If you had the choice between being with a beautiful Czech woman, or traveling to Burma where you would meet another beautiful woman... would you roll a dice to decide? That's the scenario my subconscious presented to me in a dream last night.

After I escaped the Russian mafia, a beautiful woman asked me to go to Czechoslovakia with her. Whether it was her decision, my own, or the cosmos said this is how it was going to be, I had to roll a dice and score a six to go with her... anything else, and I was saying goodbye and packing my suitcase for Burma.

I rolled a four.

I was disappointed. I felt a connection to the Czech woman, and didn't want to leave her, and she really wanted me to go with her to Prague. So I rolled the dice again (lucid dreaming!). Once more, a four. Reluctantly, I said my goodbyes to Ms Czech and left for Burma.

The destination is a little fuzzy, in my dream I said Burma but it felt like it may have been Bhutan or someplace else. Regardless of the location, I met a woman who seemed to already know me. She was surprised to see me, wondering what I was doing there. There was some sort of revolution or war happening, a state of chaos, and people were fleeing. So I helped her and her mother escape.

That's about as much as I can remember from this dream. The two women aren't anyone from my life (that I know of), and I'm not a gambler. So today, I opened the drawer where I keep my old Dungeons & Dragons dice and decided to see how they'd roll. I have two traditional six-sided dice, and guess which sides were already facing up when I opened the drawer?

Four and six. Cue the Twilight Zone music!

The possible symbolism for these two numbers is very interesting. Avia Venefica's What's Your Sign? and Aisling's Dream Interpretation have good summaries of what four and six may represent in the dreaming mind. I emphasise may, because I don't hold much value in dream dictionaries; I'm merely using these suggestions as a guide.

What it all means, if anything, I'll have to mull on for a while longer. Six is a number for enlightenment, the sixth sense, and it's what I was seeking with the Czech woman -- but the dice kept grounding me with a four. Alas, I'm too poor to go to Burma or Bhutan!

What aspects of my psyche do the two choices in my dream represent? I've never dreamt about rolling dice before, that was a new experience for me as well. I wasn't completely lucid in my dream, but rerolling the dice took an effort of will.

A dream I had last night:

I'm at a train station. The suburb sign reads Eisenshower, exact spelling. Everything is very new and clean. I get the impression I have just moved here, or will soon.

Dream disconnection.

I find myself at the end of a street, where the city ends and countryside begins. Before me is a huge tree with twisting branches reaching high into the sky, with smooth white bark and a wide trunk. I know this tree, it's from mythology; two heroes had cut branches from this tree. Why though? It's not the right type of wood to make bows from. The tree looks healthy, no signs of branches being cut off. Beyond the tree are hills with scrub and grass turned yellow from summer, and a winding walking trail. Separating the tree from the hills is an old knee-high wooden fence. I want to walk the trail, but I stay to throw fistfuls of seeds on the ground. Birds fly down to eat the seeds. I notice a mouse has appeared to eat the seeds as well! I continue to scatter seeds, feeling content.

That's all I can remember.

At first glance, Eisenshower could just be Eisenhower with a typo. However, I can't think of any connection to the American president, and the spelling felt intentional. So, a subconscious conundrum? "Eisen" is loosely German for iron, so Eisenshower could be iron-shower -- which makes me think of a meteor shower. I'm not sure if this has any relevance or meaning, but it's intriguing!

However, the tree in my dream is very interesting. In mythology around the world, the tree is seen as a gateway to the Otherworld, being both above (below) and below (roots). From Celtic Ireland to ancient Greece, heroes cut branches from sacred trees to guide them in the Otherworld. Cormac, High King of Ireland, received a silver branch from a stranger; it allowed him to enter the Otherworld, and guided him to a sacred well. In ancient Rome, the Trojan hero Aeneas was able to pass safely through the Underworld thanks to a Golden Bough.

I'll have to practice harder at lucid dreaming -- I can't help wondering where I may have gone if I'd followed the path beyond the tree! What do you think?

He's turning 28 today. Please join me in wishing him a happy birthday. Having to dodge drug cartel violence and corrupt politicians every day in Mexico City, he deserves a tequila or three. Enjoy your birthday cake, amigo!

One of my favourite bands throughout the 1980s and 1990s is R.E.M., and sadly they've called it a day. Despite Bill Berry leaving the band in 1997, R.E.M. continued, albeit as a "three-legged dog" to quote frontman Michael Stipe. Since Berry's departure, R.E.M. never quite reached the commercial success they did with their classics Green, Automatic For The People, and Out Of Time, but continued making quality music appreciated by the fans. My inner oneironaut feels R.E.M. is the coolest band name ever, being the acronym for Rapid Eye Movement. Indeed, much of Stipe's lyrics have a dreamlike quality to them, that moment between sleeping and waking, dorveille as the French call it. From the haunting Everybody Hurts to the punk of Orange Crush, R.E.M.'s music will always be around. I think I'll be inconsolable when U2 retires!

So to celebrate R.E.M's contribution to music, here are a few tracks with a Daily Grail flavour. Enjoy!

