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.

Update on Green Energy

Around 2.6 million EV's were sold in the first half of 2021. For some perspective on this, the total number of EV's on the road in the world passed 2.6 million during 2016. At the end of 2019 there were about 7.5 million. That number has probably doubled since then. It's possible that the total sales for 2021 alone will exceed 7.5, although most predictions are closer to 6 million.

 

So, yes, graphs of EV's sales currently show a line going almost straight up. The numbers in the US are much smaller than in Europe and China -- approximately 350,000 in 2020 in the US and around 1.5 each in Europe and China -- but in all 3 regions, 2021 are expected to double the figures from 2020. 

Why are more EV's being sold in Europe and China than in the US? The answer is: the Republican Party and gas, coal and oil companies. There's no big mystery or debate about this: the numbers since 1990 speed up when Democrats are in charge and slow down when Republicans are in power. And the same, unsurprisingly, is true of solar and wind power: the US lead the world, by a large margin, several decades ago, and since then, the GOP, bought and paid for by Big Oil and Coal and Gas, have slowed down progress just as much as they can. The GOP, plus a few Democrats in places like West Virginia and Oklahoma.

Globally, however, there has been a lot a progress. Vote Democratic and help the US join in on this good stuff. 

Other regions which have been held back by the fossil fuel industry include Brasil and Australia.

Globally, we can see a lot of improvement, and a lot of room for improvement. The human race might just survive its habit of burning stuff. Wouldn't that be something.

Dream Log: Australian Uncertainty

I dreamed I was out in the countryside in Australia,  walking over green wooded hills, looking for some sign of other humans. Eventually I found a dirt road, which led to a paved road, which led to a bus stop. I boarded a bus which I thought was headed toward Brisbane, but I wasn't sure. There were two other passengers besides me, and they both were dressed as if they might be off-duty bus drivers. 

 

One of them said something I didn't understand, looked at me and asked, "Eh?" I said I didn't know, and walked to the back of the bus to get away from them. Gradually the bus began to fill up with passengers. A couple of times I saw what looked like it might be Brisbane's far-off skyline, but I wasn't sure if it was Brisbane. 

As the area we drove through became more and more urban, the bus got more and more full. As far as I could see, everyone on the bus was white. I was completely unsure whether the other people were left or right wing. I was completely alone and almost completely broke, and, generally speaking, left wing people would be more likely to help a stranger in need, because he needed help, and right wingers would be more likely to mistreat him, because he was a stranger. So I was unsure whether speaking up, drawing attention to myself, would improve my situation or make it worse. I felt my best bet was get to downtown Brisbane and take things from there.

We got downtown, and went into a place filled with buses. Everyone stood up. I assumed this was because they knew we were coming to the end of the line. I stood up, kept my mouth shut, tried to blend in. The bus stopped and everyone got out. 

I hadn't walked far when I saw a basset hound puppy standing still on the sidewalk amid all the hurrying people. It was obviously lost or abandoned. I picked it up and did my best to comfort it. I went to a store, found that I had enough Australian currency in my pocket to buy a half pint cartoon of milk, sat down on a curb and started to feed the puppy. It had been crying, but very soon, after a few gulps of milk, it was in a much better mood, wagging its tail and jumping around. 

Then, very suddenly, a large Australian woman was hugging me and crying, and the rest of her family was all around, jumping up and down and exclaiming. I couldn't make out more than one word in five, but, obviously, I had rescued their lost puppy. Suddenly my own problems didn't seem so insoluble. Then I woke up.

Mayo & Mustard

Mayonnaise is French or Spanish in origin. Mustard-based condiments may have originally been invented in ancient Rome, but since then, Germany has developed a lot of different kinds of mustard. 

 

They also have lots of different kinds of sausage. Often a sidewalk food truck will have just one or two kinds of sausage, maybe with just one or two kinds of mustard to put on it, and there are also regional specialties, but if you add up everything in Germany, it's an amazing variety of sausage. And mustard.

 

And of course, Germany has beer. Great beer. A small amount of bad beer compared to Murrka, but also huge amounts of amazing beer that doesn't cost much at all.

I used to tell people that beer was invented in Germany, but I was mistaken. (I used to tell people all sorts of things which were inaccurate, and you know what? I probably still do!) People in the Middle East were drinking beer 10,000 years ago, in the earliest towns built from stone. By 2000 BC there were huge beer festivals in Egypt, where everyone would get very very drunk and dance maniacally and have sex in public. The attitudes of ancient Egyptians about sex were very different than ours today. Don't get me started. 

