Happy Hollantide.

My first post: My Monday morning nightmare. An anonymous email-attached Word document with the simple yet torturous title of "Action Items" (just two of the many "IT" buzz words that make me cringe). Simple yet frightening.

My second post: I grew up in a rather odd household. Loving, but odd. As far back as I can remember (and before my time as well) my family has always been plagued by strange dreams and stranger diseases. To give you some examples: within my lifetime we have endured cases of Victorian Whooping Cough, a bout with a strain of severe pneumonia that hasn't been treated for over 100 years, Scarlet Fever brought on by the bite of a Brown Recluse Spider as well as various sundry others. In each one of these circumstances dreams somehow coincided with the coming onslaught of sickness. My piece is the visual representation of one of these dreams. Since I was a child I would have this same dream either the night before or the night on the eve of when I would become extremely ill. The dream starts with a blank slate of brown and silence. The slate has rounded radius corners almost like a television from the 1950's. Within seconds a black mathematical formula drops in from my peripheral. Then another... Then another... quickly heightening in pace. Words from my subconscious of philosophical quotations add to the fray. Lines, angles and shapes are moving at such a rapid clip that I am almost convinced that they are singular, living creatures. The problems, the lines and the quotations are flying into my field of vision so fast that out of the corners of my eyes all I can see is a black on tan blur. The sound of a television test patter slowly fades into a deafening volume. The screen goes black then red. Pop. Brown slate is back and the process being again. Normally, I wake the next morning with a fever. Its probably happened 7 or 8 times that I can remember.

Thanks for looking and reading.

*c

Many strong submissions. i'm very very fond of the works submitted by Brian McGee, Pedro Vit, Michael Surtees, and Tarsh Fletcher.

i'm glad that so many people put a lot of thought into the works and that the faster format takes some of the anxiety of the continual "reloads" when checking posts.

i'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into 'Home' next week when my schedule allows.

I hope you all find the time to contribute next month.

C - Not probing - but have you ever looked any of that up in a Dream Dictionary? Might be interesting is all. My old roommate did it EVERY day - said she "learned a lot about herself" that way!

Mine is on page two: the boy being accosted by the ghost-monster.

Two things are in conjunction here. The boy in the picture is my son Milo, and the idea of something terrifying happening to him (or my daughter) is really my worst nightmare. To not be able to help, to have him suffering, those things scare the shit out of me.

The other thing is based on my own nightmares as a child. When I was 6 we lived in a haunted house in Massachusetts, one that had been a monastery in the early 1800s. According to local legend, one winter night a vagabond came to the door seeking shelter. The monks let him in, fed him, and asked him to join them for evening prayers. While they bowed their heads in prayer, the visitor began a murderous rampage which resulted in the all of the monks being slain, including one being pinned to a large wooden crucifix with a knife. The villain made off with what little money he could find and was never apprehended. Ever since, the restless spirits of the slain monks haunted the house, and tragedy of one sort or another befell any who took up residence there. The people who owned the house prior to us had had a daughter commit suicide there, and it was in the living room of this place where I fell onto the corner of a table and lost my left eye. We moved out shortly thereafter, but not before encountering noisy, plate-smashing poltergeists and a plague of nightmares for everyone in my family. (The worst freaky scare: a new kitten of mine sliding uncontrollably off the second-story landing to her death on the hardwood below.)

Ghosts are real. Happy Halloween

Thanks Sarah. My Dad is actually a licensed Psycho-Therapist (who has dreams fairly similar to myself) and he thinks that they are mainly stress based due to circumstances from my youth... Because my family is thoroughly steeped in Academia I can remember my Grandmother (as well as others) pushing me to perform at an early age. She was a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard and Cooper Union as well as a Rhodes Scholar so it was only fitting for her offspring to be interested in Astrophysics at a young age. Early admission to MIT is alot to plan for when you are 11 or 12. My father dealt with the same issues though through a different catalyst. My Grandfather on his side was a code-breaker for the NSA during WWII and similar expectations were made of him. I think that we just internalize our emotional distress and subconsciously self-inflict such nightmares. Not totally sure though,... aren't mysteries of the universe just grand? Thanks for the suggestion.

*c

Hi-

Mine's not up yet, but when it is:

In a nutshell, babies make me a little uncomfortable. Oh, they can be cute, sure, but they also make a lot of noise and they're so out of proportion... ugh. Little miniature people.

Of course, I'm not a father. If I were, I'm sure my outlook would be different.

-R

Erin's mango nightmare (last one on the third page) so cracks me up. I can feel his suffering. The ear, look at the ear, it's so red. Sorry to laugh on your misery Erin, but it's so funny because it's true. HAHAHAHaa... so sorry.

I really like Kevin Lo's, although I would love to know what the "R" stands for. I know that it should be left to interpretation, but still. I would say "Rage."

I like Eric Lar... excuse me E. Tage Larsen's nightmare, it looks very much like a fuzzy dream where you have no clue what's really going on.

My dad's (Pedro Vit) creeps the shit out of me. Plus it looks like cotton candy, I'm never eating cotton candy again.

Rick, I just uploaded yours� dude, that's freaky.

Rick...I'm speechless.

Christopher - I have a friend who was in the same "type" of situation - pushy agressive parents - she still doesnt sleep well! Thanks for replying though!

Rick - please have a child someday - so you do not think that way anymore :) - frightening! The funny thing is - it could have been the funniest Word It posted...but its the scariest!! I might have a nightmare now...jk!

Rick ... I share your feelings re babies so this is really ... just awful. (In a great way.)

Looks kinda like a baby Bat-boy, huh? You should sell that to the tabloids.

Sweet Armin, thanks for the tough love. When in doubt, "Mr. Larsen" works perfectly well. ; )

and yeah, your dad's really creeps me out but Rick might now have the stranglehold on that catagory.

The dream that inspired my graphic is just too depressing and cynical to recount here. Suffice it to say... I'm old.

What can I say? It was a bad dream...

'Home' will be much nicer. I like home. ;-)

damn Rick. that's Rosemary's baby-superfreaky.

My Nightmare: I am nothing more than space dust.

My worst nightmare happens when I'm awake. It is the worry that I am all alone in an empty universe and that everything happening and everyone I know and care about, or even don't care about is false. I guess it goes back to that philosophy 101 class in college. All I really know is that I exisit. It's the one thing I know for a fact is true. It haunts me, and yet I cling to it because it truely is all I really know.

i dont want to list every piece they did...but it was pretty cool that every submission from my students (i used the word it as a project in my color class) was "analog." pretty fun to see it from first year not-necessaryily-graphic design students too. check out sonya's... definitely one of my favs of the bunch.

My Nightmare, page 1, "Screaming Mouth with R"

I'm going through a really tough transition period right now and I've been having a lot of nightmares. One recurring nightmare, that I've found out is actually quite a common dream, is that my teeth are falling out and I'm frantically, absurdly, trying to find a dentist. How sad it is to have such a common dream.

That was my original idea, but I thought it would be quite hard to reproduce accurately, and trolling through my image archive, I came up this photo I took of myself for an aids awareness campaign (never used) and thought it worked well for the theme.

The R is, as Armin mentioned, ment to be open to interpretation, but there are a couple of concrete ideas behind it. One is simply the sound, one is the fact that I think R is probably the scariest letter visually (maybe X too), and the third is that it is the first letter of the typeface's name(c'mon you guys can guess!). Those are the design reasons, as for what it actually means....

Kevin —�I have the same recurring nightmare. I often dream my teeth fall out at work or some other inconvenient, embarassing place. In one variation, I pulled my front teeth out, revealing a small creature living in my gums.