Monday Morning

Lots of little scraps of dreams, and remembered too, though I am reminded that it is not necessarily a bad thing not to remember most of your dreams. These could have gone to the trash bin of forgetfulness without leaving me the poorer.

In one dream, I seem to be living with a couple of small brown boys, and I am enthusiastically playing with them, as if to become a sort of ideal brother to them.

Two other scraps seem to be related as one dream, or as variations of a common theme. In one I seem to have joined the army, or some branch of the military. We are marching and assembling, and I am consciously seeking to accept this way of life as mine, wanting to make this go at life work. In the other scrap, I seem to be talking to a recruiter. I want to join, but he cautions me against it, saying it is not for me.

Another dream is more homely. Pop is asking me if we should get a turkey and do a thanksgiving meal. I start by answering with my usual 'no', but he takes up a tone of voice urging me to reconsider and be honest with myself. I do find myself kind of hankering for that turkey and dressing. Pop has done a good job with it in the years since he has taken up the custom.

Hmmm, how many years is that? ... not many, but more than three years. ... I decided to go through my LiveJournal archive to see if I could come up with an answer, and I think I did. It looks like 2008 was the year Pop first tried to do a Thanksgiving meal. Since it was sort of experimental, it was just us - no guests. So, it has been seven years that Pop has kept it up. He got confident with it and started having guests, which ... turned it into a hardship for me. I'd rather go without the meal and be free of the guests. But it's his game and his call, and family life in these later years has settled into a pretty drama-free affair.

The Cat Plate

By half-accident, I have the cats back on an indoors diet, that is, they are habituated back into the routine of coming inside to eat, and I am inclined to keep it this time. In the past, I always gave in to the desire to make life easy and convenient for both them and myself, by simply leaving the plate of food outside on the patio, all day and all night. However, I should know by now that it is not merely bad luck that another wild beastie or two or three will start showing up. I know now they will always be showing up. We just cannot enjoy the easy life. We must always be braced against these rude intrusions. That means no letting up. The plate stays in the house. I will have to make one exception out of needful expediency. When Pop has guests, I will probably have to bring the plate outside. This will throw a wrench into the works and ways of habit and routine, but we have to work with the world that we have.

Black Mirror

I am glad that I got around to giving "Black Mirror" a chance. It is a kind of "Twilight Zone" show, but focused on the darker implications and possibilities of today's Internet and social media. My mouth dropped open watching the first episode when it was about publicly blackmailing the British prime minister to fuck a pig on live television (or an abducted princess would be killed), and then he did it. I knew then this was something different. The second episode, "Fifteen Million Merits" was not outrageous, but it was better, giving us a futuristic dystopia, almost on the level of allegory, depicting the class system and our base consumerism. With shows like this, episodes will be hits and misses, but scoring two for two right off the bat means it is worth a serious run-through.

Pre-Bed

It's time for bed, and I see, yet again, I let half of the day pass without a single blurt. I did write an entry for the show blog, but ... I really need to do a little something here. I've just been happily occupied with my Zauberberg essays, with my day being otherwise tranquil and contentedly uneventful, even in terms of the general mundane level of my home life. I didn't even masturbate. Well, with my life, a 'no news' day is a victory, especially when the reading has been very pleasurable.