Dream Log: Keanu Reeves/Siddhartha/High-Powered Lawyer

I dreamed I was Siddhartha, the prince in India who was going to renounce his wealth and become the Buddha; and also Keanu Revves;

 

and also a high-priced lawyer in Manhattan. I moved back and forth from the prince's ancestral palace in ancient India to present-day Manhattan, but after a while I stayed in Manhattan. The ancient prince was about to leave his family's palace to wander and seek enlightenment, and the attorney was about to leave his wealth and position behind to do the same. Ray Liotta was also in both realities: in ancient India he was one of the prince's most loyal servants, and in present-day Manhattan he was the attorney's loyal assistant.

The differences between the two times and places seemed unimportant. In both, Ray was very upset that Keanu was about to leave. "Let me come with you," he asked, not for the first time.

"We've been through this," I/Keanu/Siddhartha answered. "I need to go alone."

"I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you, too," I said. "But, to some extent, we can choose whether missing someone is painful. We can choose to be happy thinking about what was good in that other person." (I have no idea whether any part of this post resembles Buddhism in the slightest. I have no wish to offend Buddhists with this post.)

I also reminded him that Maura Tierney, another attorney in the firm, was staying. Ray liked her a lot.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was/was playing a defendant represented by the firm, a whistleblower who had exposed very bad things done routinely by a very big company, charged with criminal theft of documents belonging to that company. It was late afternoon, the jury was about to return. The other attorneys were already in the courtroom. Almost the entire firm was in the courthouse except for me. I was going to set out on my quest for enlightenment after the verdict. I rushed over to the courthouse, and then realized that I had neglected to put on a shirt.

Maura Tierney had a car and drove me back to the firm. By the time I was properly dressed, multiple texts had infomed us that Philip Seymour Hoffman had been declared innocent, so instead of rushing back to the courthouse, Maura and I waited for everyone else to join us at the firm for a party. Caterers began to arrive and set up shop. It was getting dark. It was one of those old Manhattan offices with a lot of exposed hardwood.

I said to Maura, "You know, Ray's crazy about you." By the way that she blushed and looked away, smiling, it seemed that the feelings were mutual. Which in turn made it seem that right now, with a party in celebration of having won a good fight about to get underway, would be an excellent time for me to go. I slipped out via the stairs and the alley. It was cold, my breath billowed out in big clouds. On the sidewalk and out in the street people were in a big hurry, typical for Manhattan. I, on the other hand, didn't know where I was going, so it made sense for me to just stand there, except to jump up and down when I needed some warmth. After a while I decided to turn left. Left was east. I started walking east on 42nd Street.

Dream Log: Economic Mediocrity in Manhattan

I dreamed I was in a department store in Manhattan when my G-Shock alerted me that a package had been fired at the store like a bullet from far away, and was about to fly through an open window. Quickly I grabbed a drone from a shelf, took it out of its package, assembled it, and got it into the air where if deflected the package, knocking it to the ground and avoiding injury or collision with other goods.

A store manager saw this, assumed that I was already an employee, and set me to work deflecting more packages which flew in through the store's one open window.

I quit this job and got a delivery job, delivering bags of candy from a storefront. However, I felt sure that the commissions for these deliveries must be very low, so when I saw a bunch of people going onto an office to start a day's work on another delivery job, and they said they were always hiring, I tagged along. 

In this job, every single package delivered by anybody contained one Three Musketeers candy bar. We were each given a bag of packages and a list of addresses and sent out. 

I found myself walking in Upper Manhattan looking for 176th St. Other delivery people from the same company, each with a bag of Three Musketeers, were walking along beside me. The streets were filled with a mixture of sea salt left by evaporation from the nearby Atlantic, and toxic waste. There were no sidewalks in this region of warehouses. We dodged speeding semi trucks. The salty poison piled high in the streets was beginning to melt the rubber in the soles of our sneakers. We were afraid it would burn right through our shoes and burn our feet. 

We managed to get out of that area uninjured. But I still hadn't found a single address. I was beginning to wonder what kind of commission I could possibly expect from such a job. I had neglected to ask how much I was going to be paid. 

The boss of my previous job, where I had been delivering bags of candy, and where I had also not asked about the pay, spotted me walking along and yelled at me angrily for disappearing. However, he also made it clear that I was not fired. He was a big burly guy with black handlebar moustaches.

