Friend: You have to take care of yourself if you want to take care of other people.
Was this the prelude to some heinous act of his?
Or, alternatively: skip the pesto-and-chicken pizza after 9pm.
Clearly the songbirds should make a regular offering of one of their own, a sort of sacrifice or tax, in exchange for protection against the other hawks.
Or maybe the hawk was suffering from an eating disorder, and therapy would have resolved the whole situation.
In any case, vegetable protein requires far fewer resources to produce than do songbirds--why are we wasting money on resource-intensive songbirds, when the hawks could be guarding and feeding on a field of soybeans?
Eat them all, stop their noise, and sleep late. Switch to squirrels for lunch.
Although now that I think about it, you'd expect that such a dream would be more about feelings of self-deprivation/reigning in "natural" impulses than about a moral per se.
I routinely dream about being responsible for a small animal of some sort which starves, shrinks away or dies horribly because I am careless of it. Last time it was about a kitten, and it was so sad I can hardly stand to think about it. A kitten!
That kitten was just going to do you in the first chance it got.
Kittens aren't trustworthy.
But it still didn't deserve to fall into a pile of sawdust, suffocate and then hemorrhage horribly, merely because I was in another part of the apartment. If I had just cleaned up after using the circular saw...
I routinely dream about being responsible for a small animal of some sort which starves, shrinks away or dies horribly because I am careless of it.
Mock if you must, but that's exactly how I felt the last time I lost my cell phone.
On the other hand, last night I dreamed pretty much the entire narrative for a fourth Phillip Pullman "Sally Lockhart" novel which was anti-war in theme. It was set during the Crimean War, though, which makes it a bit too early for the series. It would probably need to be set during some other, later British colonial adventure.
If I had just cleaned up after using the circular saw...
Rise up, Dame Frowner Felis-Bane. And, whatever happens, never forget to wipe your power tools.
12: Oh good! Now I get to live in that castle by the sea, right? And this time, when I see the lantern in the wood while I'm out hunting, I'll be smart and just turn around and go home.
I had a bunch of dreams as a kid where I injured a cat by shutting the door on its tail or stepping on its tail or something. As it yowled, I panicked, and tried to make the problem go away by shutting the door even harder, so that that part of the tail would actually be cut off and the cat could run away and my problem would be over. That made me feel pretty guilty.
Great. This reminds me that last night I had a whole bunch of dreams about watching my baby get smooshed by tractors and Vikings and assorted other catastrophes.
12: And wipe your sword and never keep a rug you've killed a friend on. The bloodstains will just make you sad.
6: at least it doesn't happen to you in real life.
17: Well, we're planning on getting a cat on that far-future day when we buy a house, so it yet might.
Well, I find that the key thing with rugs is to wash them promptly in cold water. Usually bloodstains just lift right out.
word to the wise: don't assume that kittens have the sense of self preservation not to drink foul-smelling drano gunk that backs into the tub when you're trying to clean the drain. Don't just close the bathroom door, lock it.
That sounds horrible, Katherine. I'm sorry to hear it.
19: This may be a bit soft-hearted for Unfogged, but if you're saying that happened to a kitten of yours, I'm awfully, awfully sorry.
That's right. It's not the kittens who are killing the songbirds, it's the fucking hawks. Goddamn anti-cat bigots.
19 is just heartbreaking. Very sorry, Katherine.
Nope. Hawks.
Katherine, please tell me the kitten was okay?
Also, check inside the dryer to make sure there aren't a litter of kittens inside before you dry your clothes.
I swear this happened to a friend's aunt.
26: But they come out all warm and fluffy!
Was it Unf who linked to a picture of a cat that had been run over? Anyone else remember the good old days?
25: no, alas.
My family probably shouldn't be allowed to own cats.
Anyone else remember the good old days?
Don't worry, ogged. Your mother's death is going to be a laugh riot.
Let's go back to making fun of dreams, people. No more sad stories about bad things happening to kittens. I can only handle sad stories when there's a natural "well, after the revolution things like this will never happen" ideological turn to take.
And hey, I had a dream about the Crimean War! Come on, how about some bizarre-dream anecdotes? (That don't involve anything sad about kittens)
My weirdest dream experience was when I was about 6 years old, and I dreamed I was falling, and when I woke up I was bouncing in my bed like I just fell into it from about 4 feet up. Which, in retrospect, was probably just me pushing myself into the air just as I woke up, since I was flailing my limbs in the dream.
