The Time Everything Flooded

Thanks, NOAA!

Last night I dreamt that western Washington started flooding. Like, the whole freaking half of the state. Luckily, my family was already on I-5 when the flooding started, for all the exits were so flooded that the police and National Guard closed them. We were just driving and driving, on a north-south road, trying to get away from the west-east flood. It was less than effective. We needed to find higher ground! We were winding around the mountains! We were back on I-5! We were on a millionaire's awesome houseboat! We were out in the often-flooded lowlands were my parents live in real life! More driving! More flooding! More houseboats! Noah! John Cusack! And then I woke up.

WTF, this dream.

The Time the Dentist Pulled All My Teeth Out

Last night I dreamt that the teacher who I'm subbing for came back to teach his class for a few hours, so I went to a dentist appointment—y'know, a regular cleaning. The dentist noticed that one of my teeth was loose and told me he would have to pull it out. "Can't I come back and do that later?" I asked. "I've gotta get back to my classroom in an hour."

"Oh, this won't take long," the dentist assured me as he closed in with the pincers. "You'll be back to class in no time." He ripped one of my premolars out.

It was excruciating! My mouth filled with blood, and I looked I'm the mirror. My face had swelled up in response to the trauma and was puffy, pale, and bruised. "I can't go back to my classes looking like this!" I thought, but couldn't say.

"Whulp, looks like some more are coming loose," said the hygienist, and they were! The dentist couldn't pull them as fast as they were coming out, and then I woke up and frantically counted my teeth.

The Great Gatsby (non-3D): My Review

Pros

• Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, and I don't even like Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Gatsby's ridiculous mansion. It's perfectly grotesque.
• The green light.
• The Valley of Ashes and the main characters' clothing.
• The party scenes.
• Myrtle's death scene.
• Tea at Nick's.

Cons

• Daisy is way too sympathetic.
• The floating words.
• The unnecessary framing device.
• The black extras are all horrific stereotypes. Like, wow. It's a white, white book, and pretending there were no other color of people in the world would be better than what they did. It was like National Geographic in the 1920s, except without the irony.

The Time I Was Hired to Fix The Return of the Jedi

They really needed my help.

Last night I dreamt that I was living in the early eighties, and I was hired to fix The Return of the Jedi, which was in production, because George Lucas was ruining it. I headed over to the current filming location—a cheap arcade. Han Solo was getting in a fight with Jabba's henchmen by the basketball shooting game.

"Your budget is millions of dollars, and you didn't even build a set?!" I said to George Lucas. "I know you're trying to say that there are universal constants in humanoid behavior, but we're supposed to be in a galaxy far, far away, and all the signs are in English!" I pointed to the orange neon snacks sign above the air hockey tables.

What a hag.

George Lucas muttered something about realism and wandered off to direct a chase scene through the bar. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind about realism and resolving a love triangle by magically making two of the parties magical siblings, but I next saw Carrie Fisher near the pizza parlor. "You need to stop smoking—it's making you look old," I told her. She agreed with me even as she took another drag.

Then we went to the basement of the arcade, which had psychedelic white, red, and lime green walls and, on one, a spinning blue and silver vortex that opened to another dimension. An alien or demon or something emerged from the vortex and started chasing Harrison Ford and I, and then I woke up.

The Time Wolves Attacked My Bus

Last night I dreamt that a friend (I don't remember who) and I were riding a long-distance coach bus on vacation Out of Town, only we hadn't gotten Out of Town. We were still in The City, and it was a warm evening at that awkward time when the sky is getting deep blue and the orange street lights are coming on and most of the cars have their headlights on but not all of them. Then three wolves appeared and started running alongside the bus.

My subconscious is so uncool.

The wolves were gray and black with yellow eyes, but they were also about two to three times bigger than actual wolves are supposed to be. (I'm guessing here. I don't exactly have the most proportional mental picture of wolves in my schema. The worst thing is that the wolves were probably so big because I've seen Twilight sequel previews that were burned in my brain. The wolves are big in those movies, right?) Anyway, the wolves also stank like dog urine and musk. I can't describe the smell much better than saying musk.

The smell was more terrifying than watching them catch up to the bus and dart in front of it, but no one got up to close the windows because the driver was making wild evasive maneuvers, and we were holding on to the seats in front of us as the bus careened wildly over the road.

"I didn't know the Alaskan wolves had reached Seattle!" said my friend. Then the dream rewound and she said, "We need to get out of Seattle. These are city wolves!" which makes much less sense.

Anyway, I got this horrible impression that this was turning into another post-apocalyptic dream, except instead of the city breaking into warring tribes, it was being overrun by giant man-eating wolves. Maybe we weren't even going on vacation! We were evacuating! By that point, the wolves had cut off our path out of the city, and we were heading back downtown. A female wolf ran ahead and stood in the street that we were currently barreling down. The bus driver decided to make an offensive maneuver and slam into her, but she lay down at the last moment, sacrificing herself for her hungry comrades, so that instead of knocking her out of the way, the bus rolled partly over her body, tipped, and fell on its side. The two remaining wolves got closer. We crawled out of our seating, bleeding and bruised, and then I woke up.