Then things became much more abstract. For example, I was holding a tennis ball inside a steel protective case. Then, I was inside a beauty shop, and a women held my head between her hands as she murmured incantations which I didn't understand. Then, I was in Wisconsin for just a moment. I don't know how I knew it was Wisconsin. It was a rural area, autumn, and the trees were full of firy-bright red and orange and yellow leaves. Very few leaves had fallen yet from the trees. Then I was back in the department store were the dream began, and the store manager was yelling at me for pretending to be an employee. Then I was sitting on the ground in African grasslands among some lions, and I wasn't afraid of them and they weren't afraid of me. Then I was back in NYC, on the sidewalk, with some people I've only met on Facebook. Then I was playing basketball in what appeared to a comfortably-old NYC YMCA or school gym. Then I was testifying before a legislative body in favor of massive expansion of public funding for rooftop-solar, and also in favor of 100% net metering. Then I woke up.

Dream Log: Married to Jennifer Lopez

 I dreamed I got married to Jennifer Lopez.

But in the first part of the dream, I was a small-time criminal in a gang in a city. Or maybe it was more just a group of friends in a poor neighborhood, than a gang. Don't know what city. Some friends and I learned that another friend of ours was being chased by plainclothes police, so we went to help. 

The chase seemed to be more of a tense stand-off. As long as we just stood there around our friend and didn't budge, the police weren't able to arrest him. Then one of the policemen drew a small automatic pistol. One of our group pointed out that there were a lot of witnesses around. Finally the other police convinced him to put his pistol away, and the standoff ended with no injuries and no arrests. 

We were going to celebrate our friend's escape from trouble by having dinner in a restaurant, but I got separated from the others on the way there, and the next thing I knew, Jennifer Lopez, who was part of an ambulance crew, was threatening my cat. I was poor, but I had a cat. I yelled that if anyone hurt my cat, I'd kill them. 

Apparently my angry but empty threat impressed Jennifer Lopez, because the next thing I knew she and I got married. And now she was no longer an EMS worker, but approximately the same huge movie and music star she is in real life. Approximately, not exactly. For example, in the dream she had a lot of children, including one who was still a toddler. In real life, as I learned this morning while researching her in preparation for this blog post, Jennifer Lopez has two children, with her ex-husband Marc Anthony, twins, a boy and a girl, now 13 years old. 

In the dream, we were living in Jennifer's modernist mansion somewhere in southern California, with her numerous children and even more numerous entourage, plus a domestic staff, and a photographer who was taking photos of me with the toddler, and various agents, managers, movie-studio and music-company personnel, etc. Just a huge crowd of people. The mansion was large, but it was quite crowded at the moment.

Gradually I formed the impression that Jennifer was always testing me. For example, when we had first met, when she was an EMS on that ambulance crew, she was pretending to intend harm to my cat, to see whether I would vigorously protect it. I passed that test, which got our relationship started. 

Now we were married, and there was always a huge crowd of people between her and me. Eventually I became sure that Jennifer had intentionally set things up this way, and wanted to see me become more assertive and insist on being alone with her. Which was very much what I wanted too. I was about to start yelling at everybody to clear out, when I woke up.

Another SLOW Month in Non-Tesla Murrkin EV News

Lucid have actually delivered some vehicles to customers! I don't know how many.

 

So what do you think, is Lucid currently delivering units at a faster pace than Rivian?

Rivian has said they will deliver 1,000 units in 2021, so I think the only question about that is, how late in 2022 will the 1,000th unit be delivered? (I'm highly confident that they can do it before January 1, 2023.)

Seriously, though, I wish Rivian and Lucid well. And Bollinger, and Farraday Future and Fisker, and... I was about to say "and Nikola too," but it's really hard to wish those assholes well.

But someone has to crush Tesla.

Another question: Musk has always said, in media interviews, that he wishes nothing but success for anyone making EV's, and that Tesla want to do everything they can to help all of those other EV manufacturers.

So my question is: am I actually the only person on Earth who sees that Musk is completely full of shit when he says those things? Does no-one else have the computing power in their brain-grease to see that, if Tesla was actually helping even a little bit, the combined deliveries of all non-Tesla Murrkin EV-only manufacturers would currently be a lot higher than a few hundred? (Not counting aftermarket conversions, which I would guess number in the thousands in the US alone by now.)

