Stratovania

The previous week or so was pretty busy. On Thursday the fifth, there was a Kevin Geeks Out that was different from the usual format. Kevin Maher wrote his own parody of a Hallmark Christmas movie, which was about a vampire lawyer from New York going to a small town in Vermont and falling in love with a werewolf. It was mostly just people performing, although it did have costumes and stock projected backgrounds to set the scenes. As such, they could include the sort of jokes common in radio comedy, where they wouldn't work if you could see what was happening. There was one bit about a piece of art that the protagonist loved and thought would win a contest, which was later shown to be nutmeg with googly eyes. And the inhabitants of the Vermont town had different regional accents, like a Minnesota one for the woman who owned the local diner. There were a few presentations of the more normal sort, one about courtroom scenes in holiday movies and another about how vampires and werewolves hate each other, but they were presented in-character. I get the impression that the rivalry between vampires and werewolves in fiction is fairly recent, like that between elves and dwarves. Interestingly, Tolkien actually used both, the Elf/Dwarf thing being well-known, but there are references in Beren and Luthien to how much vampires hate werewolves, even though both serve Sauron. But in folklore, there was a lot of overlap between vampires and werewolves. Dracula could control wolves and turn into one.


On Sunday, we went with Beth's mom and Uncle John to Batsto, where they had exhibits about the village in the old days, with the mansion being open to guests.

There also had free hot apple cider and cookies, and horse-drawn carriage rides.

We also visited one of the new Spirit Christmas stores, where we walked around the whole place but didn't buy anything.

I did stand in the giant Santa boots. And I like these snack-themed pillows, although I don't know if I'd want to own one.


Tuesday was a Micky Dolenz show at the City Winery in Manhattan, held in the upstairs area where we hadn't been that often before, if at all. They have tables so people can eat food and drinks, but it's an awkward way to watch a concert when the seats aren't actually facing the stage. We'd heard most of the songs he did and his introductions to them before, but he did do Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," and he mentioned that Stephen Stills was Peter Tork's roommate, and he also auditioned for the Monkees.

There were two Christmas songs in the mix, "Riu Chiu" and "Run Rudolph Run," which the band played without Micky. That song sounds a lot like "Johnny B. Goode," which was also in the setlist.

Paul Schaefer introduced the show, talking about how he worked with Don Kirschner and doing an impression of him, and he played keyboard on a few of the later songs.

Then we saw Micky again on Sunday at the Bergen Performing Arts Center. Beth had bought tickets for that one before the New York show was announced, and tried to sell the tickets, but was unsuccessful.

It was mostly the same, but he did play Elton John's "Your Song," which he hadn't at City Winery. He introduced it by talking about how he and Elton wore the same T-shirt at a party in Los Angeles.

There was also a screen, they had an intermission, and Paul wasn't there. This was after we tried to find a store in a nearby mall and not only didn't, but most of the stores were closed on a Sunday during the holiday shopping season.

I know online ordering has killed a lot of physical shopping, but I'm sure there would still have been some. It might be some weird county rule, as some of the Targets around there were also closed.


We had tickets for Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Thursday, and it was pretty similar to past years, but not exactly the same. Everything looks really pretty lit up while you're there, but it doesn't photograph that well. It was really cold out that night, despite the weather generally being incredibly warm for this time of year as of late, which was another reason I didn't want to take a lot of pictures. The Singularity and the butterflies in the pond outside the conservatory were cool.


They Might Be Giants played at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn on Friday night (the thirteenth), and it was a longer than usual show with no opener and an intermission.

