Easily distracted by shiny objects

I swear I'm not going to be one of those people who starts a blog, writes two posts and then forgets about it, but it's law school exam time and actually transcribing the nonsense in my head takes a shocking amount of time. I would much rather do that than study, but since I still don't have a job lined up after graduation, my GPA still kind of "matters." I promise after exams I'll become a blog post-writing machine, but in the meantime I've added an awesome illustration by one of my friends to the first post, "Dexter and Jude Law: Murder Kittens." If you've ever wondered what a Murder Kitten looks like, you're about to find out (surely there's a joke in there about curiosity and killing and cats, but you're on your own). Happy Thanksgiving!

...And possibly also small monkeys.

Ingredients which, when shaken and stirred inside my brain, produce the following dream:

1) My friend M was at my house last night. We talked about a bunch of stuff, including Margaret Cho's stand-up bit about being "the gay." 
2) My friend, K, and I like each other so much, we don't know what to do about it. It's a little bit gay. Unfortunately, neither of us is actually gay and we're both very attached to men. Rather than go on a picnic together in the country and punch each other, we just refer to each other as being each other's wife. Or wusband (Get it? Wife + husband? It's gay, I know). 
3) If K and I were actually the gay for each other, we would probably have some lady babies.
4) M and I also talked about Buffy which we and all of our friends are obsessed with. Were. Were obsessed with. In high school. Not like, now, that we're adults and everything. Look over there!
5) Julie Benz played a character on Buffy and Angel named Darla, who had a tumultuous romantic relationship with Angel, whom she turned into a vampire. She also played Rita, Dexter's wife on the show Dexter. I swear that I don't ACTUALLY spend this much time thinking about Dexter, but one of my professors actually brought it up in class on Tuesday.
6) Castle is an awesome show. There's a character in the show named Martha, who is the titular character's mother.  
7) M's older sister is married and preggers. She has long, dark, curly hair. She told M that next Halloween, they are going to dress up as characters from the movie Labryinth. She is going to be Sarah, her husband is going to be Jareth, and the baby is going to be Toby. Somebody also posted something on Facebook recently about this song. If any of this unfamiliar to you, there is something seriously wrong with you.
8) I'm in the process of studying for the MPRE - the standardized legal ethics test all baby lawyers have to take to get admitted to practice law. Or, at least, I should be studying for the MPRE instead of writing blog posts.
9) I love Robert Downey, Jr. with a deep, abiding passion and want to have his babies

I think that about covers it...

In the first segment, I'm pretty close to being actual me - law student, same age, having the same basic set of friends. We're staying in house in a beach town that looks like somewhere in Florida maybe, but it's not a Spring Break - Woooo! type of situation. It's winter and overcast. We're in a neighborhood that I know is near the beach, but we're not right on it and it isn't immediately visible. I'm walking down the street, away from our house, in the direction everyone thinks leads to the beach. I'm expecting it to be a fairly long walk, but on a whim, I turn right and walk through the middle of a block, in between houses. I step out from behind the houses onto a dune that leads right into the beach. I realize that we must be on a peninsula or very close to the end of the coast and so surrounded by ocean on at least two sides. I'm excited about my discovery and a little smug that I figured it out, rather than walking all the way to the far beach. I'm vaguely irritated with the people I'm staying with for some reason that's unclear, so I decide not to tell them about my discovery.

I start to walk out onto the beach, but I'm fully clothed and the cuffs of my jeans are getting wet. I roll them up to about calf-high, but the tide is coming up really far, really quickly - basically covering the beach up to the dune. My jeans are still getting wet and the water is coming up to my knees. I decide to wade out on to the beach anyway and not worry about getting wet.
The scene cuts, without any logical plot explanation, to me and a bunch of other people walking around inside a huge, pink nautilus shell. There's a path with a rail running inside it, and we're walking inward, towards something. It reminded me of the set-up of the path leading up to the ride inside of Splash Mountain at Disneyland. It's not really clear why we're inside it or what we're walking toward, but I feel vaguely concerned.

The scene cuts again and I'm riding in a car with my friend K and her younger sister E; our friend M is driving. I'm in the back seat and we're going down a winding highway out in the country. It's not precisely raining or snowing, but I'm worried about how slippery the roads are and how fast M is driving. She takes a curve in the road too quickly and the car fishtails, then starts sliding backwards down the embankment along the highway. The embankment is steep and runs down into woods. We're sliding and I'm yelling at her to brake, but she's panicking and trying to brake, but the ground is covered in a thick layer of dead leaves and the tires aren't getting traction. We slide for what seems like a really long time and I feel like we're probably just eventually going to come to a stop as the ground levels out, so I'm a little worried, but not really scared. Then I start thinking about the fact that we're going pretty fast and there are trees everywhere and the ground could drop off at a cliff or we could hit something and flip and we should all be a lot more concerned about what is happening. At the same time, I realize there's not much we can do, so I huddle down in the back seat and cover my head and wait for impact. 

