I had a dream

May 12, 2019 • 12:00 pm

Two nights ago I had a strange dream. Instead of being visual, like all my dreams, it was a disembodied announcement that I remember almost word for word (I woke up and made an effort to remember it). The announcement went something like this:

“By 2039, the Democratic National Committee was the most powerful body in America—far more powerful than the President of the United States. Unfortunately, the DNC chairman was Jerry Coyne, who spent his time preoccupied with cats, ducks, and food.”

What does this mean?

64 thoughts on “I had a dream”

  1. You made me laugh! And that is good! After reading your previous post, which I agree with you 100%, it was a treat to lighten the mood.

  2. Truly, is there any better way to spend one’s time?
    (Dreams are weird. I spent last night dreaming about a figure from a recent presentation I gave on lichen community composition across a disturbance gradient. Go figure.)

  10. DNC chairman? Truly admirable for a 90 years old man! Still fully upright in his cowboy boots!

  11. Nothing. I believe dreams don’t mean anything at all. But they can be used like tea leaves, intestines of goats or tarot cards to bring out something you think through bisociation. Do you feel you should do something more important than obsessing over cats, ducks and food? Are you afraid of time running out, and you have to set other priorities? (what you do is determined anyway, and doing things that are immediately rewarding makes a lot of sense the older you get).

  13. I wish the most powerful man in the world in 2019 spent his time preoccupied with cats, ducks, and food.

        1. But I thought Xi Jinping’s government was losing ground in the trade negotiations with the US. It seems that President Trump with his bluster has overtaken him.

          1. That’s the trouble with negotiating on an unequal footing. Rationality will always lose to an unpredictable juvenile egomaniac in the short term.

            cr

          3. >Who told you that? Was it the US government?

            Yes. Why? Are they not a reliable source of information?

  15. Firstly, you would have my support. Secondly, I would much prefer that you be preoccupied bu those things, as opposed to the normal triad of hookers, blow, and an insatiable quest for more power.

    I had an unusual dream a few nights ago as well. I was trying to come up with a solution to an elaborate problem, which is pretty much what I do, awake or not.
    But the problem seemed unsolvable. And I remember clearly thinking in the dream “It does not really matter that I cannot figure this out, because it is only a dream, and will reset to defaults anyway, once I awaken.”

    It was a pragmatic, out of the box solution. Sort of a Kobayashi Maru thing.

  16. Firstly, you would have my support. Secondly, I would much prefer that you be preoccupied by those things, as opposed to the normal triad of hookers, blow, and an insatiable quest for more power.

    I had an unusual dream a few nights ago as well. I was trying to come up with a solution to an elaborate problem, which is pretty much what I do, awake or not.
    But the problem seemed unsolvable. And I remember clearly thinking in the dream “It does not really matter that I cannot figure this out, because it is only a dream, and will reset to defaults anyway, once I awaken.”

    It was a pragmatic, out of the box solution. Sort of a Kobayashi Maru thing.

    1. Me too. I usually know, on some level, that I’m dreaming. If a dream turns really scary, a small part of my brain says ‘that’s okay, I’ll wake up soon’.

      I have even found myself thinking “I don’t like the way this dream is going, let’s change the direction” (not in so many words, but the part of my brain that’s ‘watching’ the dream has done that).

      cr

      1. I have even had dreams (nightmares) where I say to other “characters” to not worry about the horrors we are undergoing, because it will all pass, you’re not really here.

  23. I have no idea what it means beyond what it says, but I find it hysterical and possibly prophetic (how old would you be in 2039?)

    A similarly hysterical dream of mine involved Bob Hope, Julie Christie, and myself looking at a wall map of New Hampshire. Bob Hope said, “Do you know the names of the provinces of New Hampshire?” Julie Christie said, “What was Benny Goodman’s name?” And I said, “That’s not one of them.”

    I woke myself up laughing.

  24. Jerry – I think you hypothesized in a previous post that people blind since birth wouldn’t have dreams. Was this the sort of dream a blind person might have?