It's looking very grim. After a treatment dam containing radioactive toxic sludge burst and flooded a nearby town, Hungary officials are now battling to prevent it from entering major waterways, including the Danube.

A spiral UFO was reported by people from three Australian states (Queensland, NSW, and Victoria) this morning. Considering the time it was reported (around 5am), the usual skeptics will be scoffing that it was Venus; ignoring the fact that it was seen moving west and was 'spiralling'. I think we can rule out a hoax styled on the Norway spiral, as there were multiple reports across three different states. Whether the UFO was moving from the east towards the west, I don't know -- if we learn which direction people in Queensland (northeast), NSW (central east) and Victoria (southeast) saw the UFO, we could estimate where the UFO was traveling.

Reports from Queensland have just been posted (this link has video of the spiral), with an artist's impression of the spiral UFO as described by a witness:

A possible explanation has been posted to the YouTube video:

The distance from Brisbane Australia to Florida USA is almost 10'000 miles, so is it possible to see a rocket launch from this distance, and would it be a spiral? Considering witnesses spanned the entire east side of Australia, from Queensland to Victoria, this could be a likely explanation. The timing is right, Falcon 9 launching around 4:45am Australian time. It all depends on the exact times people saw the spiral, because if the UFO was observed earlier, then this theory crashes. What do you think?

A few nights ago, I dreamt that WWII soldiers released panthers into the wilderness, and I took it upon myself to protect the panthers from poachers and to make sure this feline colony thrived (even though I kept thinking to myself what the impact would be on native animals).

Last night, I found a pamphlet under my front door. A neighbour's cat had gone missing, 1Eye (named by an unimaginative Captain Obvious, as she's missing her right eye), a scruffy tabby/white mix. In a flash, I knew I'd find her. I don't know why I thought this, it's a big city and cats get lost all the time, but I got the very strong feeling I'd find 1Eye.

This morning, on my way to a job interview, who do I find lost and meowing? 1Eye. I called the owner but no answer, so I took 1Eye home. Neva, however, does not like other cats at all; there's only room in the house for one one-eyed cat! I put 1Eye in a box and took her to the local vet. The owner called back, and the ending is happy (except for their issue of 1Eye wandering off due to a new family dog).

I just find it strange that when I first saw the pamphlet, I got the strong feeling that I'd find the cat, like a lightning bolt hitting me. I'm not sure how it can be connected to the panther dream from the night before last. I'm also wondering what my connection is with one-eyed animals. Perhaps in the future I'll own a farm, with a one-eyed horse and one-eyed chickens.

Thankfully, the potential employer rescheduled my job interview for this afternoon. Wish me luck!

Last night I dreamed I saw U2 in concert (if only we could record our dreams! the new song they played was incredible, the Edge was on fire). After the concert, I was walking home and I saw someone move a live deer off the road onto the footpath, then leave. I was with my sister (at least, I think it was her -- there was a female presence with me) and we were in an industrial inner suburb. I said to my sister that the deer couldn't stay on the concrete, I had to go move it somewhere more suitable. As I said this, my surroundings were no longer urban, they changed to the central park in my hometown in the country. I thought to myself that the passerby should have moved the deer to the park, where a ranger could have looked after it, so I decided to do this myself.

Interestingly, my other dreams last night included being on a spaceship with other people, involving a plot that I can barely remember. Whenever I dream of animals, almost always my other dreams of the night include scifi elements like this.

Perhaps the deer is me?

Originally posted to The Fourth Kind news, but I thought I'd update my dream blog:

I had a vivid dream about 10 years ago I think, in which I was on a bus driving along a coastal road. Staring out the window at the beach, I saw stranded whales, so I yelled to the driver to stop and I immediately got off the bus. When I ran over to the whales, they were small enough to pick up, so I carried them one at a time and waded out to deeper water where I released them and they swam away. There was broken glass and I was barefoot, but I managed to save all the whales. When I looked back at the now empty beach, I was surprised to find I was a long way from shore, in deep dark water. A jetty extended out to sea near me, impossibly long, so I swam over to it. Climbing onto the jetty, I saw I was now miles from shore, the land a distant line on the horizon. Suddenly a boar charged me. I should have been scared, but for some odd reason I wasn't and held my ground. The boar changed into a stag with magnificent antlers and stopped in front of me. It motioned with its head to a large deck above, so I climbed the ladder. Everything was incredibly dark now, pitch black, and I could see nothing but the four corners of the deck. Perched on one corner railing was an owl.

That's all I can remember of this brilliant dream!

I've had several dreams of surviving a nuclear war over the years, but last week I had a particularly vivid dream. I was near the launch of a nuclear missile, and I saw it rise into the sky... and falter, then fall back towards the ground. I instinctively ducked down, even though it was futile, as the bomb hit the earth. This was incredibly vivid and sharp, like a blu-ray dvd. There was complete silence as the bomb fell, then I heard a cracking BOOM! as the nuclear warhead detonated. A shockwave of blinding light hit me and I turned to ash.

I hope this isn't a dream that comes true!

And in the news today, North Korea aims missile at Hawaii, and the US rallies a Pacific defence in response.

Maybe the missile fails, and it lands on Kim Jong Il's head?