The car eventually stops when it hits a tree; the impact is jarring, but we've slowed down enough and we're all wearing seat belts, so no one gets hurt. K and E's parents, D and C arrive to pick us up and help us. We're all worried about how they're going to react and how pissed off at us they're going to be, but they're pretty cool about it. They take us back to their house and D, who is a lawyer, decides that the thing to do to handle the situation is to call some of his contacts at the ABA. Not the car insurance company, or the police, or another attorney to represent us (though it was a single car crash, so I don't know why we'd need an attorney), but the American Bar Association. Two representatives from the ABA, a man and a woman who are both stuffy, serious young lawyer-types, arrive and want us to fill out paperwork, I try to explain to them that I'm not yet a member of the ABA, since I'm still a law student, and my other friends have nothing to do with the ABA. They aren't getting it and I start to worry that we're going to be accused of trying to defraud them and get ABA benefits (whatever those would be), even though we're not members. None of this ever gets resolved, the scene just cuts to a completely different segment.

So now, I'm a vampire. More specifically, I'm Darla from Buffy/Angel, but I'm good Darla and there's also an evil twin Darla. Seeing as Darla was played by Julie Benz, who also played Rita on Dexter, I'm with a guy who is some combination of Angel and Dexter (I promise I'm really not THAT obsessed with Dexter). Being the good Darla, I feel obligated to stop evil Darla from doing evil things. Evil Darla is amused but not particularly concerned by my efforts. I'm in a motel room with Evil Darla, who is lying in bed, being unconcerned by me. It's daylight, but the curtains are drawn. We seem to be sunlight-adverse vampires, but not excessively so - we can be in a room lit by diffuse sunlight, just not be exposed to direct sunlight on our skin. I'm trying to vanquish Evil Darla by getting her into sunlight. It seems the way to do this is to throw back the covers on the bed, exposing her to the light from the window. In doing this, I have to make sure I don't expose myself to the light. So, I try to accomplish this by diving onto the bed and rolling myself into the covers (like this dog at the 3:14 mark), while simultaneously shoving her to side and pulling the covers off of her with my rolling. My plan works and she runs shrieking out of the motel room...into the sunlight outside, whereupon she does not explode into flames. She just kinda hangs out.

We lock the door behind her and are watching her through the window and the peep hole. We're worried about her trying to get back in and do evil stuff to us, but we figure having her outside where we can see her is an improvement. Now that she's gone, we check on the terrarium that's set up in the front window area, which is kind of a convex window/window-seat arrangement. It's more like an open play area set about chest level in the window than a tank or cage and is full of hamsters and guinea pigs...and possibly also small monkeys. They aren't exactly talking, but I know that they are way more sentient and intelligent than the average hamsters and guinea pigs...and possibly also small monkeys. I'm concerned about how Evil Darla has been taking care of them and notice that they're all being really hyper and wacky. I realize that this is because Evil Darla was giving them, instead of water, Mountain Dew. I take a moment to reflect upon what an irresponsible pet owner/sentient hamster, guinea pig....and possibly also small monkey care-taker Evil Darla was and how it's a good thing that they're now in my not-evil care. Then, I get distracted by Angel/Dexter and they disappear from the plot completely (maybe I'm not a better care-taker than Evil Darla - she at least gave them Mountain Dew).

I get distracted by Angel/Dexter because he checked on Evil Darla, and noticed that she's gone!! Now, we're really concerned about her sneaking up on us and doing surprise evil things to us. Angel/Dexter tries opening and closing the door really quickly a couple of times, trying to draw her out, in case she's like clinging to the wall, directly above the door or something. I am very concerned about this strategy, but she never appears. We start getting kind of panicky and start running around our (now quite sizable) hotel room, trying to fortify it or look for escape routes. Now I'm aware of the fact that we have a baby - though it's not clear if the baby is mine or Evil Darla's, though Dexter/Angel is definitely the father. It seems our goal was more specifically in getting and keeping the baby away from Evil Darla, who is trying to get the baby back (I'm sorry, I had to. You know you were thinking about it). Apparently Angel/Dexter and Evil Darla used to be married, but it's not clear if a) he thought she was me, b) he just didn't know she was evil, or c) he knew she was evil and was originally OK with it. This all seems perfectly normal to me. I go into a huge storage closet and discover Martha from Castle, who I know to be Angel/Dexter's mother-in-law (somehow this makes her Evil Darla's mother, but not mine). Martha looks like Martha, but also kind of reminds me of the trash-heap lady from Labyrinth. At first I'm really worried that Martha is going to rat us out to Evil Darla, or that she's already let Evil Darla in, through some secret entrance in the storage closet. Then it becomes apparent that Martha realizes that Evil Darla is evil and is most concerned with the best interests of the baby, and so is on our side. I am very relieved by this, but before any of this gets resolved, we're on to the next dream segment.

