In my last post, I claimed that I'd not had a Zombie dream in ages, and that Alien-related dreams seemed more common. Last night, I had a Zombie dream. More specifically, a dream of a game that was a cross between Resident Evil and the poorly executed Saturn-only rip-off Deep Fear... with a healthy dose of Nazis, just for fun.
It seems that the Nazis had a submarine run entirely - from what I saw - by Zombies. The first problem the player runs into upon infiltrating the sub, is a group of four marching (and singing?) Nazi Soldier Zombies being led by a Female Officer Zombie to the torpedo room. Here, the player knows, they plan to load one Zombie into each of the sub's four torpedo tubes, then launch them at the Allies. The player has been previously instructed that the Zombies will be entirely unaware of him... until he chooses to obstruct or attack them. Due to the layout of the staircase they're approaching by, it seems likely - when one understands videogame mechanics - that a pair of Zombies will exit the stairwell in each direction, meaning the player could not avoid them at the stairwell.
So, head to the Torpedo Room, right? Sabotage them before they get there, that sort of thing.
Of course, there's an 'Explode' button on each torpedo console, but it won't do anything until the torpedoes have been launched. The upside is that the Zombies are to be loaded into modified torpedoes, not just launched by themselves. Theoretically, that just makes the game 'avoid the Zombies until the four are launched, then detonate each torpedo and escape'. Sounds reasonable...
...and it was, until the Female Officer Zombie, without looking round at the player, comments "You ran here pretty fast..."
The game was played entirely in the grainy monochrome of old black and white movies, which proved very effective at conveying the atmosphere. Upon capture, however, the game's characters became colour... and I wasn't aware of any 'background', as such. In any event, the player is imprisoned and, bizarrely, the Female Officer Zombie arrives and asks "have you ever had sex with a Zombie?" This, it would appear, is the player's chance to take advantage of the situation and escape... But I don't know for sure, as I woke up at this point.
Bizarre rip-offs seemed to be the theme of the night, as an earlier dream seemed to borrow elements (not to mention cast members) from the Catwoman movie. The sum total of the dream was the run-up to the climactic battle between the good guys - Catwoman and I - and the villain - Sharon Stone, in full-on exposition rant mode. When we first crept into her sanctuary, she was disguised as a black panther but, having revealed herself by greeting the heroes, jumped up and morphed back into her somehow deformed human form. She then disappeared, and the room collapsed to show a view over - going by the landmarks - the Thames at night. Dark clouds rolled in, the wind howled, and a few spots of rain began to fall.
"Oh, great," I commented. "Why is it that every climactic battle has to be in the rain these days?"
At this point, Shaz returned to explain what the whole story had been about, all the while covering her burnt and scarred face with a cream which seemed to heal and rejuvenate (was that in the movie? I seem to recall it revolved around a cosmetics company... but I didn't bother seeing it as it wasn't really Catwoman. Thanks, Warner ;) ) so she was obviously readying herself for battle while she walked around dealing with the exposition.
Sadly, this dream ended before it got anywhere...
So, it's Sunday, I woke up kinda late and noticed that the light - for the first time so far this year - looked pretty good. Quickly, I dragged myself out of bed and made everything ready to take more photos of Masterpiece Starscream so, with any luck, I would finally have something worth putting up on my website... Of course, it didn't last long. All too soon, the sun had moved into a position where the light was either too harsh and direct - leading my digital camera to interpret bright highlights and very dark shadows, making for atmospheric, but otherwise useless photos - or utterly diffused and reduced by cloud cover. The other downside is that, sitting at my desk, I'm occasionally blinded as the sun comes out from behind the clouds. I really must try again to sort out a light tent so I can take photos in any conditions...
In any event, I managed to fire off a decent number of shots, but it seems the light still isn't quite right. The images are probably good enough for the time being, and I think I've got a good selection of poses and details. Just need to add them to Photobucket, then I can update my website as time allows.
During the week, I had an epiphany of sorts. At first, it was just a joke I made at my own expense but, the more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that I had spoken the sad, difficult truth.
Basically, as mentioned in the previous post, last week was meant to be holiday for me but, for various reasons, I only took two days - the Monday and the Thursday. At one point on the Friday, one of the editors - surprised to see me - said "I thought you'd been suspended".
"No," I replied. "That was yesterday." (My boss had actually threatened to suspend me if I came in on the Thursday, because she wanted to be sure that I took some time off.)
"Oh, that's alright, then... But isn't this your week off?" she asked.
"Yes but, my boss is off next week, and I thought it wise to have some crossover, so I know what to expect next week... and, y'know, I'm a workaholic."
And that's the thing. It gradually dawned on me during the day that I really am a workaholic. I do believe things go wrong when I'm not around (largely because things do go wrong when I'm not around, but that's beside the point). I do believe I'm too busy to take time off. I do worry about the workload I'll return to after taking time off.
Worse still, because of all the crap that's happening at work - despite knowing that it's all 'in progress' and working toward a better way of doing things in future - I'm feeling as demoralised as everyone else and, frankly, I have days when I've completely lost interest in it all. I recently found this list of symptoms of 'burnout': one might feel powerless, hopeless, drained, frustrated, bored, resentful, irritable, detached from those around, trapped, uncertain, insecure, cynical and anxious. That's quite a list... and quite an accurate description of me, some days.
On the upside, I'm not getting migraines, so it's clearly not that bad. In my last job, I started getting quite debilitating migraines in the months before I resigned. I'd go partially blind, or suffer from weird optical illusions, or have little 'sparks' dancing in front of my eyes. It really wasn't pretty, and I'm hoping I never go through that again.
In other news, it transpires that Argos have got a decent selection of TransFormers in the new catalogue, some of which are exclusives. Alternators Ravage (Jaguar version), for example. They're doing their usual thing with the Classics range - each price-point has a catalogue number and you either get a random figure, or you go to customer services and ask to see the range to pick the one you want. I may use this trick to get Jetfire... and, having seen more good photos of Jaguar Ravage properly transformed, I'm starting to warm to him. Having checked stock at many of the London branches, I may decide to pop down to the nearest branch to work during the week.
And, has been subtly hinted elsewhere in this post, my boss is on holiday this coming week... This is a source of some worry for me, as that puts me - somewhat uneasily - in charge. I'm OK if everything's running smoothly - and there's really no reason for anything to go too badly awry - but I quickly get pissed off when things start to drift. Typically, now the 'big problem' we had last year is gone, we've got a whole new 'big problem' along similar lines. He chats too much, and works too little... But, hey, at least he doesn't go creating problems just to feel important by 'solving' them.
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