what dreams are made of

let's just see where this goes . . .

i've been having some really wierd dreams lately. not wierd as in unexpected, in fact they're completely familiar to me. wierd in such a way that i haven't had them in years, and i used to have them all the time. now i know dream studies are all over the interwebz as far as what this means, what is a symbol for that, and all that nonsense, but if any of you have any input, i'd love to hear it, i've always thought dreams were a really interesting dive into the subconscious. i'll start by briefly describing these dreams.

the first one is pretty common and one i used to have all the time. you've all heard of the losing teeth dream where first it's one tooth, then two, and by the end you're spitting out your dental plan into your palm and screaming in otherwise inaudible vowels. this one is like that, only instead of my teeth falling out, they begin cracking. think about an iceberg beginning with one crack that just starts to run throughout the tooth, spreading to other surrounding teeth. before i know it, all i hear is cracking and my teeth begin to shatter something like this.

dream number B. slightly more wierd than the first, but still relatively calm and simple. like i said before, i used to have this one all the time, so for the most part in this dream i'm a little kid running around a fantastically large mansion . . . think beauty in the beast type of mansion. if i were an architect i'm sure i could quote you a decade and name the period, but i'm not, so let's stick with beauty and the beast. the only thing is, i'm not just running around this mansion, i'm being chased . . . by a lion. wtf? i know. anyway, this dream isn't just your average chase dream, i see the entire thing as if it were being watched from the security cameras in the top corners of these 30 foot tall rooms. nothing really happens, and i wake up wondering if there's a lion in my kitchen.

and last but certainly not least my third dream takes place in an old west train with several of my best friends. while the friends at any given time change in the dream, they're always recognizable to me, and there are always 4 or 5 of us. so we're decked out in your favorite jesse james outfit and we're fighting our way to the front of this train with guns-a-blazin. as we near the front of the train, a friend and i duck under a bar table to fire at our opressors. after we take out a few of the baddies, one of them busts through our blockade and shoots my buddy in the back as he lays next to me. the dream goes in to slow motion as i see him lower his gun to me. i see him pull the trigger and as the bullet enters the small of my back, my dream literally explodes into a barrage of colors, as if rainbow brite decided to take the pop rocks and coke challenge.

so those are the three dreams that i've been having recently, and it got me searching. psychologytoday.com had an article in 2007 that basically said dreams are rehearsals your brain puts you through as a sort of practice session for possible encounters. for instance, you're watching a good old fashioned action flick and it gets you thinking what you might do in a similar situation. when you go to sleep, you brain takes that thought and basically builds a situation for you, depicting not necessarily what you would do, but what you might do, allowing you to see a certain outcome. if it's an unfavorable outcome, you see what not to do, and if it's favorable, you see it as practice. that's the general idea of the article anyway, do check it out, it's a good read. while that is a very logical approach to dreams in a general sense, i feel like it leaves out dreams that are so completely fantastic and out of the question that there is no way they could represent or be linked to real-life situations. so with that said, apparently my brain is preparing me to be chased by lions, have my teeth shattered, and be shot up old west style while on a moving train; all amazing considerations, but at least i now know what i think of dreams.

some things are just necessary

so my countless hours at 'the office' have left me with plenty of parting thoughts over the last few months: why i need a new job, exactly how much drawn butter does it take to kill someone, yes i guess that really does happen in a restaurant, as well as several others. however, the most pressing thought on my mind last night as i left was important enough to actually stay on my mind long enough for me to look it up today.

as i sit here typing this, the other tab in my browser is indeed depicting the specifications, price, size, and order information for a residential soda fountain tower. apparently the years of working in restaurants with a variety of sugary beverages at my fingertips have rubbed off on me because lately i've been downing canned sodas like they were going out of style. not that i would install such a beautiful system in my current rented residence, but it satisfies me to know that for only $1,018 plus shipping and installation, i could have my very own dispenser tower with my two favorite flavors of carbonated goodness.

even more interesting and delicious is an apparent 'upgrade' that you can get which turns one of the dispenser outlets into a liquor dispenser. how could you not be the coolest guy on your block with a perfectly refrigerated countertop whiskey and coke machine??? the sheer possibility of this makes my head spin. anyway, my parting thoughts for the evening are those of one day spending four figures on a machine that will give me what i can already get from my refrigerator for absolutely no cost at all.

are we made of what we own? or vice versa?

we've all got our list of go-to websites that we can completely lose ourselves in when we have an extra ten or fifteen minutes. of course when we're still there 45 minutes later and have accomplished absolutely no work at all in the meantime, that's when you know the site's a keeper.

