h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Shame on you, Amy. That website was so interesting I got lost in it. I had to reopen h2g2 and force myself off there.

When I was a kid, I thought scientists *could* see my dreams. You see, they were doing what the patronising nurse told me was a 'brain-wave test'. (EEG). They glued wires to my head, just like in my favourite scifi movies. Then they gave me a mickey, so I'd go to sleep.

I thought they were making a film, and hoped I would dream something interesting for them to watch.

Less than half an hour? I'm impressed.

Whoah. Now I have to study this dream recording site. Quite scary. I am lured though. hmm. I have a lot of work to do.

That's a graphic hospital sentence, DG friend, about the brain wave test. Saw it in black and white. The hospital. Strange movie.

Hey Willem, Maria sent me some fractals over on the other thread, and one of them is entitled Fractal Wasp Troll. For some reason it reminded me of one of your dreams. .

Yes Willem, those fractal works were really fasciating. They seem so organic that it demonstrates that there are lots of fractals in nature somehow. Marie for sharing those.

Hi everyone! Amy, yes I did read that, which is why I mentioned it! I read Cracked a lot in fact. And I have been thinking of dream and thought image recorders for a long time.

Dmitri, when I was hooked up to an EEG once I intentionally imagined horriffic images to see if the folks would pick up anything. They didn't. We still have a long way to go, just like with those AI chatbots.

Thanks also for those wonderful fractal graphics Maria and Elektra!

Last night's dreams ... the first I can remember involved elephant dung with intact big black seeds in it. This certainly is based upon a time I found elephant dung in the bush that had not only intact marula seeds in it (though they're white rather than black) but even a few competely intact fruits ... meaning the elephant had neither chewed nor otherwise digested them. Relative to those seed dispersal videos, Elektra, elephants are dispersers of a great variety of plant seeds over here.

In the next dream I remember, I actually got the girl! But I also got her in trouble (no, not what you think). This was the girl I was madly in love with while in high school. Anyways this time she accompanied me throughout the dream. There was a strange scene at the start where I stood upon a tree trunk, holding on to a rope that was attached to the tree. I pulled the rope tight and jumped up, which made me move in the arc of a circle rather than straight up and down. It was a weird sensation, and I repeated it a few times.

Then the girl and I was on a quest of which I can remember little. But we ended up infiltrating some government facility, or maybe a garage, because I think I can remember cars. There we were apprehended by Julius Malema (controversial SA politician ... actually not much of one, a better job description would be troublemaker). We were sent to jail but somehow ended up in a movie theatre. The girl was now suddenly much younger. She and I then looked at a book that I had written and illustrated a long time ago and that actually depictedthe adventure we had just been through. I realised that by writing and drawing it, I had actually caused our predicament and felt sorry for it.

Oh sorry, I forgot, but thanks to you too Cactuscafé for mentioning the fractal pictures! They're amazing.

I think I got up in my sleep last night. I woke up with a stubbed toe and I seem to have hurt my thumb. Stubbing my toe hurt, that is all I know.

Strange .. like sleepwalking? Now that's an added dimension to dreaming. hmm. Sleepwalking. I've never known that. I wonder what it is? It must be quite scary, especially if you wake up in a strange place.

Way back when, I shared a room in London with this lady. I remember her getting up in sleep, putting on her woolly beanie hat, and walking round the room a few times muttering dream talk.

It is a rare occurance. I don't like the idea of knowing I got up and have no idea of what I did, apart from stubbing my toe and somehow hurting my thumb.

Hello Peanut and Cactuscafé! I haven't ever walked in my sleep, but I have done stuff such as taking off my balaclava, without being aware of it, only noticing when I wake up that I don't have it on any more.

Last night's dreams, as far as I can remember.

First dream ... the beginning I can't remember, but then it reached a point where I were worried about where all the airplanes were. There ought to have been lots and lots of airplanes, and I saw them in what was a vision inside the dream. I then looked out of the window ... there are two local airfields, one to the south and one to the north of where I live. I looked towards the southern one and ought to have seen all the airplanes (in the dream ... in real life there are too many building and hills and things in between my house and the airfield) but the landscape was covered in dense fog! Then my dad and I drove into the fog. We came to a destroyed fence-gate ... it was sort of shredded and I wondered what could damage it like that ... a storm, maybe? We drove over the gate without the car's tyres getting damaged, but I was concerned if we should return, but my dad said we'd return by a different route.

Then we were in the game reserve (IRL it's close to the airfield) and there were lots of black, hairy baby elephants! (There are no real elephants in the reserve). Some were of ancient types such as gomphotheres, that have tusks in their lower jaws unlike modern elephants. We drove on and then saw some really weird things ... moose-like deer, including some Cervalces (extinct weird-antlered deer) except of course the dream deer looked different from how the real one did.

Can't remember more of that one.

The next dream was of my father having switched religions. He was a very devout Christian. In my dream he turned to worshiping the Greek Gods. He offered a prayer and an offering to one ... can't remember what the offering was and whether it was offered to Zeus or Poseidon ... but anyways at the end of a prayer my dad threw it against the wall. It didn't 'teleport' through the wall, instead just crashing against it, and this made my dad believe the offering had been rejected. I then spoke with him and suggested his way of worship might not be exactly right.

What I can remember from last night: a pool with huge skulls in it, of some kind of aquatic monster.

Another dream: My father was lost in a forest, and my mother abandoned him there, about which I was very angree.

Last dream was of a friend of someone I know ... there was a closet involved and I wasn't sure if the friend was named Joan or Jonah.