You compared the death of a kitten to the death of a parent; close enough to an analogy for bannination purposes.
My family probably shouldn't be allowed to own cats.
Indeed. You should send all your cats to alameida's family for safekeeping.
I dreamt the other night that Mimi Smartypants and I were very close friends. When I woke up I was intensely disappointed.
You don't have any pets. What was I supposed to do? Also, we're seriously going to make yo-momma-so-dead jokes.
I once dreamed I was going West in a covered wagon with Hilary Clinton and my father in law. Unfortunately I don't remember the details real well.
I dream about commenting on blogs. I've dreamed about commenting on Unfogged.
I think I've mentioned here before that i once had a sex dream about Monica Lewinsky. I've felt much more sympathetic toward her ever since.
35: Falling dreams like that are pretty common. Supposedly your brain is trying to develop a narrative for your movements or something like that. I usually have two or three falling dreams a year, which isn't annoying except that I never remember any of my other dreams.
Stupid dreams.
You don't have any pets.
I've been part of a cat-owning couple, however. I did like that cat. But we were getting all touchy-feely and affirming, and we can't have that.
I dreamed a pair of men tried to pick me up at a movie theater by sending a third man after me with a very large black handkerchief (more of a small scarf, to tell you truth) and saying I'd dropped it. It was flattering, but I remained straight in my dream.
I once dreamt I won a trip to China and was arrested there as a spy due to a case of mistaken identity. It was one of those long, involved, highly detailed dreams one doesn't shake easily. I still have a very vivid "memory" of the Iranian guy in the next cell who would try to break up fights in the courtyard.
35: That relates to my most boring hypothesis. I frequently have flight dreams where my motion is in ever-expanding arcs that gradually grow out of control. I guess they aren't all flying; some are in automobiles on outrageously steep hills, some on tire swings or trapezes. Most are flying, though.
My hypothesis is that the arc motion is from the same fluid (inner ear? around your brain? I do not know) that makes you dizzy. I've heard that the dizziness of spinning comes from fluid continuing to swirl in your head after you've stopped spinning. So I wonder if I'm tossing back and forth in my sleep and creating this arc motion physiologically.
Most people to whom I postulate this object on the principle that it's one of the least interesting things you can say about dreams.
I remained straight in my dream.
In the waking world, however, he went totally gay.
I had a terrible childhood dream that the swimming pool at the YMCA, where I took lessons, was really an aquarium with sharks and a giant octopus living in it. Even now, I get nervous doing backstroke.
When I was in grade school I had repeated nightmares based on the Boris Karloff Frankenstein.
From middle school through college, my dreams were all based on the 1970s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Starting in grad school and down to this day, I have frequent dreams based on Night of the Living Dead.
we're planning on getting a cat on that far-future day when we buy a house
First reference to this relationship I've seen. Is it new?
I don't consider the Crimean War colonial in the usual sense. If the quality you want is public feeling, mobilization, jingoism, the reaction to Gordon's death (1885) or the Boer War will have to do. Most other things were on too small a scale.
I frequently used to have not quite nightmares where I was very surprised to realize I'd be giving birth in a few hours. .somehow I got through the birth part without noticing (put under?) and then suddenly I had to take care of this tiny baby and awful things almost happening to it until the anxiety wakes me up. I also have miscarriage nightmares. I thought these were archetypal--or not?
I also frequently have dreams where I'm in a car going over a high overpass and somehow it hydroplanes and simply flies off the arch off the overpass. . . .going, going, awesome, horrible. . .aaaa--and I always wake up by "falling" into my bed with a jolt.
47: Okay, well riddle me this: My flight dreams always start out where I can fly as I please but over the course of the dream it becomes more and more of a struggle until I can barely leave the ground. I find it hard to assign an inner-ear/body motion narrative explanation to this.
Actually, I'd always assumed that it was just more of the same old boring not-a-good-enough-Frowner-blah-blah that my unconscious is so fond of.
Although once I had a really neat dream about flying a house to Russia, only it was the pre-1989 USSR except that it was actually a socialist utopia. There was a female punk band involved too, I think the Raincoats. The dream ended just as I was bringing the house in for a landing across a wide winter river crowded with shipping.
Oh, I also once wrote a paper on Dante's inferno in college while listening to the soundtrack of the muppet movie on headphones--that night I dreamed I was somehow responsible for preventing the muppets from being sent to hell.