It's a big venue, and it looked pretty full. John Flansburgh said at the beginning that they were showcasing John Henry, and they did eight songs from that album: "Snail Shell," "Unrelated Thing," "Spy," "No One Knows My Plan," "Dirt Bike," "Meet James Ensor," "Out of Jail," and "The End of the Tour." John Linnell did a bit presumably based on an old record commercial during the improvisational bit of "Spy," which I think he also did the last time we saw the band live. And Flansburgh mixed up the lyrics to "Dirt Bike," but since it's not a song they do often and a lot of the words are just "[da-da-da] dirt bike," that's understandable. They recently brought back the Stick, which is literally a big stick that Flans bangs on the stage for "Lie Still, Little Bottle," a bit that theyhadn't done in a long time.

Horn players Mark Pender, Dan Levine, and Stan Harrison joined the band on some songs, and Dan Miller played the solo at the end of "Damn Good Times" from the balcony.

Flans also talked about how he was responsible for the drones flying over New Jersey.

We finally got our Christmas tree on Tuesday, and decorated it yesterday. I know it's late in the month, and we ended up getting a smaller one than usual, but that means it took less time to set it up.

I don't know that I'm feeling that festive just now, but it's something I would have regretted not doing. I've never been someone who disliked the holidays; they were just a lot easier when other people were setting them up.

After OzCon and our visit with Stephanie, we checked in at the hotel in Anaheim. It's one of those ones that isn't on Disney property, but has an arrangement with the park, including transportation as part of the price. It also included a breakfast buffet, including a station where a cook made omelettes and waffles.

Even Beth liked it, and she's normally against typical breakfast foods. Driving around the Los Angeles area is kind of fascinating because of how so many entertainment media are based there, so you come across a lot of place names that you've heard in movies and TV, but were largely meaningless to someone growing up in Pennsylvania. We did a lot of freeway driving during the time we were there, and it's too bad they had to destroy Toontown to build that. We also drove by the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank when we went with Stephanie to a coffee shop near there.

Considering how spread out Walt Disney World is, it's kind of fascinating that Disneyland is relatively small, and there's an IHOP right across the street from the entrance with a sign forbidding parking for Disney.


The first thing we rode on at the park was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, although we did the walkthrough of Sleeping Beauty's Castle before that.

A lot of the stuff we were most interested in was in Fantasyland. The Mr. Toad ride is one that seems to get mentioned quite a lot. I remember one Simpsons episode with something called "Mr. Frog's Mild Ride," maybe not a great joke but one that stuck with me.

The ride itself runs along a curving track with scenes from The Wind in the Willows, and ends up in Hell.

I guess that's the moral message, that if you drive recklessly and try to outrun the cops, you'll be eternally damned. Was this ride the inspiration for Grand Theft Auto? Other rides in the area had the same basic theme of riding through scenes from an animated movie.

Snow White's Enchanted Wish, Pinocchio's Daring Journey, and Peter Pan's Flight are all right in there together, although we ended up not riding that last one until Wednesday. They all give some sense of the story while you're waiting in line, and I found it strange that the Snow White one didn't even mention the Queen trying to kill her. The poison apple is part of the ride, but the part with the huntsman is glossed over.

The Casey Jr. Circus Train and Storybook Land Canal Boats are right next to each other, and go past a lot of the same stuff, largely miniature versions of places from movies.

When I first saw Monstro, I figured it must be part of the Pinocchio ride, but it's actually the beginning of the boat ride.

The Matterhorn was another one that's exclusive to Disneyland, and that was fun. The theming reminded me of the Germany section of Busch Gardens in Virginia.

I know the real Matterhorn is in Switzerland, but it's close enough for jazz. Or polka. Or theme parks. Apparently the Yeti on the ride is named Harold, and the one at Expedition Everest in Disney World is Betty. Hmm, that's my dad and Beth's mom.

Next, we rode Alice in Wonderland, and had some dinner at the Red Rose Taverne. Beth had a cheeseburger, and I had pepperoni and cheese flatbread. (Is there really a difference between that and pizza?)

