Avatar Is Pretty Boring

So my roommate rented Avatar from Netflix, and we both watched the first half for the first time before getting bored and going to bed. I shouldn't have been surprised that it was boring—Titanic was like a bad soap opera (read: wooden) until the boat started to sink and water rushed through the corridor and stuff. Avatar has a problem in the special effects front that, while Titanic's special effects were new and exciting, computer animation is pretty ho-hum without the interesting 3D parts. Now, I have not read any spoilers, but I'm going to guess that after the big showdown, the humans will go back to Earth, except for Jake and perhaps Sigourney Weaver, who will find a way to stay in their avatars permanently. Maybe Colin from Bones will join them, but he hasn't gotten enough face-time so far for me to make a judgment about him.

What really bugs me about Avatar is that it's just like Disney's Pocahontas except the natives have blue skin instead of brown. It's even got the Indian princess who is meant to marry the brave warrior and future chief but chooses the stupid reformed invader instead. Is it a coincidence that all the evil humankind in the movie are white? I doubt it. The movie seems like an attempt to apologize for white oppression while actually being very patronizing towards "native" (read: backwards, but peaceful and connected to nature, awwwww) cultures. It carries the noble savage archetype to a far-away planet, but it's still the noble savage archetype.

The only part I identified with is Jake when he's not in his avatar. He says the human world has become like a dream, and he can't wait to get back to the (What are the blue people called again? I feel like they keep saying different things.) world. I feel like that a lot. Last night, I was dreaming about traveling rivers in a log canoe with my elementary school friends Gareth and Denise, except they'd grown up and Gareth looked like Martin Freeman. We hit rapids and had to drag our canoes all the way back to camp in the middle of a temperate rainforest. The trees were green. There were no mosquitoes. My allergies didn't bother me, even around the giant ferns. I wasn't tired. Why should I ever wake up from that? Sometimes I feel like I just go through the motions when I'm awake so I can fall asleep and go back to Dreamland, or at least enter one of my many complex daydreams.

The Time I Lost My Shoe at Church but Was Actually Looking for a Boyfriend

My latest dream happened during my customary Sunday afternoon nap, and I dreamt about church. I was at church, but no one would talk to me except this brother who was dating a sister in the ward. (Everyone at church is called brother or sister; I'm not talking about a black guy right now and saying brother as a synonym for black. Actually, the brother in this particular dream was either white or Latino.) He and I were talking about something church-related, but he was sitting really close to me and leaning in. I felt uncomfortable because I knew his girlfriend, but I also enjoyed flirting with him because flirting is fun.

Then church ended, so we all left the building to walk to the parking garage that was several blocks from the church because the church was in a big city like Salt Lake City or Vancouver, BC, or something. I had lost one of my beige pumps, but then I decided I must have left it in my car. I started walking unevenly down the street in one shoe and one stocking-foot. Then the sky exploded with that crazy monsoon rain which we had yesterday. I didn't have a raincoat, so I was soaked. My shoeless foot was particularly wet. I could feel the wet concrete through my nylons every time I stepped on the ground. At one of the intersections, I ran into a metal bar that was about ankle-height, and it scraped my leg. So my nylons were torn, my leg was bleeding a little, I was soaking wet, the rain was so heavy I could barely see through it, and I only had one shoe. Some of the people from church passed me on the sidewalk and gave me funny looks, and I wanted to snap, "Yeah, I only have one shoe. What's your problem?!" but I didn't. (In real life, I'm trying to become less confrontational.) When I finally arrived at the parking garage, I had to crawl on my hands and knees, in true dream fashion, through a very tiny concrete opening to get to my car. When I got to my car, I realized that of course my other shoe couldn't possibly be in the car because, when I walked to the church that morning, I'd had on both shoes. Duh! I thought to myself, Why did you ever think the shoe would be in the car?! As I contemplated hobbling back through the rain to retrieve the shoe that I'd taken off during Relief Society in order to wiggle my toes for a few minutes, I woke up. It took me a few seconds to remind myself that I'd actually had both of my shoes on my feet when I came home from church.


