We stopped at a sort of warehouse and parked among dozens of other bus-like vehicles. Dozens of other cultists like us were obviously inside. The building looked unfinished on the outside, like it was quickly built and intended to be taken apart again easily. White tin siding, unfinished pinewood, wing bolts. Inside, there were fluorescent lamps and clean checker patterned floor tiles. Aisles and aisles of metal shelves filled the whole inside of the building. Halloween costumes and toy weapons were neatly arranged on the shelves. Inside each costume was supposed to be an individual demon waiting to be merged with a human. Something on the way to this place had gotten me in a bad mood and I wasn’t feeling eager to go along with all of this. If I absolutely had to give my body to a demon, if I were forced against my will to wear a stupid costume, at least I’d be able to choose one out of such a wide variety. Irate by everyone else’s enjoyment, I found what looked like a whip in the middle of a bunch of soft, furry animal heads. Black and shiny, it was covered in scales with thin needle points sticking out. When I picked it up it slung itself out of my hand and around my body, and I felt a sharp pinch at the end of my spine and in my left nostril. This thing stuck out of my back like a tail. A spike like a toothpick was sticking out of the side of my nose. If I touched it, I could feel it rip at the inside of my nose, but I could also see things that I couldn’t before. I understood more information than I normally should have just by looking at something. I’d “merged” with this thing, but I didn’t feel at all like I was sharing my body with another soul and felt completely disillusioned by this stupid cult’s bullshit.

The group I arrived with began to collect at the entrance/exit of the building and we started moving out to leave. There was yelling and screaming outside. It sounded like quite a commotion. Where the buses and vans were parked, people in Halloween costumes were being stabbed by the hand-less arms of a tall creature and ripped apart in its wildly thrashing jaws. It had a thin body and thin limbs, was smooth, and so brittle that when it moved violently enough, parts of itself would accidentally break off. The joints in its arms and legs were hollow pot-like structures where the ends of each limb segment were sticking out. As it ran after people, it stabbed its footless legs into the ground like a person running on stilts. And its head looked like a shark’s head, and it moved chaotically as if it were trying to escape its own body. Some of the cult members ran into the fray to fight the thing. A lot of them were killed. The idea of killing this thing felt like fun. I ran in to get its attention, and dashed around it so that it would make sharp turns and trip over vehicles trying to chase me. It finally crashed to the ground and shattered. The head still wriggled around and snapped its jaws at everything it saw. I picked up a 4×4 piece of lumber that was lying nearby and smashed the head. Nobody around me seemed to care that I’d done something amazing. Nobody praised me, and it didn’t seem like anyone was any more glad to still be alive than before. I wanted attention and screamed like a child.

Then I woke.

The last thing I remember was listening to a song. I’m sure it exists in real life somewhere and my subconscious held on to it. I did a little search in real life, and I couldn’t find it. It sounded like an old song, couldn’t tell if it was trying to be beach party or early punk, and the only lyrics I remember were, “run, run, run, run, Vegeta,” beat, “Godzilla!” Then there was a solo that reminds me of a Jim Croce song. Is it possible that my brain combined a mess of loose thoughts into an original song, or does that song exist somewhere?

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: volume 3 = $8.00
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: volume 4 = $8.00
Giant Robo Bargain Bundle = $9.99
Clannad: volume 2 = $5.99
Shigurui Death Frenzy: complete = $11.99
Otaku no Video = $8.99

Economy shipping rate is $3 for the first item ordered, plus $1 per each additional item.
Shigurui Death Frenzy is $11.99 for a limited time.
My bank account has x amount of dollars, and the cost of order all of these DVDs exceeds x considerably. y is the amount of dollars that I would like to keep in my account. x – y is approximately $37, the amount of money I’m willing to spend on ordering DVDs.

