway, the book. Mozelle Moi (Mozy for short) is a test subject at Sandaran Research Center. She enters a mental link-up with a fellow called Kadin, and they go through various challenges, with the purpose being psychological research. What does Kadin need to do to convince Mozy to go along with him? What are the buttons he needs to push? Mozy falls in love with Kadin, who is up on a space station, and resolves to reach him somehow. Fortunately, SRC is working on using tachyons as basically a transporter, and she convinces Hoshi Aronson, who works at SRC to help her. Naturally, things are not what they seem, and she receives a rude surprise. Also, the attempt does not go smoothly.

Earth has been receiving tachyon signals they believe are being created artificially, from something headed this way. Kadin is being prepped to make contact, and try to establish peaceful relations, and Mozy has just placed herself in the middle of it, to the consternation of the higher-ups. Contact is made, things are going fairly well, but contact with Earth has been lost, and with the military involved, you know what that means.

The book shifts focus between several different characters. Mozy, Hoshi, Jonders (who is in charge of the link setup), Leonard Hathorne (who's one of the higher-ups), and Joseph Payne (a reporter chasing a story). There are a few chapters focusing on other characters, such as Slim Marshall the man in between Jonders and Hathorne in the command structure, and Payne's friend Donny Alvarest, but the first five dominate. I generally like this, as each character tends to have their own circle of supporting characters. Mozy has Mardi and Mother Program, Jonders has his family and Kelly, the security chief. Payne has Denine, his girlfriend, Teri and old friend, and Donny, plus a professor. Some of these supporting players serve to connect the main characters, others are their for plot or character conflict purposes (or both). It gives a sense of scope to the book, that the world is a big place, with lots of people, and one event can impact many of them. So that's good.

On the downside, with so many characters, it feels like certain bits fall through the cracks, because Carver didn't have time to explore them further. Mozy has a scar on her face, from an attack she and a friend survived when they were teens. While this feeds into her questions of self-worth, and how she interacts with people (defensively), there's never any indication from the characters we see that they notice or care about the scar. Maybe that's the point, but I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to see some indication of how it makes it difficult for Mozy to interact with people from the perspective of those others. Also, in the Slim Marshall chapter, as Marshall wonders why he feels so tense, he questions if part of it is feeling that, as a black man, he has some extra standard to uphold in this position of authority. He dismisses it quickly, thinking he's put those feelings well behind him, but if he had, why would the possibility occur to him? That's the only chapter from Slim's perspective, though, so it felt out of place, an anvil dropped in the middle of that paragraph, then ignored. I was considering adding how quickly Kadin exits the book as a major player, but I think that reinforces something the aliens point out a couple of times. Namely, humans have very limited perceptions, and it's difficult for them to go beyond them when confronted with something they aren't prepared for**. Mozy works through it, but Kadin is more limited, and can't.

I'm not sure about the importance of singing to the aliens, certainly not as it relates to joining disparate species. What would sound glorious to one group might sound ear-shatteringly horrifying to another. Also, the aliens love Earth rock n' roll. Well why not? Rock n' roll is only the jammingest musical style in the whole universe! It's totally got the music of the Universe*** beat!

The character that most intrigues me is Hoshi, who acted out of strong emotion, with disastrous results. He descends into madness as the story progresses, and questions his true motives for acting, which made me question them as well. It seemed like he was trying to make Mozy happy, while leaving some small chance he could be happy as well. I don't think it was going to work, even if things hadn't gone south, but I'm not willing to label him one of those "Nice Guys" that aren't really nice. Hoshi probably would apply that descriptor to himself, though, but I wonder if that would change if he knew how things turned out?

I think what happened with this book is that there are several ideas presented I wanted to know more about, that were really just pieces added for atmosphere. Each section of the book starts with a couple of pages from the perspective of some sentient species in the Solar System that isn't humans. See, now I want to know more about the beings living deep inside the sun, or the methane-slush eating creatures of Titan, or the crystalline entities on Pluto. We get brief glimpses, mostly how they react to the aliens' tachyon-signal songs, but how their civilizations worked prior to that interests me more than a story where humans try to form peaceful relations with aliens, but the military almost fucks it up, because that's what it's for, apparently.

Related to that, one other bit I find myself wondering about. Once the aliens arrive, and the public knows about them, it's said that while there is some panic, most people are excited about the aliens, and when word gets out the government tried to nuke the aliens, people are angry, wanting to know why they can't be friends with the aliens? I wonder, if extra-terrestrials actually did show up, would that be the way reactions would go? Or would the majority of the people be terrified, or aggressive? I'd like to think curiosity would win out, and we'd extend a friendly hand, but a more fearful response wouldn't surprise me in the least****.

The possibilities brought up by the book intrigued me more than the story itself, but I still enjoyed the story, I just felt things progressed to quickly in places, but there's no strict timeline, so the plot may take place over an even longer period of time than I think. The book read quickly, though some of the techno-jargon made me start to zone out, and the aliens' tendency to speak over each other, kind of grates, even if it is probably the best representation of that particular organizational approach. The Infinity Link isn't going to break into my favorite books of all time list (if I had one of those), but I feel the time spent reading it was well-spent.