I am no longer Good Darla and Angel/Dexter has disappeared (which is a damn shame, because that character had possibilities). Now I'm a neutral, similar to the real me, character, only I'm the gay and I have a wife, who is kind of a lesbian version of K. We also have an indeterminate amount of gay lady-babies somewhere. My wife and I are out because my wife wants to get pizza to bring back to our gay lady-baby brood for dinner. This seemingly simple errand is made perilous by the fact that we, but mostly my wife, are being stalked by a guy who is some combination of Roman from the show Party Down and J.P. from the movie Grandma's Boy. It doesn't seem like he wants to kill us/her or anything, he's just obsessed with my wife and doesn't get the part where's she the gay. The pizza place where we're going is inside a large building that looks kind of like a train station or a student union. There's a large, open central space with a really high ceiling and a lot of columns, which the stalker is using to skulk behind.

We find the pizza place in a food court-like area, which is manned by hipster waiters. We explain to them that we are going to order pizza, but are being followed by a stalker, so they should call security if they see him and shouldn't tell him anything about us if he shows up and asks after we leave. We're trying to decide what to order, when another lesbian couple walks by with a baby in a stroller. We coo over the baby and feel very satisfied with what attractive gay families we all are. We turn our attention back to pizza and try to explain our order to the hipster waiters. They're really confused, because we want to order one of the combos, which includes two cheese pizzas, curly fries, and a burger, but we don't want the burger (because we're vegetarians). They cannot understand why we would want that combo, but not that burger - apparently our "we're vegetarians" argument is not persuasive. I tell our wife that we should just order the combo and give the burger away or something, but she doesn't want us to purchase the burger (even though we're going to pay the full price for the combo anyway), because it would violate our principles. We finally order the damn combo, when I see the stalker approaching. We decide that I'll leave my wife to finish paying and get the food, while I lure the stalker away, and then we'll meet up outside after, once I've lost him. He doesn't know where we live, so we're really concerned about him not following us home.

I start walking away briskly and the stalker starts following. I go up an escalator/stairwell situation like you find in a train or subway station and run into some cops. I tell them that stalker guy is following me and make a break for it. The cops grab stalker guy as he passes and I make it up to ground level, out of the building, but then they let stalker guy go, because they don't have probable cause to hold him. Outside looks like a combination of Central Park and Disneyland - lots of people and vendors and gazebo-like structures about. I try to lose stalker guy in the crowd and I notice Martha, from the previous dream segment, sitting under an umbrella/tent situation with the baby in a stroller. I run over to her and get under the umbrella with her and pull the flaps down around us so we're completely hidden. She's cool with helping me hide, so we sit there really still and quiet, waiting for stalker guy to go by. We're hoping that, covered with the umbrella/tent, people will just walk by and not notice that we're there. Stalker guy passes by and doesn't see us, but stops to ask some people nearby if they've seen me. They tell them that they haven't, but that they saw Martha's umbrella/tent on the beach all day (the beach from the first segment - see how it all comes full circle!) and that she might know where I am (these people are all apparently aware of who Martha and I are and how we're associated, via her daughter and her son-in-law's new not-evil-twin girlfriend). I realize that at any moment, someone will notice the umbrella/tent and come to investigate, so slip out from under it and run away.

