Dream Log: September 13, 2002

In an attempt to hold the attention of the children in the congregation, our church was showing a videotape of an all-star animated version of Jesus Christ Superstar. Spongebob Squarepants and Bart Simpson were among the apostles. Jesus, of course, was played by Kyle Broflovski from South Park (because he's the Jew). Kenny played Judas, which resulted in Kyle shouting, "Oh my God, Kenny, you've killed me! You bastard!"

Cartman played Pontius Pilate. While he was interrogating Kyle/Jesus, Invader Zim burst onto the scene. He was wearing sandals and a robe and a fake beard and he started singing, "I am the Christ, I'm the great Jesus Christ." He had heard that Jesus was King of the Jews, and he thought that impersonating a king might be a good way to begin his conquest of the filthy stinking humans.

Apparently I was engaged to be married to my best friend's husband. He is a nice enough guy, but fairly overweight, and in real life there is no attraction or chemistry at all between us. We were having dinner at his parents' house, and they began talking about his plans to move to India.

I was fairly shocked to have heard this first from someone else rather than from him, but I took it in stride, and later looked into what sort of job I could find there.

The next day when I made some comment apropos of my job search, his father made an eyebrow-raised, condescending-smile sort of remark that made it clear that he didn't take our engagement at all seriously.

Even in the dream I couldn't see how or why we were engaged at all.

What made the dream disturbing in retrospect was that as I began to think about it, it was clear that the dream was taking place after the death of our respective spouses. The connection with some real-life death-related issues (that I am not willing to comment on here) was quite sobering.

+ Note added after noding: The "real-life death-related issues" were only a test, it turns out, of the emergency broadcast system of life.

I was watching a Brazilian TV show called Linha Direta, which is more or less a local version of America's Most Wanted. It told the story of two brothers who lived in the district of Barra da Tijuca, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. They killed their respective girlfriends (who were also sisters) for their money.

Some time into the show my sense of self became distributed between watching the show and actually being one of the brothers. I experienced desire to see the bastards caught, simultaneously with not wanting to be caught.

There was a barbecue party at the brothers' house (it was a lower-middle-class house, although most of the residences in the actual district are rich apartment buildings). One of the friends was fertilizing the lawn with some food remains (no, the bodies weren't there). We/they were worried that people might find the small wooden boxes with the girls' belongings (jewels, money) in the wardrobe. I suppose at that time the girls were missing but not long enough for people to be worried.

Note: people host barbecue parties a lot in Brazil, but we sure as hell don't grill hamburgers!