After dinner, we rode Indiana Jones Adventure and Pirates of the Caribbean. I'm not sure why it was necessary to add Jack Sparrow to the ride, but I've only seen the first one of those movies. I liked the film pretty well, but there's something to be said for preserving the original layout. And Johnny Depp is rather problematic these days. Then we unsuccessfully tried to get a spot for the Main Street Electrical Parade. Fortunately, there was another one later that night.

The parade has been running on and off since 1972, and still has the relentlessly cheerful yet somehow a bit unsettling electronic music. They Might Be Giants did a cover of it, and it's so well suited to them.

I noticed that the floats included both Goofy and Dopey driving trains.

Also, there were several that had heroes and villains hanging out together. I saw Colin Ayres at the ice cream shop before the parade; he and a few other OzCon attendees were also visiting the park that day, but I didn't run into anyone else I knew. Our last stop before leaving the park was Tomorrowland, where we rode the Astro Orbiter (okay, that one was actually before the parade), Autopia, and Space Mountain.

I believe I'd first heard of Autopia in the NES game Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, which my family rented once back in the day. Space Mountain was different from the one at Disney World.


Next time, we have a California Adventure!

I feel I should say something about seeing Ben Folds last Thursday, which I did in Morristown, New Jersey with Beth and Tavie. It was a fun show, and he provided some interesting commentary. He played "Still Fighting It," where he tells his son that "twenty years from now, maybe we'll both sit down and have a few beers," and it's been almost exactly twenty years since that song was released. Rockin' the Suburbs came out on the ill-fated September 11th, as did They Might Be Giants' Mink Car, although I'd gotten the electronic version of the latter about a month before that. Ben also talked about how the idea for the titular song on that album came from how there was a trend at the time of white guys singing nothing but angry songs, and how he couldn't identify with it. And "Effington" was one he largely improvised on stage. For the encore, he did an improvisational bit about New Jersey, and ended with "The Luckiest." I took a few pictures, but none of them came out very well, even though we weren't that far from the stage. I want to blame the lighting, but I could be totally off on that. The factors that make photographs look good are often beyond my knowledge, despite my having taken a photography class. In fairness, that WAS in high school, and before digital cameras were really a thing.

After the show, we went to eat at a nearby diner, where I appreciated that I could substitute fruit salad for potatoes with my omelet. I didn't like as much that there was grapefruit in it, but it was easy to avoid. I've noticed as of late that I just don't have as much of an appetite as I used to. It's most noticeable with pizza; I'd often order a large for myself (Beth's not a big fan of pizza), eat maybe three pieces, and then save the rest for later. Most recently, I only had one slice on the first day, and finishing the rest was more of a chore than a treat. And in general, I find my stomach getting upset over amounts of food that never bothered me before, and I don't really know why. I did have some changes in my medication recently, but I don't know that that's the reason. It's probably a good thing overall, as I don't have to spend as much to get full, but it means I have to adjust my eating habits.

While the concert required masks and proof of vaccination, Beth said she had a sore throat the other day, and noticed me coughing quite a bit. So we went to get tested today, and fortunately the rapid tests came back negative. Of course, there are still plenty of illnesses other than COVID, but we both felt better today. I'm really not that worried about it, but I still feel that the country in general just isn't that concerned with safety anymore. Starting this week, we can no longer work from home at my job, and I really don't know what they have to gain by taking that risk. I'll admit that I'm looking at it more from a perspective of not wanting to get up early every morning than of being afraid of getting sick, but: 1) the latter is still a legitimate concern for many people, especially considering that they're not requiring vaccines as long as those who don't get them get tested every week; and 2) if I'm still doing my work, why does it matter where I am at the time?

About a month ago, I jumped on the bandwagon and signed up for a Dreamwidth account as a backup for my LiveJournal. I don't write there much at all anymore, but I did for years and don't want to lose any of it. But now I have something I wanted to write about that doesn't really fit my WordPress format (as loosely defined as that may be), so here goes.


