More summer dreaming

A conspiracy threatened us. An influential early movie director passed away and, as his most devoted students, myself, Frigo, and Emily had to stop something bad from happening. We started in a megaplex...

The theater was running a number of the late director's films during a tribute week. This particular theater was attached to the film school the director taught classes at on occasion. The three of us had to sneak past the crowds into the school section (front entrances were locked impenetrably) to rendezvous with the rest of a contingency that had sworn an oath to uphold the late director's principles.

Few would recognize Frigo or I--the problem was Emily starred in one of the late director's last films. Frigo and I assumed there was more behind that story, but kept it to ourselves...

We passed the crowds and entered a hallway with a number of attached classrooms when we heard a security guard coming. Our fortune was vast, though, as our contingency had taken in three of these classrooms to wait for us--and each of us entered a different room, myself arriving in the farthest and just barely arriving before the guard would have seen me.

Bram and Jerry were in the room. Two more figures, ones I did not recognize, sat at desks to my side.

The scene shifted. Our party, fifteen-strong, skulked the edges of city streets, enroute to a sympathetic storefront. We all made it--a miracle. Our residence would be a videogame store on a street corner, and we would likely have less than a full day to complete our task: creating a movie with the late director's principles that would awaken the industry to ideas that shouldn't be new.

We left most of the lights dark. The store was large enough for us to begin creating tools to use--it appeared this would be something of a stop-start film. I forgot to mention the boxes each of us had carried through all of this, full of art supplies, that had made our journeying slightly slower.

I stationed myself with James Bittner and a small girl with short, straight dark hair that I believe I have yet to meet. And we got to work.

The last detail I can safely describe (as far as gathering enough detail with any measure of recallable imagery) is my absolute confusion as to what to work /on/. Everyone was working, but everything was being crafted in individual styles. We had only briefly discussed what our finished item would be composed of, and I worried that there was too little organization.

Shortly before waking, I had decided that I would create something big.

------------------

Other recent dream loglines:

A sky-defying tower as a hotel in Las Vegas with many escalators and a very fast elevator.

Bram and then Jerry on a street in downtown Chicago whom I followed into a diner and plotted making more music with.

News of the next Nippon-Ichi (Disgaea, Phantom Brave) strategy game.

Exploring the possibilities of tachyon transportation and data streaming (my most scientific dream in a long time).

Eventful

Captured and refilmed part of The Burning Five this weekend, along with attending a family birthday and stopping by the Bristol Ren Faire on one of the hottest days of the year. Rather easily the most I've done over a 7-day period since my last finals run.

But there is always some bad with lots of good--foremost, it appears the bar Slide (Tantalus Theatre's latest show) is running in happens to be 21-and-over only. With the amount of new footage acquired for The Burning Five, I almost fear placing the new against the old--there is less old to work with, and all involved have learned many lessons over the last 8 or so months. And there is the reality that another summer break--likely my last fully in (or near) Chicago--is closing.

That last observation was very much welcome until the end of the last week. Next to nothing has been happening in my life aside from losing direction across various RPG platforms and the last of my first set of occasional work days. But re-emerging in society, especially backed by like-minded (but not /too/ like-minded) friends, has again been an opening experience.

Post-filming the other night I talked to Scott for maybe 5 hours hitting on a multitude of mostly-retrospective/reminiscient topics. All of my peers are breaching into unknowns and are largely realizing it. Some have been slow to get there, and in my case there has been less change behind me than I see now in front of me, but now we /all/ face our crossroads. We are all making weighted decisions.

I have a phone number grabbed by ridiculous chance that has mocked beckoningly since being acquired. Levelling with it I could face such a scorching wind that my entire path would succomb and distort. These are seven digits (and an area code) that could explode a large measure of my past into eternal oblivion.

Or I might have written a number incorrectly, and the act wouldn't make even a dent. Or more likely I will continue keeping that number as a lingering reminder of what I chose to give distance to so that it will continue carrying those lessons. Or it could boost my life-situation somewhere I've long dreamed of, to a place I've found in few moments outside of my imagination.

I always find myself looking back when no one is looking. Never in public, but almost always when left solely imagining. I find myself weighing mistakes and looking for lessons that maybe I missed the first and fifteenth time through something that now exists only in memory. Wonder secretes in me and pulses as it asks, eternally, a single question: "Why?"