The first course of action is put together the obvious groups: the most expensive + the least expensive, the least expensive + the next least expensive. All other possible groups that I ran through were alterations of these two groups. When the sum of each group could allow the addition of another item, I added the least expensive item that wasn’t already in the group. When the sum of each group considerably exceeded $37, I removed it. The resulting groups that I favored:

Shigurui + Clannad2 + MSZG3 = $31.97
Shigurui + Clannad2 + MSZG3 + MSZG4 = $39.98
Shigurui + Clannad2 + Giant Robo = $32.97
Shigurui + Clannad2 + Otaku no Video = $35.97
Clannad2 +MSZG3 + MSZG4 + Otaku no Video = $36.98
Clannad2 + MSZG3 + Otaku no Video + Giant Robo = $38.97
Clannad2 + Otaku no Video + Giant Robo = $29.97

To narrow this list down, I ranked each DVD set between 1 and 3, based on how eager I am to own it. The greater the sum of points per group, the more likely it’ll be chosen for purchase. They were:

Shigurui + Clannad2 + MSZG3 = $31.97   (7)
Shigurui + Clannad2 + MSZG3 + MSZG4 = $39.98   (9)
Shigurui + Clannad2 + Giant Robo = $32.97   (6)
Shigurui + Giant Robo + Otaku no Video = $35.97   (5)
Clannad2 +MSZG3 + MSZG4 + Otaku no Video = $36.98   (7)
Clannad2 + MSZG3 + Otaku no Video + Giant Robo = $38.97   (6)
Clannad2 + Otaku no Video + Giant Robo = $29.97   (4)

Since $39.98 is cutting it pretty close to an uncomfortable price, I’m going to go with the $31.97 plan.

EDIT:
So I placed the order and the total wasn’t what I’d calculated. Whatever mathy bullshit I thought I was pulling off, it was apparently wrong.

Marvel
Amazing Spider-Man – #365
Annex – #1
Beavis and Butt-Head – #1-6, 8, 9, 17
Conan The Barbarian – #129
Darkhawk – #2
Dazzler – #1
Excalibur – #32, 33
The Incredible Hulk – #300, 393
Kazar the Savage – #7
Longshot – #3
Marvel Fanfare – #9
Maverick – #1
Night Thrasher: Four Control – complete
Raiders of the Lost Ark – #2
Silver Sable – #1
Star Brand – #1, 15
Thunder Strike – #4
Wildstar – #1
Wolverine – #71

DC
Action Comics – #712
Action Comics Annual – #6
GHOSTS – #96
Kickers Inc. – #2
Legend of the Shield Annual – #1
Shade – #16, 40, 43
Superman – #364, 367
The Wanderers – #4, 6, 11

Image
Backlash – #7, 13, 14, 21, 22
Bloodstrike – #12, 14
Boof – #1
Boof and the Bruise Crew – #1
Brigade – #1, 2,  25
The Comet – #1
Darker Image – #1
Deathmate Yellow
Extreme Super Christmas Special – #1
Ripclaw – #2
Stormwatch – #2, 3, 5, 25,  27, 28, 42
Team One WildCATS – #1
Tribe – #1

Valiant
Deathmatch Yellow
Rai and the Future Force – #9

Wildstorm
Robotech – #1
Thundercats – #3

Topps
Mars Attacks – #4

Antarctic Press
Albedo – #9

Tekno Comix / BIG Entertainment
I-Bots – #2, 4, 7
Lost Universe – #2, 4, 5
Primortals – #1, 4-6, 9, 10
Mullkon Empire – #1
Xander in Lost Universe – #0

CHAOS!
Lady Death – #3

DDP
Voltron: A Legend Forged – #5

Defiant
Warriors of Plasm

Charlton
Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm – #21

Fawcett
Dennis the Menace Bonus Magazine – #115, 134

Whitman
Bugs Bunny – #176
Flash Gordon – #31-33
Pink Panther – #68
Tweety and Sylvester – #61
Walt Disney Mickey Mouse – #215
Walt Disney Scamp – #40

Archie
Archie and Me – #44, 88
Archie at Riverdale High – #7, 79
Betty and Me – #62
Betty and Veronica – #213
Jughead’s Jokes – #73
Li’l Jinx Giant Laugh-Out – #35
PEP – #268, 283
That Wilkin Boy – #22

