2025/3/6, 2025/3/14, 2025/4/29, 2025/6/20, 2025/7/4, 2025/7/18, 2025/7/31
Inspired by Moonpr1sm's excellent dream diary, I decided to record some of my own dreams....
His mother was already very drunk from a whopping two bottles of beer when Ken, Annusya, Nancy, Damian, Maxim, and Ken's friends all forgathered into a karaoke box somewhere in Fukuoka. Nancy muttered something about how you can't fall down in those booths in Hong Kong (which is untrue) before she passed out and slumped on her seat like a cute little sack of onions.
We sang together and consecutively for over 5 hours. Solo and in duets with Ken, Maxim, and Annusya, I sang Stubborn Kind of Fellow, Here Comes Your Man, Peg, Music Non Stop, Between Something and Nothing, The Caterpillar, Reminiscing, Eight Days a Week, Master and Servant, The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get, Violence of the Flame, Maneater, Die Interimsliebenden, Panic in Detroit, From Her to Eternity, Never Be the Same, Love Me Two Times, She's Lost Control, The Last Time, Stop Me if You Think You've Heard this One Before, Somewhere in Between, and Street Spirit, and a few others (these are the tracks that I recall and have itemized in the past two days.)
When Ken's girlfriend took the stage, she sang Desire, Witches, and a couple other pop songs that I don't know. He and I have similar taste; I would've had eyes for her at his age, and she's like a skinny, Okinawan version of his mom.
One of Ken's friends belted out Ride on Time, another big city pop hit whose title eludes me, and some late Heisei stuff unfamiliar to me. I couldn't believe this tenor's voice, which was enormous. I complimented him later and told him that he should consider singing in a professional capacity, but he grimaced and said that he'd hate to be an entertainer.
Late into the session, an extremely shy young lady -- the girlfriend of one of Ken's friends -- could barely sing something by Seiko Matsuda. She vomited a bit on her shirt later, and started crying.
She slept through the entire session, and I had to carry Nancy out of the premises, and half of the way back to the hotel before she could stagger with her dumb shuffling steps to the suite. Very annoying! As always, Annusya was boundlessly amused by her.
Standing in a lin under numerous cascades, I came to realize that each such waterfall contained a mnemonic stream. When I placed a hand or my head under one or other, I found my mind deluged with foreign memories that were familiar, alien, offensive, pleasurable, confusing, horrific, intimate, desolate, etc. This was wrong. These were not my memories, and I felt that I'd no rightful access to them.
Eventually, I identified my own cascade, which dissolved my hand and forearm when I touched it. I stepped under it and quickly deliquesced, my quiddity and whole being suddenly flowing downstream. This was fun: a ride first down an ever-accellerating river, then through rapids. I felt several other souls from a waxing conflux traveling about me, but could only espy them peripherally.
A portal opened in my bedroom's wall, and my dry, corporeal figure was deposited from the river onto my bed minutes before I woke.
I was in Brussels, trying with a sympathetic agent to negotiate licensing for a Franco-Belgian edition of Apron Strings with the aim of penetrating a broader Francophonic market. It wasn't going well; two executives asked me what the social context of the story was, and I explained to them that it hadn't any; it was purely personal. They didn't cotton to Calla's subplot. Explication of my old ethos was a real pain in the ass.
One night, my agent invited me to a screening of a documentary concerning irrigation in western China. He further notified me that Madonna would be there, as she was for some reason involved in its production. I shrugged and agreed, curious to observe the freakshow in person.
That documentary was perfunctorily but competently produced. Afterward, I was introduced to Madonna, who was all wrapped up in some kind of weird latex bodysuit, and resembled Madonna cosplaying as Bette Davis's corpse in the manner that the stunted little old girl from Akira looks like a tiny, elderly Gena Rowlands. She was surrounded by a terribly edgy, snide retinue, and declined my hand. I told her that I was very fond of her early work, in particular her first three albums. She rolled her eyes and said, "Well, I was still kind of naive back then. Some of us grow out of it."
I replied, "I just liked your vocals. You hadn't much to do with composition, arrangement, or production." She stared at me with a countenance that was less lethal than moribund, and very unnerving.
She walked away from me with her entourage, and just as I was introduced a minute later to a model who was quite unpleasantly pretty, we all heard and turned to the loud, slightly distant noise of shattering and splattering -- as though a balsa box containing entrails had been dropped three stories.
Well, ole Madonna had thrown herself off of the screening room's balcony in an apparent suicide. A Dutch tourist just happened to videorecord her impact, which went viral two days later.
Upon viewing the video, I immediately scripted my encounter and the suicide, then contacted Ferry and instructed him that I needed this illustrated in four pages immediately. He obliged almost as soon as I paid him double our usual rate.
The comic publicized me successfully, and the deal (among others) was secured. I'd taken old lady Ciccone's lemons and made myself some lemonade.