Oh, good recipe for scary dreams? Watching Pany's Labyrinth and eating entirely too much ice cream very late at night and then going directly to bed. Oog.
51: Sadly, it's not new. But we try to cheer each other through the ongoing bourgeois drabness of our domestic life.
For years now I've had recurring dreams in which I find it easy to perform autofellatio. Interpretations, anyone?
I had recurring falling dreams through college, but they were exhilarating rather than frightening—just a big, ecstatic rush. They always involved jumping out of a hot air balloon. I had them often enough that I'd recognize I was in a balloon, and start crawling out excitedly.
My flight dreams always start out where I can fly as I please but over the course of the dream it becomes more and more of a struggle until I can barely leave the ground.
This is eerie. Although I haven't had them since high school, I used to get these all the time. I used to jump out of windows and such to get some altitude for flight -- I could fly well enough not to hit the ground, but I'd be struggling along at about six inches of altitude.
58: Self-Hoovering, one might say. It probably means your apartmentmate is sneaking into your room while you're sleeping.
I dream that I'm blind a lot, but it's a particular kind of blindness in which I can see things, sort of, but I can't put the information together into seeing. Dream stroke, yay! I also have absolutely fantastic dreams in which I'm dying, à la Tears for Fears.
61: That's disturbing to the point of suspicious...and you know what? No one has ever seen both of us in the same room at the same time!
58 would be better if you'd actually dreamt that you were Herbert Hoover and found it easy....
My flight dreams are always filled with insecurity, because I'm afraid someone will see me flying and think I'm weird.
I had them often enough that I'd recognize I was in a balloon, and start crawling out excitedly.
This is charming.
I once had a very vivid dream that my school playground had been determined by the Soviets to be a key strategic bomb target. My sisters and I dressed up in soldier costumes to try to delay the fighter planes into dropping their nukes a couple of minutes later. And as the planes flew low, I ran out onto the playground, waving my little cardboard sword, and I saw the pilot through his windscreen, and he just laughed and pressed his button. And then I woke up.
Usually I view people who tell me about their dreams as people with whom conversation in general should be avoided. Dream narratives, after all, fail as social intercourse because by definition they describe experiences that can't be shared by others. It's cool to have dreams, it's deadly boring to hear about them.
And being the pedantic neuro-geek that I am, I roll my eyes and shake my head when people try to tell me what they think their dreams mean.
And yet, having said all that, I recently had a dream featuring a lot of interaction with a child, and it was so emotionally powerful that, literally overnight, it changed me from someone who was not interested in having children to someone who wanted them (not that it's likely to happen).
I've heard that the dizziness of spinning comes from fluid continuing to swirl in your head after you've stopped spinning.
Not actually true.
62: It probably means your apartmentmate is sneaking into your room while you're sleeping.
No, the only other person in the house at night is Mrs. Hoover, and I am quite certain that she is not fellating me in my sleep (would that it were so. . .), nor am I fellating her in my sleep (she, being female, is non-fellatable.)
I am also quite certain that neither of the cats is fellating me in my sleep (size issues, abrasive tongues, etc.) And since I have not woken up with fur in my mouth, I am reasonably certain I have not been sucking on their tails as I dreamt.
So I am seeking a purely psychological explanation for these autofellatio dreams.
The most productive heuristic I have encountered for dream interpretation has been to start from the assumption that every character in the dream represents you.
It doesn't always illuminate but it's a good way to get started.
My stepmother suggested it to me when I mentioned a dream in which I was trying to get my father to stop throwing kittens in a swimming pool (sorry -- this is a bad thread for kittens). Maybe she just wanted to shift the blame away from my father.
69: Well, I'll see that and double it: Being the pedantic cultural studies geek that I am, I tend to think of all experiences as "can't be shared by others", and all conversation as a sort of fumbling always-already-kind-of-impossible attempt to negotiate meaning. As a result, I am charmed by talk of dreams.
To contradict what I just wrote, though, I'm really interested by trends in dreams; in college I collected nuclear war dreams for a fanzine I wrote, for example, and I'm very interested in the variety of flight dreams.
And although dreams probably don't "mean" in either a Dream Book or a super-Freudian sense--since we make coherent narratives out of disparate/random dream elements, as I understand it--they're fun and occasionally useful sources of reflection. To me, anyway.