 

Am I the only one on Earth who suspects Tesla of actual illegal interference with other EV manufacturers? Not just everyday hardball business-as-usual dirty tricks, but actual completely illegal sabotage? Answer me! Am I the only one? I did a Google search, tesla sabotage of other ev manufacturers, all I got were some stories from 2018 about Musk yelling that someone had sabotaged Tesla, no doubt to divert from the latest horrible thing he himself had done. FEAR MY SUPER-POWERED AUTISTIC BRAIN-GREASE, MUSK! You fool all these others. Not me.

Collectivization in the USSR

Stalin is accused of intentionally starving several million people in the Ukraine starting in 1928, under the process of collectivization of agriculture. The INTENT of collectivization was to grow more food so that people wouldn't starve. The intent was to farm more efficiently, using more scientific methods and so forth. Collectivization was begun because there had already been several near-famines in the USSR, and because it was clear that the other European countries weren't going to help in case of an emergency. They had a system in place to help each other in case of famine, but when people in the Soviet Union began to starve, they said, Oh, that horrible monster Josef Stalin, starving his own people! and, amazingly the charge has stuck to this day.

The Ukraine was the biggest source of food for the USSR. Farmers in the Ukraine reacted to collectivization by burning whole fields of crops, and slaughtering livestock and letting the meat rot, by not growing food to begin with, etc. In short, collectivization was a huge failure. And as a result of this -- and as a result of other nations not helping, when they had food surpluses and could have helped -- several million people starved. Other European countries stood by and watched (and hypocritically blamed Stalin).

You can blame Stalin of lying about collectivization being a huge success, when it was failing. Yes, he did lie about that. But I don't see how you can blame him for famine, when he didn't have the food to feed people. And, again, other European countries DID have the food to feed them. And they did nothing to help. Because they preferred to take the opportunity to falsely accuse Stalin of intentionally starving millions of his own people. The INTENT of collectivization was to PREVENT famine.

 

Cancer

My Mom died of cancer. My sister-in-law died of cancer. So have many other of my relatives and friends. My best Facebook friend has been struggling with a very serious case of cancer for a long time. I recently googled how many people get cancer. Google says about 1/2 of the women and 1/3 of the men.

Three years ago, they discovered I had a huge tumor in my lower-right abdomen. They were going to have to take it out to know for sure whether it was cancer. (Turns out it was.) And to take it out, they had to remove one of my kidneys, which was no longer functioning because the tumor had completely enveloped it. The tumor weighed 13 1/2 pounds. They had to cut a pretty big hole in my diaphragm to get it out.

From first discovering that I had a tumor, to the surgery, was just 3 weeks. It was not enough time for me to become really traumatized. But in the three years after the operation I have become traumatized. I have not been the same, physically or mentally, since then.

 

And now my doctor wants me to have a colonoscopy, because my latest annual stool test shows a possibility of cancer. (That's right: you can have an annual stool test instead of a colonoscopy every five years. I have a feeling most men don't know that.)

 

I haven't scheduled the colonoscopy yet. I realize I'm behaving irrationally by not scheduling it. My doctor, my general practitioner, who is very intelligent and extremely competent, and in whom I have a very high level of trust, says she's like to see me have the procedure -- "the dreaded procedure," as they called it on "Seinfeld" -- in the next 6 months. If I don't have the procedure, and if I do have cancer, she says, it could take up to 10 years for other symptoms of the cancer to show.

So if I've seemed sort of grumpy lately, that may have been part of the reason.

 

Dream Log: Lost on Sunday

I dreamed that I and some friends were in a car together, and we pulled into the parking lot of a Catholic church in an area somewhere on the border between suburban and rural. Mass was about to begin. The others went inside, and I decided to take a walk until Mass was over. 

There was a tall, steep hill near the church, and I climbed it. The hilltop was very broad and flat. Even though I was in church clothes, I felt like running. After I had been jogging along for a while, a man zoomed past me, wearing the Chariots of Fire running outfit: white T-shirt tucked into white shorts, white socks, black shoes. 

I took the difference between his speed and mine as a challenge, and sped up. He soon disappeared around a bend and I never saw him again, but I enjoyed running fast. For a while I was self-conscious because I was running in a dark red shirt under a dark red sweater, dark red corduroy pants, white socks and black shoes, but then I told myself to worry less about what people thought and enjoy myself.