Harvey Comics
Devil Kids – #87
Little Dot – #48, 137, 149, 152
Richie Rich – #124, 127, 128, 129, 163
Richie Rich and Gloria – #20
Richie Rich and Jackie Jokers – #43, 44
Richie Rich Cash – #37, 40
Richie Rich Dollars and Cents – #100
Richie Rich Gems – #36
Richie Rich Gold & Silver – #21
Richie Rich Jackpots – #53
Richie Rich Money World – #34
Richie Rich Profits – #26
Richie Rich Riches – #52, 54
Richie Rich Success – #97
Richie Rich Vaults of Mystery – #24
Richie Rich Zillions – #10
Sad Sack – #257, 279
Sad Sack and the Sarge – #116

Earliest parts I remember were of myself living the homeless life. For some reason, I had to stay hidden from most people. I was exiled from my group of pals, and I was wandering around until the part of the dream where I wandered back and they considered removing the exile. They had a hidden fortress built into a giant tree, and our quarters were inside of the branches. I was being asked to sleep on the outside of the branches until the decision was made that I would be fit to return or not. I don’t remember if I wanted to be accepted back or not, I just remember being frustrated. I found my own food and lived off of my own efforts. At some point I was given a closet to sleep in, or it was something like that. And people would harass me by stealing things I’d gotten while I was away or food I’d gotten for myself. I didn’t have the patience to wait for a permanent acceptance, and I left that place.

Next thing I remember is being in a school building where refugees were being transported to, divided and organized into groups, documented individually, and transported elsewhere. Their skin and clothes were different, and none of them spoke or responded to anything I’d say to them. I don’t remember why or how I’d gotten there, but I do remember seeing someone I recognized and trying to meet her. Stumbling through lines of people that shuffled between rooms, avoiding detection from men in uniforms with guns, and whenever I’d finally reach where I saw her, she’d be somewhere else that I was lucky enough to spot. Last thing I remember was hiding against a doorway that opened into the school building’s gymnasium. At least four doorways along the hallway opened into the gymnasium, only one line of people was moving in to the desk at the center of the room where people were being documented, name, teeth, hair samples and shit like that. I was outside of the doorway, looking in to see the person I was after getting recorded in the various ways. If I was spotted out of line, I’d draw unwanted attention. If I went into the line from here, I’d draw unwanted attention. If I were camouflaged in the line of people I might not be spotted, and in that case, I’d still have to face the person at the desk. I was trying to think of the new plan to catch up to this person when I woke.

Life can be compared to anything and everything, given the right frame of mind and desire to explore tired, trite analogies. For the sake of this tired, trite blogger, life is like a musical instrument right now.

Low chords, high chords, can look beautiful and sound shitty, can look trashed and sound awesome, or any variation of those juxtaposed phrases, can be played well while it can also merely appear to be played well, can be misused, destroyed, repaired, abandoned, or maybe replaced if you’re that kind of person, and it’s all got to do with who has what and how they why. A lot of times, people face the decision of abandoning life/said-musical-instrument and others have the ability to choose for themselves taken away, or never even given to begin with. Born without the ability to live/play beyond an extended period of time, or an unforeseeable disaster removes a person the ability to live/play. Sometimes a person like myself will forget how wonderful it is to play until he/she gets some perspective from other musicians, and he/she remembers that being able to play an instrument is a blessing, religiously toned or maybe shorthand for a more complex series of ideas that can be tested and disproved through the scientific method.

To be brief, I’m sorry to everyone who I’ve been a downer to, and I can’t promise that it won’t happen again, but I can tell you that you all make being able to play a metaphorical instrument worth… being able to play a metaphorical instrument. I won’t ever stop being sorry for any of mistakes, but for as long as I can remember this feeling, I’ll certainly do my best to stop being such a pain in the metaphorical ass.

Blobguy AKA Robert Anthony Frank

DO NOT OFFEND THE CHAIR LEG OF TRUTH. IT IS WISE AND TERRIBLE.

I keep bouncing between embracing that I will die without having lived, to put it simply if not dramatically, and wanting to be a part of the rest of the human race. Sometimes I confuse the two. Like in the case of the shitty podcast that I have been “trying” to make. Don’t  defend it, by the way, it’s supposed to be shit and I care as much about it as what I flush down the toilet. But I’ve been making it with the excuse of trying to spend time with people. But when spending time with people doesn’t live up to the grandeur I’d hoped, I fall back on the purpose of interaction being the podcast. I originally started it up because I wanted to keep in touch regularly with one person, someone I can fall back on when I was tired of my self-imposed isolation. That’s a lot of responsibility to push onto someone, and it wasn’t fair of me. And it’s not how a healthy person reacts to wanting to break out of fucked habits.

