but I can die happy now that I've read some Hamlet slash. It's PG (less racy, in fact, than most of Shakespeare himself). Written by one of my favorite authors, Sarah Monette.

Here, have some well written geeky fun for a Monday: Absent from Felicity.

I dreamed last night that an elephant carried me across a field of spring-green grass from one museum building to the next. When he knelt down for me to disembark, he asked me for $20,000. I said, "Sir, I believe you're mistaking me for Jason Bourne."

"Ah," said the elephant, and sighed through his trunk. "I should not have forgotten."

I've closed my 2008 out with a string of intensely interesting and totally messed up dreams. The best kind. I don't write about my dreams like some authors, because then I'd have stories that went something like this:

~ A girl is trapped in an airport (that looks a suspiciously like the hospital in the middle of Oklahoma where she spent several surreal hours after a violent car accident in 1999), and she MUST get out, but the last plane leaving will lift off in two minute to avoid the super storm rolling this way like nuclear fallout. She joins a wizard and a talking tree (who later turn out to be the same person) on a narrow jet, and they take off just as the red and black storm clouds ripple in. It's terrifying, but they make it to the jagged valley between three mountains, where there's a portal back in time. To get through it (and save the world) the girl must battle another wizard who's been alive for five hundred or so years and she basically has no chance. There's a lot of running around and magical explosions, and she dies. But is reborn as a talking tree, and eventually evolves into a wizard in her own right. She goes to fight the old wizard again (who now looks like Lord Voldemort) and defeats him! Woo!

~ On another planet, there is a little boy whose Mom works as an indentured servant to the mayor of the planet. Mom keeps transforming into Dad, however, which makes total sense in the dream, but would not really work so seamlessly on the page. There's something rotten going on in the massive Capitol City, which is never resolved. But there is an alien wandering the galaxy. He looks an awful lot like my boyfriend, except is seven feet tall and his dreads are prehensile. Oh yes, imagine what they can do. Go ahead. I'll wait.

.........

Anyway. The alien wanderer shows up in his little ship, and the boy thinks he's Jesus (or the futuristic alien equivalent), but the authorities think he's a menace. They go to capture him and imprison him. He escapes with the help of the little boy, and they make a sarcophagus for him out of sand (did you know sarcophagus means "flesh-eating?), and the wanderer gets in to hide. He's found, of course, and kills a bunch of the Mayor's soldiers with his prehensile dreadlocks (what? what did you *think* I meant?) and the and the boy go hide with the boy's Mom/Dad, who, it turns out is transforming gender because s/he is a member of the wanderer's species but hasn't figured out how to settle into a gender. The wanderer is amazed that s/he managed to bear a child. They all prepare an exciting escape plan, and just as they leave to implement it, I woke up.

Oh, and for this fun one, "I" was all three of the main players. It was most fun being the wanderer, because I liked being seven feet tall. (I blame this particular dream on listening to the REPO! soundtrack about five times yesterday and watching the original The Day the Earth Stood Still over Christmas with the family. Because it's our kind of holiday movie.)

And there were two others, but I can't form sentences to describe them with any accuracy or sense.

First links:

- A gross, hilarious, delicious claymation-zombie short, Chainsaw Maid. Via rougewench. I know some of you reading will love this piece of unmitigated bloodletting. (I'm looking at you, mdhenry.)

- Why I only get Orson Scott Card's books from the library these days. From the Mormon Times, State Job is not to Redefine Marriage, suggesting that married people will rise up against the government to protect the sanctity of their rights. With guns. Did you know heterosexuality "is a permanent fact of nature"? As Elizabeth Bear said in her blog, this is almost endearing in its certainty, and no one should tell him about the penguins.

Now, the highlights of one of my dreams last night:

I was trying to teach a class about something (theater, writing, reading - something artsy that I've done in my life), and in the third section I was getting frustrated because the students (of various ages) weren't actively participating. One student spoke up and pretty much led a coup. I was ousted, though they voted to allow me to stay and learn if I wanted to. They were going to act out scenes from The Simpsons. I opted to go. So I was wandering the basement of this dark, concrete complex, raging to myself. I couldn't find an elevator that went up to the 16th floor (where my room was) so I couldn't get to my computer or books or anything. I decided to take the lift to the 13th floor, and see if any of the elevators THERE went up to 16.

I get there, and am lured into a lounge by the smell of clove cigarettes and brandy. There's laughter and some jazz playing through crackling speakers. I went to the bar, grabbed a snifter, and glanced around. A group of guys was clustered at two low, round tables in the corner, and they waved me over. I joined them, and we chatted for a while, telling jokes and generally shooting shit. I was on my third glass of brandy when I slowly began to realize that one of the guys was Justin Timberlake (sexy!) with a close-cropped beard and little gangster hat. We shared a cigar and were generally lording it over everyone else, making them sing and entertain us. I thought, wow, I'm glad I got kicked out of my own seminar! And, why isn't chernobylred here?

~ Found an icon of the poster that made me laugh so hard back in December. Now there's an added tone of morbidity that, although I am sorry for the reason, makes me love it even more.

~ Read another shitty book last night. Started out boring, and stayed that way. I made myself give it to page 50 before I started skimming. Skimmed to the end. Did not improve. Boo. Began a new one this morning, and in the first 5 pages it's already miles better. Fingers crossed it says that way.

