Copious Free Time

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I was Spanky McFarland, and the gangsters were in color, but apart from that they were pretty standard issue, with hats. Only they seemed to be attempting to seduce the gang instead of just getting rid of us, offering candy and the use of their apartment. While the others went along readily, I was playing for time, and made a break for it when I saw a chance. Their dog chased me, but when a wolf attacked us both, I helped the dog beat it (I had a stick with a nail in it), and after that, the dog was on my side. We fled through buildings and out windows, and through an older woman's apartment.

We seemed to be in a darker section of town, and I was reluctant to cry out for help, expecting little sympathy. Some guys were coming out of a comic store, and I knew somehow that they weren't going to be any help (though they were apparently drawn by Jim Mooney in his 50s style). We hid behind some boards, but those blew down. Finally, I saw a storefront tabernacle, and even though it had conspiracy theories written right on the sign, I ran in. An acolyte in a white toga listened to my incoherent ranting and went to get someone. I wasn't sure if he was turning us in, but the man he brought back listened sympathetically. He was some sort of elder, though he also partook of the nature of a policeman.

I turned my back on the dream action for a moment, and it was pretty much over. The elder/cop had run the crooks down in a nearby field, and they were being taken in. We were safe. Even more amazingly, I had actually finished a dream! Normally, when I have a dream with a plot, it never gets to the end. I always wake up, or else it segues to something completely different.

I used to have twice-told dreams. I'd dream that I was wrapping up a story in a dream, and it would immediately start again, and then go off track and collapse somehow well before the last act. Now it's mostly random wandering or incomplete plot dreams. Actually finishing one is very encouraging, and I hope it leads to more satisfying dream adventures.
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Seeing the Friends list reminds me of a dream I had.

I never have watched the show "Friends," but Geoff at work used to recount plots to me, and some of them sounded amusing.

Perhaps it's because I helped Geoff move several times, but the dream started off at a new apartment Geoff was living in. It was sort of a neat place, I thought, and I was happy for Geoff. Then things started to slide a little. I began to notice that details were off, and things didn't have the right names, and I realized (as one does in a dream) that we were in "that episode" of the series. A nonexistent episode I never saw, to be sure, but I knew this was It. It was the "MAD-world" episode.

In this hilarious episode, the Friends become aware that one of their acquaintances (or maybe one of them; details fuzzy; ask again) was living in more of a parody world than a real world. That is, as I noted on the scene, the paperback historical novel on the side table wasn't Gone With The Wind, but something like Gone With The Blecch. I don't have any more titles to quote. That one's sort of nebulous. I must say, I was convinced on very little evidence in this particular dream.

But it was satisfying. For a moment, I was in an episode of a TV show, in a sort of MAD parody within the episode. It wasn't exciting -- in fact, it was really sort of dull and boring, now that I recite the particulars. If it helps any, the apartment was next to a body of water, with boats and stuff on it, so it was more keen than one might suspect.

A TV show from the Well of Lost Plots! (By which I mean, something sort of similar to the Jasper Fforde books I've been devouring recently, but that's another story.)
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