That number, as far as I can gather, was never meant for me to find. I should never have taken it, even as openly as it appeared. And I've never wanted the entrance back into that chapter to happen via such a shallow device--but I've never been a gambler. Recently, measures seem prudent that I forego chance and dial a forsaken relationship. What has always been a seemed impossible hope will soon become a good deal more impossible.

There is an infinity of possibilities to which direction I will decide for my future life. I don't know, for sure, what I will do. There is an infinity of possibilities standing face-to-face with me right now, opportunities with doors that will close in one week, and in two, and even more that /will/ disappear in no more than three months. And I don't know, for sure, what I will do.

But I want to try.

on Willy Wonka

A repost of a response to a comment made that Johnny Depp/Tim Burton's adaptation of the character is just as admirable, though different, than Gene Wilder's (which is a very wrong opinion).

"Girl, even if Burton's film was supposed to focus the film on Charlie's perspective, the newest adaptation was still a failure--because it still focused on Wonka. Just a different, every-case worse Wonka (though I do grant Depp looked like he played the character Burton told him to play admirably).

If the film had really focused on Charlie, he would have said more, reacted more, and done more inside the factory. He and Grandpa Joe would have stolen the Fizzy Lifting Drink setting up a scene of Charlie's redemption at the end. With which, there would have been no horrid additions of Wonka's childhood.

Burton's decisions seemed at almost every turn to distance from the 1971 classic. I've read that Burton both hated and never saw the '71 gem. Had he not been so adamant in reversing Wonka's role from that as solitary genius to crippled child-man there would have been a more memorable entrance scene, a terrifying boat ride, and the ending that let us acknowledge that even the good ones might make mistakes but what sets them apart is they atone and redeem when they realize.

I'll repeat: if Burton had decided to re-adapt the idea under all new names and locations (thus leaving the '71 masterpiece alone) I would let it slide. Hell, I might even believe the things he did right outweigh the things he did wrong. But as it is, what we now have is an unnecessary modern remake that will likely replace the '71 "original" in the minds of generations to come. Wilder's impeccable characterization will be replaced with Depp's sad agreeance to abide by a misguided director's choices on television, more copies will be more visible at Blockbusters, and the next generation of 10 year olds will try proving me wrong in believing Burton has moved to destroy a classic.

The biggest shame is Burton /did/ get the sets right--pretty much every single one of them. Especially the boat scene! But he ripped out the heart and soul that Wilder managed to enhance a damned musical adaptation with, and a film's graphics does not a classic it make."

Some recollection

An image of graphic horror mixed with characters from popular comedy...

Professor Frink's wife, Lisa, wasn't as luck as the rest of us. The pull-down ladder/staircase that led to our escapes crushed her right foot and took off her left leg... well, most of her leg. A long, sharp fragment of bone jutted out, but otherwise she was crippled.

I wasn't sure how events progressed to this point, so I started over from the beginning.

I was on vacation with my family in northern Australia--except we were in Perth (which is actually in south-western Australia). The layout of the (dream) city reminded me of Seattle, with lush mountains behind and an ocean expanse, cluttered with seacraft, in front. We passed a university of sorts ...

well, this is interesting. I've managed, through wording this dream, to connect something and have remembered that this dream city has appeared to me before, though I can't remember when I last dreamt of it.

Anyhow, we arrived at a hotel without problem. The rooms were contemporary--sparse but vibrant, solid-painted walls and ceiling, and with an Asian dignity. But I can't remember there being windows. Which, after my family settled in, brought me to running into Professor Frink and his wife Lisa.

He was conducting an experiment on insect mutation. We proceeded only a floor below my family's hotel rooms to a strange red-glow lab area. The room was... compressed. Maybe four feet from side to side, but very long--like a hallway. However, near one end were stacked kennels with gigantic scarab-like creatures (though not as gigantic as that one in The Relic).

A yellow siren-light began flashing, and Professor Frink exclaimed a line of horror--he told us to run. These creatures were poisonous and altered like weapons. The light meant one had escaped.

Herein would be the part Lisa lost a section of her body had this been an average, instead of lucid, story. Instead the three of us made it out with help from my uncle. Our escape route took us to a higher level of the strange hotel/lab complex--into a mall that would make The Jetsons proud with its automated walkway systems.