Being the pedantic cultural studies geek that I am, I tend to think of all experiences as "can't be shared by others",
Being the pedantic Wittgensteinian that I am, I tend to think that things that "can't be shared by others" don't really exist at all.
So I am seeking a purely psychological explanation for these autofellatio dreams.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe you really like blowjobs.
73: I am also quite certain that neither of the cats is fellating me in my sleep
I do believe that's one of the finest phrases I've ever seen on Unfogged.
I haven't had flying or falling dreams, but I have had a floating dream in which my body was converted into a helium balloon, and I had no control over where I was going. Really vivid, disturbing feeling. In general I feel pretty cheated that all the dreams I remember best are the screwed-up ones.
77: You academics with your crazy theories!
Several times I've had a sex dream where if I started making out with someone not so desired by me, and let them get to say, second base, I could lucid dream them into being the person I really wanted all the way to home and then some. If I tried to start with the true object of my desire from the get go, I woke up or something bad happened. I always felt terribly guilty about this later, like I had used the less desirable person.
It reminds me of the songbirds actually--the hawk has to choose which songbirds to eat for the sake of which songbirds to protect.
I'm with Frowner. I love to hear about someone's dreams because at the very least they can be entertaining and I'm entirely open to the possibility that sometimes dreams are the sleeping mind trying to tell the sleeper something they might not otherwise be willing/able/etc. to think while awake.
Man, this thread hell of sucks for kittens.
75: I wouldn't say that interesting conversation can't be made out of dream narratives, just that it doesn't usually work out that way. I would agree, for instance, that finding common themes in dream content could be interesting. But a blow-by-blow recounting, no so much.
Dreams are useful sources of reflection to the extent that they can identify what are emotionally-charged images for you. But I really wouldn't try too hard to extract cognitive meaning from them.
I've stopped remembering my dreams in recent years -- I can't think of the last time I woke up with a clear enough memory of a dream to talk about it.
76: My problem is really that I don't have a method. Some days I feel convinced of standard cod-cultural-studies premises; other days I don't. Usually I'm strongly influenced by whatever I've been reading most recently.
So at the moment I'm sort of a Franco-Moretti-ite-cheesy-Ursula-Le_Guinian, with a large dose of MFK Fisher receipes for oysters. Classier to be a Wittgensteinian--do you refer to the early or the late? I am given to understand that there's a difference.
I could lucid dream them into being the person I really wanted
Unclear, Edith. Do they morph from less-desired to object of desire, or is there a dream within the dream?
My dissertation was on late Wittgenstein, but I have recently become more interested in the early Wittgenstein, although actually I don't focus on Wittgenstein professionally at all any more.
[bad joke]
How did Wittgenstein die?
He became the Late Wittgenstein. [/bad joke]
85: Sorry; they morph into the object of desire.
83: Since sometime around the end of college, I usually only remember dreams if I haven't smoked marijuana for a week or so.
That must be it -- I'll cut back on the dope and see if that changes anything.
77: I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe you really like blowjobs.
Then why wouldn't my subconscious simply cue up a dream about Mrs. Hoover giving me a blowjob? Furthermore, the actual blowjobs I have received in my life have been, shall we say, less than mindblowing; I greatly prefer actual intercourse.
I'm also certain that these dreams are not about any repressed homosexual desires.
So the question remains, why do I keep dreaming about performing autofellatio?
(Other than the fact that I'd really like to be able to actually perform autofellatio.)
blowjobs I have received in my life have been, shall we say, less than mindblowing
Next meet-up, you should get a room with me and Labs.
90: Furthermore, the actual blowjobs I have received in my life have been, shall we say, less than mindblowing
So then it would an "if you want something done right, do it yourself" sort of thing.
My weirdest dream experience was when I was about 6 years old, and I dreamed I was falling, and when I woke up I was bouncing in my bed like I just fell into it from about 4 feet up
Aside from occasionally waking to vague memories of a bad dream, I rarely remember anything I dream. Bah.
Oddest dream I can remember recently was one in which I resumed a sexual relationship with Michael Aspel. I did have one last week where I was trying to send someone something important in a parcel and instead gave them some eggs.
Generally, early pregnancy is the worst time for crazily disturbing dreams, I have found. (Although perhaps that was to do with the stopping smoking marjuana!) So I'm glad I won't be going through that again.
