Another strange dream, but first...

[altivo]

A moment of mourning for what the human race has become. I'm not going to say that depictions of violence in media and games are a direct cause of this sort of thing, but it is certainly true that when we glorify this kind of behavior, some individuals really do get weird ideas and run with them. I'll never really understand, though. This stuff is so alien to me I feel like a visitor from another planet.

So last night I had another movie script technicolor dream. This one was as surreal as if it were designed by Salvador Dali, though. It all took place in a huge convention center, where I was apparently supposed to be attending a furry con, though only one vaguely furry scene took place. Mostly it consisted of wandering from room to room and down corridors and stairways looking for things and never finding them.

It was a huge place, all designed and decorated by some very contemporary designer because there were areas where the walls and even the ceilings were covered with shag carpeting and things like that. The colors were vivid and ran the gamut from heavy purples and indigos in some areas to bright yellows in others. I think the actual guest rooms and corridors were done in blues and purples while the meeting spaces were more often yellow, beige, and orange. Several of the auditoria featured stage areas that were filled with architectural miniatures of some sort of futuristic complex of buildings that, I think, were supposed to represent the center itself, and people were there talking about them and pointing out features. It seemed as if in many cases the only way past such meeting halls was by entering from one side and going out the other, so you had to walk through whatever event was in progress.

One large portion of the building was some sort of contemporary art museum, and it was laid out as a whole series of rooms furnished and decorated as if they were living space of some kind. There were even dining tables set with place settings and various sorts of fresh bread put out. While wandering through this area I had the only furry incident. A group of people were sitting at one of the dining tables eating and talking, and next to the table was a smaller round table with long curving spindly legs, like what some of our grandmothers used to hold a flower pot with a fern in it. Except instead of a flower pot, there was a very canine head on the table, growing apparently right out of the table top. No body was evident other than the table, but the head was engaged in the conversation and had a female voice. In form it resembled a Newfoundland or maybe a Great Pyrenees, but the fur was a sort of turquoise green color.

As I approached, I realized it was going to be difficult to squeeze past this group, but as I edged past the table with the canine head, it noticed me and said "Oh, excuse me, sorry," and shuffled on its table legs out of my way to let me pass. Talk about an Alice in Wonderland kind of experience...

As this strange and surreal thing continued, I got into an area where people were constructing something, rather like stage sets for a play. Then I arrived at a set of doors to the outside, with signs indicating that they faced "EAST". I stood there trying to remember the layout of the place and figure out where I must be if I was at an east facing exit. Then more people came along who were wearing con badges (no fursuiters though) and I went with them, thinking they must know where they were going. We only arrived in a large lobby area with clumps of people standing around asking each other "Is this the panel?" or "What panel is this?"

I realized it was already Sunday, and somehow I'd missed the fursuit parade, and didn't even know the way back to my room. I hadn't had my own suit on at all yet, and the con was nearly over. Very confusing and disappointing, and that's where I woke up. ;p

The interesting thing though, was the dog head on a table. It seems like I've really seen something like that but I can't recall where. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would usually come up out of my unconscious mind.

Comments

[vimsig.livejournal.com]

Crazy dream but foul despicable cruel 'trench'

I haven't seen a dog's head on a table but I have seen in a picturing food type post a waiter's head popping through his costume that was made to look like a table loaded with many fruits - in the same sequence of photographs wasa woman waitress with the large marie antoinette skirt-table jutting out from the waist and covered with desserts.

It's a mad mad mad mad world.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hmm, which calls to mind the scene in the BBC production of Hitchhiker's Guide, at Milliways, when Peter Davison was the beast who had been roasted and was trying to convince the diners to have a slice of his rump. ;p

[vimsig.livejournal.com]

ah yes - milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe.

I have only watched the beeb's production so automatically place those particular actors in those rôles.

Was that scene the start of the phrase 'do you want a piece of this?'

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I believe that's a much older expression and they just took advantage of it in the screenplay. If I recall correctly, it isn't in the book.

As for the scene in which the dinner talks to the diner, we can look all the way back to Lewis Carroll and Through the Looking Glass for that.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, there's no fall of man involved, we've pretty much always been like this. Right now we just have the technology to advertise the kind of animal we are far and wide. Back in the day we didn't know about some guy in Thailand getting stuck and dying in a peat bog, we had our own peat bogs to worry. But, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, information has been set free(r) and we're well-fed enough to put some time and effort into things that really interest us, like violent entertainment (like chess, which is about war) and reading extensively about the gruesome and violent things that happen elsewhere.

