Some dreams from yesteryear

June 19, 2004 – The setting for the dream began at a house on a hill with a driveway to the right, and I do not remember any cars in the driveway. Well the beginning is hazy but I remember gathering with a circle of people deliberating on the proper course of action. We were planning on raiding a hotel (on the bottom of the hill) and capturing the people who were in control of the building. The members of the "strike team" I cannot recall. We moved from the house on the hill down to the hotel. We entered the lobby and went up the elevators to the top floor, and then we went up a service ladder to another floor. This is where we began to train for the raid. I do not remember the specifics other than I vividly remember shooting free throws with Shaq. Then we went down the stairs of the hotel (the hotel had stairs lining the inner edges of the building with them constantly sloping up with a space on the right side of the corridor of stairs. We finally got to the bottom floor and raided the group of protagonists that were holding the hotel. As far as I can remember there wasn't a struggle except for the fact that one guy pulled a lever that allowed water to gush into the building, slowly filling it up. Of course we quickly began to ascend up the stairs, running as fast as we could, except for me because I seemed to fly up the space on the right of the stairs slowly. When we reached the top floor I met up with Rachel Wise and then went over to the elevator because apparently one of the members of the team got on there. When the elevator opened up, Daffy Duck exited and I didn’t seem to be surprised. After that we disabled the water valve and the water receded.

June 20, 2004 – This dream began with me sitting around with Nathan Hahns, Brett Bowman, and Jason Boyd (?) drinking vodka out of the bottle. Of course, we all were getting pretty drunk. We opened up a couple of cans of cream corn and I ate them all. Then we moved over to the next room (the setting is an older hotel or building that is sort of ran down). The room had a pair of bunk-beds bunked and a plastic sink on the other side of the room. Well I had too much to drink and began to throw up the vodka mixed with all the cream corn I had to eat. The cream corn seemed to come up exactly like it went down, no changes. It would come up in surges and flow out in a large stream. I kept throwing up for a long period of time. I then cleaned out the sink into which I was throwing up and went over to the bunk beds to sit with the other guys, who were laughing at me. I believe I then challenged Brett to a duel and we picked up paint ball guns. We then began to shoot at each other in the dilapidated halls of the building for a while until I believe we both shot each other.

June 21, 2004 – Today's dream setting is a high school gym. There is was a group of people sitting around listening to a concert given by some person who I can’t remember. A smaller group of people, including me, snuck over to a smaller hall and sat around. We were getting bored so we got out a pair of speakers and a turntable along with some vinyl records. I began to DJ some (scratching, "mixing" {- not much because I only had one turntable, and just making good music for the people around me). A couple of people got up from the "jam" session and started to yell at the instructors around the other kids who were listening to the performer. They were yelling about getting me another turntable so I could really wild out. Since the instructors did not like the fact that these kids were interrupting the performance for the rest of the kids, they took the turntable and speakers and put them in a locked room. Of course this pissed all of us off, so we proceeded to put up flyers on the wall advertising a concert or something (I can’t remember). This enraged the instructors and they ripped them off the walls. This further angered us and somehow the scene split over to a music performance where I felt like I was the main performer (Common Sense) and was rhyming onstage; Erykah Badu was also present on stage. I believe I, as Common, was dissing the main instructor who tore down the flyers and locked up the turntable and speakers. I think I was telling her to give the stuff back to the kids (a kind of like Save the Music thing VH1 has).

June 23, 2004 – The setting for this dream was a train platform, which I felt was located in the Raleigh/Durham area. The train station/platform was extremely vivid. It was steel (or just plain grey) and had a semi-circle as a roof; anyway. I was rushing with my mother to catch a train to New York, and this was the reason for going to the station. For some reason, I was very angry with my mother (the justification for this never did appear). We then went to a movie theater that was located in the train station, why I do not know. There I noticed Katie Davis was employed at the movie theater (now keep in mind I had not seen Katie for several years and couldn’t even think of her last name when I awoke from the dream).

