Feed Your Head

It’s been a while since I've had a good alien dream but I had an interesting one last night. Earth suffered two alien invasions in succession. The first one involved a very human appearing species who could often pass for us unless you really knew what to look for. They were generally taller and thinner than us, and always had black eyes that held an unusual shine. They initially attacked right at Christmas and were able to cause tremendous disruption by attacking shopping centers and traffic hubs. Lana and I were getting gas in our car when one such attack occurred, and we were able to make a break through the resulting traffic snarl and escape into the countryside. I saw the police respond and shoot some of the aliens, but they had some kind of shielding that stopped the bullets. All you’d see was a kind of shimmer when the bullets struck them, like heat waves.

Although the aliens quickly took over most of earth, a large human underground resistance formed. We found that we could kill them even when they were shielded by using edged weapons that could be pushed slowly through their defense fields. We also discovered that they didn't wear their shielding all the time. At one point, I and another group of guerrillas broke into an alien TV station and were able to shoot up many aliens who were unshielded in what they thought was a safe area.

The resistance forced the aliens into a peace treaty and we found that, in fact, we could co-exist. Before long we were living with one another instead of against one another. In fact, when the second invasion came, I was at a football game with an alien friend of mine and was studying the program booklet, which told us which of the players were alien and which human. The tall, thin aliens seemed to be particularly prominent at the wide-receiver position.

As we were at the game, these small, crab-like aliens suddenly came floating down all over the place. One landed at our feet. It tried to snap my human-like alien friend with its claws and he stomped on it. We knew instantly that they were aliens and it was an invasion, but we laughed at how easily it was going to be for us to repel the new invasion. Then the crab creatures deployed their technology. Each was wearing some kind of machine harness around their bodies, and when they pressed a red button a virtual armored suit formed around them, kind of like what they used to call a Waldo. When they opened fire from these suits we realized we weren't going to defeat them so easily.

I woke up after that so I don’t know whether we won or not. I guess we did since I’m still here blogging this morning. What I did realize when I woke up is that the image/idea materials for the dream had been cobbled together out of stuff I've been reading and watching lately. Since school has been out I've been indulging myself with reading and movies. I've been “feeding my head,” and that’s what my brain was using to construct the dream. I’d watched the movie Arrival, about an alien invasion; I’d watched Avatar again last night. I've been reading some Star Trek and watching reruns. I read a book about terrorists trying to use biological warfare on the US. I noted there was going to be a remake of Red Dawn. I watched The Bourne Legacy, which involved a guy shooting up a research laboratory. I read a horror/western about spider-like (or crab-like) demons. Put all that together and you have many of the elements of my dream.

In other words, if you want to have weird dreams like mine, remember what the door mouse said: Feed your head.

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