If violence didn't capture our attention, how would we ever learn to run from predators and whatnot?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced. It's not so much the gruesome appetite of the masses for bloody entertainment that bothers me, offensive and ancient though it is, as this business of individuals walking heavily armed into a crowd and just opening fire for no apparent reason. That's the sort of thing that certainly would have made news even centuries past, yet it seems to be happening much more since the mid-20th century.

[miktar.livejournal.com]

An event that seems wholly unique to the United States of America, for some reason.

I think every country has such things, locally, it's school beatings (to death), in public schools. You guys have random gunmen, Israel has... well. Germany has gang violence, Italy has rapists, Mexico has kidnappings, and the East is a whole bag of fun.

Things like this have always happened, to my knowledge - just the means, technology and media coverage have changed.

If a guy, in a town, somewhere remote, killed five people with a knife before the invention of the printing press... well, we wouldn't really know, would we?

As for the 'appetite of the masses for bloody entertainment'... well, that's a bit cum hoc ergo propter hoc, excuse my latin.

As for happening much more - I think we're just paying attention more. I did some weak research and didn't see any curves, just the sporadic spike.

I think the real big problem here is, how humanity responds to things like that. Especially the US.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Except the school shooting happened in Montreal, Quebec, Canada -- depending who you talk to, one different country or another, but neither of which is the U.S. Granted, it's pretty close to the States and does not escape our influences.
There was a similar shooting at another Montreal college in the late 1980s.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of quibbles.

First: almost all of the case have been for very apparent reasons, once people stop being hysterical and actually investigate. A couple years ago the organization of states' attorneys general released a study that laid it out in stark terms what's behind the school ones: harassment, bullying, and teasing.

But the report (and others like it) tend to be repressed because almost of that bullying and teasing in schools directed at boys has a homophobic dimension--whether the boys are gay or not, the ones who get singled out are called sissy, fag, et cetera and ad nauseum. As the report pointed out, it tends to not just be overlooked by teachers and administrators, but is often perpetrated by certain teachers. Every attempt to do something on a policy or legal level to decrease these things has been opposed by the evangelical wingnuts because they want to protect their kids' right to torment "sinful" children.

The other common profile is another sort of isolated loner who lacks empathy, has rigid and inflexible thinking processes, and in general would be diagnosed as low-functioning sociopathic if they had been carefully examined before their spree (since they frequently get killed or kill themselves during said spree).

The technology to kill lots of people that quickly didn't exist three hundred years ago.

Population densities have also played an often underappreciated role. Two hundred years ago the majority of people lived in small communities where virtually everyone they met throughout their entire lifetimes were related to people they grew up with. Even fifty years ago more than half the population of the most industrialized countries lived further than 30 miles from where they were born. So neighbors were people you might know for a lifetime. People knew their extended families and the extended families of most of their neighbors, the kids they went to school with, et cetera. That changes the way we percieve and interact with each other.

[alaskawolf.livejournal.com]

you always have the most interesting dreams. i think i dreamed about green bell peppers last night for some odd reason

[altivo.livejournal.com]

A craving for stuffed peppers perhaps?

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I don't even dream of those O.O

[darkhorseman.livejournal.com]

Well aginst popular belief most of the problems I see with my generation and the ones after is just... bad parenting. The media dosent do much to help. I did a journal entry not long ago about it. We have become a culture of violence it seems

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Parenting certainly enters the picture, but this condition goes back a couple of generations now, so that current parents are insufficient because they in turn were not properly parented. The only fix for that is for society to step in and start teaching better social behavior, or else.

I haven't seen precise details about the weaponry involved in this particular case, but it does seem so far that the victims were selected entirely at random. The killer was not after specific persons against whom he held a grudge, he was just out to kill for the sake of killing, or so it seems. That's what bothers me about it. There are odd parallels between these kinds of incidents and suicide bomber attacks, really. Invariably the killer knows he will die in the end, one way or another, and perhaps even by his own hand. We are told that the Islamic fanatics do it because their religion tells them they will be rewarded in the afterlife, but I'm not sure that's really it. I think it's an upwelling of internal rage that demands this sort of satiation, and society in general does indeed bear responsibility for that situation.