I ran so far that when I stopped I didn't know where I was, and couldn't find my way back to the church where my friends were. The area had become much more urban. 

I walked through a plaza lined with Renaissance-style apartment buildings which, I felt sure, many connoisseurs would disparage as absurdly gaudy and over-the-top. But then I told myself that I didn't have to let some hypothetical snobs stop me from enjoying the view. 

And the dream went on like that for quite a while: I walked through many different architectural styles which I liked although, somehow, I was sure that there were many experts who would laugh at them, and over and over, I was able to overcome my self-consciousness and like what I like. None of it was Sylvester Stallone's sort of thing. I don't like architecture that's THAT gaudy. (And there's no reason that Sylvester Stallone should be upset about that.) One of the buildings was a mall which included a shop whose wares included some of those old books which are as tall and wide as a man, which often appear in my dreams, or, more likely, new replicas of those old books.

RANGEMAN!

This is how an ordinary guy became the superhero Rangeman.

The ordinary guy lived in an apartment in NYC. There were three idiots who hung out on the front steps of his apartment building and harrassed people. The ordinary guy didn't have any reason to be intimidated by these  idiots, because he was a huge ordinary guy and strong as an ox. But he was very timid. He tended to go around with his head down and his shoulders hunched. 

One day he left his apartment and walked past the idiots, who were harrassing a young woman. They had taken her purse and were tossing it around, playing a game of keep-away. The ordinary guy hurried past, ashamed that he was afraid to do anything. 

Suddenly he was face to face with a gnarled figure in a hood who blocked his path on the sidewalk and glared at him. Lightning lit up the edges of his silhouette and thunder boomed as he looked at the ordinary guy and held up a Casio G-Shock Rangeman GW94001,

and said, "You really need this. I'll spare you the unboxing. Here," he said, and fastened it on the wrist of the ordinary guy, who suddenly became Rangeman. Thunder boomed again as lightning ominously lit the edges of things. 

Rangeman unhunched his shoulders and held his head up high. He turned around and returned to the entrance of his apartment building. "Give the lady her purse back and stop bothering her," he said. And because he was about as big as all three of the idiots put together -- and not fat. He was cut -- they did as he said and mumbled apologies and slunk away. The young lady gave Rangeman a big smile.

"Hey," the gnarled figure shouted, "I didn't just give you that watch. Hundred bucks. That's a good price. It's almost new."

Rangeman paid him and they parted with a friendly handshake.

A little while later, Rangeman was in Stark Tower, giving the Avengers a hand. Tony Stark pointed out a work station which had been set aside for him, with a desktop computer plugged into the big Stark/Avengers computer with its large screens looming over everything.

"Thanks," Rangeman said, as he took a few Casio gadgets from his backpack and arranged them in his station. "You all probably know that I'm autistic. That shouldn't be much of a problem, I hope. But I have a few quirks which I'd like you to respect. For instance, if you could just not touch anything in my station. I know it's silly, but it'll help me to concentrate and do a better job for you, and..."

And right on cue, Tony Stark, because he is a dick, because he had a traumatic childhood, had picked up a G-Shock which Rangeman had laid down in his station. "What's this -- Casio?" Tony asked, sneering at the inexpensiveness of the brand.

"Well, um," Rangeman said, "I've made a few modifications, but yes, it's a G-Shock..." and then Rangeman's voice trailed off, and he sighed and decided to just cut to the chase: he reached out, grabbed Tony by the larynx, and began to choke him just a little bit. "What's that, Tony?" he asked. "I can't make out what you're trying to say. Are you annoyed with me, because of the choking? Does it make you feel like I'm disrespecting your boundaries? Yeah, I can see how it might feel that way. Hey, imagine if you had specifically asked us all not to choke you, five seconds before I grabbed your larynx. That would've made it even worse, wouldn't it have? Are you getting my sarcasm, or have I already cut off too much blood flow to your brain?"

Tony let go of the G-Shock he had taken. Rangeman caught it in mid-air, set it back where it had been, and let go of Tony's throat. Tony gasped and bent over double as his face gradually returned to its normal color. Rangeman asked him, "Do you have a better sense of my boundaries now?' Tony coughed and nodded, nodded and coughed, and Rangeman shouted, "I HOPE SO!"

Once he had recovered his voice, Tony turned to the others and asked, "Were you going to step in at some point?"

"Why?" Captain America asked. "New Guy looked like he had the situation well in hand."

