Dreams of Solomon Grundy

Here was a dream I had Saturday night. I went with a group of friends to a "resort." In reality this is something we actually do; get a nice place in a remote city and game all weekend. In my dream however, the nice place was an underground cave. I was disappointed they would pick such a drab place for this year's get-together but I wasn't totally against it, as long as we had fun. In the past, when we did this we would bring thousands of dollars of electronic equipment with us to keep us entertained: TVs, game conosles, cell phones, a video camera. In my dream it was no exception. We were wired to the teeth for fun.

After we moved in and got settled, I found out that there was a race of cave dwellers that lived near our underground resort. They spent their whole life in these caves and as a result, looked very pale, wore shabby clothes and had bad English. They were tall and hulk-like as well, very built. Their physique seemed as chiseled as the walls of this underground city. Sidenote: I think I know how their physical description made it into my dream. That day I was listening to a Crash Test Dummies song called Superman. In the song, there are references to a Superfriends-Legion of Doom character named Solomon Grundy who happens to look a lot like the cave dweller race in my dream. Very interesting.

So we're in our resort/cave room, playing our video games when the cave dwellers sent a platoon of cave-soldiers over to the resort side to attack the residents. Apparently, this is a common occurence because our resort had a response team of defenders ready there to fight back. The battle was bloody (chalky?), both sides sustained heavy losses. When it was all over, we were safe but our electronic equipment was gone. Come to find out the reason for the attack was that the cave dwellers are merchants and they sell used equipment in their cave shop, located not far from the cave resort. Since they don't make it to the surface world a lot, their only line of supply are the tourists staying in the nearby cave resort. My video camera and Nintendo console were among the stolen items and as result I was not happy.

I decided to visit the cave dweller shops to see if I can find my possessions and reclaim them. If there was going to be trouble, I'd just break down and buy them back. I looked at some of the items on sale and they were definitely used. Old VCRs, stereos, hand held video game units; all scratched and dented, basically pieces of crap was all they had for sale. This was stuff you would find at a flea market or yard sale. To make it worse, the items were all overly priced. A ten year old VHS VCR went for $1000! I don't know how they stayed in business.

I never found my items and even if I did, I knew I didn't have the cash to get it back. I returned to the resort and took out my frustration on my friends for picking such an obviously piss-poor place to spend our vacation. I yelled at them for hours and said I was picking the spot next year.