Dreaming is for Children and Civil Rights Leaders

Oct 17th, 2011 | By | Category: Columns

I’m convinced that any and everything I dream during my night’s slumber serves no real purpose other than to leave me bitter in the morning. Now, I’m certain most folks love to dream, and enjoy traveling to distant lands and connecting with old friends and passed on loved ones and etc., etc., but to me, dreams are responsible for no less than 45% of all dickish behavior everywhere.

First, let’s look at what dreams are. For the sake of argument, let’s say that your subconscious is nothing more than a hyperactive 7-year-old, which is good, you need that obnoxious part of you to be able to tolerate the asshats of the world. However, when you fall asleep, there’s nothing keeping that little bastard in check, so he gets into the “special” batch of brownies, and goes absolutely nuts.

Never has a dream maintained one continuous plot, it’s nothing more than random events with maybe a fraction of anything containing any sort of order. Despite their complete randomness, they tend to contain a combination of three following traits:

We’ll start off with the standard “No one under the age of 21 is allowed behind the beaded curtain” kind of dreams. From a male perspective, these dreams were like gifts from the sleeping Gods when you were a teenager, to the point where, if you prayed before sleep, you’d drop a couple of hints that you could really use a piece of astral ass. After you’ve become an adult, and that overabundance of testosterone and various other hormones have subsided to nominal levels, sexy-time dreams leave you with the feeling of “Man…has it really been that long since I last got laid?” which sends you into a shame spiral, and inspires you to troll the local watering hole for a chain-smoking, beer swilling woman named Phyllis just to break the streak.

Next, we have those dreams that function as if they were created by the writers of the SyFy original movie of “TigerBee” (staring La Bamba himself), only more nonsensical, and nowhere near as awkward to experience. Everything starts off as puppies and sunshine as you’re doing everything you’ve ever wanted, and, as things reach the pinnacle of awesomesauce, that’s when two red glowing eyes fixate their gaze upon you. Naturally, much like all horror movies, the initial instinct isn’t to immediately flee from the area while lobbing any frag grenades you happen to have, but to investigate as if you were part of a group of meddling teenagers with a talking Great Dane who has a speech impediment. So, what happens? As soon as you get closer, the scenery changes, and you go from the comfort of your sprawling 25-room mansion, into an abandoned farmhouse. Of course, you’re completely unaware of this change, and press onward to investigate the shadow that appears to be devouring all natural light (as you show no concern for your mortal well being). You finally get to it, all light has been consumed, the barn has been replaced with a dead and dying forest, when a slew of tentacled arms shoot out from the darkness squeezing the life essence from you. Good job Sherlock. You begin to struggle as you attempt to free yourself from its slimy grasp. It brings you to its gaping maw, toxic saliva burning the flesh from your bones and it bites down. You shoot straight up in bed screaming your head off. Now, if you live alone, it’s a non-event, but if you share a home with anything that breathes, you’re going to cause them to wake up in the same fashion, and hopefully, they don’t have a heart attack as a result of you being unable to face an intangible being.

The last type of dream is where your subconscious goes to town. It’s this dream where you’re the conquering hero, defender of the planet, protector of the weak, and all around bad-ass. Your adventures have you taking on a medieval battlefield, swinging swords at the faces of a marauding barbarian horde, gaining a righteous blood lust as each invader falls under your blade. You’ve slaughtered your way to the invading general: two titans of the battlefield pitted against one another in a fight to the death, one fighting for country, one for spoils. You’ve managed to get the better of your foe, and as you prepare to deliver the final blow, you wake up. No disturbance, no noise, no nothing, your eyes–just–open. Awake with a new found vigor, you start mulling over every detail of that battle, probably enacting the “Parry, Spin, Thrust” technique (perfected by Daffy Duck) with nothing more than your toothbrush.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9vaNS3b0s

You go through the day, thinking back to just how awesome that dream was, finding yourself day-dreaming about how you would’ve finished the battle and celebrated the ensuing victory. As bedtime approaches, you try to barter with your subconscious, offering up a “Joy of Painting” marathon for just a a fraction of that night’s dedicated dream time to complete the previous night’s story. You drift off, the dream slowly begins to materialize, and you find yourself leaving a zoo as a 65-year old man….cheated again.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raXanYjTF18

Dreams don’t just don’t stop at taunting you on the subconscious level, they actually work in tandem with external forces. In order to understand why this is important, you need to understand the physics behind dreaming…which I won’t get too much into. When one is dreaming, they are at the deepest level of sleep possible, generally referred to as REM sleep. When one reaches this level of sleepdom, the subject has to be gradually eased out of REM sleep so the brain waves can reach peak levels and blah blah blah. Now, let’s take an external force such as, oh, I don’t know, an alarm clock. You’re in the middle of the most amazing dream you’ve ever experienced, when the equivalent of a howler monkey in heat starts screaming in your ear. Now the joy and rapture you were experiencing is gone in the blink of an eye. You’re now awake, extremely groggy, and every little thing annoys you: the way the sun shines in through the curtains, the birds chirping, your wife, all of it compounded with the fact that you have to get yourself ready to leave the house, which means you won’t be back in bed for a few hours. You have to force yourself to get through your morning ritual, all the while trying to sneak in a quick wink of sleep as you’re buttoning a shirt or driving down the interstate. It’s not enough, it’s never enough. You develop a short temper for the day, your patience is non-existent, and complete strangers have to put you in check as you’re about to reveal certain truths about Santa, The Easter Bunny, and Mr. Snuffleupagus to a bus filled with pre-schoolers.

Congratulations, due to the simple act of dreaming, you’ve become a dick.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCSoRfC7hpI

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Chris hates anyone or anything which goes against how he feels a sentient being with more than three brain cells should act. He hopes to use his “Encyclopedia Douchebag…ica” as a springboard into becoming a full-fledged, tax exempt religion complete with holidays and greeting cards, mainly so he can steal from its coffers. His hopes are…not that high, knowing that those who needs his guidance most, are unable to read his words… what with the extra flesh from their sloped, ape-like foreheads blinding their eyes from the truth.

When not acting like a complete bastard (which is not very often), Chris writes about all things video game related on his blog iNOOBriated, and his Twitter. He also offers his services as a freelancer for Beckett’s Massive Online Gamer. Yep, he’s a neeeeeerd.

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