"Needed to be done." "I've been this close to choking you for months, Tony," others chimed in. Thor, Falcon and others. "Well done, New Guy!" "Wow, check out these guns! Oops, I'm sorry I didn't ask first."

"It's fine," Rangeman said, smiling, and even starting to laugh as the level of backslapping, muscle-squeezing, hair-tousling and general friendly rough-housing among big guys intensified. "It's obvious that you care and don't want to intentionally annoy me. And that alone makes a big difference."

"It DOES, doesn't ?!" "Did you catch that, Tony? Intentionally annoy other people less, get choked less!" "See how that works?" "I think New Guy's gonna be Employee of the Month!"

Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris lived from c AD 1200-1259. Just now, Amazon delivered the 3rd volume of Matthew Paris' Historia Minor. I now have all 3 volumes. That is, I have all 3 volumes in the Rolls Series, published in the 19th century. I believe this 19th century edition is still the standard edition. Things sometimes move slowly in the world of publishing in Latin, and compared to ancient Latin, publishing in Medieval Latin is much slower still.

Matthew Paris is generally considered to be one of the best Medieval historians. In addition to the Historia Minor, he wrote the Chronica Maiora, which runs to 7 volumes in the Rolls Series. I have a few of those volumes.

A few years ago the Cartography Department of the U of M had an open house, and I went, and I learned that this same Matthew Paris is considered one of the best medieval cartographers. One of the Department's big displays was one of Matthew Paris' maps. I'm not sure whether the people in that department had ever given much thought to Matthew's historical writings. They were definitely much more interested in his maps.

Once, long ago, must have been in the 1990's, I was in a hotel room which had a small TV and either no cable or just basic cable, so I ended up watching some women's bowling. And one of the bowlers was Lisa Wagner. Turned out, Lisa Wagner is one of the greatest female bowlers of all time.

While she was kicking ass in this bowling competition, as she did in many competitions, the commentators were talking about her. And, besides mentioning how much ass she was kicking those days, they also mentioned her very long fingers. She had an exceptionally good grip on the ball for a woman.

And that was when they mentioned that Lisa Wagner was a direct descendant of the famous 19th-century pianist Franz Liszt.

And that was when I realized that she was probably also a direct descendant of Richard Wagner,  who composed operas and wrote books, and married Cosima Liszt, Franz Liszt' daughter, and had 2 children with her.

And that those bowling commentators probably didn't know who Richard Wagner was. And I wondered whether Lisa Wagner knew who Richard Wagner was. Among other things, he was, and is, much, much more famous than his friend and father-in-law, the star pianist Franz Liszt.

And I wondered what Richard Wagner would think about one of female descendants becoming a professional bowler.

110's and 2100's

 My interest in G-Shocks was awoken earlier this year by pictures of the GM110RB:

I learned that the GM110 (M for their metal cases) series of G-Shocks had been released in 2020 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the similar GA110 series (with plastic cases), which as of a while ago were the all-time best-selling series of G-Shocks, and may still be.

I had at first assumed that the above-pictured GM110RB was a departure in the 110 series as far as its intensely colorful nature is concerned. My assumption was incorrect. Just do a google image search for ga110 colorful and you will find pictures of all sorts of very boldly colorful GA110's, such as this one:

If anything, compared to the boldest GA110's, the GM110RB may be toning it down a little.

And to me, this is all good news because I like bright colorful stuff.

For a while I worried that maybe either the GA110 line, the plastic ones made since the year 2010, or the GM110's, the metal ones which came out in the year 2020, might soon be discontinued. But it seems that both GA110's and GM110's will still be around, at least for a while. The GM110RB, unfortunately, is a limited edition, and several other GM110's have been limited editions, but the gold GM110 Eminem wore in the "Higher" video, and the original silver GM110 both seem to be in production. As are a bunch of GA110's. 

As to whether or not the GA110 is still the most popular G-Shock series, as I said above, I think it's possible. But I doubt it. All signs I can see indicate that the 2100 series is now the most popular sort of G-Shock. The 2100. The Casioak. I hate the Casioak. That's all I have to say about the Casioak right now. If you want to learn more about it, just google casioak, and you find many people who are more than willing to go on and on about it, with no end of pictures of the watch they love and I hate.

