Alexx's Journal

Zombie apocalypse crossed with office comedy. (Intelligent zombies, a la Matheson's I Am Legend,)

One worker suggests that any bites be quickly washed out with Dr. Bronner's soap; maybe the "all one god faith" will stave off infection. Sadly, alarm went off before this could be tested.

Yesterday, Kestrell and I watched a bunch of YouTube videos from the British Film Institute, mostly ones connected with their “GOTHIC” film festival from a few years ago. Which may have had something to do with the incredibly odd film I dreamed last night.

I was at a… party? At any rate, there were a lot of friends around, and we were snowed in. I was channel surfing looking for something interesting to watch. I eventually landed on a PBS station from out of state, which seemed to be showing this movie repeatedly and/or in random order. I can’t be quite sure, because the snowstorm was intermittently knocking out the signal, so what bits I did see were in random order at any rate.

The overall antagonist of the piece was Godzilla, but he was attacking Victorian England. In order to combat this threat, Sherlock Holmes had enlisted the help of Dracula, Jack the Ripper, and others (maybe Frankenstein’s Monster?). Near the end of the film, Jack had a speech about how he envied Godzilla for having spent most of its life in a world without humans.

Much earlier in the film (probably the opening scene) a prehistoric tribe of white furred hominids are about to be trampled by rampaging woolly mammoths. We focus in on one of them as he closes his eyes and prepares to die – but he doesn’t die, though blood splatters across him. A ghastly roar is heard above the noise of the trampling mammoths. He opens his eyes and sees (though we do not) the towering form of Godzilla, chomping down on the mammoths, inadvertently saving the ape man’s life. His name is Zaius, and he will become the shaman of his tribe.

Meanwhile, in Victorian England, criminals are taking advantage of the chaos of a Godzilla attack at night to break into a bank vault – but Sherlock Holmes has anticipated this! Sadly, his near-superhuman speed is not sufficient to stop the criminals, who escape in a waiting coach. Several of them were dressed as cowboys (Including Billy the Kid?) but most of them were uniformed Bobbies. Some sort of government conspiracy at work?

I was telling someone else at the party about this incredible film I’d been watching, when I woke up enough to realize I wanted to tell all of YOU about it. And now I have.

Dreampt that I got news from the Judge. Convicted to time on a Chain Gang. Luckily I was lucid enough to force myself awake from that. Woke in significant pain. Decided to write it down in hopes of getting it the fuck out of my head. Back to bed now...

"Most experts agree that, while killing oneself once may be therapeutic, making a *habit* of it is distinctly harmful."

Cool: Running in to an old friend while both of us were on Babylon 5.
Less Cool: He was working a cash register at a hamburger joint in the food court.

(I was on B5 to attend the big annual interstellar SCA event...)

I had an interesting dream experience a few nights ago. In the dream, I was testing out a game I was working on. It was an immersive VR horror game, with monsters that were approximately “slow zombies”. In this run, the only “weapon” I had managed to acquire was a sharpened pencil; theoretically viable if you can stab a “zombie” in the heart before it gets you. I was trying to sneak past an un-alert zombie, when I accidentally alerted it. I quickly tried to stab it with the pencil I was holding in my left hand, and here’s where the interesting thing happened. Since I knew I was in a VR game, but did NOT know I was in a dream, I actually tried to make a stabbing motion with my real arm! Sleep paralysis prevented my arm from more than twitching, which was so frightening that it woke me up. The zombie wasn't nearly as scary as the sudden loss of control.

Snatching a few hours sleep at an odd hour, my subconscious served up a surprise: a previously unseen collaboration between Fritz Lang and Peter Lorre, The Deep Underground.

It’s one of those films where the setting (and set designer) is of equal importance to the actors and director. It is set in an old, never-named city, located on the side of a steep mountain. Streets are all switchback and the sidewalks are stairs as often as not. Shadows fall swiftly down the slopes. Night comes early here.

Like all old cities, it has another city beneath itself. Basements, sewers, ancient tunnels of secret and unknown purpose, all interconnecting in a labyrinth. But this labyrinth has a famous difference from many others. Usually, if one is lost in an underground maze, one can escape by always trying to go up; “up” is reliably towards the surface. Not so, here. In the deep underground, you could climb upwards for a mile, always within 100 yards of the outer world, but never actually reaching it. It’s a threat used to keep little children out of the underground, but it’s true for all that.

In this nameless, steep city, Peter Lorre is a denizen of the underworld in two senses: a petty criminal, and someone who has spent much of his life exploring the deep underground. Another criminal recruits him for a job. He has found the existence of a treasure vault, guarded well – on the surface… If Lorre can get them close enough to drill in from beneath, they can share a fortune.

As they travel through the deep underground, sometimes Lang uses shots from street level. You’ll hear just a snatch of clear dialogue echoing up through a sewer grating, accompanied by the merest flicker of torchlight, indirectly reflected below

The exact details of the plot evade me (as is typical in dreams). The treasure is found, there is betrayal in the dark, Lorre survives and emerges with a double handful of jewels. Jewels that are SO valuable, that he cannot immediately convert them to currency…

Later, there is an investigator. He probably would have found nothing on his own, but Lorre is seized by that classic hubris, and offers to guide the investigator through the underground. After all, the underground is HIS domain, and he is proven himself invincible within it. He’s already effectively hidden one body down here, another should prove no difficulty. Down in the dark with a soon-to-be-dead man, Lorre can show off his mastery, and boast of the cleverness of his crimes.

In the inevitable climactic fight, Lorre is blinded by an errant torch. The investigator escapes to the surface, with a solution, if without a prisoner.

Lorre, master of the underground, discovers that though he knows these spaces better than any other man, he does NOT know them blind. Lost, he begins to struggle upwards in montage. Daylight filters in, but he can no longer see it. On the surface, little children sing a nursery rhyme about how when you’re lost in the deep underground, going up will not save you. The rhyme echoes through the underground halls; Lorre hears it, but cannot identify its direction. He struggles frantically upwards… and inwards, away from the light. Fade to black. The End. Credits.

In order to raise money for charity, John Scalzi and Jim Hines do a photo shoot where they pretend to make out while each wearing full body costumes that are a sort of transporter-accident mix of Wookiee and Sorayama-style sexy female robot.

Did you know that citizens of Twin Peaks are exempt from being drafted by the U.S. Government until the year 3009? It's true! Or at least, the mayor put up a big stone monument near Laura Palmer's grave claiming that he brokered such a deal.

Had a dream last night that involved a Lego castle.  In the hypnagogic post-dream state, I came up with a design that I would totally do if I still *had* Lego.  A castle bedroom set, with tapestries.  The tapestries would be built of one-width bricks, though using some one-third height flats to make fancier designs.  They would be suspended from the wall, but two bricks out from the actual wall.  They wouldn't quite reach the floor, being short by about 2/3 of a brick, so that if you're paying attention, you can just see the toes of the minifig hiding behind it :-)