Earlier I had traversed this mall area--I think I was in Australia in the first place to study in a class under Mr. Berger-White, a former high school English teacher. My first order of business was to collect a number of books. And I recall images of two bookstores--one not so much unlike another previous dream that I recall transcribing in at least minor detail in my archives. This previous dream was either in January or the later portion of last Summer.

And the dream-fragment I recalled in the midst of transcribing this one (which I cannot place) involved racing a'la F-Zero atop these buildings.

Indeed...

Blogging as a negative determiner for job seeking

The linked article suggests that the personal variety of blogosphere media is far more damaging and negative to career seekers than one would simply assume.

They raise the question: why? That is, why blog? Why detail thoughts and events that would have, in any other era, remained invisible to the majority to now enable the entire world access?

I can't speak for the world just yet. Nor for my generation--perhaps the first to be nearing that job-seeking point in "normal" life to be fully affected by the emergence of blogs. But I can always speak for myself.

In entries months and years past I have visited the question of why, and have in a few cases even explained, face to face, my incentive to a small number of scholars. And I continue maintaining that blogging about my thoughts and personal life is my way of practising, nearly daily, the act of writing.

While maintaining a blog, I am aware that any number of people could eventually find it. Every last implication and factor of the possibility of decades-old entries returning to haunt me in employment may very well not be yet realized, but I am aware that as I write and publish my own words at my own discretion, my full audience here is indeed, "the entire world."

This said, I believe I am aware of my (potential) audience. Though I assume it is my friends that mostly read what I write here, I know that my enemies, distant relatives, and complete strangers (as well as possible employers) are able to read this. In my awareness, I employ slight discretion in choosing my topics. Though I do occasionally post self-revelations and epiphanies that very much reveal current and previous weaknesses, I tend to distance my writing from sharing the inward thoughts that ever target specific people.

Well, maybe I haven't from the first day, but I have been growing as has my blog. And I wager that I have done nothing to actually defame individuals outright (though have occasionally nicknamed one or two) in my archives.

Blogging allows me a public outlet to practise writing and, it is my hope, that will eventually achieve a readership that might grant, via public comment or email, insight and advice that I will be able to employ in my own life, personal or otherwise. By writing, I can maintain a consistency with my written voice as well as develop my abilities as I slowly notice my flaws and work to erase them. If a future employer reads a future (or past) entry of mine and decides the person (myself) who would write as I do would not be a good job candidate solely for my written/online voice, then I am compelled to believe the employer would be right in his/her assumption as much that I would find myself, eventually, stifled and lonely in the environment that would only accept me when censored.

But it is a chilling prospect. Most blogs by students from my former highschool I read are, at best, vicarious popularity or, at worst, suicidal diatribes concerning every major failure. They are written heedlessly for a select audience and their authors seem reproachless that their words might be found in the future. My guess is that the referenced article is about them.

And it is a wonder to me, because I assume that these are the peers dreaming of normal jobs whilst I continue dreaming of exceptional and self-derived...

More demons

I was invited to a field, and was told to provide transport. They would provide arms, and they would give directions.

Two old friends whom have all but disappeared. Neither would tell me how he came to know that it was /this/ field, not far from DHS. In my family's black Buick I made a right turn off Waukeegan and drove down a narrow dirt road to a large clearing--

something from a movie I saw last November. A movie that will likely never be known by more than two hundred pairs of eyes. It was between Summer and Autumn, and it was dry in daylight. I parked near the edge of the rectangular expanse of rough grass surrounded by a thin forest.

They wore garb familiar to me, as it has appeared in nearly all of my true Internal worlds. Imagine a trenchcoat mixed with portions of elaborate metal armor framed to promote something entirely more intimidating than what is underneath it, but what happens to practice with impeccable fine response as if it were even lighter than a cyberpunk-chick's leather tube top. They armed themselves with, one, a bastard sword only different from my own in it being battle-functional and, two, a three-headed morningstar. And they walked forward from my vantage behind a slightly-tinted windshield to greet a malicious host.

It had to be from some videogame. The creatures, most of their details lost to the nether (including the color of their blood), appeared in bursts of light erupting from, but not scarring, the dry ground. And my friends, cool-faced, began dismembering them.

Frigo was late. I had invited him, exhanged a new cell-phone number, and told him this might be fun, but he was nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be heard, so I dialed him and text-messaged a brief line of inquiry. He swiftly replied: he needed a ride. I rolled down the windows and shouted I'd be back with reinforcements, and circled back down what I now understood was a one-way road.