The symbolism is pretty basic: People my age like to run around in pairs, but I'm running around by myself—I only have one shoe on, but I should have two. When I look for the matching shoe in the car when it's obviously in the Relief Society room, I'm looking for my match in the wrong place. Flirting with the man who already had a girlfriend is taking advantage of an opportunity to not risk a real relationship. What I learned from this dream, that is, the impression that I received when I woke up and thought about it, is that I really want a boyfriend for the first time in a few years. That's not necessarily a good thing because if I just want someone to make out with, hang out with on Friday nights, and canoodle with during Sunday School, I can find somebody. It means I'm willing to date someone who is not and never will be a suitable eternal companion just because I want some temporal companionship. That's how I did it before my mission, but now I'm too old for that. I need to get serious. On the other hand, my schoolwork always suffers when I date.

The Time I Was Accused of Murder at Oxford University

Last night's dream started out smashingly: I fulfilled my life-long goal of studying at Oxford University. I had some sort of fellowship or apprenticeship because I was doing some teaching too. Then the faculty of my department went on a beach trip. The beach was very close to the college, and the water was fairly warm. (None of that is accurate.) Anyway, I was splashing around in the ocean with two of my friends (a man and a woman) from the college when we heard a lot of yelling. Two of the men in the water had started to drown, presumably because they were swimming drunk. My friends and I swam to them and pulled them to shore. It was too late for one of the drowned men—he was already dead. The other one was still barely alive, so my guyfriend picked him up, and we all hurried to the closest building, which was a dorm or something for the college. (In real life, we would have performed CPR and said, "You, call 999!", but it was a dream.)

The door of the building was locked, so my female friend and I knocked while our guyfriend said his burden was getting heavier. Finally the door opened a crack, but the woman inside said she knew I'd killed both of the men. She was not letting me in to kill her too. "But this one's still alive!" I pled, but she didn't believe me. Then we flashed forward a bit, and the police were investigating me for murdering both of the men because the one had died after we couldn't take him inside. They thought I'd poisoned the men because I had a low-class accent—I said sick instead of ill or something. Something else happened, but I can't remember because I forgot it when I woke up.

More Like a Nightmare

Last night's dream involved foot-long brown rats and woke me up at five-fifteen in the morning. I still remember the whole story about why I was spending time among large rats and all the characters (including four cats who were afraid of the rats), but I don't want to write about it because rats are gross.

The Time I Tried to Talk Kurt from Glee out of Committing Suicide

Last night's dream wasn't as exciting as the night before's, but it probably reveals a lot about my subconscious mental state.

It started with me organizing an acting troupe that met at night in the parking lot of a generic Westfield mall. Finn and Kurt from Glee joined (the characters, not the actors who play them), along with several real people I know from church and school. I think my educational psychology professor was there too—foreshadowing the ensuing freakiness. We were supposed to work on our acting by doing improv sketches and monologues and stuff, but mostly we just sat in a circle of folding metal chairs (the church chairs) and talked about our lives. It was a little like The Book Group (which no one should ever watch because it gets dirty quite unexpectedly).

Anyway, one day, we all got together on our metal chairs and discovered that nearly all of us were adopted. Including me. (I'm not adopted in real life. I even have the inherited autoimmune diseases to prove my biological relationship with my parents.) In my dream, I had just found all the papers about how my (actually incredibly fertile) parents were infertile and, after many 1980s fertility treatments, adopted me. I saw my parents going to the adoption agency in a very flowery flashback. Finn from Glee also had found out he was adopted, as did Kurt. Everyone in the group experienced a lot of feelings of abandonment and betrayal. I also was angry that my parents had lied to me for so long.

Kurt was so depressed by this revelation, however, that he pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot himself. Everyone ran away and around the corner when they saw the gun except Finn and I. Finn and I pled with Kurt not to do it, and Kurt menaced us with his gun. Then he just shot his brains out anyway. Finn and I had brains and blood splattered all over us, which was gross, but once we got cleaned off, we just went inside the mall and talked about acting and our parents some more. The sun rose, my alarm went off, and I woke up.