I believe Canada bans handguns, but allows hunting weapons. Obviously that's enough that this will happen anyway. Previous incidents there have involved so-called hunting rifles, and this one probably did as well. One such madman went to a gun dealer, bought a high powered rifle and 100 pounds of ammunition, and said he was going after "small game." No questions were raised. He killed several people in a random attack a couple of weeks later. That was in 1989.

I don't believe weapon bans are effective, but I also don't agree with the gun lobbyists and manufacturers. Sure, guns alone don't commit murder. But by placing guns in the hands of unbalanced people, we make it too easy for those people to commit this sort of crime. Society is not taking enough responsibility for education and morality here.

[darkhorseman.livejournal.com]

Well... thats part of the problem. Parents for the past few generation expects society, computers and tv to raise their children... and well you see where thats wound up.

I am a firm believer that gun control means using both hands... The truth of the matter is if your hell bent on killing someone a wepon is available. They outlawed drugs completly. I can still get thoes within a matter of hours. Do you think a gun is any harder?

Getting rid of the guns isnt the answer but what is? What makes a person a murderer? I rember being driven to that point. Fortunatly I had understanding parents who allowed me to drop out of school before I took my rage out aginst the students. It was the right choice for me. But outside that. What makes a suicide bomber a suicide bomber? What makes a person climb the bell tower?

[duraji-synth.livejournal.com]

I feel like an alien on my own planet, too...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I know. And at least partly for the same reasons that I do. However, since neither of us knows the way home, we have no choice but to adapt. XD

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

One of the big regrets I have about this planet is that all territory is claimed by at least one existing nation. There's nowhere to go to start a new country. One can only resort to going someplace relatively remote and trying to live under the radar, I suppose.

[goldenstallion.livejournal.com]

Dear Rider,

I just read every post here and my mind is now swimming and yet, it all seem to fit. Dreams are not, necessarally, what you desire or fear, they are just dreams. Yet pieces of these things are always in our dreams. I tend to surfboard or rollerblade or fly through huge, imaginary realms or, often, malls... yes the big huge shopping malls and as many people who are alarmed are met by those who are jazzed by it. I am usually very good and look down or over at them. Strangers. A shrink might tell me that I have an hidden need to feel welcomed or accepted and yet I am zooming all over the place and nobody gets all that close to me.

How about my recurrent dreams in which I am being pursued by the likes of imaginary prison guards or police or just as often, monsters like in Alien, who just want to killmurder me for no explainable reason. I am always the innocent just trapped in this weird place hiding and running and usually finding a way out before wake-up occurs.

My dreams have always tended to go toward a source of waking up as the end result thus safe and sound no matter how bad it appeared. Deep dungeons but never ever some monster or another oh no it is always human men after me and I have done nothing wrong.

In reality I never feel strong sensations of being pursued. Do love the flying dreams... been a long time since.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, but I can vouch for the fact that you fly so well and so gracefully in reality that you don't need to dream of it. :)

And besides that you swim good too. Like a swan. The all purpose aero-amphibious mount. You're definitely one of a kind.

*hugs*
Your Rider

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

You really have interesting dreams O.O, I don't dream of anything these days.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You do. You just aren't remembering it when you wake up. Everyone dreams as a normal part of sleep.

[miktar.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but I don't buy that one. I'm well aware of when I'm dreaming -as it happens-. In the morning, if I don't recall a dream then I simply didn't have one. I've never agreed with this idea that you always dream, you just can't always remember it. I used to try that experiment of sleeping with a spoon in my hand, on a chair - so that it drops when I fall asleep to see if I dreamed.

I'm of the conviction that if you wake up and don't recall a dream, you didn't have one. Or at least, I didn't. I can't speak for everyone.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

No I meant, I don't dream when I'm awake anymore XD

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

I used to lament humanities inhumanity but no longer.

We are animals, thus we act in accordance to the rules
of nature, the strong subjugate the weak.

And no, I'm not advocating fascism, just stating the
fact.

What we need is people willing to say, "Yes, but..."

Yes we are not angels...but we can aspire to better.

And then lead on towards the dawn.