June 27, 2004 – At the beginning of this dream I was stationed outside of Southgate mall (on the left side) with a ladder propped against the side of the building. I had the feeling that I was in a "contest" to see who could keep their ladder propped against the building the longest, but there didn’t seem like anyone else was competing. There were two people outside the building with me; one being my roommate from over the summer session, Brandon, and the other person I can’t remember. I believe a huge gust of wind came and knocked the ladder down onto a white Mercedes-Benz. We were horrified, not because it had happened, but that the cops would eventually be called in and we did not want that. The next scene was me walking into a record store in Southgate Mall (for the record, there is no record store in Southgate Mall) and buying two 12" vinyl records. The first record was a single of Wu-Tang Clan "Wu-Tang Ain't Nuthin' Ta Fuck Wit" and a LP of Zack De La Rocha (notice that Zack has yet to release a solo record). After I bought the vinyl, I walked through CVS store (which doesn’t exist any more) in a hurry because I felt I was being followed or chased. I exited Southgate Mall and rushed to a parking space that held a large Dodge truck with a large suspension system and matching large tires.

Coerced Update

I do not understand why some professors, more so than the lesser-educated populace, accept either some or all the tenants of Post-Modernism. I also do not understand why departments choose to hire such people either. Or why there are journals, that are purchased by institutions of higher-learning, that publish such material. A sample of the great work by a post-modernist philosopher by the name of Jean Baudrillard:

"Shortly before the Gulf War, Baudrillard predicted that the war would not actually happen. After the war, he claimed that he had been correct, that no war had taken place. The reality of the war, where people fight for a cause and are killed, had been replaced by a 'copy' war that is delivered to televisions across the world where no fighting is taking place."

Now I know it isn't just me, but this makes absolutely no sense. If Mr. Baudrillard wants to argue over what the word "war" means, then fine, there are plenty of pot-smokers that would gladly engage you. But if he wants to be taken seriously, then how can he make such a claim. Imbedded in the word "war" is no pretense of "reality" or "authenticity". The wars that take place between GI Joe and Cobra in comic books are wars. Now they do not exist in reality, and no they do not have their own reality. As Bertrand Russell said:

"Similarly, to maintain that Hamlet, for example, exists in his own world, namely, in the world of Shakespeare's imagination, just as truly as (say) Napolean (sic) existed in the ordinary world, is to say something deliberately confusing, or else confused to a degree which is scarely credible...If no one thought about Hamlet, there would be nothing left of him; if no one had thought about Napolean (sic), he would have soon seen to it that some one did." (Descriptions).

This seems to be true. It seems that people who engage in the language games that are continental philosophy/post-modernism/etc are being intellectually dishonest and fradulant in the sense of achieving any sort of academic rigor. Sure, there many very well be limits to rationality, but they are not going to be discovered by people claiming such things and positing a limited picture of reality.

On a personal note, it seems to make the most sense to not bother yourself such situations: if you are interested in another person, reveal this fact of the world, and they either do not reciprocate or have no reaction. Worrying over things that you are entirely powerless to control or remotely influence is rather pointless. Additionally, emotion does seem to rely on perception or personal acknowledgment. If this is the case then one can always ignore the physiological signals sent to your consciousness. An optimal situation for everyone.

the Declaration of Independence (United States)

The Declaration of Independence, you know, the document American school-children are indoctrinated to idolize? Well, as I was passively watching a program on the Declaration of Independence on the History Channel and it made the claim Mr. Thomas Jefferson penned the piece during a two-week span. I was struck. Two weeks? How in the hell did it take two weeks to pen this document? According to the copy at the Indiana University School of Law has 1,350 words in it (roughly 2 ½ pages of single space text). I know I've been at college too long, but 2 weeks to pen 1,350 words is ludicrous. I know it is a beautifully worded, but two-weeks to write it (along with less than 2 weeks of revision at the Continental Congress). Give a normal college student 3 or 4 Redbull's, some sources (like the Virginia Declaration of Rights, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and such), and he'll knock this out in no time. An associate, Doug Sparrow to be precise, is at the UL penning a 25 page paper on politics in Sub-Saharan Africa right now. Rubbish. We need to stop worshipping these lazy mofos who were our forefathers. Regardless, I just needed to write some text down here. Mr. Douglass has been harassing me over my neglect for this blog. Peace.