Last night I had a series of dreams that were - for me - amazing. First I'm rarely IN my dreams, and second I can almost NEVER remember them when I wake up.
Clearly this dream was influenced by recent TV watching, in particular "It" and "Waiting".
ANYway to the dream (as far as I can remember it).
It starts out with me on break from work walking over to a local department/hardware store (sort of like a Home Depot in that I associated the color "orange" with it, but it wasn't any Home Depot I had ever been to IRL. I go in through the back/loading dock area, to use the bathroom there (I can only guess that this is because there's no bathroom where I work). When I come out there's a guy (apparently played by Justin Long) arguing with a customer. He sees me and mistakes me for another employee of the dream-Home Depot. He's really nasty about it too. Apparently he had called for "backup" to deal with this customer and thought I was a manager or something. So, I tell him I'd be happy to go find the manager and bring him to the situation.
I go get the manager (played by ??) and he comes over to defuse the situation apologizing for the employee, etc. to me. SOMEHOW this gets into a discussion of patterns of behavior and my wondering if there might be some cause that could be pinpointed. SOMEHOW I end up with a chart showing that yes - employees somehow have more "incidents" on warmer days, and offer (for a price) to do some consulting for him to see if I can help work out solutions, etc. He says he'll get back to me.
OK - so I'm leaving (after some time) and going back through the delivery area, the manager comes running in with a box, opens an incinerator and is trying to jam it through the door. Apparently the box has some batteries in it that are behaving strangely and he's trying to destroy them.
(I can't remember if there's anything else at THIS point... cut to...)
There's an Asian lady examining some batteries with some gadget saying "See - this is one of the infected ones - you can tell because it's glowing blue and my (gadget name) is really pegged."
SOMEHOW this relates to zombies. (There's another gap in memory, but somehow we determine that people are being turned into zombies because of exposure to the batteries, but no one we've met so far is infected.)
Now a guy runs in and say "you should see what's going on outside!" - we go outside (thereby obeying the rule of every monster movie where you - for whatever stupidity - go TOWARDS the problem instead of running for your lives) and there are all these people lying on the ground looking rather zombie-like. Somehow (another memory gap) we vanquish them, and save the day.
Yay.
We go back into the warehouse area and talk about this when a bunch of zombies attack (they're being chased by soldiers with automatic weapons). There's your cinematic firefight and at the end there's a lot of dead zombies, and other people who we decide must have also been zombies, and the credits (literally) roll.
At the END of the credits there's that "scene the add in to make sure people sit through the credits" but it's really a sequel that picks up just where the first film left off. Now - for some reason - I'm being played by Lance Henriksen (I swear - he's in EVERYTHING), and there's this great effect where we go back in time (through a quick succession of cascading images) to a few weeks ago.
NOW I'm in the store in the employee area sitting there while some woman is trying to give me a back rub. I refuse. Turns out she's the girlfriend of the guy at the beginning of the story, is in a rock band with her friend (I get the impression she's bisexual), and I notice she has a cut on her arm. This bothers me.
We flash further back and discover that she cut herself on a broken glass while we're all at their apartment discussing a concert they just gave (that I was at).
Now we flash forward through several sequences - all between "now" and the beginning of the first movie where it's revealed that it's not zombies per se, but more of a "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and I am revealed to be the "king zombie/snatcher" setting things up for the first movie whose sequel is a prequel and presumably going to #3 in the series which is a real sequel.
Weird.
The last part was VERY sped up (which is why I can't remember details) and by this time I have realized that I'm dreaming. It didn't help that Tammy decided to jump on the bed from the spiral staircase to get momentum to attack Chloe (I think she's feeling neglected by her sister lately) which was a little jarring. Just when I went BACK to sleep a police siren went by so my dream state and awake state started to blur and I couldn't quite tell if the dream was a dream or memory. I considered getting up to tell Den about it, but I was briefly concerned that I'd discover that he became a zombie, realized I REALLY had to pee, and then decided that I would just have to deal with the consequences of a zombified Den if I had to.
Fortunately he was up watching TV and I got to tell him all about this, although I had forgotten many of the detail by that point.
That's too bad - I think it would've made a decent film trilogy, though not by SyFy. They screw everything up, and I'd've ended up being played by Barry Williams or something.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Observing the Train Gang
I have found myself in the situation where I get to observe a group of primates in their native environment. It's interesting because a) they're a type of group with whom I don't normally associate; b) I'm a captive audience; c) as the observer I cannot directly interact with them because that would affect the experiment (which has interesting consequences, see below); and d) it passes the time.
What is this sociological test tube? The commute home on the train.
There's a "pack" of people who ride together whose long-term ritual has led them to feel they are somehow "privileged patrons" of their own making (i.e., "regulars with an attitude"). As you can expect, this leads to very interesting interactions with the other apparently "unprivileged patrons" and gives rise to all sorts of episodes.
So, I've decided to chronicle them. I won't name names - partly because I haven't bothered to learn them, and it's probably better (not to mention safer) to just use indirect descriptions.
So where to begin - well, we can start with a general description of "the pack".
There are about 6-10 of them on most days. Most are female aside from one male (who is almost certainly gay), some transit personnel, and a few far-lower-ranked males (who mostly don't interact - they're generally "hangers-on" and so far haven't contributed anything interesting to the observations).
