Amateur Dream Analysis

DREAM: My family and I are on our way to Port Stanley, Ontario (perhaps better known as the happiest place on earth) when our car breaks down on the way. Our car, by the way, isn't any of our usual family vehicles, but rather Herbie the Love Bug. Yeah. Anyway, we pull into the parking lot of a farm/produce market just before stalling out and the kindly vendors and customers all take a look at our car and offer to call for help. Suddenly, everyone's smartphones start beeping with texts and news alerts, and word is spreading that the earth is under invasion from an alien race. We even see a formation of air force jets swoop through the air, no doubt on the way to the nearest largest city. (I'm guessing Toronto….sorry, hometown of London.)

That's when it happens. The sky splits open with some kind of interspacial wormhole as people run, terrified, to take cover. From the wormhole emerges the alien hordes….flamingoes. Yup, flamingoes. Dozens, if not hundreds, of them, just dive-bombing everything in sight. I caught the image of one farmer taking a home run swing with his umbrella and catching one flamingo in the face, instantly killing it. Then I woke up.


ANALYSIS: When and if humanity does experience some kind of extinction-level event in my lifetime, it won't be due to some cataclysmic event like an alien invasion, the Apocalypse, dinosaur rebirth, etc. It will probably be due to somethings stupid --- as in, humanity is doing something dumb to the environment that we don't even know about and it's causing a ruckus that will eventually kill us without warning.

Like, for instance, pissing off flamingoes. They're perfectly laid-back, innocent birds who want nothing more than to just hang around, and yet we not only destroy their wetlands, we also mock them by putting plastic flamingoes in our yards. (Well, not my yard, but white trash yards.) It's preposterous! I don't blame flamingoes for attacking humanity in some kind of coordinated, inter-dimensional attack.

Two theories: one, that flamingoes ARE aliens who just colonized themselves on earth centuries ago and have now called in the reinforcements from their home planet. Or, perhaps more cannily, flamingoes have somehow developed wormhole technology and are simply making it LOOK like an alien invasion in order to surprise humanity. Either strategy is pretty threatening --- lord knows I wouldn't want to fuck with a flamingo that could blast me into the outer regions of time and space.

I'm presuming the farm setting lodged itself in my subconscious since I recently indulged in some high-quality eatin' during a recent visit to my parents' house in London. Fresh meats, fruits, vegetables…and, in particular, some of the sweetest corn on the cob I've had in many a moon. I don't know if the folks picked it up specifically while going to Port Stanley, but my parents were indeed in the Port just last week seeing an Elvis impersonator concert. Uh, yeah.

Re: the smartphones going off. One of the most interesting aspects of social media is how quickly news breaks, details develop and then analysis begins almost instantly. For example, the east coast earthquake from a couple of weeks ago. I was at the computer and got up to make a sandwich. By the time I returned to the computer five minutes later, there were suddenly 70 tweets in my feed. Within five minutes, the progression went from "whoa, was that an earthquake?" and "Did you feel that?!" to confirmation that there was actually a quake hitting the east coast, to almost instant mockery of the weak-ass nature of said earthquake. The famous "stunning photos of devastation" links appeared almost immediately. Between this and my dream, it made me think that if aliens ever do invade, we'll be in for some AMAZING tweets.

As for the Love Bug, well, who didn't like that movie when they were kids? Perhaps my childhood love of Herbie is why today, I prefer to drive compact cars. Maybe I should just buy a Volkswagen with a racing stripe and be done with it. I'll get to buying a Herbie right after I purchase the Ecto-1.