I had a bunch of very short dreams that I didn't feel deserve their own post, but now I've had so many, I can hardly remember them all.

Last night, I had a short dream about watching my friend Matt (who is a Broadway musical actor) in a movie. It was a terrible movie, and at the end, the credits said it was written and produced by Something Awful goons. Figures.

I've had two dreams about my very favorite teacher who recently died. He was my theater director, so they were mainly stage manager type dreams where I did something wrong. But he was there helping me along and not yelling at me, like my dreams of that nature usually are.

I had a really weird dream a few weeks ago that I'm actually hesitant to post here, because I think it's rude to talk about religion or politics. But I'd like to record it to remember, so here we are.

I was at a party, and I knew I was going to die, but all my friends were there to help me celebrate my life. It was a really fun and upbeat event. Then I saw my friend Mike (who is also deceased and has appeared in multiple dreams) calmly told me, "It's time" and took me away. Suddenly, I'm in purgatory, and it looks a lot like Ikea. Figures.

Here's the offensive part. I see two of my friends who are devout atheists, just kind of shopping around in Ikea Purgatory, not really bothered either way. Mike's telling me I have to go on to heaven, and I'm kind of shouting towards my friends "Just say you believe in God, and you can come in with me. Come on, you see the afterlife is real and heaven is this way. Just believe, and you can go!" But they don't listen.

Sometimes my dreams are embarrassingly telling.

I just woke up from this one. Technically, I woke up at about 5 AM and couldn't get back to sleep because I was so upset, but I knew it would stay fresh in my mind.

I can't remember the exact circumstances, but I was in this place that seemed like a train station. Or maybe it was a place where trams brought you to the airport. Or maybe it was an amusement park where you rode on trams for fun, because everyone around me was happy and laughing. Actually, I think it was a mix of all three. I remember buying a ticket on a certain line where I liked the conductor because he joked around. I was with my family and a group of friends, and a boy I liked. It started off as all good.

At some point, we stopped to have a gathering somewhere. It wasn't at someone's house, but it was kind of a private party, and there was a little kitchen nook in the back where people could prepare food or something. Here's where it gets morbid.

Someone at the party who was a stranger to me was dying. He was in the nook with me and several people close to me: my mom, my brother Ryan, and maybe one other friend. I can't remember how it came about, but this person HAD to die. He had done something bad or he had asked for it, but I was being convinced that he had to die and it was a completely legal and merciful thing that had to be done. Only no one would do it, and they wanted me to do it. AND he had since become delusional and would resist anything slow like, I don't know, chloroform and an injection or something.

I kept thinking that I wouldn't want to go on living knowing forever that I had killed someone, and he looked to me like he could go at any minute, so I decided to wait it out. Ew, I just remembered. At one point, he actually threw up his internal organs. Like, I remember a kidney and, like, a bladder, outside of his mouth attached by a gross string. And I was like, "He HAS to be dead now," and I'd go out into the party and say, "Okay, everyone, I'm sorry. He's gone." But then he'd burst around the corner, shoving his internal organs back in, like, "What? Me? I'm fine." And everyone at the party would be disappointed in me.

I guess I got it through my head that these people wanted him GONE, and since I couldn't kill him, I decided to put him in my car and drive around until he was dead. So I dragged him out to the train area to buy the ticket from the machine for my favorite conductor, and I passed the guy I liked on the escalator.

I told him that I was sorry, but I couldn't talk right then, and he looked at the half-dead guy and he said he understood. PS, why are all these people okay with me "killing" this poor dying guy? No clue. But actually, he WAS starting to piss me off a little.

I get off the train, and it's sad, because everyone there is happy and laughing, and I have this horrible job to do. I get out to the car with my mom and brother, and we're trying to push this stiffening guy into the car, and it's not working. This is the part that's like an airport, because there are all these security agents outside.