The Time I Tried to Fight the Daleks but Ended Up Talking to German Tourists at a Conceptual Theme Park

   Okay, so last night's dream = super weird. I was one of the Doctor's companions, and I was British. As the dream started, I heard/read a blog-like commentary saying that the dream was going to start strong but then get convoluted when I got carried off and stuck in another world that has nothing to do with Daleks.
   Anyway, we were trying to fight the Daleks, whose spaceship—which looked kind of like those triangular ships (Imperial Star Destroyers—I just looked it up) in Star Wars because they were huge and light gray with all of these pipes and stuff all over the outside—was parked on some planet that may or may not have been Earth. C-3PO was with us, I think. Anyway, I volunteered to covertly fly onto the ship with my jet pack and check things out. I was wearing this skin-tight white suit that made the jet pack work correctly or something. (My body was way taller and hotter than my real one.) So I flew up to the ship and passed information to the Doctor and either Captain Jack or Amy's fiancé Rory through a comlink.
   Suddenly, the Daleks saw me! "Ex-ter-min-ATE!" they yelled, shaking with rage and pointing their mechanical eyestalks at me. I jumped off the bridge and frantically tried to get my jet pack to engage as I fell. I guess it usually needs to warm up or something. As the uneven surface of the ship rushed towards me, I felt a jolt as the jet pack came to life, and I flew away. Unfortunately, I had scraped against one of the sticky-out bits of the Dalek ship (Star Wars ships always had lots of texture during the original three movies) and torn my suit. The jet pack started to sputter.
   Just as I started to fall, a skinny red-skinned (I mean the color red) humanoid who looked kind of like those Avatar people except red (Can you tell I haven't seen it?) who could fly scooped me out of the air and flew me over the continent and half an ocean.
   When the creature grabbed me, I heard the Doctor remark, "An Angel!" when he saw what was happening through his binoculars, so the alien race must be called Angels. (Except they are not the Weeping Angels.)
   She took me to an island that looked kind of like a mix between Disney's Magic Kingdom, Happy Hollow, and Oompa Loompa Land. It was very sunny and filled with fanciful pinkish concrete forms, fountains, and little red children playing in the water. "This is the south part of my country," the Angel told me. She kept flying over that part to the north part, which was populated by little pink children (again, I mean the color pink) who were playing in a kids' amusement park. It had a light green carousel, a light orange Ferris wheel, a really tall red water slide (which looked kind of like a scaled-down version of the colossal water slide in this dream I had a few months ago about the Coronado Bridge and houseboats), and a slow pastel yellow roller coaster that was little more than a train ride.
   The Angel gently placed me feet-first on the ground, said, "You're safe here," and flew off.
   I think the island was like the island of the Lotus-Eaters because everyone was in kind of a daze, just riding the rides over and over. I somehow changed from my torn skintight jumpsuit to a touristy pair of linen shorts and a linen button-up shirt over a red t-shirt. Then, since I had nothing better to do, I got on the yellow roller coaster, which was called Moral Dilemma. (I'm not kidding.)
   As my little yellow car climbed over the little hill, another roller coaster car pulled up alongside me. In it were two human men. I waved at them. They waved back and said something in German.
   German tourists are everywhere! I thought to myself.
   "British," I said, pointing to myself. They stared at me funny as we went around a curve. "English," I tried again, pointing to myself.
   "Ah," said dark-haired German dude, "hello. Good morning."
   "Hello," I replied.
   "You . . . go to school and . . . college?" light-haired German dude asked.
   "Um, yes," I answered, smiling.
   They looked at each other and spoke German rapidly. My dream-self realized they thought I was fifteen and were arguing about who got to get with the cute teenager first. I wanted to correct their misconception about my age, but then I realized it would be rude to correct them when they were just learning English. They probably don't even know the word university, I told myself. (That was silly because I'm fairly sure the German word for university is probably university or something really close.)
   Yet, in a way, I had lied by letting them go on with the wrong idea. That, I think, was the moral dilemma. Once I realized that, I woke up.

