i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Last night's dream: I was playing Carlotta in an extremely abbreviated version of Phantom of the Opera.

Scene 1: Carlotta et al rehearsing for the elephant scene of Hannibal, for which I was using non-standard lyrics that included a reference to Pokemon, and that overall made about as much sense as "watermelon watermelon watermelon". [No elephants, even stage versions, actually appeared.]

Scene 2: Christine, alone in her dressing room, practices ballet, not realizing the Phantom is secretly watching her.

Scene 3: Raoul beats up the Phantom, The End.

*blinkblink*

Yes, brain, that is an exceedingly faithful adaptation... snorfle.

A couple recent dreams ...

1. I was petting Loki, long head-to-tail strokes(that I can't physically do any more) that coated my palm in loose fur; I would shake it off before petting again. ...and I woke up realizing my hand IRL was 'petting' the sock I hold at night.

(The position my right arm is frozen in has my palm an inch or two away from my stomach, with the fingers curved down so the fingertips press against my abdomen; when I'm awake and using the tablet, that hand holds the stylus, but if I sleep with my hand unsupported my fingertips start to hurt. So I took a mateless solo sock, tucked it inside a fluffy sock that had also lost its mate, and 'hold' that to support my palm. Really it's just tucked under my hand, I'm not actually squeezing it ... unless my hand thinks it's a cat, lol.)

2. I was in a choir performance with a guest conductor, and about a minute in he stops and says we're doing it wrong, we should have gone up a fifth instead of a fourth. I double check and the score says it's a fourth, but I bite my tongue. We start again, going up a fifth, and it sounds horrible, so he stops again and yells at us. Now I say "We're just doing what you said, sir." It's the sort of 'sir' that really means fuck-you. He says he wants us to follow the score and go up a fifth. "We can't do both, sir. Look at the soprano part. We go from [X] to [Y]" (actual note values redacted for a reason I'll explain) "which is a fourth." He insists it's a fifth. I challenge him to count out the intervals; he does, using the piano, starting with 1 on X and ending up with 5 on Y+1. He says "See?" as if this proved him right. "But that's [Y+1] not [Y], sir." On it goes. And mind you, this is a performance, not a rehearsal! People are watching!

...and I was recounting this to my morning aide and realized that while the notes being sung match going up a fourth, the sheet music -- and the words I was saying in the verbal explanation -- had us going from G to B flat, which is a (minor) third, not a fourth; and when he was plonking out notes on the piano he landed on B flat for "four" and C for "five", except G-C is a fourth up, not a fifth. Awake, I can't figure out how he got four notes from G-Bb with a normal sounding scale... </nerdery type="music">

3. One of my art communities -- which, irl, has a monthly challenge where everyone who wants to participate uses the same inspiration image as a base -- had, in the dream, an image of a snake as the inspiration. I started drawing a realism-type copy ... using Paint. (My non-dream art these days is done almost entirely in Procreate on the tablet.) Somehow it was actually coming out decently snake-ish.

4. I was sitting on the edge of a stage as people started arriving for a concert of a choral group I wasn't in. The guy who used to conduct one of the choirs I used to sing in irl came up to say hi ... at which point I realized I was utterly naked from the waist up. He didn't seem to have noticed, so I was holding my arms awkwardly to hide at least the nipples, and skedaddled as soon as I could.

Stained glass banana slug, this week.

( Read more... )

ahahaha I finally placed the mystery quote from a couple weeks ago

...so I went with a friend to see local production of J&H

(which I was OBSESSED with back in the late 90s, particularly the recording with Anthony Warlow)

and afterwards I was a) ranting about how the change from intellectual curiosity to fixing his father makes a stupid plot hole, because "I'm fascinated with good and evil, therefore my life project is creating a serum to separate good from evil" makes so much more sense than "My dad is catatonic, therefore my life project is creating a serum to separate good from evil", wtf; maybe if his dad had been a serial killer and he was like "but I know he's good deep inside" there would be a connection? and b) talking about the songs that were dropped

and so I was playing my friend some of the AW-version songs, and bam


[JEKYLL, spoken] Do it, John. I beg you, set me free!

[UTTERSON, spoken] I can't, Henry...

[JEKYLL, spoken] We promised... remember?


Welp. Mystery solved :D I still have no idea why it popped into my head, since it's been a while since I've listened, but my brain works in mysterious ways

to the tune of "found a peanut"

...yeah this is dorky ( Read more... )

all from last night:

1. a West Wing episode where the wife of a Republican candidate announced she was creating a Republican Women group; their first event, highly publicized and televised, was skeet shooting, only she accidentally shot a bald eagle. The episode showed a badly-done cgi eagle landing almost on top of the wife, and then the eagle's face changed into the face of a Native American, following be the camera panning over to show two lines of Native American ghosts in stereotypical outfits. Episode ended with a press conference of the candidate announcing his divorce ("when I woke up this morning, I was lying next to my wife. Now, she no longer has a husband, I no longer have a wife, and she's packing up to move out") and withdrawal of his candidacy.

