The last words on 5/6/20 in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

So… originally, I thought this entry was going to be a Twitter Sized entry. You know… maybe a paragraph long… tops? Well… as I signed in… it dawned on me that I can’t limit myself to that expectation. Because my dream from last night STILL circles my brain, if for no other reason. NOW… those of you who have read me since Law School may remember… I often have very cinematic dreams. Even if they don’t make any linear sense, they have well developed characters, strong themes, and defined environments. Sadly, not all of my dreams follow me back into the world of the waking. Even more rare, it is unusual for a dream to follow me into the waking world for more than a few hours. Typically, no more than three hours later… I can barely conjure the hint of an image of the dream. But here I sit… 16 hours later and I still have so much of the dream in my mind! I wasn’t even going to write the dream down, whatever of it I remember. I was going to use this space to discuss Nala and Anime and other things. But considering the dream is still in technicolor in my memory… I feel I must.

THE DREAM

I was living in a very odd building. It was a run down apartment and either the building itself or the world around us felt VERY 1980s. All I knew for certain was that I was the individual out of place. Life was fairly simple for the most part. It was my job to keep the residents happy and keep the Community safe. Apparently, there were no landlords or police or governments. It was strictly OUR BUILDING (before you ask, yes… I have seen High-Rise) as its own self-contained world. There were good days and bad days. I made a few friends but for the most part, nobody paid attention to me. I remember I was in an elevator asking for Floor 9 and, though the elevator was packed, nobody would push the button. In an effort to create a sense of community, some of my friends from High School arrived with a Special Edition Blu Ray of “The Labyrinth” and I set the 2nd Floor up expressly so that we could have a special showing. Strangely… we had MORE residents attend then I expected!! I had originally set up the 2nd floor lobby with about 30 chairs but within an hour there were 150 people in the lobby waiting to see the movie! INCLUDING DAVID BOWIE! But everyone hadn’t seen the movie or even HEARD ABOUT IT before this viewing!! So as I was running around the room trying to accommodate people, I kept looking over at Mr. Bowie who always matched my gaze. As if he knew I was the only person in the room that knew he was actually IN the movie we were about to watch! The movie started and I got a call from the First Floor. Apparently, there was a pressing matter that needed my attention. I instructed whomever was on the other end of the line that I needed about ten to twenty minutes… I had to make sure that Second Floor was properly set up first. As the movie started, I saw David smile and everyone else quiet down. Probably because of my own failings, I didn’t leave the second floor until the The Fireys showed up. Those fucking disassembly puppets always disturbed the living shit out of me! David was nice enough to wink at me as I left and he smiled an appreciative smile that I took to mean, “Thanks for showing the film. It was a fun time making it!” I raced to the first floor and found myself smack in the middle of a court room. It was, strangely, a case I knew about. Almost as if to PROVE this whole damned thing was happening in the distant past. The prosecution was struggling but the jury was already sold on the idea that the criminal defendant was a bad dude. The allegation (story) was that the prime defendant had created a violent cult within the Apartment Complex and had quite literally “used and abused” a woman from every floor to have his child.... this man was a violent rapist who had the uncanny and dangerous ability to convert as in cult-like anyone to his perspective. The prosecution was doing their best but they were not having an easy time of it!! I jumped in with some additional evidence and some additional legal procedure, and the judge called a recess so that the Jury could properly digest all of the new damning evidence. As I was not an attorney in this dream but merely (apparently) some “entity that existed” I did not know what to do with myself during the recess. So I excused myself from the makeshift courtroom and waited on the other side of the door. Apparently, I grew impatient and walked back into the makeshift courtroom only to discover that everyone had left. The stenographer informed me that my testimony had been “essential and necessary” and then she left the courtroom as well. I cannot tell you why, but my Dream Self followed the stenographer to the Judge’s Chambers. The judge and I then spoke for a while. We discussed how the defendant was a terrible and disgusting person having manipulated and abused dozens of people for his own ends! I inquired what was to happen to this man and the judge essentially said he was to be banished from the existence of the current world. Not knowing I was dreaming, I didn’t quite understand that. But the judge and I continued to speak. I admitted that I came from a future but not a future of much value but that I had always been interested in the law. The judge informed me that I was the most professional and legally intelligent person that was in the courtroom on this case, then made sure to remind me that he qualified it the way he did… I was not “intelligent” or “professional” per se; but as compared exclusively to the people that had been trying the previous case, I was “intelligent and professional.” I thanked him, walked out of his chambers, and said aloud, “Only because this is my past and not my present.” and then woke up.

SO YEAH.... that was my dream LAST NIGHT! Y’know… an imaginary experience that typically isn’t saved to the Long Term Memory Bank. But… if I cared enough… I could even tell you HAIR COLORS of the stenographer and the Judge. So… no idea what that is about!!!!

THAT was the dream… now the “twitter sized entry I was going to write”:

Nala has been hunting a particular fly in the living room. It is adorable. She lunges for it, always missing. I hope she catches it.

I am still watching Fairy Tale on Hulu. However, while the first two seasons were dubbed in English… Seasons 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are not dubbed on Hulu. This makes perfect sense as a tactic for Funimation. If you want to reap the rewards of Funimation’s Dubs, you should pay for the funimation app. I get it. But here’s where shit gets weird. I used to be obsessed with subs (for the uninitiated there are “dubs” meaning the audio is in English and there are “subs” meaning the audio is in Japanese and subtitled in English,). And honestly? I LOVE the Japanese language. I deeply honestly desperately do. I honestly wish I was a master of the Japanese Language and a master of Japanese History!! And for Anime Fans that predate (around) the year 2000… subs are ALWAYS better than dubs. This argument is no longer valid nor worthwhile, but I guarantee that you will still be able to find this argument raging on in many corners of the internet. Which is why I find it so strange and honestly so dishonorable that watching a single episode of an anime SUBBED has taken most of the evening. FUCK! I adore the Jet Li movie Hero and the whole damned film is Subtitled. But here is why shit has changed… back before people like Monica Rial, J. Michael Tatum, Colleen Clinkebeard, Cherami Leigh, Brina Palencia, and Jamie Marchi… dubs were not acceptable. But now they are. THEY very much are!! And so it feels very weird to have grown up as a SUB ONLY simply to find myself having become a DUB PREFERABLE person!

But as I recognize this as a ramble… as a strange ramble of incoherence… I do feel the need to go back to the primary simple impulse of why I signed in to write this:
I am (by blood and family) Norwegian, German, and British. And yet… the two cultures I have most obsessed over in my life are Irish and Japanese. I would love to study their history in a traditional honest academic environment. But… unless it is some kind of online class, I don’t think I’ll be able to find “The History of Japan” as a series of courses in my local community college.