The Time I Defeated Satan with a Spanish Bible

My dream last night was pretty boring, so today I'm going to talk about a crazy-detailed dream I had during my mission:


In the dream my mother was sending me on a mission, but it wasn't a missionary mission. It was a mission to retrieve buried treasure from inside the underwater skeleton of a giant sea snake. She helped me prepare for the dive in a creepy blue-tinged forest that looked like the forest where the Puritans take the human sacrifice in the Breaking Benjamin video "So Cold" (which I haven't seen for years, by the way). I suited up in full scuba gear (which I have never worn in my life). She packed my waterproof backpack with a plastic box of crayons and her special compact 1960 Reina-Valera Bible, which she bought in Seville during her mission, in a watertight plastic bag. Then I dove into the cold, dark water and swam down to the bottom of the cove, guided only by my headlamp.

underwater treasure by nicolshe, deviantART

At the bottom of the cove, as expected, I found the skeleton of a giant ancient sea snake. It's body was much wider in diameter than I am tall, so it must have been about eight feet or so. Between its teeth I swam, and I found gold coins carpeting what had been the bottom of its mouth. They shone from within, so the whole skeletal mouth, which was at least as large as a walk-in closet, was bathed in watery golden light. In the center of the sea of coins was a large, lidless chest containing gold coins, red jewels, and white pearls. I felt drawn to an onyx necklace from which dangled some sort of amulet—something that would bind Satan's power for all eternity. As I reached for it, the skeleton of the sea snake's tongue came to life. The end of the tongue bone was flat, shovel-shaped, and sharp, like a ceremonial spear. It lashed at me, trying to crush me or slice me in half.

Leaving the amulet in the chest, I twisted my way out of the snake's mouth only to be confronted with the Devil. He was a dark shadowy shape in the water. He was trying to keep me from resurfacing. I shot him with a harpoon, but it zipped right through his ethereal shape without harming him. How do I fight Satan? I asked myself. Of course, read the scriptures!

However, in order to read the special heirloom Spanish Bible my mother had given me, I would have to take it out of the plastic bag, ruining it forever. Unwilling to destroy the book, I picked it up, still in its watertight cover, and slashed at Satan with it. He dissolved into nothing, and I woke up.

Another Dream about WMDs, and Some Frozen Confectionery

Last night I dreamt that my family (That's the third dream about my family in a row—weird.) lived in a courtyard house in the North African desert and had access to vast weapons stores. I was cleaning my brother's room one morning, and I found a rifle, several large grenades, and a honeydew-sized bomb under his bed. Understandably, that freaked me out. Our whole house could blow up like Hill House in Foyle's War did last night! I ran to tell my mom, but it took me a long time to find her and my dad out in the Sahara. By the time we got back, the weapons and my brother were gone. Under his bed, however, I found a box of Dreyer's Creamy Coconut Fruit Bars. They were still a little cold, and when I took one of the box, I saw that the frozen bar had kept its shape even though it had melted. Victory! My parents and I turned all our attention to the Fruit Bars, which had also turned yellow in the heat so now they looked more like Dreyer's Pineapple Fruit Bars. I was biting into the coconutty goodness when I woke up.

Living the Winnebago Dream

Last night I dreamt that I was trying to get my parents to do more member missionary work with Spanish speakers in the area. I think they were trying to start a Spanish twig in my parents' ward or something. We were at an all-day conference at the stake center, and it was a Saturday. That was actually one of my more boring dreams, since I dream about missionary work a lot. However, I have made a decision to record more of my dreams on this blog, so it's going up.