2. An X-Files episode where a government dude agreed to transfer a file of budget info to someone online, only when he initiated the transfer it allowed the other end access to everything including confidential stuff -- basically copying *.* in a way that government doofus couldn't interrupt. I, watching the ep, wanted to yell at him to pull the cord (either power or internet or both) but I was watching in a movie theater so couldn't. Rest of episode either didn't happen or I just don't remember.

3. Teen me (possibly only tween?) was going with my family to some sort of competitive test, possibly like a spelling bee. We had to pick a spot for me on the front bench; each spot had a reward of some sort. Some rewards were shoes, either dress shoes way too big for me or sandals that I couldn't really wear. The rest were fancy dress hats, mostly ... *stares at wikipedia page on hat styles* I guess picture hat and fascinator are the closest. I found one that looked like a tiny pink hat, meant to be worn perched on the side of the head, rather like this, and I put it on and felt like a queen. Rest of contest either didn't happen or I just don't remember.

4. Some guy reading from scripture that had been suppressed for centuries but recently re-found, detailing Jesus and his disciples ... basically having a giant orgy? It was written as being this ~mystic experience~ that ~transcended the limits of flesh~ but it boiled down to Jesus discarding his robe and joining them on the bed, so uhhhhhh yeah

5. The library here advertised showings of ... er, it was called "Cabaret", but not a musical and with a different plot, about trans people in Nazi Germany; the main character is this girl disguised as a boy who stays at a cheap boarding house that turns out to be all LGBT people, including a gay couple and a nun who turns out to be a trans woman; the main character falls in love with a trans woman and for a while is trying to figure out if she herself is trans or gay but eventually decides it doesn't matter because it doesn't change who she loves. I enjoy the movie but then my mom mentions wanting to see it (preferably with me) and that's a huge yikes because I'd have soooo much explaining to do, for her not to be confused.

(Also I woke up with "Diamonds are a girl's best friend" going through my head, which is definitely not Cavaret. Probably my brain snagged it via Moulin Rouge rather than Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? idk)

6. ( transphobia )

Posted this in March on twitter, here for not-losing

things fall apart / the center cannot hold / you need to weave in the ends / s e c u r e l y

things fall apart; the center cannot hold; it's a center-pull ball you donuthead what did you THINK would happen~~~

Duo helpfully highlighted a new Spanish word: "a".

I have, mind you, been doing Spanish Duolingo for a while. I'm on Unit 13 of section 5, which is CEFR B1. Needless to say, "a" isn't new. It's, like, "unit 2 of section 1" at most ("un boleto a Santiago" [a ticket to Santiago] is a sample sentence from that).

The sentence tonight was "A ti te gusta mirar la tele menos que a mi" [you like watching TV less than I do; literally, to you to-you is-pleasing to-watch the TV less than to me]. The comparison structure of "a ti ... más/menos que a mi" with gustan might be new, but comparisons overall aren't, nor is the meaning of "a" anywhere close to new. The only new(ish) thing is that "a ti" before "te gusta(n)" is usually redundant and used only for emphasis, but in the comparative structure I think it's required; but Duo doesn't explicitly say these things.

(For those unfamiliar: Gustan and a few other verbs are flipped in Spanish from how they work in English. Instead of "I like dogs", it's "to me is-liking dogs". The thing being liked is the grammatical subject. There's an indirect object pronoun required, which always goes in front of the verb. For ambiguous pronouns, you can use "a (person)" -- "a Ricardo le gustan los perros" or "a mi hermana le gustan los perros" [Richard likes dogs; my sister likes dogs; in both cases "le" is the 3rd person singular pronoun]. 1st and 2nd person pronouns are way less ambiguous, so in simple statements you just say "me gusta(n) X". Saying "a mi me gusta(n) X" is equivalent to the English "Me, I like X". It's emphasis, often with contrast: well, *you* like mushrooms but me, *I* don't. Grammatically "a mi" adds no info that the required "me" doesn't.)

(...lol it's kinda weird flipping between English "me" and Spanish "me". They mean approximately the same, look identical, but are pronounced differently.)

...for those of you familiar with the song My Grandfather's Clock...

...given it was some sort of lifebonded clock, was "it was taller by half than the old man himself / though it weighed not a pennyweight more" *always* true? Like, his parents got a nice medium desk clock and it just kept growing? Or was it just during later adulthood i.e. once he had a grandkid? Was it magically enforced, and if so *which direction*?

These are the questions my brain is obsessing over, instead of sleeping 😂

Scene: bed, midnight-thirty, lights off

Me, trying to get to sleep:

My brain: So if you had a recipe with couscous plus duck meat, probably also a bunch of vegetables and spices idk, you could call it "duck duck cous (cous)" ~~~~