Friday, May 28, 2010

damnedest dream I've had in a while

So I was at this high tone party in a refurbished brownstone.  It was the kind of upscale affair where celebrities were all over the place.  I distinctly remember the fashion wonk from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy sitting on the kitchen counter surrounded by a rapt audience of party-goers, expounding on his opinion that the brioche did not go with the wine.  Which is pretty weird, since after I woke up I had to go to Wikipedia to look up exactly what the hell brioche is.  Turns out it's bread.

Remember Pat Stevens?  She was a talk show hostess that Nora Dunn played on Saturday Night Live a few times in the eighties.  I always liked Nora Dunn.  Anyway, Pat Stevens walks up to me holding a frou-frou cocktail with an umbrella and starts gushing about all the wonderful people at the party, rattling off a long list of names.  I've never heard of any of these people, so I nod politely.

All of sudden these french doors fly open and in march this bunch of Hell's Angels, moving in diamond formation like the secret service use when surrounding the president.  And who is standing in the center of the formation?

The President of Heavy Metal, apparently.

I yell "Ronnie!  Aren't you dead?!" and he replies "I'm Dio, baby!  Dead don't matter to me!"  He then hands me this bar of silvery metal, maybe four inches across, eight or nine inches long, with a thickness of less than half an inch.  Inscribed on one side are Egyptian hieroglyphics in three colums, with these pre-Columbian glyphs done in relief in the spaces between the columns.  Kind of like this:


So I ask Dio what this is all about and he just smiles and says "Figure it out!"  That's when I woke up.

23 comments:

  1. > "I'm Dio, baby! Dead don't matter to me!"

    Hell. Yeah!! Sounds like you have had a message from beyond the grave!

    >"Figure it out!"

    I'm guessing it means you'd rather have Heavy Metal than be at a party where they serve brioche.

    \m/

    ReplyDelete
  2. So I ask Dio what this is all about and he just smiles and says "Figure it out!" That's when I woke up.

    In a less decadent society than ours Jeff would be able to parley this (obviously prophetic) dream into wealth, power and all the babes he could eat. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Maybe, the worlds going to end in 2012 and you are going to end up in B-Tier celebrity afterlife?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice. Like a Zen Master transmitting his enlightenment to a student from beyond the grave, Dio confers the wisdom and power of Heavy Metal to you, symbolized in the heavy silver bar he hands you. It's not what the bar says, it's what the bar is - much like the music. :D

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hmmm. Please lay down upon ze couch and tell me about your moder.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous11:01 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous11:06 AM

    Brioche = Bread of life

    It didn't go with the wine, remember?
    Or, was it the whine? Which leads to...

    Pat Stevens = the host of pomp & celebrity that makes a lot of noise without really saying anything. Not your kind of party, eh?

    Dio = Tao, the way of enlightenment

    Metal Bar = ?
    Are you sure the silvery bar wasn't 1 inch thick? 1x4x9 = the squares of the first three prime numbers. Sound familiar? It's like the monolith in 2001: Space Odyssey!

    A measurement of your intellectual or spiritual advancement, maybe?

    Have any irons in the fire?

    Ciao!
    GW

    ReplyDelete
  8. Eric: don't even get me started on that subject.

    Metal Bar = ?
    Are you sure the silvery bar wasn't 1 inch thick?


    I dunno. I didn't measure it my dream. It seems really narrow looking at the edge of it, but on the other hand the hieroglyphs were incised pretty deeply into it and it still had quite a bit of heft to it.

    A measurement of your intellectual or spiritual advancement, maybe?

    Have any irons in the fire?


    Three things spring to mind.

    1) I recently resolved to read the entire Great Books of the Western World series. I'm only on the second book, but I feel good about having some structure to my reading.

    2) As I've been running the Caves of Chaos for my Wednesday night group I've been getting the itchy feeling in the back of my mind that maybe I've finally outgrown the need to run the Keep on the Borderlands every few years. I think this will be my last time and then this module will go into retirement alongside the World of Greyhawk.

    3) I've been kicking around an idea for a pseudo-quasi-historical campaign setting that would be a lot less flashy and gonzo than the World of Cinder.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Don't ya just love strange dreams that don't make any sense?!! Thanks for fun read!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Runes of Dio sounds like a dungeon waiting to be written.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Dude.
    Dio gave you a Quest.

    ReplyDelete
  12. It's like Wayne's World meets Monty Python. That's awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is how my next D&D adventure will start.
    : )

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous8:38 PM

    Very well written article. Nice stuff!
    [URL="http://easyfreexbox360games.blogspot.com/"]Free xbox 360 games[/URL]
    [URL="http://psncodes4free.blogspot.com/"]Free PSN Codes[/URL]

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous11:28 PM

    That's the fashion guy from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? I thought it was the Sixth Doctor!

    ReplyDelete
  16. I thought it was the 5th Doctor. I got confused when there was no celery on his jacket!

    ReplyDelete
  17. I've found that seemingly random dreams are often composed of overlooked details of the previous day's experiences.

    Let's see...

    Carson Kressley was the guest on last night's re-run of Chelsea Lately. Even if you didn't watch, you may have seen a TV listing while channel surfing.

    Dio's passing has been highlighted on just about every old-school gaming blog on the web, some of which you might not have read until recently.

    Your last post was about the wonders of magically being able to read even the most obscure languages.

    And maybe the size of the metal tablet more closely matches an iPad.

    As for the SNL character, I don't know. Maybe another SNL sketch getting the movie treatment recently made you think about your favorite sketches from the past.

    Nothing can get into your dreams that isn't already in your head.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Jeff, I agree that Dio has given you a Quest. That Quest might be too write an Encounter Critical adventure based upon this dream.

    ReplyDelete
  19. You are all wrong!

    Jeff, you have been marked as the next front man of Heaven & Hell, you need to call Iommi immediately!

    ReplyDelete
  20. > 3) I've been kicking around an idea for a pseudo-quasi-historical campaign setting that would be a lot less flashy and gonzo than the World of Cinder.

    Dio was clearly warning you away from anything non-gonzo. Even pseudo-quasi-non-gozo.

    And dude, not fair. The few dreams I remember are just me making breakfast and other mundane junk. Do I need to take more drugs? OTOH waking up not sure if your dreaming and couple times I was has given me a healthy skepticism of reality.

    ReplyDelete
  21. If only you knew a first level MU with Read Languages.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Amazing!

    Why don't I have dreams like that?

    Just the fact that you know words in your dreams which you awake don't know is mind boggling!

    I totally agree you have been given a Quest. About what? Figure it out...

    ReplyDelete
  23. Seize your destiny, Jeff.

    ReplyDelete