I make my escape and run right into another dream plot - kind of like those scenes in moves where someone is running through a movie studio/back-lot and runs through a bunch of hilariously elaborate and different scenes full of people in detailed and accurate costumes. This scene is taking place on a lawn in front of a large building that looks kind of like Parliament or Kent Palace. Everyone is dressed in Edwardian-era England clothes, including the large group of upper-crust-looking gentlemen I run up to. Naturally, now I'm dressed like an Edwardian lady. Among the gentlemen is Robert Downey, Jr.; he's a con-man and I'm his moll. He was apparently in the middle of the final act of a large scam that involved taking care of some problem going on the large building behind us; everyone is waiting for a large explosion to happen inside the building, as proof that whatever RDJ said he was going to make happen actually happened. They've been waiting a long time and the gentlemen are starting to get antsy and are on the verge of doubting RDJ. I decide to create a distraction, so I run up and start loudly congratulating RDJ, telling him what a marvelous job he'd done and how proud of him I was; the gentlemen are all flustered and dumbfounded by the sudden presence of a lady in their midst. Just as I'm about to plant a big one on RDJ in order to further befuddle them, the explosion happens. People start running out of the building and smoke is billowing out of the windows. The gentlemen are now completely assured of RDJ's veracity and start cheering. Fireworks start going off in the background and RDJ throws me into a deep dip and passionately kisses me (this is how all dreams should end).

Aaaaaand scene.

Dexter and Jude Law: Murder Kittens

Things you should know about the contents of my brain before reading this dream:
1) I love the show Dexter and usually watch the new episodes online on Monday, after they air on Sunday. Apparently last night I still had Dexter on the brain.
2) I watched a video yesterday of Jude Law on Sesame Street explaining the word "cling." I would very much like to cling to Jude Law.
3) I saw the movie Repo Men earlier in the year and quite liked it. There was a scene in the movie in during which Jude Law does some very manly and violent things while wearing a vest-o-knives. It made quite an impression on me. Ahem.
4) My neighbor across the street has a puppy. She has a screened-in porch attached to her apartment. She locks the puppy out on the porch on a regular basis, frequently early in the morning. The puppy does not like this and makes its displeasure known. Loudly. My bedroom is in the front of my apartment, facing the street. With my windows open, it's like the puppy is IN THE ROOM WITH ME BARKING AT ME ALL THE TIME.
5) I frickin' hate snakes. I love animals, even the not cute and cuddly ones. I once locked myself in my bathroom with a feral rat until I managed to wrangle it into a humane cage using only an oven mitt and an issue of Rolling Stone (and then drove it to the park and released it). I'm a vegetarian. But, I have an irrational, all-consuming fear of snakes.
6) I am made both nervous and excited by the thought of a zombiepocalypse and my dreams are frequently set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I also watched the premiere of The Walking Dead yesterday (seriously? that guy was unconscious in a hospital bed for how long and didn't a) die of dehydration or b) poop the bed?).
7) I am not obsessed with pee or catheters, but wondering how someone could lie in a hospital bed for an extended period of time, unattended, and not wake up in a fetid, putrid nest of their own waste (see above) brought catheters to mind.
8) I've been watching the show Party Down and had a conversation with someone the other night about Megan Mullally's character, Lydia.
9) I watch A LOT of TV and movies, clearly.

Without further ado...

So, the beginning of the dream was from the perspective of the character Dexter. He was planning to kill his neighbor, who lets her dog bark constantly in the wee hours of the morning, so he went into this store in the neighborhood to try to surreptitiously get a look at some information on the cashier's computer that would be useful in killing said neighbor. The store turned out to be owned by Jude Law, who totally caught wise to what Dexter was trying to do, but then was like "dude, I was gonna kill her too!" So, they decide to do it together and Jude's like "I have schematics of her building and her apartment and all of this info that will be useful in killing her." They decide that, naturally, the best way to do it is to kill her with a venomous snake, because there are two venomous snakes that are indigenous to the area and people will think it's just a freak accident that she got bitten by a venomous snake in her house and not that she got murdered by her neighbors who were sick of hearing her dog bark.

Cut to the night of the murder and they're trying to climb in her kitchen window, like you do. Dexter goes first, but the window is over the sink and there are some pumpkin decorations along the wall under the window and he hits one with his foot and knocks it over, making a bunch of noise, and then gets stuck in the window. Jude Law is behind him, trying to push him into the window when the neighbor girl comes into the kitchen to see what the noise was, only now, the girl walking into the kitchen IS ME, because Dexter and Jude Law got the wrong house. The part of me that is dreaming this realizes this and wants to explain their mistake to them, but the part of me that's a a character in the dream is like "holy shit, dudes are climbing in my window to murder me!" So, rather than running away, which would have been sensible, I started hitting Dexter with somethng, trying to repel him, and screaming like a maniac.  Jude Law is trying to hit me over Dexter's shoulder (Dexter is still stuck in the window), and then Dexter pulls out the venomous snake, which he had in his coat, and thrusts it at me, holding it by the head. It bites me above my upper lip and then he hits me in the head or something, because I start to lose consciousness as my boyfriend comes in to see what all the ruckus is about. Dexter and Jude Law hear him coming and run away, so he just finds me on the floor, unconscious with a snake bite on my lip.