 

Knowledge of beermaking doesn't appear to have gotten as far north as Germany until 800 BC.

But mead remained the most popular northern European drink well into the Middle Ages. Generally speaking, beer and wine moved north alongside the Latin language, reading and writing, and Christianity. And in some areas it didn't replace mead as the most popular booze for a long, long time after that. And, as you may know, there are still people who make mead and grow beards and sing wimpy folk songs.

 

I've never had mead. Unless I have, and I was so drunk that I don't remember it, which is possible.

Dream Log: Rich, Unpleasant Family

Last night, I dreamed that my extended family were completely different people than they are in real life, different names, different appearance, different people altogether, and that they were much more rich than my family. How rich? Well, some of them, I suspected they might be the dreaded b-word. 

 

I also dreamed that I didn't particularly like them, which is also different than reality. 

Also: in real life I and a few others of my extended family are very, very much interested in show biz, and have been in plays, in bands, on TV etc. But most of them aren't. In the dream, almost everyone in my extended family was very, very interested in show business, except for me and one of my uncles.

Almost the only thing I had in common with any of these dream-relatives was how much this uncle and I both loathed every aspect of show business, and how much we hated constatly being bothered about it by everyone else. It would be an exaggeration to say that this uncle and I bonded, but our hatred of show business brought us closer to bonding than anything else did -- a couple of seconds' worth of shared complaining now and then.

This particular uncle was even richer than the rest of us and was probably a b-word (billionaire). He was the patriarch of our particular neolithic tendency. We would gather several times a year at his huge mansion near Detroit.

In this dream, I was poorer than most of my extended family, but I was much richer than I am in real life. My relatives were always pestering me about why I didn't grub constantly for even more money, as they did (when they weren't doing show-biz stuff). They were appalled when they learned that I paid taxes, and tried to get me use the same crooked attorneys and lawyers they used. They kept trying to get me in on the investments they were cashing in on, in things like coal mines and arms trading.

I felt that I was happier than they were because I was not behaving as horribly as they were. But I knew they would not believe me that I could think I was happier than they were, Because they had more money than I did.  This is how crude and capitalistic their mindsets were.

One evening when we were gathered at my uncle's mansion, there was a huge, sudden downpour. We -- several dozens of us -- were in a huge courtyard at the time; we fled to colonnades at its circumference. Everyone else was across the courtyard from me. The heavy rain made the night so dark that I couldn't see any of them. I could only occasionally hear a snatch of one of their voices above the roar of the deluge. 

The next morning, we were all at a luxury hotel in downtown Detroit. We had several floors of the hotel all to ourselves. I woke up on the floor of the ballroom. Everyone else was dressed up a bit, but I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. 

We called such events "social occasions," but, it occurred to me as I shook off my sleep and stood up, nobody was here except family and hotel employees, so that it would make much more sense to call them "anti-social occasions." I thought that was fairly funny: "anti-socials occasions." But then I got sad again, as I reflected that probably none of my relatives had a strong enough command of English to understand the joke. 

Someone saw how I was dressed, and rushed me off to the hotel staff to get me dressed up. A pleasant, bright young man led me into a room packed with suits and accessories. I told the young man that I was putting myself into his expert hands, that all I needed was to blend in with that crowd out there, and that I'd like him to estimate my size and select a few items for me while I took a shower. 

It turned out, unsurprisingly, that there was a bathroom adjoining this room of suits, with a ridiculously large marble shower. This hotel was the sort of place where, if you saw something which looked like it might be marble, or granite -- or gold, for that matter -- there was no need to wonder whether it was genuine, or solid.

I was looking forward to a few minutes of luxurious solitude in that shower when I woke up.

Casios and Coolness

There's this YouTube channel called The Mad Watch Collector, which I recommend very highly. A nice and very talented British bloke hosts it. He knows a lot about watches, and he throws in a lot of wacky humor. Top-notch.

Which doesn't mean that I always agree with him. Take the Casio A100WE,

a recent release which The Mad Watch Collector just reviewed. Because he knows his stuff and because his reviews are very thorough, he explained to me in his latest video that this is a $10 watch which Casio is selling for $40 and up, depending on the trim, because it looks very much like the F100, the watch Sigourney Weaver wore in Alien, which Casio discontinued long ago, and which, according to The Mad Watch Collector, is now worth several hundred British pounds to collectors.

The Mad Watch Collector is not the only one who loves Casios from the 70's and 80's -- obviously, or the original Ripley watch (Sigourney Weaver's character in Alien was named Ripley), the F100, would not be selling for hundreds of dollars or pounds if you can find one, and the different Casio she wore in Aliens would not be hugely popular, but it is. 