* Though they never tell me something useful, like lottery numbers. It's more like "That one girl in your class with the scar will wear a yellow sweater tomorrow", and lo and behold, she does. The Legion of Superheroes would laugh their asses off at me.

** At least the aliens aren't particularly condescending about it.

*** Also known as the microwave background radiation that is the remnant of the universe's formation, and can be heard as music, apparently.

**** Not coincidentally, while I'd hope the aliens were friendly, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to kill us, and take our planet for their own. It's the kind of thing we do.

It Wasn't Nearly As Terrifying As You'd Expect

Two nights ago, I have this dream. I'm in my grandmother's house, and so is the Hulk. Big, green, not Banner-smart, but a little more articulate than "Hulk Smash!". For some reason, my grandmother's basement was now a sewage treatment plant, and I was fighting it out with the Jade Giant, which is kind of cool. I made some kind of attempt to immobilize the Hulk by jamming sai blades into his deltoids*, then stupidly let off with the pressure so I could try and slash Hulk's elbow ligaments. Yeah, that didn't work.

At some point, Green Hulk becomes Mr. Fixit Hulk, and since he was kind of a mean bastard, I decided it was time to run. I charged out the front door, and who should be fleeing alongside me but Banner himself. We went opposite directions down the road (him east, me west), and then I look back at the house. Fixit wasn't ready to let things drop, so he was giving chase. He jumped over the entire road, the barb wire fence on the other side of the road, landed in the cow pasture**, and began racing after me.

On a mountain bike. This was after his attempts to use roller blades to pursue me where thwarted by the lawn. But grass proved no problem for Fixit's much too small mountain bike. He just made that thing hop right over the lawn, and the road, and landed in that field, and started tearing after me. Really, if he hadn't been chasing me with the intent to smash, that would have been pretty neat, you know?

I'm heading out for the weekend. Going to the 2009 Cape Girardeau Comic Convention with Alex. I'll try and post over the weekend, but no promises. Have a nice weekend!

* I know that came from the Millar/Romita Jr. "Enemy of the State" arc in Wolverine, because Elektra did the same thing to Logan.

** As you might have guessed, my grandmother lives in the country.

Smatterings Of This And That

These are, as far as I know, unrelated, and none of them really merit their own post, so I'll just toss them all together.

- I've been thinking of the word "circumvent" lately. In the most specific sense, how I would attempt to depict it in Pictionary, which I played with some of the housemates a couple weeks ago. Except "circumvent" never cam up, and a lot of the times, it's not even that, the word just pops into to my mind, no connection to whatever else I was mulling over.

- I was listening to some music earlier this afternoon, on my Pandora Avant Garde Jazz station. The thing I feel like I notice about a lot of the songs is the background instruments that only come in occasionally, and how a lot of times I think they're actually a random noise from my surroundings. One of the songs I was listening to had something in the background that I thought was the blinds smacking against the window frame. I find that kind of distracting, but maybe it would be less so if I weren't listening to the music while reading blogs. Maybe jazz demands/requires my full attention to work.

- Problem with pleasant spring days like today is that the wasps are out, and they keep flying in my window. No, there's no screening, and no, that's not my fault. I don't really have anything against wasps, since they don't seem interested in stinging me, but if I let them hang out in here, next thing you know they're building nests, and with lots of wasps, the possibility I unintentionally rile them up and get stung increases, so I've had to kill three intruders already. Or was it four? I've been at this so long, the deaths have all started to blur together. . .

- Dream last night involved Peter Parker in prison, acting as a hitman for the Kingpin. Despite being in prison, was able to wear a John Travolta style Saturday Night Fever, white jacket and pants over a black shirt combo, accessorized with an Uzi on a strap slung over his shoulder outside the jacket. Subtle, Pete. Also, Pete walked up to some person (the guy he was meant to kill?) and said 'Fat Eddie's back', and he was referring to himself. Furthermore, it looked as though it was drawn by Frank Miller, circa his work on Daredevil.

- Still an improvement from the preceding dream, where I was engaged in a rooftop rifle shootout with John Malkovich's character from In The Line of Fire. Considering that "Booth" was more than a match for Clint Eastwood, I guess my dream self should feel lucky he didn't get shot, and stopped Booth from killing whoever it was he was after this time.

- Did anyone else see the article on Todd Marinovich in Esquire? That was some kind of crazy stuff, especially his story about the guy who injured himself in a pickup game, then started dying when Todd gave him some heroin for the pain, and Todd swears he could see the guy's spirit leaving his body. I agree with the person I saw discussing it on Deadspin: at least Marinovich isn't trying to blame anyone else for the less than exemplary path his life has taken. It seems like I should feel worse for him, but it seems like he did so much of it to himself, and I have friends who had worse hands dealt to them, that handled them better, it's kind of hard. Be nice if he could actually get himself straightened out and stay that way long enough to help some people avoid the way he went