la_belle_laide | zombies and the white dog, also some politics

I've been having these crazy dreams. And obviously they are related to my playing RE2 late into the evening just before bed. I may have mentioned that the game is really well done for its time, even though for me it is a few steps backwards. It is also mega-scary. At some parts, it comes close to Regenerator scary. Okay, not quite, but sort of. Two nights ago I had a dream I was Leon and the alligator was chasing me down the hallway just like it does in the game. It's a narrow hallway and even though Leon is eight way directional he is goddamn hard to control because a) you have to use the pad instead of the analog, and b) he can walk backwards but not run,and in order to get him to actually run in the other direction you have to turn him with the control pad. The controls are something between FFVII and FFVIII. So anyway, it's a scary little part of the game and I dreamed that the alligator was chasing me/Leon down that hallway and I couldn't run quickly enough. I could feel the floor shaking behind me and the alligator snapped at my heels and then I woke up.

Last night's dream was even weirder. I might have talked about this one aspect of my dreams before; I can't remember. But I do this so often in dreams that it bears mentioning. Often I'll be dreaming of the hero of a story and he'll find himself in trouble. This is where I always step into the dream. I tell myself, "He can't handle this; I'd better do it until the crisis is over." And then I'll become the character. Usually it's men; there are very few women in my dreams and when there are, they are taking care of business themselves. In my dreams, men can't handle it and so I have to solve their crises. O_O I'm not sure precisely what this says about me but probably not something good. According to my friend Kim, however, the gender of the character doesn't matter since every character in your dream is really you: after all it's your mind and you have created the scenario and the characters, even if they resemble anyone else. So in her logic, the "hero by proxy" is just my way of solving a problem using another aspect of my own mind. Which I think is really neat.

Well, anyway. So in this dream, once again I'm playing as Leon Kennedy and there are zombies all around. A few have bitten him. (In the game when you get bitten or injured, you can no longer run; instead you hold your side and limp along, which makes every consecutive battle even harder!) So he's limping along inside this big factory, actually more like a grainery because there was definitely some grainery action going on, zombies everywhere but these were more like the Ganados of 4 rather than the zombies of 2. At the top of a silver staircase is a huge white dog. I realize that this dog is the german shepherd Jimmy, the one who I trained and finally got placed in a dog sanctuary (anyone remember how angry I was at Douche Ex Boss over that, when he kept threatening to put the dog in the pound and he made it my problem even though it was his business? And I had to care for the dog myself and finally drive it to Lindenhurst etc.? Well anyway, I was crazy over this beautiful dog and I cried when I had to say good bye to him. This was the dog in my dream.)

So there was Jimmy at the top of the stairs, and he was being used as a guard dog to protect the zombies' grainery. O_o Every few days they would throw him the arm of some person they had killed. He was chained up at the top of the stairs and he started growling at Leon. I was watching from behind a wall; I knew that he would not be able to get past Jimmy. But I also realized that Jimmy would recognize me even if I had to take Leon's place in the story. And I knew that i had to or they would both die. So I jumped into Leon (O_O) just as one of the zombies was going to feed Jimmy. Jimmy finally saw me / us and started barking. I waved my (our) arms around and said, "Jimmy, it's me! I placed you years ago, why did they put you here?" I immediately knew it was Douche Ex Boss's fault. Well, Jimmy recognized me and started barking joyfully. The zombie went to hit him, and Jimmy bit the zombie's arm. He started twisting it around until he bit the arm off totally. The zombie started to scream at him and that got the attention of all the others. They started to run towards, not Jimmy, but me / Leon. I ran up the stairs towards Jimmy where everything was suddenly so bright, and I grabbed him and hugged him really hard.

Zombies started to throw bars of soap at us. It was white soap; suddenly everything was white. Beyond the door there was a field of white flowers and we both ran into it. I kept hugging Jimmy and saying that I hoped he was okay and I missed him.

The scene changed and I was outside of what used to be my grandparents' front yard but is now my cousins' front yard. Jimmy was still with me, only he looked more Saluki-ish and I said (to no one in particular,) "This dog was the reason I got a different white dog. Otherwise everything would be different. It's like he's the grandfather, or maybe the prequel to the line of white dogs."

Then one of the zombies told me that if it hadn't been for the white dog, the entire story of Resident Evil wouldn't make sense, and that if I paid enough attention, the white dog would show how 2 became 4 and 4 became two, like a story with no ending.

And then I effing woke up.

WTF?

Let's see, let's see. Okay, I love the drill we're doing in Kung Fu, in blackbelt. It's got some steal-steps, a binh-choy, a side kick to a back-kick, then two head-removing hits, the cup choy and sou choy. (I can only hope I'm spelling those right.) I was so happy because I was doing them tonight and Sifu said I was doing a great job. Pretty much made my night!

And just because I don't want to forget this: U.S. "war on terror" eroded rights worldwide: experts

GENEVA (Reuters) – Washington's "war on terror" after the September 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.

Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.

"Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies," the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.

While new U.S. President Barack Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo to break from the practices of his predecessor George W. Bush, Robinson said sweeping changes needed to take place to ensure Washington abandons its "war paradigm."

"There has been severe damage and it needs to be addressed," she told a news conference in Geneva. "We are not more secure. We are more divided, and people are more cynical about the operation of laws."

Arthur Chaskalson, former chief justice of South Africa, said that the United States should launch an inquiry into its counter-terrorism practices, including acts of torture by individual security and intelligence agents.

Although counter-terrorism issues have faded from the front pages since the change of government in Washington, Chaskalson said such practices have shifted around the world and could keep restricting liberties if they are not confronted head-on.

"We all have less rights today than we had five or 10 years ago, and if nothing happens, we will have even less," he told a Geneva briefing to launch an International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) report on counter-terrorism and human rights.

ABUSE MONITORING

The report found that many undemocratic states have referred to U.S. counter-terrorism practices to justify their own abuses, a trend Robinson said was particularly alarming.

She called on the U.N. Security Council and Human Rights Council to step up their abuse monitoring and to assist poorer nations with police training to better target rights violators.

Counter-terrorism policies worldwide should also be put under the microscope, according to Robinson. "It could warrant a special session of the Human Rights Council," she said.

The 47-member-state body has previously had special sessions on Israel and the Palestinians, Sudan's Darfur region, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and high food prices, and will assess the global financial crisis on Friday.

Robinson also questioned the effectiveness of the Council's universal periodic review, under which every U.N. member has its rights record assessed on a regular rotation.

"We have looked at some of the universal periodic reviews of countries that we know from our hearings have severely abused human rights in their counter-terrorism measures, and it is a soft review, there is no accountability," she said. "There is a necessity now for leadership at the United Nations."

Countries recently reviewed by the Council include China, Russia, Germany, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. Hearings for the ICJ report took place in Bogota, Nairobi, Sydney, Belfast, London, Rabat, Washington, Buenos Aires, Jakarta, Moscow, Delhi, Islamabad, Toronto, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Brussels.

THANK YOU.