Okay, I understand, the wrist wants what it wants.  But I really don't understand. There's another $10 Casio watch, the F91W, which Casio released in 1989 and which they're still making, and which, unlike the A100WE, actually sells for around $10, does about as much as the A100WE, and has the buttons on the sides, because they work better there, which is why Casio have sold tons of F91W's. Not only is The Mad Watch collector perfectly happy to pay $40 and up for what he knows is a $10 watch, because it has the buttons in front just like the one Sigourney wore in Alien -- not only that, he actually calls the A100WE "The best Casio Release of 2021." That's the name of the You Tube video where he reviews it. 

The best Casio release of 2021? I mean, I ask rhetorically, has he ever actually seen a G-Shock? I ask rhetorically, because he probably knows more about G-Shocks than I do. G-Shocks can actually do all sorts of things, not to mention being almost literally as tough as nails, and besides all of that, some of therm are also very, very sparkly and pretty in a completely up-to-date way. 

Ah, but then, I'm pretty sure that the most popular type of G-Shock these days are the 2100 line, first released in 2019 and better known as Casioaks, because their 8-sides cases mimic the look of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, a Swiss watch introduced in the early 1970's which is still very popular, and which retails for around $20,000 and up -- WAY up. Many of the Casioaks can be had for under $100. And although they are G-Shocks, I have still not begun to understand their appeal. 

No, that's not stating it nearly strongly enough; I find the popularity of the 2100's to be downright bizarre. Why? Because a G-Shock, like a genuine Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, is a classic, a watch which has no need to copy any other watch, and which, in my humble opinion, ought to concentrate on being itself and letting others copy it, if they don't happen to have come up with their own stone classic. Casio should take the attitude that, if a movie star wants to wear one of their watches in a movie, it makes the movie cooler. The watch already had it. The watch never need any help in the cool department.

Well, I have to remind myself that I'm still just a little bit new to watches and watch culture.  But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong.

Dream Log: Beautiful, Unsuccessful Hollywood Actress

I dreamed I was an actor in Hollywood. I was the same age and appearance as in real life, and just as poor, and I was writing this blog same as in real life, but I was living in Hollywood and auditioning. I knew many actors and actresses who were much more successful than I. 

 

It was afternoon, and Ryan Gosling and I and several other actors were hanging out at some tables on a sidewalk. Ryan was wearing a tuxedo. I was wearing a cheap suit. It was uncomfortable and I was self-conscious, worried that others could see how cheap it was. 

George Clooney showed up, also wearing a tuxedo. He asked me what I had been doing lately. I started to talk about the blog, and the conversation died. It didn't seem to me that George was being rude. Rather, it was extremely difficult for him to sustain an interest in something which, from his point of view, had so little to do with movies.

It became evening, and we went inside the theatre outside of which the tables had been the entire time. I felt miserable, and was at the free bar, searching for something with alcohol in it among the soft drinks and snacks, when a very beautiful actress approached me, wearing a man's-style white shirt, black skirt and black stockings. We had known each other for a long time, but had lost touch.

I don't know whether she was someone who exists in real life. She was a little under medium height, had green eyes and straight chestnut-brown down to her shoulders, was a little over 40 years old and looked essentially the same as she had when she was under 20. I was confused about why she wanted to talk to me. After a little while she said she had to go, but that she wanted to hang out with me some more, and, the way she touched my arm and looked into my eyes when she said it, it seemed like she meant it. 

Eventually I gave up my search for booze, concluding that this must be a health-conscious event. Many actors and actresses are extremely meticulous in choosing healthy refreshments. The incidence of veganism is very high in Hollywood. This is one of the reasons why some actors and actresses look very much the same over age 40 as they did under age 20.

Across the room I saw the beautiful actress talking with a man wearing a tuxedo. From their body language, he looked to me like a boyfriend or ex-boyfriend. 

I had conversations with several people similar to the one I'd had with George Clooney: they asked what I'd been up to, I answered honestly, describing the blog, they found it impossible to feign interest. 

Then I heard the voice of the seeming boyfriend over the PA. Somehow, although I hadn't heard his voice before, I knew it was the same guy. And now it was clear that he was her boss, because he was telling her to put on an apron and bus the area. And apparently the reason I hadn't heard anything about her recently, was that her acting career had not been going especially well. Earlier, she had easily supported herself by acting.

She went behind a curtain to the service area to get an apron. I took off my suit jacket and followed. Even though I really hate food service work, I was going to put on an apron and tell her I wanted to help her bus the area. But before I got there I woke up.