The Weirdness of Dreams

Yes, this is it. The first non-dream-post. I should probably drink something festive to celebrate, but I can't be arsed to get up so the slight taste of garlic still residing in my mouth since lunch will have to do.

For those of you who didn't stop reading from being too grossed out just now, welcome! I've been meaning to get this done for ages, but it's never seemed the right time. But today, as I was reading a blog post on the blog of a delightful woman who on the web goes by the name of dyermaker I was reminded of a wonderful album I haven't listened to for a while, namely This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours by the Manic Street Preachers. Lately, I've mainly listened to Send Away the Tigers, but it was time to reacquaint myself with the older stuff too.
So, I found myself inspired by a delightful blog and a wonderful album and I decided to sit down and write a non-dream blog post.

Since I'm trying to ease you into it, this is really only an introduction, also touching on a subject you will be familiar with if you've read my earlier ramblings. Dreams.
After James had read my most recent nocturnal adventure (well, it was really morning when I had those dreams, but still) he posed an interesting question, namely that if he has as weird dreams as I do? Since he's one of many who can't recall their dreams very often it really it's not easy to tell what he dreams. This got me thinking... Do we all have as strange and odd dreams or is there something wrong with me? Wait, that doesn't put me in a very good light, does it? Am I... different? That's a better word.
The more I thought about it the more odd dream descriptions from various friends over the years I could remember. Clearly, there's Kit and her strange dreams. Beppo has mentioned a few as well, and then there are others - including James, who's mentioned one or two odd dreams he's had. Is it very common to have strange, crazy dreams where nothing seems to make much sense? Could it be that a lot of people for some reason think it's embarrassing to talk about and therefore never tell others about their REM-induced endeavours?
Every time I see one of those "dream charts" they always explain things like dreaming about a ladder... And while I can understand that not everyone dreams the way I do (comeplete with sound, smell, taste, sensations and different languages - all in full colour, of course) are there really people who just dream about a ladder? Do they just stand there looking at it? What kind of ladder is it? Doesn't it lead somewhere? Do they climb it? I've seen a few ladders in my dreams too. One was propped up against a house that was being painted white and purple by kids from the school I went to in that dream and somewhere around was a boy I then spent the most amazing day with, walking alongside a road, smelling flowers and went to all kinds of places with before he got in a fight with one of my brothers (I had two in this dream) and as a result died, since he'd had a heart problem no one had known about. Do you see what I'm getting at here?

So what causes dreams as elaborate and odd as mine? I know I get a lot of from real life because I can often relate things in my dreams to things going on in my life and even in dreams where I'm in "fake" places with "fake" people I can still see resemblances from places I know in life. But how come it all comes through so vividly? Is it because of my fondness for the evil rock music? Is it because my diet isn't healthy enough? Or because I watched Gremlins when I was five? That, by the way, was only one of many "scary films" I saw when I was a child but still the only one to give me nightmares (oh, poor Gizmo, those bad ones were throwing darts at him in my sleep too that night), and I've yet to turn into a psycho killer or anything so it couldn't have been too bad.

Any theories on this? I'm not sure I've really composed a proper problem here to hypothesise on, but if you've any thoughts feel free to share them.

As a side note I might add that I've never had a recurring dream that I'm aware of, and I think that's quite common. If I kept getting recurring ones this blog would really be lacking in content.
I wish you all cracked and entertaining dreams!