In my oddest dream we were having a dinner party at my family home. Among the guests was Hitler's mother, and people were worried that someone might say the wrong thing. In the middle of the dinner a very Jewish guy from college (whom I knew only slightly) lurched over to Mrs. Hitler. Everyone stiffened, but it turned out that he and Mrs. Hitler were both stamp collectors and there was a certain stamp he wanted to talk about.
Yes, in my younger days my family frequently entertained B-list Nazis.
I've had sex dreams about David Letterman, Michael Kinsley, and Perry Ferrell. Also once or twice about Unfogged commenters.
I have dreams of sex acts between kinsley and Pat Buchanan. Buchanan can out-"bear" Andy Sullivan any day of the week.
99: You have *not*. You're just saying that to be weird.
53,61 - that's exactly how my flight dreams go, too.
I have tons of apartment/nesting/moving dreams. About sequences of ficticious apartments that I live in, cohabitate with others, regret moving from, am planning to move into. Apartment layout dreams. Tons of them.
Also, I don't think I've ever had a sex dream, but I have hand-holding and excited-first-kiss dreams. Isn't that chaste and sweet?
I don't think I've ever had a sex dream
The advice in 91 works here, too.
Also once or twice about Unfogged commenters.
I was awesome, wasn't I?
I have lots of dreams of walking around in some random neighborhood of some random city, or maybe inside some random building, trying to find where I'm supposed to be but never quite finding it as it seems to receded whenever I get close. It's a little like the high school late-for-class dream except that I have pants on. These are all mildly anxious dreams, though not nightmares.
103: In my dreams, sure. In real life?
Oh, I'm awesome there too.
Why, what have you heard?
I was given a stern talking-to WRT recounting Unfogged-commenter sex dreams in comments threads so I shall not do so here. I think but am not sure that I am more likely to have vivid, memorable dreams if I have smoked marihuana not too long ago. The advice to think of everybody in the dream as representing yourself is coincidentally the exact same advice my friend Ed (he was with us at Chumley's) gave me the other day when I was telling him about a dream of mine which featured him telling me very earnestly to remember what was happening in the dream because it had bearing on my real life, and then absolutely cracking up when I asked him hesitatingly, ""Be straight with me Ed, this is not really happening is it?"
Clown, how recently didja smoke the wacky tabacky? I'm intimately familiar with a certain kind of rambly story...
I have dreams occasionally where I have pet rats, and they breed out of control and get out of their cages. I'm supposed to track down all of the baby rats and make sure they don't get hurt or take up residence in the walls and make yet more rat babies. These dreams always happen when there are lots of little details or tasks going on in my life that I feel like I don't have enough of a handle on.
Then there's my special variation on the not-graduating dream: a few times I've dreamt that I missed a test or some homework in high school and that not only does it mean my high school diploma's revoked, but the degrees I've earned since then as well. Once in the dream I was fired, because they said a college degree was required, and suddenly I no longer had one, so...
I think that the first person role in dreams always reflects either a way you view yourself as being, a way you want to become, or a way you actually are. So it can be useful for learning about yourself, but only insofar as you encounter situation in your dreams that would shed light on your character if they happened in real life. I doubt symbolism is significant, except insofar as you're accustomed to certain sorts of symbolism, and you can thus easily understand it.
108 -- Since the fall, I have been smoking every couple of weeks. I'm not sure how long it has been right now, I think going on two weeks. Before that I had a dry period of about 4 or 5 years.
I'd *like* to have sex dreams about Unfogged commenters .... especially if they fed me first.
111 - I was just teasing you and trying to imply that you'd taken a hit right before typing 107, because I had to read it more than once to follow what you were saying.
113 -- Huh. I thought you might be making that joke, but was not sure. And thought it would probably be funnier if I reacted to it straight.
Apropos of President Hoover's dilemma (and I'm hoping he was making a conscious play on Hoover vacuum cleaners when he chose that handle), this song has been running through my head:
Don't let my cat, go down on me
Though I try to suck myself, it only works in my dreams
I'd just allow a fragment of myself to wander free
Cause sucking myself, is like my cat, going down, o-o-on me.
Goodby Norma Jean
No I never, blew you at all...
You had the grace to spill your seed
While those around you balled...
112: I could have dreams about the Unfogged food too.
I told you all that I had a dream where I was a Democratic operative who had to marry Alberto Gonzales a la Ingrid Bergman in Notorious. Sadly there was no Cary Grant character. I was just stuck with Abu.