I'm worried that the Casiok, the 2100 series, might be so popular that it will completely replace the 110's, that the 110's will stop being made, but that's probably a fairly irrational worry. However, the worry that fewer new 110 models will be made, to give Casio more time and resources to feed the public's hunger for Casioaks in ever more variations and colors -- that seems to me to be a perfectly rational worry. It's already happening.

King Arthur and Jesus

 King Arthur never existed. I'm not sure whether Jesus existed. 

And of course, I'm talking about a completely non-supernatural Jesus, who was crucified by Pontius Pilate around 30 AD. Supernatural details were added to the story later. They were either added to the biography of a real person, or the entire biography is fiction.

Academics overwhelmingly say Jesus existed. This is the only case where I go against an overwhelming academic consensus. I still can't figure out why the academics are convinced.

I believe John the Baptist existed. I believe Pontius Pilate existed. I believe Saint Paul existed. But the evidence for Jesus seems very thin, to me. The story of Jesus could be based on John the Baptist. Paul could have made Jesus up because he thought the story would be good for people.

Or something else.  Or he might really have existed.

King Arthur is a slam-dunk case: never existed. 

 

Merlin might have existed. The earliest writing about a King named Arthur comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote a terrific book (in Latin) in the 1130's called de gestis Britonum (The History of the Kings of Britain). Fantastic book of fiction, great story, zero reason to regard it as actual history.

What Geoffrey thought he was writing is very hard to tell. He said his book was a translation of a book in Welsh. But there's no trace of that book except Geoffrey mentioning it.

I see several possibilities:

1) Geoffrey never intended anyone to regard his book as non-fiction. The Welsh book was just one more fictional detail.

2) Geoffrey wrote what he regarded as a mixture of history and legends. In this case, the Welsh book could have been 2a) real, or 2b) made up by Geoffrey.

3) Geoffrey could have been completely sincere, and the Welsh book could have been real, and Geoffrey could have done no more or less than translate it into Latin.

If Geoffrey never intended de gestis Britonum to be regarded as non-fiction, Boy, did that go wrong: it took about 500 years until the main stream of academia began to have doubts about Geoffrey's book, and large parts of the general public are still, today, having trouble sorting this out.

It's possible that that Welsh book really existed, but if so, it's very strange and extremely unusual that we can find no trace of it except for Geoffrey's mention. Still, it's possible that that Welsh book, and/or some other written description of a Dark Age Welsh King named Arthur, may turn up. 

But if and when they are found, they, like all other tales of King Arthur, will be legends. There may have been a soldier named Arthur in 5th or 6th century Wales. There may have been more than one. One of them, or more than one, may have been what could reasonably have been called a general. 

 

But enough light has been thrown upon the Dark Ages that we can say, with great confidence, that there never was a King Arthur. 

 

Many of the stories are still magnificent, though. That hasn't changed at all.

 

Dream Log: Hollywood vs the Aliens

Last night I dreamed that the Earth was being invaded by violent extraterrestrials, and that Hollywood saved the world from the attack. I was a part of the Hollywood effort which saved the world. 

Now that I am awake, the details of how we saved everybody are rather vague. It involved a lot of scary costumes by special-effects experts. I think this was less to try to scare the aliens away, as to try to blend in with them. They were scary-looking. We would get into scary alien costumes and lead the real aliens into traps. Something like that. 

For most of the dream, I had less contact with the aliens, than with Rob and Sherri Moon Zombie.

 

 

That is to say: I was working with a bunch of Hollywood people, and I didn't recognize any of them except the Zombies. 

Pretty soon they figured out I had a crush on Sheri (who doesn't?), and they both teased me about that a lot, but in a nice way.

The alien invasion was scary at first, but soon it was evident that the humans had the aliens on the run. Rob was in charge of our group. There were hundreds of such groups operating all over the world. Ours was based in Phoenix. Several of us, including me, would be made up to look like the aliens, and then we would go out and -- as I said, the details are vague to me now. Most of the action of misleading the aliens occurred on city streets. We would run along in traffic, and the aliens would follow us, and then -- something. Something bad for the invasion and good for the safety of the Earth. Apparently we were luring the aliens into some kinds of traps, where they were incarcerated. And then we would go back to headquarters, have our costumes repaired, and repeat. 

Soon the alien invasion was all over with and done. Rob was going around shouting into any news microphone he could find that he hoped, FINALLY, that horror-movie people would get a little more respect, since they had just literally saved the world.