  25. It may not “mean” anything. Even wacky Freud conceded sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
    Remember what dreams do, though. In part, they are mode-program updates (as James Burke once put it in a show on dreams in the way back 20th cen), as the brain shuts “you” down to do housekeeping at night, but part of that (the REM stuff) requires reactivating aspects of “you” to get its job done (the rumba needs to attend to all the furniture, & “you” are part of the landscape).

    Along the way whatever you’d focused on gets folded into the busy review process, which is very possibly why you became a star at the DNC, and you do think a lot about cats, ducks & food, so (duh) that gets threaded together in the surreal frame that “you” experience during the REM modes, as the recent stuff gets assessed for incorporation or rejection in long term consolidated memory.

    Now people who genuinely do have obsessions, and perhaps even bad ones, may get warning flags in the dream state or other behavior, as the brain tries to grapple with its own internal troubles and inconsistencies. I had an odd grandmother who had lots of troubling dreams, which likely would have made for a lucrative career for any psychologist brought in to grapple with them.

    I dread to think what dreams Donald Trump has. Yuck.

  26. Famously, Winston Churchill kept a notepad on his bedside table in case of the need to write down ideas that struck him during the night. On one occasion, he woke up having had a dream that revealed an important truth which he knew he must record before falling back asleep. In the morning, Winnie was disappointed to read that his revelation read “The universe is permeated by the smell of turpentine”.

  27. Cats, ducks, and food make a far better platform planks for the DNC than its current ones of open borders, transgender radicalism, and voting rights for felons.

    1. lol. As opposed to the wide-scale caging of the children of asylum seekers, allowing health workers to deny gay people care because of religious beliefs, and reintroducing poll taxes in addition to other neo-Jim Crow voter suppression laws? Not to mention stripping health care from millions, while trampling on the Constitutional balance of powers.

      1. Aside from every item your list being specious, you engage in tu quoque.

        Do you have a point to make that is factual and logical?

        1. lol. Evidently you don’t keep up on the news.

          And in this case it’s tu peius, not tu quoque.

          2. “tu peius”

            What does that mean, and where exactly in my Google results do I find an explanation?

  28. The hero’s journey never ends well if you know the outcome before you set off on it. Good luck. It sounds like you’re wearing a heavy mantle.

  30. One can only hope Jerry Coyne is head of the the Democratic National Committee in 2039 and that he is obsessed with cats, ducks, and food.

    Ducks are food, among other things. Duck fat is fit for confit.

  31. It means that at 90 you will be a power to reckon with, and will rule the USA (hooray!). However, apparently you will have lost the greater view of global warming and conservationism, and sadly will be reduced to a cat, duck and food crackpot. 🙂
    Seriously though,I speculate it is your fears talking to you.

  33. I’m looking forward to this day and wonder how guitars might fit into the picture 😀

  34. Dr Laingholm here.
    A dream for a period of American history you want done and dusted (who doesn’t) and a whimsical desire to show life with power does not mean you have to be a narcissistic ratbag, hence the symbolism of lifelong and recent preoccupations, cats, ducks, food.
    I may be powerful but my cowboy boots are firmly on the ground.

  36. It would be forgivable for me to speculate that you might have an unmet desire to do more, to have some power to develop policies that would benefit your country. The country needs more people like you in charge. Angry Catman!

  37. I think it means that in 2039, the DNC chairman will be Jerry Coyne, who will be obsessed with cats, ducks, and food.

    Looking forward to it.

    -Ryan

  38. The Trump family’s removal of restrictions on multi-term hereditary “presidencies” comes off the rails in about 2032, and in the popular backlash, sanity prevails.

  40. I am concerned by your loss of interest in boots upon becoming chairman.

  42. The Greeks had a strong belief in dream interpretations which were brilliantly codified in “Oneirocritica” written by Artemidorus. I’ve looked up your dream there Jerry and it means that the Democrats will win in 2020 but only if YOU run for President. Your program in office will entirely focus on ducks… which should prove a vast improvement in governmental affairs

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