"Why is the post title quoting Marilyn Manson?" you ask. Well, let me share the truly bizarre (and hilarious) line of dreams I had this morning...
This dream session came in two bursts. In the first, as I am wont to in dreams, I was walking a very long, narrow and dangerous bridge. At its peak, I got delayed due to a police investigation in front of me. There had been jumpers and they were fishing the people out of the water. Turns out this scary woman approached a learning disabled guy and convinced him to kill his brother. She then took him walking on the bridge and was going to get him to jump off, making it look like the brother acted alone and killed himself out of guilt. The LD guy freaked out and grabbed her as he fell, taking both down. Amazingly, both survived. The LD guy talked when they were rescued and the woman was going to jail. Way to suck at a plan, lady!
The reason I was on the bridge, it seems, was to deliver a robot to the military. I got into a combat base and brought the codes for a Wall-E robot type. Turns out this was a defensive robot, which quickly identified a hostile situation and disarmed it. That means, of course, he disarmed US! I had to turn him off and turn the defenses back on, but it was too late. The enemy had used the lapse to break in. (Damn you, Wall-E!) It was my job to aim two guns manually and take out the enemy. This sucked, as enemies from each entrance had a clear shot to me. I took out one, had two bullets barely miss me, and was calling for backup when my brain decided it’d had enough.
(I woke up, took my meds, and went back to sleep to dream some more!)
Dream series two started with a dream where my grandmother was having a party at the townhouse I lived at from age 4 to 8. In this dream, I guess the whole family was rich and spoiled rotten. My mother and her boyfriend entered, both acting spoiled and snotty, and the boyfriend told a story about how terrible it was that he left his scotch back at the cabin. The women compared name brand serving dishes and catering services. (Note: This is about as opposite as you can get for them.) I was quickly pushed from the scene and told to amuse myself. I had a credit card, no supervision, no limit and lots of bought friends. It was time to go nuts and storm my former college campus!
On campus, I ran into Bill Clinton. (I assume he was giving a speech there and not trolling for some tail, but I can’t be sure.) He gave me permission to sleep with Chelsea, saying she needed the attention. I used the excuse on Mandy Moore (seriously? her?), who was playing a Chelsea-like role in a movie that just happened to be filming on campus. The dream got more meta as it devolved into a playful fight between her movie boyfriend, real life boyfriend, movie dad and Bill Clinton. When asked if it was weird to be fighting for someone who was playing his daughter, Clinton said he wasn’t even sure Chelsea was his. All those watching the scene were laughing at the ridiculousness of it.
After the Clinton thing, I joined a rag-tag group of people who were trying to sneak into my old Shepherd University dorm. There were ridiculous antics that would fit the screwball parody film this obviously was. (One guy started a war cry, and kept going so long we had to muffle him. He may have died, since we forgot to un-muffle him. No one cared and we dumped him in the street.) I managed to blow the plan by talking within earshot of the person at the dorm desk. This would have been fine, but then everyone in the group spoke up and argued about the best way to get into this dorm. Each dorm had a different trick and some couldn’t remember which trick matched what. By the end, the entire team exposed itself by talking, so the plan was dashed while we could regroup. I went off to chat with a conspirator and an overweight woman followed us. When she found out it wasn’t about the assault, she joked about doing twice her daily exercise for nothing. She was a good sport and she introduced me to THE TRIPLETS! They were not even identical – also, they were about 60. Dammit!
Plan failed, I walked to the college library, where I heard my friend Courtney talking over the speaker system, giving a soul-crushing speech about the futility of life. It was hilariously thorough, and delivered in the tone of a mother reading her child a bedtime story. I went in to talk to her and found her casually deadpanning into a mic. She decided to talk me up a bit, which surprised me. I was told that what I did put me above the level of amateur and I deserved the promotion. This great skill: Arranging Chrispmas lights into patterns.
I managed to arrange a city scene, which promptly faded into the real setting. I was on a ridge overlooking the city, with some maintenance building on the ridge with me. It was something government-related, but I’m not sure what. I watched a plane fly by and drop some banners, which were caught by the wind and blown over my head. They were army recruitment banners, saying the military would pay for your college education. The last banner hit a flock of birds and came in too low. It crashed into a security guard’s vehicle, which was driven by Marilyn Manson. As he got out, pissed off over getting struck, a eagle holding a Navy banner flew overhead. It dropped the banner on a guy dressed as an angel, who was ALSO promoting the military. (I must assume the marines, as they do love to die in combat.) I went up to Manson, who was still upset, and we joked about calling it in: “Sir, we’ve been attacked! The US Military hit two people with recruitment banners. One was dressed as an angel. One was Marilyn Manson. Both were working for the government at the time -- OH FORGET IT!”
And that was just what I can remember. The question is… can I make art to go with this?
Presenting: The paint sketch of “Model City” – a painting based on looking out on my former city of lights! (Canvas is 48"x30")
Edit: Here's a shot of Model City, step two:
That's it, Rhode Island! I'm call you suckballs out! ALL OF YOU!