my current keeper of the moment happens to be http://www.onesentence.org/. the site, strangely enough is exactly what you might think, a simple user-submitted list of single sentences. from hilarious to disturbing to jaw-dropping, the list contains entire stories without the puffery, without examples, without adjectives, setting, or backstory. these entries, sometimes as few as 7 or 8 words can represent entire years of a person's life and take no more than 5 seconds to read.

as i think about how much detail and how much personality these singular sentences have, it makes me think of how many tens and hundreds of pages i wrote throughout high school and college that collectively couldn't muster the soul that is contained in some of these posts. to me, that is advertising; taking a hundred page report on why your target is your target, why they buy what they buy, why they like you, what they want to see from you next, where they shop, what they eat, how much they make, what they wish they could afford, what their names are . . . and turning that into 9 words. as impossible as it may sound to take the entire lives of a collective group of people and try to transplant it into a tagline for a product, that is how relationships are made.

we all have relationships with the products we buy, and we purchase those products, most of them anyway, because they fit our lifestyle. whether it be price, color, taste, texture, we buy the things we buy because we like how THEY fit into OUR lives. isn't it interesting then, that the reason they fit so nicely into our lives is because our lives helped form the product.

this backwards-compatability is what is helping to reshape the way we see consumer goods. we can no longer think of the traditional top-down pyramid of CEO to supervisor to manager to clerk to customer. a successful brand has the product and the customer at every level of the game. my thoughts on a model, if there has to be one, is a circle of your business plan with the facets of your business around the outside, and the customer in the middle. the consistent interaction with the consumer at every level will ensure their approval at every step and form a more personal business model that will increase repeat business and spread the word of your company's good character.

character is what we do when no one is watching.

ever wish you had a sixth sense?

i absolutely must pass this on. although i did originally get this article from kevin pereira (my favorite TV host) on twitter, the link is to the digg posting of the same article. please view the entire video, then read the comments
. . . great, GREAT inspiration here, and plenty of new avenues to explore with the potential realization of this idea. allow me to introduce you to Pranav Mistry and his world altering idea

you must begin somewhere

what to write when you don't know what to write. a tragically common problem among writers, artists, creatives, and anybody else that is constantly put on deadlines to extract nuggets of material from their brain that are nothing less than spectacular.

it's times like these that i'm dragged back to 9th grade english (and yes dragged is the appropriate word). back then they made us do this exercise in which you are required to write without stopping to edit, punctuate, capitalize, brainstorm, sneeze, pee, or make fun of the teacher's terrible thanksgiving sweater. when i was 15 this was quite possibly one of the most useless activities on the face of the planet, right up there with putting your seatbelt on, and trying to understand algebra. then again, when i was 15 i was stupid, at least for the duration of that thought process.

i find it terribly interesting how common i think this thought "man if i'd only realized that when it was told to me the first time". it's not that i don't listen, i'd like to think i'm a fairly good listener, especially when i'm being instructed on how to do something, or taking mentor-ish adice on some life lesson. it's also not that i'm incapable of comprehending complex cerebral ideas and deep lines of thought that may have more than one meaning at any given time.

i think situations like these, where you're told to write for the sake of writing, that it will make you a better writer, that you may be surprised with what you actually write, these situations are ultimate misunderstandings that befall 90% of the people being told. whether it's because they're hungry, they're attracted to the girl two rows over, they really don't like that sweater, or a million other possible reason, they will not WANT to do this assignment.

assignments like that have a 0% success rate if the student doesn't want to do them. you must let go, free your mind, be the ball, or whatever other matrix-like line you want to use. the 10% that actually do this assignment will gain the knowledge of what's really inside them when they read what they wrote, not believing that they could write like that, but for those 90% they will continue to tell stories of how bad 9th grade english was. you can be told, you can hear, you can listen, and you can understand (or so you think), but if you don't believe, the outcome of these exercises will not benefit you at all.

so pick up your guitar and record yourself playing nothing in particular. close your eyes and type about nothing (it helps to literally start typing about why you're typing, and just go from there, you'll be surprised where you end up). begin drawing and don't lift your pen up till you see something. look at familiar scenes through a mirror. do all of these, but don't even try them if you don't believe you'll come up with something great.

why watchmen should have done better

while i certainly do have an opinion on 'watchmen' which i saw yesterday, doing anything more than saying i thought it completely rocked would be (at least right now, cause i have to go to work in a bit) a waste of my time. in the meantime, if you're wondering my thoughts on the movie, i'll suffice it to say that i completely agree with what the feed has to say on the subject.

and it really was an exquisite film.