This part is crystal clear in my mind. I'm on the driver's side, and my brother opens the door on the passenger side, but the dying guy slumps to the ground. My brother turns, but he's on the other side of the door. He's about to close it to pick up the guy, but at the same time, two security guards run over to help the dying guy. Well, dying guy chooses this moment to come back to life again and sees the two security guards manhandling him as trouble, and he struggles. He's apparently really strong now, and he's smashing a rock or something over one guard's head. The other guard raises his gun, and I scream, "RYAN, LOOK OUT!"

The guard shoots dying guy through the stomach, the bullet exits, goes through the open passenger door, and into Ryan's stomach, and there's blood everywhere. The guards don't look sorry at all, and I'm fumbling with my cellphone, shaking, because I'm so scared that an ambulance will come and take care of stupid dying guy and dumb rock-smashed-head security guard before they'll help Ryan. And I'm shaking so bad, I keep dialing 9-1-# and 9-1-5 instead of 911.

Then I wake up, and I'm panting because I'm so out of breath and it feels like the bed is shaking because my heart's beating so fast.

So I guess don't watch Discovery Health Shows before bed, either.

This dream is pretty fresh in my mind, from about 2 nights ago.

It started out a normal Stage Manager Dream, but it was more laid-back. I was setting up the scenes and getting the props in place, but I had everything under control. I wasn't concerned at all. I was on top of it. I say all these redundancies to stress how unusual it is for me to A) have a Theater Dream where I'm not absolutely tearing my hair out and having everyone yell at me, and B) at this point in my life where I feel so worthless and irresponsible, it's odd for me to have a dream with really comforting feelings like this.

To add to the awesomeness, the theater was really stocked and futuristic. Like the design backstage was really slick and clean and white, and there were trapdoors and rotating stages, an elevator to the catwalks. It was really swanky.

At some point, I wandered off and ended up in some sort of sleek future hotel room with my high school BFF Kameron and her mom (my "second mom"). Kameron took me into a corner and was whispering to me about this new time travel device she wanted to show me, and I was all, "Hell, yeah, sign me up!"

I don't know why it was a secret from her mom or anyone, really. She used to work for the FBI, so maybe that was where that seed was planted.

Anyway, so she hooks me up to this thing, and zaps me back to that exact place maybe one year or five years earlier. It's really boring. Like laughably so. I walk around and try to look at cool stuff and proof of time travel, but it's just a year or more. It's the same room. Nothing big. So I start tapping my foot, waiting to get zapped back to the present.

Eventually, I do, and Kameron lets out this huge sigh of relief, and a few people are kind of freaking out in the background, ringing their hands, and running back and forth.

Turns out I had been gone a lot longer than it appeared for me, and they thought I was going to be stuck in the past forever.

Which, again, looking back while awake, I can't imagine would have been a terrible thing. Seriously, reliving the last one to three years of my life? I'd do it in a second! I don't know, maybe they thought they neutralized me in the time-travel process. Who knows?

That was actually a pretty cool dream.

Okay, so this is a dream from about 3 weeks ago that that I don't remember a whole lot about. Alls I can recall is being in a church and thinking that it was totally awesome. Like, I kept thinking about all the bad stuff people usually say about church -- the self righteousness, the wars, the judging whether or not ye be judged, that sort of thing -- and then seeing really energetic people NOT doing any of that stuff. They could actually answer all my questions, and they did it in a really thoughtful, not-contradicting way. I woke up feeling full of hope. Unfortunately, actually living my life crushed that hope pretty fast.

I had this dream one of the first nights I got back into the states.

I was back in Japan, but my successor had already moved into my apartment. I was hanging out in some random rice field, when I decided I should go meet her at my school. I get to the front entrance and see some of my old co-workers, but I realize I left a mess on the kitchen floor back in the apartment, so I decide to go home and clean it while she was working.

I start home, but I either forget the way, or I have to go this long (colorful!) convoluted way I'd never been. When I get in the apartment, Justin's there with a gun.

He says that everyone just saw me leave school to come home, and "it" will be very suspicious. Then he shoots himself, and I'm left standing there, knowing I'm about to be arrested for murder.

Then I woke up. Fun, huh?! Don't watch Forensic Files before bed.