I'm hanging out in the Florida room of the house where I grew up when I see lightning hit a tall tree just beyond the back yard, on the golf course behind our property. Chunks of tree, some flaming, fly in all directions, including towards our house. The effect is by ILM, and it's basically copied from the scene of debris flying towards the camera from the first machine in "Contact".

After the debris lands I think how cool that was, and then I think I'd better go outside and make sure the chunks of tree aren't setting anything on fire.

As I step outside I remember that there was a can of gasoline out in the middle of the backyard, on the patio, and I see the muted glow of a radiant blue column, like the stem of a mushroom cloud, centered on where the can of gasoline was.

I realize with horror that the gasoline must have mostly turned into fumes or something, because a bit of tree has apparently just ignited a fuel air explosive in my backyard. I can see the blue cylinder of flame grow slowly outward toward the house. I brace mentally for impact, knowing that I'm going to be knocked on my ass no matter what I'm thinking about anyway, and it occurs to me to shout a warning to my mom and my brother. It comes out as "...oh shit."

The blue cylinder grows towards me, accelerating in slow motion so that its radius is roughly r = 2t-1 (despite all the laws of physics I know, dammit), but I have time to see it coming, and

CUT TO BLACK for a quarter to a half a second and then CUT TO

us all talking about how lucky we were (don't ask me, it's a candy-ass plot device but that's what I dreamt), and my mom showing a scrapbook of the tragedies she's had to help people deal with (she really is a counselor at a high school in Miami where tragedies are too common).

Incidentally, my last words -- or should have been last words, had the screenwriter known a damn thing -- were "...oh shit.", which were also the real last words of Mario de la Peña (writeup coming eventually), my best friend's brother, who on February 24, 1996 was shot down by a Cuban MiG over the Florida Straits as he was flying for Brothers to the Rescue.

But I don't think I was quoting him at the time. I was just dreading the impact of that expanding column of blast wave.

Incidentally, this is my first dream log and I really have to get back to sleep now.