unearthly animals.

The action is quite vivid and real but not lucid, I don’t even know that I’m dreaming. 

It is stimulated by frustration with Galaxy 6 cell phone that insists you have a relationship with your phone by continuously telling you everything that it’s doing, its own updates, its own problems, its needs, and instructions for you, through unwanted messages and odd beeps, but without doing things that you tell it, like STFU, remove Samsung Pay, stop reminding me Samsung pay has the same to g.d. messages, that it's still there, still active, still connected,  provide my email and be quiet about it, and actually ring when I get a call. And don't go silent. Somehow the essential basics go wandering off and reset to do nothing and the user must continuously check. 

While standing in line outside in the sun with the pot smokers at the marijuana dispensary waiting to take advantage of holiday price combined with early bird special, I wanted to see how close we are to the doors opening but the screen cannot be read in bright light.

The simplest thing is impossible. Unless I download yet another app that will use the speaker to tell me. I suppose. Such a major pain in the ass. And, yes, get the hell off my lawn. I could smash your brains out and sleep like a baby.

I love that part of the movie. 

I ask the pot smokers waiting with me. They kindly look at their analog watches and tell me. 

Incidentally, if you smoke pot or drink alcohol or wine or possibly even coffee, all these chemical interferences will cause your dreams to become cloaked and unrecoverable. I think. So if you cannot recall them and want to, then try giving up whatever drugs and drink. That’s my opinion. Don’t bother asking your doctor, he/she most likely drinks. Most likely doesn’t recall their own dreams. They deal with a lot of harsh issues. 

The first is separated from the second. Both have different phases that amount to several separate dreams in a row.

I’m at a hotel and discussing with people unknown about logistics to the next spot on my itinerary. Crucially, it involves a holiday and scheduled events so timing is key.

Nothing works. The people I know are all behaving as jerks. Now in different location and among a tight crowd I wonder why it is that I’m wearing roller skates but it does help zooming around. I’m arguing with someone I know in real life. He’s a jerk IRL and he knows it, but he has episodes where he simply cannot control his behavior.  He knows the effect all that has on other people but he’s too egocentric to manage his emotions, to cover his childish feelings, it shows, and everybody around knows this and it’s why they avoid him. He’s incredibly successful in life. Similar to Trump in this way, except not nearly so extreme. And whereas Trump avoids alcohol and the like, this guy’s had problems with both alcohol and depression. He avoids people in retirement, and people avoid him. I chide him. Rough him up. Poke his fat belly. Skate away. 

I notice Milo Yiannopoulos sitting at a table by himself on the opposite side of a dividing wall. We do not know each other but he is celebrity. He’s wearing an expensive and glaring outrageous gray suit bedazzled, a thing he wouldn’t touch IRL. He’s holding a giant wishbone hinged where it breaks. "Get your wish?" Eh, it's all bullshit anyway. It’s a prop. He’s scheduled to speak, apparently. I want to provoke the alcoholic friend somehow by showing I know a lot of strange people, that it’s not just him and his group. I make vacuous conversation, Milo is gracious but not particularly penetrating, and I skate off. 

The event is not interesting and neither are any of the TOC, (tired old crowd) My skates are gone and I’m at the home of two immigrant women. They’re digging into their new life in America. Really digging. Now here my interest becomes piqued. Finally something interesting.

Two women bought a filled warehouse at auction unseen. One said, it’s the only way to beat  ____ at his own game. You must buy the whole thing when he’s distracted. Similar to “Storage Wars” a popular cable tv program. Except a lot worse. The two women are Iranian and this is their first foray into American adventure into this sort of thing and their first success. They’re both very well chuffed. But I’m worried for them. They brought home and into their own house a tremendous amount of dreadful junk that you would not want to have around. They were both excited about sorting through all that. They considered it a real treasure while I considered it all an unnecessary burden.

Segue to outside and I see a penned animal that does not exist on Earth. This should have been my clue to alert me I’m dreaming but it did not. The animal was larger than an elephant, had tusks, thrashed around menacingly but was too light to be a real  threat. It was stupid and it was messy like a pig in mud. Bright cobalt blue and large and inflated as a synthetic balloon.

I wanted to take a photo. To show everyone later. They’re not gong to believe this. The phone doesn’t work. I press the right buttons but it just doesn’t work. The touch must be just so and I haven’t mastered it yet. (This actually happened at the Hatch chile place) 

The dream helper appears and takes the phone out of my hands and photographs the animal and returns the phone. 

While we’re standing there, segue again and the helper changes into another male, antagonistic about my phone incompetence. More animals appear in the distance. A herd of ordinary farm animals with an elephant among them incongruently. Now I want to photograph that odd sight well in the distance. Cell phone doesn’t cooperate. I lack the magical touch. “Press the upper left corner of the icon, you idiot, and press it 75% of full pressure.” Jeez.  

Good Lord, there’s a lot to these phones. One needs a full semester to use one. You don’t just jump in as I have. Fuck me. I loose the shot. They’re gone. 

But animals keep coming, and they’re coming on strongly now, they’re all weird ones too, prehistoric, post historic, not of this Earth, and fully imaginary, like floats, like rampaging creatures, things from the ground, things that fly, they’re getting close, animals that target movement, all colors, even beyond our light spectrum, wild things, tame things, giants, monstrous, menacing, adorable, every  range of wild thing imaginable. Things I cannot imagine on my own. They are upon me. 

The antagonistic helper slips a cellphone holder over my head and clips my cellphone onto it. It’s like a headband with light and a magnifier that watchmakers and hobbyists use except this one has a telescoping zoom lens in the front specifically for cellphone cameras. You reach inside and and press buttons on the g.d. phone! Obviously that doesn’t work for me. He retrieved it from the pile of junk the Iranian women brought to their house. It sloughed off bits of dry cracked material and ruined the whole operation. Worse the telescoping zoom lens caught the interest of the animals, they go for it, and now they are right in my face. I scream at the antagonistic dream helper and I segue into …

parallel parking a car. Now there’s a misnomer for you. It should be “in line parking” because you’re putting your vehicle in line with all the there others. Here, let me show you what real parallel parking looks like.

or

But my vehicle was in line. The perfect spot actually. I want to make sure that nobody can park too closely in front and pinch me in after I’m gone. While I’m doing this the space behind opens to the end. I back up far enough to read the sign to make sure it says “no parking beyond.” I want to do this right for all involved now and for later. As I’m doing this a small bus that is pushing another small bus backwards fills the space that I just left and now I'm beyond the sign that I read.s I was trying to be perfect and they rushed in to take advantage and it pissed me off so hard at the rudeness that I went insane. I decided to smash into the bus and create a ruckus on purpose. I wanted to fight. I wanted to make the driver fiercely angry to match my own anger. Now all that is quite impossible so I snapped awake, thinking, “boy, I sure am glad that never happens in real life, or I’d be in real trouble.” 

These were dreams of  frustration. With straight up abuse perpetrated by technology companies and by ordinary human behavior. Both unacceptable. But they’re extraordinarily colorful and entertaining nonetheless. And I wouldn’t miss them for the world. They’re better than movies by professionals. Better than real life in some minor ways. 

Awake I wonder why they call it parallel parking. What’s wrong with these parking-namers, anyway? 

So I look online, and see it right off. Without even reading, the answer is shown. They call it that because they’re referring to method of parking not to result. You probably already know this. Well, I didn’t.  You pull up parallel to the car in front of your space, look over your shoulder, pull back 1/2 way, turn sharply and tuck in. I had it wrong all these decades. So then, live and learn. Forever. It seems. Right up to your last day. And probably even beyond.