On Sunday night, Beth and I went on a moonlight tour of Green-Wood Cemetery. It was led by the cemetery's historian, accompanied by two accordion players who provided music for when we walked from one place to the next. Songs I remember them playing include "Erie Canal" (Beth thought it was "Sixteen Tons," and there's definitely a similarity there), "Blue Moon," "Over the Rainbow," "Walking After Midnight," and "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The historian gave a brief lecture on each of the sites we encountered. The first was a bronze statue of DeWitt Clinton, Mayor of New York City, Governor of New York, United States Senator, and 1812 presidential candidate.

He was largely responsible for the Erie Canal, which is represented on the statue's pedestal. While originally buried in a friend's vault near Albany, his remains were transferred to Green-Wood sixteen years later. He was also the inspiration for this song by John Linnell of They Might Be Giants, as part of his House of Mayors project:

I believe the only still-living mayor to receive a piece on the record was David Dinkins, who couldn't figure out what it had to do with him. I'm pretty sure only Linnell really knows the significance of any of these. Well, excepting "Fernando Wood," which quotes him. I think the neighborhood where Linnell lives, or at least lived a few years ago, is adjacent to the cemetery. Maybe he goes there by himself to do interpretive dances.


Known as the Beard Bear, this marks the burial place of William Holbrook Beard, who was known for his political cartoons featuring anthropomorphic animals. The statue is by Dan Ostermiller, and was finished in 2002, 102 years after Beard's death.


My picture here isn't very good, but this headstone features an incredibly intricate scene carved by Patrizio Piatti. From the description, it sounds like it portrays Jane Griffith's husband going off to work on the day she dies of a heart attack. Kind of morbid, perhaps, but tastes in funerary matters change over time.

We looked around inside a mausoleum, which reminded Beth of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, I suppose because it was run-down and divided into small rooms.

I still haven't found work, and I still spend most of my time at home on the computer, as you've probably guessed. I've also been suffering from allergies, which apparently are really bad for everyone this year. And I've been seeing quite a few cats wandering around Brooklyn, and while most of them are scared of people, a few will come up to us. Do people let their cats outside in the city? I had outdoor cats in my youth, but now I'm too paranoid not to keep my cats inside.

I did do a few things recently that I think might be worthy of mentioning, though. On Thursday, bethje and I met up with Stephanie to see a RISK! show, which is basically a storytelling session hosted by Kevin Allison from The State. He wasn't actually there for this particular show, though. The point is that the stories are ones you normally wouldn't want to share, which I guess is where the risk comes in. We were going to eat at a place called Mook's beforehand, but they were closed. So instead we went to the Orion Diner, where I had what they called a Tropical Waffle. This was topped with peaches, bananas, raisins, and whipped cream; and I'm not sure I would consider all of those things tropical, but it was good.


Today was a They Might Be Giants fan meet-up at the Sidewalk Cafe in Manhattan, hosted by Madeleine, whom I've known online for a while and met in person once. There weren't all that many people there, which was probably a good thing overall. Madeleine played some songs on her ukulele, which seems to be the hip instrument for girls in particular these days. I guess they all want to be the next Tiny Tim or George Formby. After her set came James K. Folk, who did mostly TMBG covers but a few of his own songs as well. Mike Cecconi, who bore a resemblance to Penn Jillette, read some of his poems very loudly. Brook Pridemorgue played a few covers, mostly of rather melancholy B-sides. Finally, Jordan Cooper did a few of his own songs, plus covers of "Narrow Your Eyes" and "Lullaby to Nightmares" with his girlfriend Kristen, who's in the band Sally with him. Actually, the only other time we'd been to that venue was to see Jordan upwards of ten years ago. I answered a trivia question correctly and won a copy of Moxy Früvous' Bargainville (which Beth and I both already own, and I'm a little leery of that band now anyway since one-quarter of them was recently revealed to be chronically abusive), some guitar picks, and one of slfcllednowhere's zines. After the show, we ate at a nearby diner called Odessa's, where I think Beth had eaten before but I hadn't. Then we went to a place called Big Gay Ice Cream pretty much entirely because of the name, but it was quite good. It's apparently quite popular, as it there was a fairly long line. Inside, they had a poster of Bea Arthur giving the Heimlich Maneuver to a unicorn.