Annusya and I were viewing The Great Train Robbery and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution as a double-bill (we should do this during your next visit, snus). During the end credits of the latter, she waxed obnoxious, asseverating, "She's too old for him," and "The score should be synthesized," and blah, blah, blah, blah. I snapped, "Well, why don't we find out who owns the rights so that they can finally rework the movie almost a half-century later in accordance with your stupid opinons and royally FUCK IT RIGHT UP?!" Then she slapped her arms folded, jutted her lower lip nearly an inch from her face, and slammed her back against the back of her recliner. I couldn't determine whether we were kidding.
Dante was convulsed by and constantly watching an inane, well-intentioned, frankly unhinged sci-fi comedy called Da Futcha, in which a black spaceman (played by the screenwriter/director, who's essentially Rudy Ray Moore if he were born in the late '80s) from the year 300,000,000 travels back in time to Earth in present-day 2034 to help his dysfunctional ancestors. This entails: unsuccessful conversion therapy effected by lasers to turn his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather straight, after which he uses advanced technology to merge his antecedent with a dog that he's raping; attempts to preclude his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother's prostitution by punching her with a special glove that defenestrates her; a lot of assaults on pedophiles and drug dealers; etc. Acting in Da Futcha is uniformly, hilariously abysmal; its production values are nonexistant; its story makes no sense at all, all of the "sets" are scarcely-dressed, often reused rooms in people's dumpy houses; the special effects are spectacularly bad. I realized that this was my son's The Room or Birdemic, and we bonded while watching it five times. It also provided me with a context and examples that enabled me to teach him how black schizophenia differs from white or yellow schizophenia. I hope that it's real someday and that this dream was precognitive.
My feet were stuck in the soil at the embankment's peak, and I was struggling to free them and clip the bent, rusty, mismatched bolts and long screws that held the bedframe together with a bolt cutter. Who the hell assembled this thing, anyway?
Whilst perusing the Criterion closet, I couldn't believe that I either already had or didn't want anything available. As I was examining spines of Eclipse sets for something worthwhile, I suddenly remembered and irately yelled, "Why the fuck haven't you idiots issued any of Iwai's pictures yet? You should be on your second Rockwell Eyes box set by now." Morons. Fuck these hipsters.
For ten minutes, I left Dante with Madre and Randy to check on Annusya's progress. She was fixated on her cherry and boysenberry pies, and couldn't discuss anything else. When I returned to their living room, Dante was sitting on the couch with his arms folded, face flushed and contorted into an awful grimace. I asked what had happened, and Madre told me that she spanked him after he threw his shoe at and injured Lilibet, who was cowering cutely between Madre and Randy. I enjoined him to apologize, and he yelled, "No!" and ran away down the hall on his little feet.
My house was somehow submerged in a giant goldfish bowl, and impossibly watertight inside. Everyone was very tense, except for Annusya, who didn't know what was happening. She exclaimed, "Oh, look! A cute fishie!" and opened the window to pet it; a torrent of water tore through the screen and flooded the bathroom before I could shut and lock the window again. I opened my mouth to yell at her, but only uttered a soundbite of Mark Hamill's voice from the soundtrack of Star Wars: "Would you forget it?! I already tried it; it's magnetically sealed!" Weird.
He assumed that he could simply clog the toilet and bolt, but I had other plans! I loaded the potato gun, settled into a folding metal chair before the bathroom door, and waited.
That PTA meeting was a fiasco, but the contiguous sex was spectacular; we were the only ones who really enjoyed ourselves that night. It was the first evening since her colonoscopy when I felt fully joyous and serene.
After my autographic session concluded, Peter and I evagated about and by fortuity met Dan Jurgens at a booth. He was very old and clearly infirm. I paid $60 for an autograph, but mostly to tell him how much I'd enjoyed his run on the Superman titles during my preteens. He replied that he chewed gum as chain-smokers smoked back then, then touched his jaw gingerly, clearly pained for some present ailment that was mnemonically recalled. His left index fingernail and right pinky were missing. I inquired how, to which he glared at and shunned us.
Finally, I met Shunji Iwai at a reception introducing the rerelease of newly-remastered, 4K Swallowtail, but he was coming down with some sudden illness, and his assistant (who was appareled in an incongruously recherche ensemble) informed me that he couldn't meet anyone else today. I whined that I'd flown thousands of miles just to meet him; he consulted The Master, who conveyed his apologies. Before Damian and I took our leave, I asked his assistant to tell him that his idiomatic auctorial, directorial, editorial, and musical prowess mean the world to me. We betook ourselves to a dumpy little eatery that prepared quite toothsome eel, and I felt the distinct pressure of crushing disappointment.
Annette was chewing on my shoulder, and our foreplay was disrupted, not enhanced, when she gnawed though to the scapular muscle. I jammed a chunk of wood in her mouth to deter her, and she proceeded to nibble though it like a beaver, laughing that crazy bray that always startlingly portended some kind of lascivious or jaundiced violence. Big dental anteriors of Hans and Japanese are so sexy and charming to me in reality, but my subconcious employs them as cynosures of nightmares.
Perhaps my tacit disapproval of his proposal insulted him; anyhow, he deemed my consumption of raw chicken and egg disgusting, and told me so. My ripost was perfectly Attic, but even better for its ethopoetic superciliousness; pehaps no other jeu d'esprit so perfectly conveyed my character as an ungodly snot. Alas, I could remember that, but not it, or his reply. I was wearing a gray chamois shirt that I wore often in the aughts though the mid-teens.
