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Book meme, for which I was. . . not not tagged by fuunsaiki

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people.

I cheated a little bit, but not like they suggested in #5. I have three animorphs books in a stack next to me and I choose the one with the coolest three sentences. (I actually have five animorph books total on my dressing table, but I didn't have to go to the second stack.)

Rachel turned her huge, shaggy grizzly bear head to me, even as she swatted a human-Controller with a backhand that sent him flying.
< Well, Ax, all we have to do is go through about fifty Hork-Bajir, bust down that door, and find a way out of this hellhole. >
< Yes, > I agreed. < Let us begin. >

Dangit, I was going to give you guys about four more sentences about Rachel charging! Anyway, that's from Animorphs #28, the Experiment! One of my all-time favorites. Also known as "the one where Ax morphs into a cow on the cover." I thought that was an ok quote, but unfortunately the books are so short that by page 123 they're usually fighting or infiltrating or something like that.

Anyways, if it wasn't for those animorphs, you guys would have been getting My Sergei, by Ekaterina Gordeeva! ;)

Gotta go to work.

Copied from email to myself, sent at 11:21 AM

I have a recurring nightmare, I think--I think I've had it twice now, but I definitely had it last night--that starts out with superheroes existing in the real world--I think usually (or, again, last night) J'onn J'onzz & Wonder Woman, but then it turns out they're super-advanced aliens who view us as so inferior they can't even tell we're sentient--our communication is so different & inferior to theirs that they can't tell we're communicating with each other. And then they start making all these decisions that effect our welfare. And they aren't evil, but we're totally expendable to them. So they try to make decisions that will benefit us and the planet as a whole, but aren't that concerned if this involves some people dying, or some negative effects in the shrot term. And we, of course, can't communicate with or understand them, so we have no idea what's happening (except for me, observing--but also being part of the human race) and everyone is just panicked & scared and we have no control over our lives. It's really frightening. All though I was somewhat detached from the dream so I woke up creeped out and disturbed and had a hard time getting back to sleep, but not, like, scared and breathing heavy.

Essentially, they see us like animals. And they have sort of my view towards animals, so I don't know what that says--but, like, that I think animals should be happy and comfortable and have good lives, but they don't know if they're in trouble, generally. Like, you can slaughter an animal, it won't understand that this is happening and won't fear it. (If you attack and animal, of course it will fear it--but I think that cows in a slaughterhouse don't really get it and aren't afraid. And of course, they could be expressing our fear in a way they don't understand--which must be what's happening in my dream, because humans do understand when they're about to die and fear it and stuff like that--but we do recognize when animals express fear, like during a thunderstorm or something like that, so we have to assume that the animals are going peacefully to the lethal injection or whatever).

I've also actually had a variation on the previous dream where super-powerful aliens want to wipe out the human race to make the world a more pleasant place for ants to live, and I have to try to talk them out of it. And some of them really like me--I'm sort of like a pet, sort of a friend--but they aren't very powerful, the ones on our side, so they say they'll try to stop it but probably can't. And they don't quite get why I'm so upset, cos they say that they'll save me.

So this could, again, be some type of subconscious examination of the way I view animals. And it's true, I have certain issues because we can't be sure that animals aren't sentient and, like in the first dream, it's just in a way so different from ours that we can't understand it. But I have to go with the evidence that indicates that this is not the case, and that animals can be spayed or castrated or put down or slaughtered without getting too upset about it, because they don't understand/don't care. But I also, before I get shot or something, of course I understand that animals can feel pain and should be kept happy and comfortable, including livestock. [Katie and I ended up discussing this at lunch and I feel pretty good about things now.]

So, what I actually think these dreams are a reflection of (not that I'm a psychiatrist or at all qualified--i've never even wikisurfed dreams or anything) is my fear of not being in control. It's weird because I usually hate to make decisions, but I also hate being out of control. I'm trying to think of some examples, but it's such a weird sort of paradox that I can't expand on it. Well, in terms of making decisions, not only do I not like to choose what to do or what to eat or stuff like that (unless I have a good idea, which I rarely do), I also sort of like the idea of the European school system, where they sort of decide your life path for you at age 10--even though I actually think it's a freaky and dangerous system that seems to kick a lot of kids in the balls. But I also really like to have a plan for life, and I don't like to be in situations where I don't know what's going on, and I don't like to lose control of my emotions, and I don't like my personal relationships to be out of control--like. . . to have weird issues with friends and stuff like that. So that sort of tranfers into me hating drama, but it's all part of me liking my life to be orderly and in control. Which isnt' exactly the same as it being in my control, but still. The first dream was bad in both counts.

Anyway, even if they aren't a reflection of my own feelings on the subject of control, I think that's what made the nightmares so scary--the total inability to change our destinies, to save ourselves, to control our own lives.

And, uh, in conclusion, fascism is bad?

Anyway, I just typed this into an email at around 11 AM at work, after writing the dream summaries out on a piece of paper (which had printed text on it, so it's pretty hard to read) and I will put it into LJ later. [That is, now.]

-Laura (why did I just sign this? I'm emailing it to myself!)