murder, manatees & hound dog on a street sign

this morning i had a sickening, endless run-on nightmare. i am sure it would have gone on for hours (lifetimes, in dream speak) if i hadn't gotten out of bed.

there was a little old lady with a round face, curly white hair and many wrinkles under her giant glasses. her shabby clothes didn't conceal her chubby little figure. her and her husband (who was also wrinkly, balding, chubby and white haired) lived in squalor in a small one bedroom. everything in the apartment was old and hand-me-down. somehow the lady was me but not me. there was a sickening feeling of dread and extreme poverty. somehow myself and my wife were in a restaurant with the couple. there were glass windows and it was a scummy diner. the flourescent lights were oddly dim and everything was cast in a gray and orange tint...  we ordered the buffet and ate with trepidation and worry, but chatted with them like we were fine. after we finished the owner of the diner realized the old lady was going to pay with her expired credit card and they had swindled him before. so he locked the door and was going to kill us all. we were trying to get out, pushing on the glass while he went to get an axe. i didn't see the killing, but i felt the fear and sickness and faded out.

next i was back at the old lady's apartment. my cousin chuck was my brother in this sequence, and i had another brother i didn't recognize. we were the children of the old couple. they weren't home yet, but we were preparing to murder them when they returned. we had trip wires and knives. the unknown brother had some hedging shears. he was going to slide down a wire into their faces. then he would jump out and cut their heads off. i was frightened but i was implicit in plot. it was some sort of revenge that i couldn't figure out, but i definitely wasn't trying to change the outcome. this settting up of weapons seemed to take forever before i faded out.

then we were in some future dystopia, thousands of years ahead. the old lady and old man were there, but they were younger. i was their son. there were large angular moats surrounding giant pyramidal buildings. the moats were filled with manatees. our family was poor and starving. we were on a raft, looking to catch and eat a manatee. i was unaware of what was happening until the old man pulled up a baby manatee from the water onto the raft. when i objected and the old man explained to me that we had to eat to survive and this was the only way. my consciousness zoomed out in a fast motion and i finally woke up.

a few days ago i had this less depressing dream:

the band was on tour. we were driving across the beautiful mountains of indiana (in an alternate reality, apparently) and cincinnati was off to our southwest. this didn't make sense to me and i tried to tell the guys that the map was wrong but everyone looked at me like i was from another dimension. eventually we stopped to get some work done on the van. there were mountains all around. next to the shop was a guitar store. i took my acoustic in there because i needed to get new strings or something. the shop owner looked at it while i waited. he finally returned and told me i needed new everything on it. new headstock, new strings, new neck, new whatever... this enraged me and i told him it didn't need anything and it was fine just how it was. the argument escalated and we were back in the garage, which was now my childhood home garage. i told the shop owner i didn't need any new strings, or a guitar for that matter. i picked up a Do Not Enter sign off the floor and hoisted it under my arms like a guitar and started playing 'hound dog' by elvis presley. even though there were no strings, i was able to make the sign sound like a guitar by using my fingers to hold down the chord progression. i was into it and singing and not believing it at the same time. i think i sat there after all the dream characters faded away and marveled at how awesome that was, then tried to figure out how i pulled it off. eventually i woke up in a good mood

the end?