~ Dreamt I was being held hostage by a monster all night. He lived in a split-level decorated with a lot of wood panelling and knick-nacks. He was an ogre (I was reading and talking a lot about ogres yesterday), though he looked human most of the time. Very broad shoulders, black eyes, a huge grin. Then he'd turn into my peripherals and I could see his bones shifting under his skin and he'd be malformed, like some Frankenstein with a head that didn't match his hands and hips too narrow for the torso and legs. He laughed a lot. I was locked inside the house, and couldn't go into his bedroom. I could see into it, and I knew he also had imprisoned a little boy. Though he didn't want to hurt the boy, nor would he eat me while the boy was there. So I did all I could to KEEP the boy hostage - I even impersonated the ogre on the phone when the kid's grandma called. I told her the boy was having a marvelous time. I spent all day when the ogre was out arranging his house so that there was a weapon (ax, large book, kitchen knife, etc) within two feet of every possible location. When he came home, he glanced around and noticed, but didn't put anything back in its proper place. That really pissed me off - but probably only because I knew it meant he wasn't worried at all about me hurting him, so I was being angry so as not to be terrified.

Early this morning I had a dream in which nataliesee and I went to the Eddie Izzard performance at the Upland with chernobylred and rougewench. We coordinated, too, which horrified me. I was in a black suit with red gloves and a little red hat, nataliesee was in a white dress with red gloves and a red belt, chernobylred wore a black and red polka-dotted 50's house-wife dress that looked spectacular, and rougewench was in a red dress with a black belt cinched in tight. When I realized, I think I offended everyone by saying, "Oh my god, ew."

We were seated at round tables set up in the theater instead of rows of chairs, and the four of us were near the front drinking pink martinis. The wait for the show to begin was longer than usual due to some wardrobe problems. We entertained ourselves imagining what they were. When they announced the show would begin in ten minutes I decided to go to the bathroom. It was quite the adventure, and I ended up being a little late back to the table - they'd served everyone dinner but me. I was grumbling as the lights went down and Eddie came on stage........

And wow did it suck.

He'd lost a bunch of weight, was dressed in an army-green jumpsuit, and wasn't wearing any make-up. I was disappointed to say the least. But I would've gotten over it if he'd been, you know, funny. He wasn't doing stand-up, though, he was doing some elaborate performance art with props, extras, lighting and sound... it was very much not funny.

I woke up a little, and when I fell back into the dream, the show was over. The whole way out I bitched about how awful it was that I'd been so bored I'd fallen asleep through the entire second half.

On the street outside the theater, we saw a whole bunch of friends (which likely reflects what the reality will be in May, since approximately 50% of the people I know also have tickets) and everyone else thought it was great! I was dumbfounded, and woke up disgusted.

My imagination is a fun place to be.

I was about six or seven, out at a campground in eastern Kansas. And I was running from a psychopath. I don't know what he wanted to do to me. There was an old man with a wiry beard and silver ponytail who helped me up into an abandoned cabin. He gave me old rye bread and a tiny bottle of water. Then he tucked me into a sleeping bag on an old, worn cot. I wrapped it around my feet and over my head when he left, certain there were rats and huge hairy spiders. But I slept.

In the morning, I woke to the sound of the psycho walking near, calling out to someone. I huddled, freezing, then finally peeked out. He was standing down the hill, on a gravel road in front of another abandoned cabin. In his hand was the head of the old man who'd helped me. Gore dripped from the neck, and his dead eyes stared right at me. I panicked, and ran.

There wasn't anywhere to hide again. I couldn't hear him, and didn't know if he was even following me. The forest felt empty - not just threatening, but dead.

I woke up, fell back into the dream, woke up again, and started thinking about politics. It amuses me now that I used politics to distract myself from a nightmare. I used to use Superman.

So, yesterday late afternoon, I get a politics email from NYT (yeah, I can't *not* mention it) with a bunch of campaign coverage. The third headline is something like, "Huckabee funny on Colbert Report."

Me: huh? *blink*

I reread, then click on the video link. My mouth slowly falls open as I watch Colbert interviewing Huckabee via satellite, and they are talking about the Iowa caucus. Meaning: this is a new episode!

Me: No way. I'd have heard.

Off I go to Comedy Central, and sure enough, there are clips from both the Colbert Report and The Daily Show labeled January 7th, 8th, and 9th, 2008.

Me: But... the strike.. the writers... huh?

I watch several clips to find clues. And what does Colbert reveal? Will Smith is a Scientologist now!?!?!!

And of course, with that news, all fears about the WGA strike are wiped from my consciousness. Not Will! Noooo. He can't be crazy! My favorite actor/hunk of sweaty man-flesh canNOT be falling for the insidious evil of Scientology!

When I got to work this morning, I investigated (before doing any, you know, actual work). It isn't as horrible as Colbert made it seem. That article I linked above quotes Smith as saying, no he's not a Scientologist, but he's studied it with Tom and it's 98% like the Bible. It isn't evil or bad, it's pretty cool. But he's still on God's side. Ok, he isn't crazy, he's just not that smart. Would I rather him be crazy or smart? I haven't decided.

BACK TO THE STEWART/COLBERT DRAMA. They are indeed back on the air, without writers. :( Much sadness.

( In a joint statement, Stewart and Colbert said: )

In completely unrelated news: apparently, a meteor is on it's way to Earth and we'll all die. At least, according to some visionary who called the Physics Department yesterday. So we can contact Bruce Willis, I assume. No, really.

And I had a long nightmare about a serial killer who was murdering people in this 25 story snazzy hotel. He used a brilliantly polished silver hook to tear their throats out. I think he worked there. I don't know if I worked there or was a guest. The weird thing is that it wasn't *really* a nightmare. I never woke up in a panic. I only say nightmare, because, uh, it should've been. Once, I interrupted him and the hook slammed up through his victims head and the point poked the victim's eyeball out from the inside. The killer fled and that's how I figured out what the weapon was. It was there. Shining and pretty.