There's a weird ritual around actually getting on the train: specifically, we're not allowed to board until the announcement is made to do so (about 10 minutes before departure), probably owing to some security policy. This is annoying because there's about 400 people on the train when it leaves on any given day. Quite a few of the regular commuters play the game of trying to guess which track will be the right one (it varies considerably among 10 tracks). So there's generally three "waves" of a rush from the station to the correct platform: 1) people who have "inside information" (the theory from talking to other regulars is that someone knows someone who has dispatch information and they get a text when the track is assigned) who try to queue up at the doors of the cars as soon as possible (about 15 minutes ahead of departure); 2) people who know one of the conductors who then follow him when he gets on the train (also about 15 minutes ahead of departure - sometimes this happens without wave 1); and 3) everyone else who has been waiting for the official boarding announcement (about 10 minutes ahead of departure). At the point of "wave 3" everyone can board, so the people who are part of waves 1 and 2 have an advantage to getting seats - and especially those people who feel they must have "their" seat on every trip.
Typically I'm in the first wave because one of the alpha females is one of the recipients of the aforementioned "inside information". When I first started riding in their presence, I made a comment to this effect to the alpha female and it was vehemently DENIED - however, on subsequent observations, I have determined that this precisely the case, and apparently I was "not to be aware" of the special arrangement. Many days I can anticipate which track our train will be on without her passive assistance; other days I end up being part of "wave 2". The consequence is that I am usually in line at the car entrance ahead of "wave 3" so I get to observe the pre-boarding interactions.
Now - people line up somewhat disorderly at the car doors, but there's a _general_ sense of "first come first aboard". Not for the Train Gang, of course. Typically one or more of them are at the head of the line (being in wave 1), but as others arrive they - without fail - "slide into" the line at the front with their companions. Presumably this so they have first choice of seating, and when boarding commences, politeness or courtesy be damned. They tend to take up the seats at the end of the car (closest to the entry point) but since the actual train configuration changes daily (depending on which cars are where), the whole idea of "my seat" doesn't strictly apply. (This is good because it avoids aggravation, but eliminates one obvious set of experiments and/or observations. C'est la vie.)
Since I'm usually boarding after them (because I don't want to be knocked over in the rush to get into the car before everyone else), I take whatever seat is near the door (because that's where I want to sit anyway) without getting underfoot. Typically I'm right on the periphery where I can observe "the gang".
That's the setup.
Specific "episodes" to follow (both as they happen and recollections).
What is this sociological test tube? The commute home on the train.
There's a "pack" of people who ride together whose long-term ritual has led them to feel they are somehow "privileged patrons" of their own making (i.e., "regulars with an attitude"). As you can expect, this leads to very interesting interactions with the other apparently "unprivileged patrons" and gives rise to all sorts of episodes.
So, I've decided to chronicle them. I won't name names - partly because I haven't bothered to learn them, and it's probably better (not to mention safer) to just use indirect descriptions.
So where to begin - well, we can start with a general description of "the pack".
There are about 6-10 of them on most days. Most are female aside from one male (who is almost certainly gay), some transit personnel, and a few far-lower-ranked males (who mostly don't interact - they're generally "hangers-on" and so far haven't contributed anything interesting to the observations).
There's a weird ritual around actually getting on the train: specifically, we're not allowed to board until the announcement is made to do so (about 10 minutes before departure), probably owing to some security policy. This is annoying because there's about 400 people on the train when it leaves on any given day. Quite a few of the regular commuters play the game of trying to guess which track will be the right one (it varies considerably among 10 tracks). So there's generally three "waves" of a rush from the station to the correct platform: 1) people who have "inside information" (the theory from talking to other regulars is that someone knows someone who has dispatch information and they get a text when the track is assigned) who try to queue up at the doors of the cars as soon as possible (about 15 minutes ahead of departure); 2) people who know one of the conductors who then follow him when he gets on the train (also about 15 minutes ahead of departure - sometimes this happens without wave 1); and 3) everyone else who has been waiting for the official boarding announcement (about 10 minutes ahead of departure). At the point of "wave 3" everyone can board, so the people who are part of waves 1 and 2 have an advantage to getting seats - and especially those people who feel they must have "their" seat on every trip.
Typically I'm in the first wave because one of the alpha females is one of the recipients of the aforementioned "inside information". When I first started riding in their presence, I made a comment to this effect to the alpha female and it was vehemently DENIED - however, on subsequent observations, I have determined that this precisely the case, and apparently I was "not to be aware" of the special arrangement. Many days I can anticipate which track our train will be on without her passive assistance; other days I end up being part of "wave 2". The consequence is that I am usually in line at the car entrance ahead of "wave 3" so I get to observe the pre-boarding interactions.
Now - people line up somewhat disorderly at the car doors, but there's a _general_ sense of "first come first aboard". Not for the Train Gang, of course. Typically one or more of them are at the head of the line (being in wave 1), but as others arrive they - without fail - "slide into" the line at the front with their companions. Presumably this so they have first choice of seating, and when boarding commences, politeness or courtesy be damned. They tend to take up the seats at the end of the car (closest to the entry point) but since the actual train configuration changes daily (depending on which cars are where), the whole idea of "my seat" doesn't strictly apply. (This is good because it avoids aggravation, but eliminates one obvious set of experiments and/or observations. C'est la vie.)
Since I'm usually boarding after them (because I don't want to be knocked over in the rush to get into the car before everyone else), I take whatever seat is near the door (because that's where I want to sit anyway) without getting underfoot. Typically I'm right on the periphery where I can observe "the gang".
That's the setup.
Specific "episodes" to follow (both as they happen and recollections).
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