In a shopping mall's food court, I was strolling past a pizzeria, and took one of many tan baseball caps bearing its logotype from a shopping cart parked nearby. Just as I was pinching mammamia gesticulations and yelling, "Ayyyy, luigi spungole!!" to the checkout jerk of the pizzeria, he yelled back that I had to pay for it. I tossed it back into or near the cart (they look so stupid, so who cares?) and approached the pizzeria while hollering stuff like, "Whattsamattayou!?" and "Ya got some capricciatore in your spugatamoli, or what?!" Just as I was jabbering all that, I realized that I don't know any Italian, except for maybe "il" and "lasagna," and I'm not always even certain about "il."
This checkout jerk looked more Ashki than Italian, but I said, "So I wanna slice-a of da pizza, extra cheese and ravioli with some pepperoni. Ayyyy."
He tried to wave me away and said, "Get out of here; c'mon."
"Just gimme my fuckin' food, ya mulignan," I said, and slammed my left hand into my pocket for some cash. I had bills therein, but also 60-odd coins. Why all the specie?
"That's offensive," he spat back. He was really aggravated now, and I felt a sinking sensation that I wouldn't get my food.
In the split-second before he said something else that didn't register, I glanced at his nametag and I could've sworn that it read, "Gene Hackman." I started to ask if he was also a fan of the late thespian, but upon closer inspection, it read something like Geoxha Horrklare. What even was this guy?! So instead I started to ask: "Geoxa? What the fuck is--"
"I'll have to call security if you won't leave," he told me.
A sudden furor swelled and I seethed, "No, fuck this! What the fuck is that name?! And I want my fucking food!" A screaming match ensued during which I kicked something and -- as I foresaw -- didn't get my food before two security guards arrived to escort me out of the mall. I was livid against this god damned Albanian or Basque or Mizrahi or whatever the fuck this bald, ugly prick was. I woke feeling groggy and entitled because my ancestors were here for millennia, unlike this second-gen jerk-off stand-in for Fred Melamed. I want my pizza.
Damian and I spent nearly two hours setting up my stand at the convention. After a few hours during which we sold five comics, some fat slob waddled up to the stand and vomited all over our wares, which were consequently ruined. He was forcibly removed, and my enterprise was screwed. As the hall's custodian was tidying his puke and my ruined comics, I knew that I had to do something ingenious to salvage the day, but what?
A memory of Etsuko walking into a wall and staggering backward as she said, "Aeuggh." Even her skinny chicken's calves were cute.
Just as I stabbed Kenneth Branagh and leapt off of the pier, I realized that my car keys had flown out of my accidentally unzipped pocket. Terrible.
An oft-recurring dream: finally exhausted with Israel's subversive bullshit, China nuked Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, then immediately blamed India for the strike. When the counterfeit, conniving, parasitic, genocidal, triumphalist, second-world, architecturally hideous country failed to retaliate, we all knew what we'd suspected for decades: their warheads are duds, and the Samson Option is codswallop. Discussing this online, I felt suddenly horrified and elated in the knowledge that balance had been restored to the world, and that some heroes aren't good people at all. This is one of my favorite dreams.
In an impossibly prevenient version of Hereditary shot in '76, I was a supernumerary playing one of the cultists. After Karen Black's decapitated corse floats into the treehouse and newly-possessed Scott Baio climbs up after her, I was one of the nude demonolaters bowing in wait. I was very sore and cramping for assumption of this position for over an hour, and I could feel some fat lady's exhalations on my feet and scrotum. After Philip Kaufman yelled, "cut," I finally relaxed, donned a robe, then repaired with a big Olivetti typewriter to the studio commissary, where I banged out a first draft of a review almost literatim to my new review, and for which I felt the same vague dissatisfaction: it's a bit too superficial, almost perfunctory. Karen Allen was sitting nearby, complaining of menstrual cramps.
When Ichiro learned how to ride a bike in the mid-aughts, I was present and instructing him. He struggled very much as I did in the late '80s, suffered a bruised knee for his trouble, and was stoic though saturnine throughout, even when he learned how ride. This prompted some reflection on Pasternak's description of Eurasians as congenitally sullen and deliberate people. I was crying when I woke.
As transposed teenagers, Keith and I found a box full of (mostly broken) iPhones in a shed. He shot footage of me snapping them with punches, judo chops, and drop-kicks whilst wedged between shelves, car doors, etc. I edited the footage into a video of 4 minutes' duration that went viral and enriched me before it was demonetized. In recognition of my service to the country, the President (not Trump, but griseous, toothy, badass James Coburn) phoned to apprise me: "To commemorate your valor, the government will accord you one free assassination, son." Naturally, I immediately selected Sophia Takal for instant death. When we hung up our phones, I felt a climacteric swell and realized that I was now part of history. o7
Lain in a grassy field, my skin was green. My toes wiggled, and the grass beneath and between them wiggled back!
© 2025 Robert Buchanan