I dreamt last night that I was teaching or working in a seminary. I was working on a project where, with a team of grad students, I was doing a thorough cataloging of all of the verbs in the New Testament associated with Jesus, particularly from the Gospels and doing a statistical analysis of the frequency of these verbs so that we could say, with some statistical certainty, what Jesus would do.

I remember I had a rather lengthy discussion of whether we should admit the verb "to be" into our calculations as was argued that the word is often just a linking verb and has no real existential meaning in most cases.

I also remember a dean or a vice president or some such authority being very upset with me because he thought I was trivializing the whole thing and wasting time.

The interesting thing is, now that I have had the dream, I think this might be a fun project to do in reality.

Posted by ironic1 at 9:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I had a dream last night that Noah was gay. God saw how horrible the world was and decided the whole of creation needed to be reset, so God got Noah and his partner, who both looked really buff, and explained the plan and that they would have to gather all the animals on board the ark.

Noah, perplexed by this plan, wondered aloud to God about what would happen after he and his partner died off and there were no more humans left. God led them down into the lower levels of the ark where there were these humanoid robots in various states of construction.

"These will replace humans as caretakers of my creatures," said God. "They can't do any worse than humans have."

And that's where the dream ended.

Posted by ironic1 at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I didn't sleep well last night. I often don't when I have to get up early to catch a train or plane. Light sleeping is a great opportunity for weird dreams and last night didn't disappoint.

I dreamt I was a contestant in some sort of reality show and I was among about 40 or so people in a small town in north central or northwestern Minnesota. Camera crews greeted us when we arrived, but we really had no idea what we were supposed to do and there was no one there to tell us. We were shown to where were supposed to stay, but still no one told us what we were supposed to do, and the locals were equally clueless, but very excited that we were there.

Some people in the group thought that we were supposed to pair up and that it was all about finding a love connection.

Some people thought we were in some sort of survivalist competition. After all, why would we be in Minnesota otherwise?

Some people had no idea why we were there and were getting more and more paranoid with every passing hour.

Some people waited until they were told what to do, which never happened.

Most people apparently believed the reason we were there was to argue about why we were there.

I decided to put on a show.

I tried to get to know everyone in the group, figure out what their talents were, and started to organize a show around their talents. I found a local venue. Spent time talking to the locals. When I found out there was some need in the town, I made it a benefit show and started publicizing it in the around town.

That's about where the dream ended. There was some bad weather and something about a nearby army base. There may have been zombies too, I don't entirely remember. But that's how dreams go. They never really end, they just morph into something else.

Posted by ironic1 at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I had a dream last night in which I looked up and saw a handful of moons in the sky, each a carbon copy of the other, and strung out like a pearl necklace across the sky. In my dreamlike logic I thought, "Why had I never noticed that before?" and just accepted that there were multiple moons and probably always had been.

Posted by ironic1 at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I had a lot of weird dreams last night, but perhaps the most entertaining was of an exodus of superheroes who fled earth for another planet to start over and then, several generations later, they found that the planet was doomed because of a microscopic fiber worn in their superhero outfits.

Posted by ironic1 at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just had this dream in which I had rented a truck to move some old, personal items out of storage. I was staying overnight at a college because of some convention or symposium or something professional and I got up the next morning to find that the truck had been emptied!

At first I kind of shrugged because it was old, old stuff in storage that I didn't really care about that much. And then I started to think about all the old journals and drawings and flotsam and jetsam from my youth and I got peeved. I walked into the closest building to see if I could find any clues as to who did this and I saw my friend Sienna in the hall.

Sienna beckoned me into a classroom which had categorized piles of my and other people's stuff, including filing cabinets and drawers. There were about a half dozen people in the room and some of them were reading off of pink paper a play developed from something I'd written in a journal when I was a teenager. The only other person I recognized in the room, John, was uploading video snippets and pieces of my life to the internet.

Outraged, I demanded to know what was going on. They kind of smirked at me, dropped some things in some files, and left the room. After a little poking around I figured out that they were using my material as fodder for their internet performance pieces and exposing the overwrought, emotional person I was as a teenager. Weren't we all?

About that time I woke up.

Posted by ironic1 at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had a dream the other night that I was going out with a group of colleagues, people from work as it were, to play baseball. There were so many of us that we had to use two adjacent ballfields. The first one was perfect, well kept, beautiful, with a fully functional scoreboard. The adjacent field was overgrown, irregular, with trees growing here and there in the field, and the bases were poorly marked.

I ended up playing in the irregular field, with loosely defined teams and even more loosely defined rules. It seemed to be a hodgepodge of baseball, kickball, tag, and improv comedy. And we were having a great time.

In the meantime in the other field the crisply suited teams were playing their game. Occasionally a ball from their field would fly into ours and, to their consternation, we'd often throw it back into play impishly.

I think I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm never going to climb the ladder in my chosen profession. I'm never going to go "big league." But it's not because I'm untalented, it's just because I'm not playing that game. I'm over here in an overgrown field playing by Calvinball rules and I'm enjoying myself quite nicely, thank you very much.

Posted by ironic1 at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I was just moving through the zone between being awake and being asleep when I heard a female voice with a distinctly Chinese accent say...

"Fate has three children: Can't Wait, Long Shot, and Live Dog."

It sounded so familiar and right that I looked it up, but couldn't find that quote anywhere. I guess it was just a special message for my birthday.

Posted by ironic1 at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I had a good night of very vivid dreams last night and what's more I remembered most of them in the morning. In fact while I was waking up I was still in that delicious semi-dream state where everything takes on a sheen of awe and wonder.

One of the most provocative of my nocturnal narratives was a tale of two people who were infatuated with each other but were too shy to let the other know because, unbeknownst to each other, they were both secretly cyborgs. He had lost his original legs and arms and she had lost her original arms and most of her face. Both were afraid of the rejection they'd face if the other found out that he or she wasn't completely human. In the dream I was a friend to each of them and knew their secrets, but couldn't convince either of them to overcome their shyness.

Had any great dreams lately?

Posted by ironic1 at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)