Then during my afternoon nap, I dreamt that my family lived in a Winnebago during a simulacrum of the 1970s. My grandparents (who were not my actual grandparents) had died, and we drove to their mobile home to clean it out and take it home with us. We drove through a lot of those stacked concrete overpasses that they have in California. I remember the air felt really hot. At some point, we may have stopped at this New-Agey spiritual shop owned by a Sufi woman, a shop I have visited in my dreams before. Meanwhile, my sister—who was wearing the 1970s vintage dress that in real life she posed in for some of her senior portraits—had a falling out with my parents and didn't want to live in a cramped Winnebago with both my parents, my brother, and me anymore. I was trying to negotiate a deal in which my parents would give me enough money to care for my sister and me, and she and I would drive off with our grandparents' mobile home when I woke up.

My sister and I should have been born in the UK.

My sister has written a list of reasons why she was born in the wrong country, and I totally agree with all of her points. Darn immigration laws! If it weren't for them, I'd be in England, Scotland, or Wales (sorry, Northern Ireland, I don't like being blown up) already.

This installment of Dream Watch: Teaching Dumb Blondes to Swim and Faking a Russian Accent

Early this morning, I dreamt that I was hired by a graying multimillionaire CEO to teach his twenty-year-old fiancée (a pretty and rather naïve model—not supermodel) to swim. He was in the process of molding her to become the perfect woman for him, and she had a fear—actually, she said, distrust—of water, so he took her to his favorite swimming spot with me to force her to get over it. His favorite swimming spot was this huge river delta with sapphire-blue water, lush green vegetation, and snow-capped mountains in the background. He would swim several yards, tell his fiancée to follow him, and she would, holding onto a rope attached to an emergency C-shaped foam thing. I was in charge of staying just behind the model so she had to do all the work but didn't drown. The model was really making a lot of progress: she told me she'd never seen the mountains so beautiful, and she was also very motivated to please her fiancé.
The problem was that the CEO got bored with our slow pace and swam off into one of the estuaries. (Actually, I'm not sure he was bored. He gave me this look, like he was attracted to me because of my intelligence and no-nonsense manner—sort of a Wallis Simpson thing—and he got freaked out and said, "I think I'd better stay away from you." The blonde did not notice.) Looking for him, we found two little kids who hung onto my rope and wouldn't let go. After getting rid of them, we got ourselves caught on this big white antenna thing in the middle of the river. That's about when the model, exhausted, decided we should give up and swim to shore and I woke up.

All this was after my dream, earlier last night, about trekking across some continent with a bunch of Russian refugees. (We all spoke in Russian accents, but mine was fake.) We kept stopping at these huge casinos for the night, and we'd lose all the men to drink. (Wow, my dreams are racist.) Only half of them ever woke up on time to move on with us in the morning. The barons of sin in the casinos were keeping the men from us. A small contingent and I returned surreptitiously to one casino to liberate our (except I was pretending to be Russian) countrymen. Then the dream restarted to the day we came to our first casino, and I scrambled to keep everyone safe.

Acronyms that Could Save the World

UN, ICC, ICJ, WHO, NAFTA, DR-CAFTA, NNPT, KP, BBC, and above all, UK.

Boycott Arizona!

Just in case you thought Arizona's insane law requiring all people who look like immigrants to be prepared to prove their legal residence at any time was just a fluke, the Arizona governor has just passed HB 2281, which

Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:

• Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
• Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
• Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
• Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

This might sound okay, but what it is really prohibiting are high school classes that focus on a ethnic group which is not Anglo-American, such as African American studies or Chicano literature. I say that because this bill will not restrict regular American literature, British literature, or Western civilization classes, even though you would think those classes also fit at least two of the criteria.

The last bullet point is the most troubling. Heaven forbid that people who are not Anglo-American have ethnic solidarity!

Dating Rules for My Sister, who is going to BYU this fall

These rules are not about finding an eternal companion, they are just about being comfortable with the guy who took you out. They stem from sad experience.

1. Never date a guy who cannot take the sacrament. (I'm serious about this—watch him at church.)
2. Never date a guy who does not hold a current temple recommend, unless he's a new convert working towards holding a temple recommend. (This is harder to ascertain. Just be sure to dump him if you ever find out he does not have a current temple recommend.)
3. Never date a guy who says being a stay-at-home dad sounds like a good idea.
4. Never accept a date via Facebook message. (Well, maybe if you are really, really, really infatuated with him and will therefore take anything you can get.)
   