Last night was action-packed. I remember one dream was about Lando Calrissian appearing in a dream-version of The Empire Strikes Back. Then there was a drug addict that became grossly disfigured, with a rigid, protruding tongue, really weird skin, and he also became rigid and unable to move. Then I was in a classroom with young children and I was writing or drawing something really profound for them. I also had a dream of one of my chairs (the kind with the seat made of leather thongs) getting fixed, merely by tightening the remaining unbroken thongs. I wish it was that easy! I have four or five chairs here the seats of which are almost completely in shreds.

The most remarkable dream was however where I was insulting or warning a certain person. I did it by composing a rhyme while I was speaking it, telling him what I think of him and what I'd do to him ... I was astonished even inside the dream by how rapidly I was able to compose lines with the right number of syllables and also with a word at the end that rhymed just right. But when I woke up I could remember nothing of the poem! I wish I could ... was the poem really as good as it seemed to me in the dream, or was it gibberish? Because in a dream pure gibberish can sometimes seem very meaningful!

Oh Willem, I liked your dream where you told someone off. All too often I think of something witty or cutting afterwards.

I love the pool with the skulls. The aquatic monster skulls.

I am lured by that pool..... it's like I know that pool ...

hmm...

What does this say about my DNA?

Hi Elektra and Cactuscafé! I just wish I could remember what I told that guy off for!

Cactuscafé, I don't know about your DNA, but I have many dreams of strange things in pools. Sometimes lovely, sometimes scary.

Last night I dreamt of riding a bicycle. A friend from back in school rode along with me on his bike. What was wonderful about this dream was that I rode easily ... most of the time when I dream of bike riding, they're horribly hard to pedal. In this case it was a breeze and I appreciated it, even wanting to bike as far as possible. Wish I could remember more of the scenery.

I also dreamt of SA rugby players Kobus Wiese and Joost van der Westhuizen. Don't remember what they were doing in my dreams.

Then I dreamt of being in a movie theatre. Another old school friend of mine was there. I don't know what movie we were watching but it was long, and there were two parts, and by the time the second part was on I was getting impatient and wanted to leave the theatre, but it was very dark so I couldn't see my way to get out. Also, like most of my dream theatres, there was a veritable labyrinth of passages leading hopefully outside but most of the time *not*, instead leading to other theatres. And I always have to navigate these passages in the dark.

Hm. Your dream just reminded me that in my dream last night, I was swimming in some sort of indoor pool, very irregular, in a sort of Gothic cavern of a building.

I'd forgotten, because I was too bemused by the fact that I'd dreamed of s. One was in a cage in my china cupboard, for some reason. (Although it would be a good place to be safe from the cats.)

That's interesting that my dream reminded you of yours Dmitri! I happen to have a scene in one of my books of people (human and non-human) swimming in pools in caves, and the cave system overall is a very Gothic-y sort of environment.

Anyways: last night, first dream I can remember is of me training with weights. I did power cleans, and got up well over 200 lbs, and was very happy about that. Real-life subtext: my best ever clean was around 200 lbs when I was a teenager, and I've rarely performed them but have been thinking of returning to them lately.

The next dream was of a sexy Latina girl who danced wonderfully but turned out to have a foul mouth! I wonder if this might have anything to do with the real-life Pussy Riot incident? They're Russian of course and singers rather than dancers but things get mixed up in strange ways in dreams.

That's all I can remember, but something very strange is that it feels to me like I dreamt all that ages ago. I wrote it down this morning just after my cat woke me, around six ... but later in the day when I thought about it it felt like it was weeks ago.

(heads to dream analysis book, to check meaning for Gothic pools, and s in china cupboards)

Only kidding. .

I think you guys could flummox the most adept of dream analysts. . Good word that, flummox. I have never typed it. Flummox. Looks funny in print.

Funny that, though, about the pools. I don't tend to dream about them, but I have certainly been there. Weird, huh.

Hi Cactuscafé! I don't think analysts would be able to do much with the stuff I dream! Take for instance ...

Last night I dreamt of a guy with a strange hairstyle. His hair was straw yellowish and he had it arrayed into two flaps that hung like huge dog's ears at each side of his head, obscuring his real ears. Now what's that about?

Next dream was about a book on chameleons ... ALL the chameleons in the world, illustrated! In other words something I'd really drool over in real life. I had a look at the book, but then put it back on the shelf - it was in a library, see. Then I failed to find the book when again I went to the library to search for it. But in the process I DID find an entire rack full of Dr. Seuss-books ... books that don't exist in real life, and I took a look at them and they were awesome! Now imagine if I could remember all that after waking up and could actually reproduce those books ...

wowzum. That's incredible, about the books! All the chameleons in the world, illustrated? How I could dream about owning that book! Imagine if you could remember all those books, and you went on to create them. That's your life's work cut out for you eh? heheh. As if you aren't busy enough already.

And as for the guy with the straw yellow hair hanging down like a dog's ears. (checks dream analysis book. hmm. what??).

Don't worry, wink wink, only kidding. I don't own such a book, not these days. I used to have a dream analysis book but it kept analysing me , and I had an argument with it. .

I'm really into that guy with the straw yellow hair. He reminds me of good things. I think he has wisdoms. He reminds me of my Dad's golden retriever, , because you said dog ears, and straw yellow, , and when I was a kid I used to tell all my secrets to this lovely dog, by lifting up her ear flaps and whispering my secrets into her ear.

Nice to think about that. Thanks for dream association!

Now, get painting, kid. . I need that chameleon book by next week. heheh.