I'm pretty close to being finished with my edit/rewrite of an Oz manuscript I've been working on for almost twenty years. My working title is The Giant Rabbit of Oz, because Wag from Kabumpo in Oz is a character in it, but he turned out to be not all that major. I might well end up going with another title. Anyway, I wasn't satisfied with the ending I wrote, but I'm not sure the new one is much better. I suppose I'll have to get people to look at both versions and let me know which they like better, or if neither one works. I'm terrible at endings, and I keep wanting to introduce new plot threads that I then have to resolve. I edited out quite a bit of extraneous stuff this time around, but it's probably still overly complicated in parts. When I read books that contain continuity errors, I always wonder how something so obvious could have gotten through. It really can be difficult to keep track of everything you've written before, though. Mind you, that's what editors are for, but the original Oz books were very barely edited. Well, except for The Wonder City of Oz, and that edit reportedly added as much weirdness as it removed. I'm still putting off editing Prince Pompadore in Oz based on suggestions I've gotten from people, but should probably get on that pretty soon. I'm using the fact that I haven't heard feedback from one of my test readers as an excuse to procrastinate.

Last night, bethje and I went to Manhattan to see Jordan Cooper's band Sally, which was cool. I actually recognized a few of the songs from the Internet. Their set included a cover of the They Might Be Giants song "Narrow Your Eyes," which fit into the mix quite well, as they played a lot of breakup songs. Kristen played the melodica during the solo part, where John Linnell plays an accordion on the original.

During the past few days, I've been taking a break from The Sims 3 and getting back into The Sims Medieval, although that game comes off as rather too easy and uneventful, since you're pretty much always told what to do. lozenger8 recently mentioned that she found it too easy, and hence hasn't played it in a long time. I've also checked out the Space Quest Collection, and found it amusing but really frustrating. Well, at least the first two games are, and I'm going to assume that didn't change much for the later ones.

Last night's was the fourth Simpsons episode to take an extended look into a possible future for the characters, the first one being the sixth season "Lisa's Wedding," which took place in the year 2010. I don't think the writers had any idea that the show would still be on then. Anyway, I think this new one tried to cram too much in, and even though the underlying message was decent, I don't think it worked that well. As with some of the earlier future episodes, they did way too many jokes about improbable technology. "Lisa's Wedding" had some of those as well (and hey, it's now 2011, so where are our commercial biplanes and self-aware robots with melting heads?), but it mostly focused on the characters. With the other three, it seemed that the technology gags took precedent. Tonight's episode also had a similar characterization of Bart to the one in "Bart to the Future," which I really didn't like that much. So much of the show suggests that Bart really does have potential to turn his life around, but both of these suggest that in thirty years he's just become more of a loser. Eh, whatever. The stuff with Maggie was kind of cute. The Krusty as Andy Rooney gag was perhaps a bit ill-timed, but not especially so, and I guess that's going to happen when there's a gap between the show being made and aired. I would also imagine that the Sarah Palin bit at the end of American Dad was made before she announced she wasn't going to run in 2012. I liked the American Dad episode, by the way, largely because of how amusingly far-fetched the idea of being excommunicated from every kind of Christianity was. By the way, the service dog Stan shot was named Clancy, which is also the name of one of our dogs. I did watch the Cleveland Show, but as I've never seen Die Hard, I can't say I got most of the jokes. And Family Guy was all right, but I can't really think of anything specific to say about it.

Also, I got this meme from poisonyoulove, so I might as well go ahead with it.

Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you - they might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your LJ (or just add a reply back to me). Other people (including me) can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

Here are my five:

1. Oz
What makes you think I would be willing to expound upon this topic? :P Seriously, I'm not entirely sure why the Oz books have been my absolute favorites for so long, but it's still the case. It helps that there's a small but active fandom that's still cranking out Oz stories. The quality varies, but some are really good. Did L. Frank Baum have any idea what he had wrought?

2. Mythology
I remember starting to cultivate my interest in mythology, particularly the Greek variety, when I was in elementary school. I recall reading through the entry on the gods in my mom's old Book of Knowledge (published back when it wasn't so much an encyclopedia as a hardcover magazine), and checking out a lot of books on the subject from the library. Obviously it's stuck with me. Many things seem to; I've noticed that I rarely totally lose interest in anything these days, but simply put some things on the back burner from time to time.

3. They Might Be Giants
My favorite band, although I knew of their existence for years before really listening to anything of theirs. It was in college that I first heard a significant amount of their stuff (I lived in an honors dorm, so there were a lot of nerds there), and started buying their albums for myself. It seems that TMBG tends to attract completists who want to hear everything they put out, unless it's just the Internet that attracts such people. And now that their fanbase seems to be averaging out to an increasingly younger crowd, I guess I'm now one of their older fans, although it certainly doesn't feel like it.

4. Politics
I'm not the most politically astute person, but I try to keep at least some tabs on what's going on in the political arena, if only to avoid becoming one of those people who think they're too good to pay attention to current events. I'm obviously on the liberal side of the spectrum, which I'd like to say is because I really care about people, but ultimately it's more or less selfish. I'm not rich, so why would I support politicians who only care about the rich? Mind you, I think that in our country that's largely the case with both major parties, but I'm still a registered Democrat. Lesser of two evils, or something, plus I wouldn't be able to vote in the primaries otherwise.

5. Twitter
I think I first heard about Twitter from 3x1minus1, who's someone with her finger on the pulse of all the new online developments. Well, at least she's much more so than I am, but that's really not saying much. I think what led me to become a pretty regular Twitter user is that it's a good place for one-liners and one-off observations, which I'm generally loath to blog because a one-sentence journal entry seems wrong to me. Yeah, I'm weirdly obsessive-compulsive in that respect. I remember overhearing someone in the break room at work a few days ago talking about how Twitter is just people posting what they had for lunch. My problem with that complaint isn't even so much that there's more to it than that as it is that people wanting to share mundane details is nothing new. It's just that, prior to the Internet, people usually just shared them with anyone who happened to be around, most of whom really didn't care.
With the Internet, it's easier to acquire an audience that might actually take an interest, and when they don't it's easy to just skip the boring parts. I guess Twitter especially, and other social networking sites to a certain extent, is a good substitute for small talk for the socially awkward among us. To me, a lot of the complaints I hear people make about online socialization don't really have anything to do with technology at all, but rather are outgoing people not understanding the rest of us.

Last night, bethje and I went to Asbury Park to see They Might Be Giants at the Stone Pony. ( There are pictures and such in here, so I'm putting my write-up behind a cut. )

After the show, I saw some girl in a hippie skirt meditating on the grass near the venue. Okay, what's the point of that? Was it a ploy to pick up guys (or girls; I don't want to make assumptions as to this person's sexual orientation) who are into earthy types? I mean, she obviously wanted to be noticed, right? I wonder if that girl is on the Internet. Anyway, Beth and I walked on the boardwalk for a little while, but we got tired rather quickly. Beth was thirsty, so we waited in line at a crepe stand to get her a soda. After we'd ordered, the guy at the stand asked if anyone else just wanted a soda. How was that fair to us? I'll tell you how: it wasn't.