Cut to me waking up in the ER. Since Dexter and Jude Law ran away before my boyfriend saw them, no one realizes that there were dudes trying to kill me. They think that I was on drugs and OD'ed, which destroyed my gall bladder (but it was really the venom), which necessitated the gall bladder surgery I had apparently had while unconscious. I also have a big herpes-like sore on my upper lip from the snake bite, but no one seems particularly concerned by it. I'm debating whether or not to tell people about Dexter and Jude Law, because I don't want to seem crazy and paranoid, but they're still out there and I don't know if they know that I'm still alive and will be coming to finish the job. I also have a catheter, which is very uncomfortable.

So, then my mom comes to be with me in the hospital and I try to tell her what happened. No one is quite getting what I'm saying, or if they believe me, they don't get that the relevant part is that Dexter and Jude Law may be coming back to kill me. I start freaking out and wanting to leave the hospital, but the nurse, who is Lisa, the aesthetician who does my laser hair removal, says that I have to have more gall bladder surgery and she needs to prep me. I'm terrified of being knocked out again, since no one is addressing my potential impending-murder, so I don't want to have the surgery and start freaking out more. Lisa says that she needs to put another catheter in, but I don't want to let her, so my mom and Lisa start trying to wrestle me down onto the bed. Finally, I'm like "OK, wait, wait I'll let you do it, just let me lie back," but Lisa doesn't let me. She just jabs the catheter in while I'm at a very uncomfortable angle. It hurts like...a forcefully inserted catheter, so I start screaming and then think, "oh well, if I'm going to go crazy screaming patient route, I might as well do it all the way!" So, I start screaming my head off and going completely ballistic. Lisa leaves, and I finally calm down, and my mom is finally starting to believe me, but then a nurse says I have visitors. It's Dexter and Jude Law!!!

I lie down in the hospital bed and we hastily throw the blanket over my head. At first, I try to pretend to be dead, but then realize they'll see me breathing. So, my mom tells them I'm in a coma from the OD and my mom and the nurses and everyone are acting nonchalant, not arresting them or accusing them of trying to murder me. I'm pretending to be in a coma, but lying on my stomach with my tongue lolling out of my head. Then, for some reason, everyone leaves the room, leaving me alone with Dexter and Jude! I'm like "oh crap, they're going to straight murder me," so I spring to life and start screaming for help and flailing my limbs for all I'm worth, hoping that I can startle them and keep them at bay long enough for help to come. Then a nurse - Lydia from Party Down - comes in and starts helping me fight them off. We subdue them and are trying to figure out what to do with them, only now they aren't people and suddenly there are more of them - their accomplices - and they're all fluffy little bunnies and kittens.

I have decided that, since I can't kill bunnies and kittens, they're going to be sent to live in a shelter the rest of their lives, with no escape, like an animal prison, so I start picking them up by the scruff of their necks and stuffing all of them into this one soft cat carrier, but they keep crawling out of the carrier and I keep having to stuff them back in. Then I decide that, since some of them were just accomplices, they may have learned their lesson and might be worth sparing. To decide which should be spared, I pick them up by their scruffs to see if they had knives and weapons strapped to their chest, because the Dexter and Jude kittens had harnesses on their chests containing knives and pliars and hammers and all sorts of effed up stuff that they were going to use to kill me. I pick up one little black kitten thinking that it's probably innocent, but then it has a little wee knife and some other kind of utensil strapped to its chest - the knife was more like a cheese spreader - and I'm like "well, it's to the shelter with you." Then, I picked up a tiny little fluffy grey bunny, and was sad that I was going to have to send it to animal prison, but it was innocent and scared, so I let it go.

There's more to that section of the dream, involving rats and Russians and Robert Downey Jr. and getting even stranger, but I don't remember it as well. Then the dream cuts to a completely different set piece and I'm living in a post-apocalyptic world with just my dad, holed up in a house. He's fortifying the fence around the front yard, but he's taken sections of the fence in front and put them on the side, to make the side higher which then makes the front lower. Sidda, my dog, keeps barking at the people across the street and jumping from the front porch, over the fence, into the street and attacking people. She goes after a little kid and I'm terrified that she hurt him and run after her, screaming at her to stop. I get there and the kid was OK and his family were totally understanding and not mad. They told me that it was good to have an alert, protective dog patrolling the neighborhood for zombies. I was super relieved that my dog hadn't mauled a little kid and that his parents didn't freak out about it. Around this time, my neighbor's incessantly barking dog actually woke me up...

Dexter and Jude Law: murder kittens. This is what's in my brain.