I picked Frigo up at the Walgreens off Waukeegen--the field was somewhere inbetween here and the highschool. And we hurried back.

And just as we both stepped out of the car, this time myself ready to join in, I woke up.

Beyond a mirror

This season drains me--far more than Winter ever has.

Without obligation, I continue failing to rouse myself before noon, believing my dreams are special enough to warrant wasting daylight hours.

There was a hub city and three mirror-portals. And I was in a party of sorts, four or five of us, and we would split up. There was a world of Light, a world of Darkness, and a world of Balance beyond the mirrors. And there was rumor that all of them were soon to fall.

I jumped through the Darkness portal and found myself in a sunless land bathed in black water. What ground there was happened among platforms that reminded me of oil rigs, except the only lighting was lightning and dull neon. I piloted a form of hydrafoil a lot like Jade's ship in Beyond Good & Evil, and decided to make rounds through as many platforms as possible.

They were occupied by vile bipedal creatures--not men or robot, but something twisted. Some wielded scythes. As I made my way, the platforms were increasingly choked with their presence--the shallow host I first fought soon became overwhelming, and soon began chasing me on a craft of their own.

In the midst of it all I recieved word that the Balanced land had fallen. Friends who checked on it had already escaped back to the hub--and when the sky itself opened revealing a reptillian eye, it was clearly time for my leave as well.

I don't remember much of the rest of my dreaming... the world of Light was ... depressing. I remember some feelings: mostly contempt and skepticism in the face of laughter. Everything was not alright.

Late in the dream there was something to make sense of, but its message is now lost. Buried from the haplessness of this useless day.

And I remember the night I made a decision to escape this world for the dreaming--I remember the bright light that swallowed me before the Rectangle's typing (at 4 in the god-damned morning) came back, and I realized I had woken up instead of ascended.

In that instant I was fully ready to leave Everything in this world behind me so I could begin a new adventure--so I could enter a more fantastic world, alone.

So I lied

I publicly vowed five months ago that I'd leave my past blog for good.

But it was my past blog that I was able to update, with fewer than a dozen "real" failures, every single night (for six hundred nights). And I made... what... ten posts here last month?

Thus now I'll try some dual posting...

...this is all vast (and lazy) effort to kick-start my personal writing again.

Some weeks pass--

So much uneventful--'tis why I hope not to fall into the cubicle world after securing a college degree or two.

Biggest event was a gore movie marathon which I wasn't nearly looking as forward to as others involved... but which proved to be a nice deal more fun than I anticipated. And I got to see Tetsuo: Iron Man (as well as Ichi the Killer, which /was/ better than expected, but still off my tastes). This was late Saturday/early Sunday.

I've been turning down the time spent in PSO:BB recently, hoping to preserve some of the fun when new content is finally released. Have played a few games of Warcraft 3 with my brother this week. Finished Devil May Cry 3 on Monday.

More of The Burning Five part 2 is plotted in my head--I keep meaning to set to writing it after work, especially since it is one of the best things I think about during work, but am always drained upon pulling into the driveway. If dreams come true, I'll enlist a single female co-lead, secure part of a downtown office interior & roof, recieve word that bladed weaponry is legal to carry in public on city streets from the Chicago PD, and get confirms from everyone I want involved to commit to three or four days of filming between December 10th and 23rd. The weather will also enable a small river branch to freeze over, and there will be a moderate long-lasting snow in that timeframe (at the same time). I want to do this with a $0 budget, borrowing all necessary tools and props, once again.

And I am finally caught up with Blade of the Immortal single issues until the end of the month (though I'll probably pick the next issue up when it comes out). Outright mention of Shira's impending return was rather surprising--they say he comes back in #104 in one of the letters in #100. I re-read all of my single issues, which happen to start with Fall Frost, which was the last arc Shira made an appearance in.

I am increasingly looking forward to returning to NIU, even aware that I shall be swiftly escaping (transferring) if classes aren't up to a much higher par than last semester. This town especially bores me now that my highschool class is much spread and distant planning individual futures. Admitting I expected a lot, there have been far fewer run-ins than I had anticipated... I've still a month to witness a change, but I am starting to believe (perhaps as I firstly should have) that fate instinctively refuses whenever I figure something has to happen.

Like explaining to a certain face how and why I have become what I now am.

I am eagre to share my visions of the world, whether or not you are near to the dark, and whether or not you want to listen.