My dreams last night included one that apparently repeated, although maybe it really didn't and my subconscious just convinced me it did. There were some kids (I don't know whether I was with them or just observing) who went to a house at the end of a road where a grouchy old lady lived, and then jumped off a precipice. Later in the dream, the old lady had died, and I was inside her house, which had somehow grown to accommodate offices and such. In another dream, I was a kid going shopping with my dad, brother, and sister; and was upset because the store was out of frozen pizzas and Myers pot pies. I practically lived on those things for a significant portion of my life. I think Myers pot pies are a local thing, but they're really good. They sell them at the grocery store near where I work (or at least they did last time I went there), and maybe I'd pick some up if all of my work days didn't end after midnight.

The Silence of the Clamps - I liked this one. I remember a discussion somewhere (on the old alt.tv.futurama newsgroup, I think) about why Clamps works despite the fact that he's basically a one-joke character. The answer that made sense to me was that he works as a parody of gimmicky characters, in that he's constantly pointing out his gimmick. So it was cool to see a larger role for Clamps, and the misdirection with the farmhand who looked just like Bender was clever. Strange that Billy West looked just like a bending unit, but wasn't one. I guess the Crushinator married him at least because of his resemblance to Bender. The show has a lot of jokes about robots being related to other sorts of machines, but we never really learn exactly how reproduction works for them. Bender apparently considers the robot arm that constructed him to be his mother, but what of his father who was killed by a can opener? A deleted scene in "The Series Has Landed" had the Crushinator say she was pregnant with Bender's child, and Bender gives a different child of his to the Robot Devil in The Beast with a Billion Backs. We'll probably never know exactly how this works, or even sort of how it works.

I don't have much else to say, so I'm just going to talk about dreams I've had recently. One of them last week involved going on some sort of school field trip, which included a long bus ride. The ride was really boring, and no one else there liked me or wanted to interact with me. From what I remember, that was most of the dream. There was also part where we ended up stuck in some town where the bus had broken down. I think bethje was with me for this part of the dream, and we also stopped by a burger place where 3x1minus1 was working. When they sent in a new bus, it was really big and fancy, and included a dining room with tables. Robin Goldwasser was sitting at one of them, and singing along with one of the songs from They Might Be Giants' children's albums.

In another dream with a similar theme, I was back at my old college dorm, attending a graduation ceremony because I hadn't back when I actually finished college. (In real life, I graduated on time, and attended the interminable ceremony for the Honors College.) I saw people I knew, but none of them would talk to me. (Notice a pattern here?) For some reason I was staying in my old dorm room and had a bunch of stuff there, which I was trying to figure out how to get home. Back when I was really in college, I didn't drive, so one of my parents had to show up to help me transport my things back home. Also, as with other dreams where I was back in the dorm, people could come and go freely from my room, which was rather unsettling. Also, somebody showed me a plant that a kitten had somehow gotten into. Then there was some assembly that involved Nazi Germany, and outside the auditorium was a vending machine in which two girls somehow got trapped. And in another dream, or perhaps another part of the same dream, I was driving Beth home from somewhere and lost my way, and ended up going into several schools for no real reason. There was something about a new Weird Al EP coming out next year, and they were previewing the tracks at a music store. In the dream, I recognized the songs he was parodying, but I don't think they were anything real. Several cartoon characters showed up in some capacity or other, including Charlie Brown, the Looney Tunes, and the Flintstones. And I was on a plane that did a nosedive and came out all right. Originally I was just hearing about this plane, but then I was somehow on it. I can't remember what happened in my dream the night after that, but I remember there was a real sense of urgency to it, as if something important was coming to an end. I guess a lot of my dreams are like that. Endings are a recurring theme for my subconscious.

I have a Google+ account now, but I don't know what to do with it other than add people I know from elsewhere. Gotta catch 'em all, right? Actually, I can see it being a useful venue for things I want to tell everyone I know on the Internet (i.e., not just LiveJournal friends), but would rather not see made public. I can't think of anything like that at the moment, though.

There were a few things that happened this week that are probably worth writing about. ( It's not very long, but I'm cutting it because I'm including pictures. )