Only In My Dreams

The Democratic primaries have been interesting, and I've certainly been paying attention. However, unlike a seemingly disproportionate number of people, the candidates have not yet entered my dreams. Yes, many of us have been dreaming of Hillary or Barak, and if you're interested in seeing how the candidates interact with the subconscious, check out this site, where such dreams can be sent in and posted. Once on the site, use the links on the left to navigate from Hillary dreams to Barak dreams. In the spirit of fairness, a link for McCain has been added, but as of yesterday poor John had only entered the dream life of two people.

I'm not sure that any meaningful information can be gleaned from the site. Obama holds about the same lead in percentage of dreams as he does in delegates, while dreams about Clinton are on the whole more emotional and centered on feelings. Clinton dreams are also on the whole more sexualized. Obama more often comes across as cool. Mainly, it's an interesting read, and inadvertently quite funny.

Here's one about Obama:

I became best friends with Barack Obama. We had a sleepover at his house and played board games all night, like it was middle school again. In the morning, he went to the kitchen to cook up some pancakes. While he was out of the room, I took the opportunity to call my friend on the phone, all excited, saying, You have to come over! I'm at Barack's house and we have pancakes!

She replied, Yeah, whatever, me and Barack are BFF. We’re going to hang out later this afternoon.

Many of the Clinton dreams involve her clothes. Generally, she's wearing pants suits, and some sort of wardrobe malfunction is immanent. Here's a malfunction of a different kind:

I was reading a magazine article about Hillary. Then I got to the part that read: Also, she can be cruel. She enjoys wearing $1 billion dresses, one of which is made from the fleece of an endangered penguin.

There was a picture of Hillary in the penguin dress; it looked like a zip-up penguin costume made of polar fleece, and would probably keep you warm.

Sometimes the dreams verge on nightmares:

Keanu Reeves was voted in as the next President of the United States. He was giving his acceptance speech, dressed in jeans and a hoodie. He looked good, but we were all shocked. How did he win? Did we even know he was running? I set about urgently painting him a sign, twelve metres long, with a too-dry paint brush, reminding him of all the things he had to remember: Prioritize education. Provide medicare. Cap corporate profits. The environment! There were two brief interruptions as we fielded interviewed reactions from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They were both equally stumped. They didn't know he was running, but were gracious losers.

I'll leave you with my favorite dream. It has it all: finding oneself in an inappropriate situation, fear of discovery, food as a stand-in for sex. Happy REM cycles to everyone:

I was at some kind of county fair and Hillary walked up to me and said Hi Dan! (I didn’t know how she knew my name.) I’m Hillary Clinton. Are you going to vote for me?

I told her that I hadn’t decided yet, but wanted to know more about what she stood for. She told me that she had to go to the restroom, but that if I went with her into the bathroom she would talk to me while she took care of business. I followed her into the restroom and she went into one of the stalls. She started talking about her platform but I wasn’t paying attention because I was trying to get the bathroom door locked. I didn’t want to get caught in a women’s restroom with Hillary Clinton.

She came walking out of the stall with a Dole pineapple whip (like they sell at Disneyland). She said, Look what I found in the stall. This is delicious!

I told her that she shouldn’t be eating that because who knows where it came from and who knows how long it had been in there, but she wouldn't listen. I said I had to go, but I would definitely be voting for her. I was lying so I could get away. She thanked me and asked if I knew where to get some ribs.