For the first time ever, not too long ago, I had some hardcore introspection about whether or not I wanted to continue living past that night. I obviously did. Besides that, there shouldn’t be a reason for me to think about my own life in this way. You could say that I haven’t experienced anything that would make life unbearable, and I will always believe that there’s potential for a better situation, even if I forget that belief sometimes.

I'm not ready to put away childish things, yet.

The earliest part of the dream I remember is being somewhere where my high school classmates were. I get the general feeling that this is very soon after our graduation. We we gathered in a white building, some of us talking to each other, some of us avoiding each other. Someone I used to have one of my many stupid crushes on IRL showed up in the dream to talk to some of my freshly graduated peers. I was exiting the building as she was entering, and I asked to be excused as I almost bumped into her. She sneered at me. I don’t ever remember seeing that kind of look on her face. Outside of the building, I was waiting for something, but I don’t remember what. More people kept coming and going, all jovial, all nostalgic. I sat on the sidewalk outside for a while, and then felt someone kicking me. It was the person I’d almost bumped into. I surrendered to receiving whatever pain she thought I deserved, but she said that she was only trying to get my attention, and sat next to me, saying that she was going to help me. The way that people were talking inside the white building, the way I was so completely lost inside, the way I feel when I try to focus on college-sort-of-things, I get the feeling, now that I’m awake, that she was talking about helping me sign up for a school.

I next remember images of inside of a department store and wandering around in this house I live in at night while drunk, but I don’t remember the order or a more than that.

Morning at a college. It looked nothing like any college that I’ve seen IRL, by the way. I had been going to classes for months. This first class was math related. The teacher was excited about what he’s teaching, but after months of teaching this particular group of students, we could all see how jaded he’d become. Nobody paid attention. Nobody cared. I woke on the classroom floor, realizing that at some point, I’d decided to lay down and sleep. I was so ashamed of myself. I sat upright, and pulled the books and papers on my desk closer to me, as if that would make me seem more attentive. That teacher looked at me in disgust and without saying anything got his shit together and left. Nobody cared and went about their shit, and I was so embarrassed and ashamed and angry at myself.

I left that classroom, and the hallways turned out to be a part of the high school. I walked down to the end, because I was sure that this wasn’t the same place I’d been in a moment ago, and found the door to one of the high school art classrooms. I walked in and saw students working. A certain bald-headed teacher was wandering around, looking at the progress of each student. He saw me and looked at me with fierce eyes, as if to ask why the fuck I’d ever come back here again. I wanted to leave them all alone, but he stopped me and told me, “you’re gonna be alright.”
I didn’t understand. Stumbling and confused by everything around me,  I wandered into an office-like room where Walls was making photocopies of something. He looked younger than I remember seeing him IRL. He came up to me calling me, “Bobberino,” and asked how I was doing. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak or gesture. I couldn’t communicate anything, and all I wanted to do was leave this place as fast as I could.

Somewhere along the way, I’d heard someone mention a friend of mine, and the conversation was sullen, as if something bad had happened. I scrambled, moving blindly to get somewhere I thought that my friend would be, and the door to their house formed in one of the walls. Inside of the house, it was night, and the door was locked. I could see a single person through a window. I banged on the door until someone would open it. And everyone was fine. I could see them in the doorway as the door opened. I fell onto the floor exhausted and crying.

I came across the page about physics, which is incredibly well summed up by the quotation along the top of the article. That got me thinking about the shortcomings of a story that doesn’t follow its own rules. In Star Wars, space travel is depicted in much the same way that driving between states is. Presenting interplanetary travel in a fantastical sense works against the mysticism of interplanetary travel. For most of my life, I believed that time passed at the same rate in all points of the universe. Learning the opposite filled my mind with renewed wonder, and I have come to appreciate stories that are built around a submission to physics as often as ones that ignore it to tell conventional stories. This doesn’t mean that, in my transition from stupid kid to cynical asshole, I think lesser of the dumb shit than I already did. A steam engine plowing through space is as exciting to me as the best moments in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Whether you think that this is a comparable pair in regards to excitement may be a different story.)