5. On the first date, allow the guy to talk for a couple minutes without interruption. If you are bored, this is also the last date. Your boredom will only worsen over time.
6. Go ahead—give him a kiss, unless you have already violated rule 1. In that case, go home. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
7. Shoulder massages are apparently more erotic than you would think. Allowing a guy to give you one is, in his mind, like making out or something.
8. Even if you do not always follow the guests-out-by-midnight rule with your guyfriends, always follow it with your boyfriend. It is just a good idea for the sake of your own sanity. You also might get notes like this one from Passive Aggressive Notes if you do not follow the rule.
9. We have all heard about NCMO, but NCC (non-committal cuddling) is almost as fun while being much more sanitary and much less slutty. Ward movie nights are great NCC opportunities.
10. If a guy you are not interested in keeps pursuing you, make a sign that says "I'm not interested" and post it by the phone. The next time he calls to ask you out, just read the sign. If he is really persistent, stop taking his calls, answering his Facebook messages, and talking to him in person. Some guys are so deluded that they mistake politeness for flirting.
    

Now that's more like it.

Last night I dreamt that my sister got me a part-time job with her at a secret government nuclear weapon site near Ferndale. It was fifteen to twenty hours a week, and we just monitored the bombs on our computers and got paid for it. We were stationed in a kind of elongated geodesic dome. The décor was white and light salmon. We could listen to music and chat during our shifts. My boss was pretty cute, too.

I should just record my dreams on this blog. I have enough to make daily posts.

I'm so not over him.

Okay, so I just woke up from a dream that was too much like real life. That's weird in itself because usually I dream about video-game monsters and medieval knights and mermaids and being elected empress of the world or president of the United States and stuff.

In this dream, I was at my singles' ward, but the man I've had a crush on for years—whom I totally thought I was over, by the way—was there. It was so painful. I even told him I liked this university diving team just so he and I could roadtrip to one of the games/matches/meets/see, I don't even know what they call a diving competition. I was also trying to pick up my new Visiting Teaching route during the dream. Meanwhile, this guy had lost my email address again so I was trying to find a clean sticky note (my notepaper of choice during my mission) to write it down for him. Then he pointed out that he kept thinking my name was Tess, which is so embarrassing because it's not and he remembered all the pretty blondes' names. (That probably wasn't accurate. In real life, he is very good with names.) Still, I scrabbled in my purse for a sticky note that didn't have email addresses for me already written all over them, desperate for any scrap of time with him because just being near him while he waited for me to write down my email address made my heart flutter and my bones feel all tingly.

My alarm went off just as I found a clean scrap of paper, so then—this is so sad—I closed my eyes and imagined I had written down my email address and given it to him. It was like a prayer.

The worst part was when he came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder—I thought, Yesssss!—to tell me we'd have to get up at three-thirty in the morning to start driving and get to the diving competition on time. That is the worst part because I am, as the English say, rubbish in the morning. I knew I would be groggy and whiny and completely put him off, but I couldn't help myself. If he were really in my ward and I really accidentally—in the heat of a hormonally overwhelmed moment—told him that I liked that diving team, it would all happen exactly like my dream.

US Interest Rate Still Unconscionably Low

This from BBC News: The US Federal Reserve has decided to keep the interest rate at nearly zero. As I said on my facebook page, I do not usually believe in conspiracy theories. A large group of people, in my experience, does not have a high enough average IQ to sustain a complex deception. However, in this case, I am getting a little suspicious. Why on earth would the Fed keep the interest rate down so long after it ceased to be economically expedient? It does not make sense. Either the Fed contains stupider people than it should, or some other force wants the interest rate to stay low.

How to reveal your racism, sexism, hubris, illusory superiority, actual stupidity, and low social class in one Facebook status update.

See more.

P.S. There aren't very many of them, it's true. If we look at it one way, the author is simply offering evidence to support his argument.

P.P.S. (1) Type Downing Effect into Wikipedia. (2) Apply to self.