I chose not to watch the beheading videos. For two reasons, mainly. First, I have quite the imagination so I didn’t really feel it was necessary. And, secondly, they put the videos online which assumes they wanted them to be seen. By not watching I was actively thwarting their will. That felt pretty damn good.
Even so, it was hard to avoid still images taken from the videos. They were on the evening news. They were on Google. They were showing inline on Twitter.
I heard they did a study and 95% of respondents had heard about the beheadings. They said this was higher than any news event in the last five years. Wow. It’s hard to imagine in this day and age that 5% of us were still, somehow, blissfully unaware. Is 5% about the same amount who live out in the woods and off the grid? I’d like to meet these people. Send me their Twitter usernames.
Usually I try mindfully not to let the conscious world intrude upon my mind. Even so, sometimes the dreams come. What is the genesis of dreams? Who knows? I haven’t been able to find any rhyme or reason to it.
Some people will tell you that dreams have meaning. In one theory they say that everything in the dream represents some facet of yourself. Poppycock! I believe dreams are a random white noise of the mind.
My dreamworld is an interesting place. Sex dreams are exceedingly rare and, if they happen at all, always end before getting to the “good stuff.” I apparently enjoy a good denial even in my sleep. I have experimented with directed dreaming but have never enjoyed success producing these kinds of dreams upon demand.
Far more common are dreams where I’m scared shitless. Repeating motifs such as driving off a cliff in slow motion are common. And by repeating I mean that death occurs countless times in the same damn dream. It’s infinite looping fun, at least until you wake up and need new sheets. That’s when the shit gets real.
The other night my dreams brought something new. Perhaps it’s my choice of music. (See inset photo.) Perhaps it’s the limited exposure to the beheading incidents in the news. But I’ve never had a dream like this before.
I was surrounded by jihadist types in a Middle East setting. They were shooting me in the head. Over and over again. Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t the funnest dream of all time.
Curse you, conscious world!
For bonus points use the comments section below to analyze my dreams. The winner may receive cookies.
Shouts from the Abyss 
I had a dream last night that the Hancock Tower in Chicago was falling into Lake Michigan. I don’t know whether it was a function of it being the eve of September 11th, or the pork and black bean burrito i made for dinner.
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Dear Dream: You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. Or, mayhap, a pork and black bean burrito.
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