Beyond science-fiction, I’ve gotten to thinking about other examples of stories that don’t follow their own rules, rules based within the universe of the story instead of ones based on real life. According to Cyrus on Spill.com, Joss Whedon works well on the audience’s suspension of disbelief because of Buffy‘s very strict rules about what vampires are and how to kill them. It’s easy to be pulled into a fantastical world that abides by its rules thoroughly, as opposed to a fantastical world where all rules are broken, bypassed, and subverted by a lack of consequence. But then the prime example of a show with tight logic seems to fall apart when you reach season seven.

I don’t know where my thoughts are taking me or what I intend to do with my discoveries, evidenced by my anticlimactic ramblings in the past, but this is all very interesting, and I have TV Tropes to thank for the new wing in overthinking playground.

When I had awoken, I forgot everyone I’d met in the dream. All I could recall is that I was talking to friends. As I lingered on the scenes I could easily remember, other stuff slipped away, and I’m sure that the people who I think I was talking to in the dream are just mistakes from me trying to fill blanks.

So what is it that I want to do with my life? I don’t know. I really, really don’t know. If I start up college classes again, what will I focus on doing? What is the goal? All I can think about is how I can mold my classes around my ability to enjoy the various media I consume. The deadline feeling is rushing through me right now, and I have nothing. No classes, no employment, nothing to make me feel this way. Like I’ll be out of time, soon, and I need to decide right now. For what? Do what?

I feel ashamed of myself. Because I’ve always been lying to myself, I’ve never been able to be honest with other people. That’s where all of my friendships go. Nobody who knows me should think well of me. Nobody I know should ever trust me.

White walls with cork boards, inspirational posters, and banners made of paper alphabets. A colorful carpet. A long table with a white cloth, on which baskets of food were placed. Various chips and candies. We were gathered around this table, sitting at it, each of us discussing what we like, but none of what each of us were saying had anything to do with what any of the others around us were saying. So I’d talk about Gundam as if everyone else there was talking about Gundam, and then someone would talk about her cat as if I had just said something about cats, and the next of us to speak would argue something about Superman as if this were a debate about Superman the whole time. None of us noticed that nobody else was talking about what we were talking about. I was fidgeting with something, maybe food, maybe a toy. My fingers short and wide and difficult to move.

Later on, with some feeling of time passing, I was elsewhere within this institution. Sitting at a table in a kind of auditorium. White walls. White tiled floor. Stacking chairs spread throughout the room, all of them facing the stage. It was a recess into the wall with a raised floor. Wood panels. Someone we see about two or three times a week had a mic and was singing and asking us questions. I wasn’t participating, I was focusing on food, which was spread around on tables in this room. I remember feeling more comfortable with the food in this room than the food in the other room. It was easy to hold and it was fresh. The people participating in the group activity stuff were older, much older folks who had jobs outside of the institution. They all wore some sort of uniform. I remember feeling like they got special treatment because they had jobs and didn’t have to visit this place if they didn’t want to, even though they were just like those of us who did have to come here. People who were difficult to talk to because either they couldn’t understand what was being said to them well or what they said couldn’t easily be understood. The effort behind their speech is apparent to me, now, but in the dream it felt like they were just older than I was, and that’s how older people are. The person with the mic started to play some music and was trying to entice everyone to dance. Only one guy stood straight up and looked around like he was expecting someone else in the crowd to join him. He might have been pretty embarrassed. All of these people in one spot had been hardened and desensitized by the way they’d been treated most of their lives, and the group thought was, “I’m not going to be told by a clown in a suit with a mic to dance just because he wants us to dance.” The woman sitting nearest to the guy who stood first slowly made her way over to the poor guy so that they could dance together. Her breasts were large and swung heavily underneath her blouse as she walked, and her back was formed in such a way to make them look like pendulums swaying before her thighs. There was a general sense that something uncomfortable was about to happen filling the room. I saw another man who was sitting nearby this woman twitching and rubbing his hands in his seat. He had apparent sexual urges that needed to be dealt with right away. He stood and made his way over to the woman to propose intercourse as she and the first guy put a lot of effort into figuring out how to dance.

This is what I woke from.