Seeking the Pollen of Truth

I dreamt last night that Commander Riker (I know, any story becomes funny somehow once you say "Commander Riker") and an unfamiliar Starfleet engineer were exploring a derelict ship that looked somewhat like the Defiant from Deep Space Nine. There were several mannequins on the bridge made out of newspapers and at one point an alien burst from the chest of one. The alien was also made entirely of paper.

I suspect this was all due to reading before bed a story about Prometheus and then a bit of Through the Looking Glass, the scene on the train with the man dressed in paper;

I also read the part where the Gnat tells Alice about various insects in the looking glass world, including the "snapdragonfly".

The Annotated Alice has this to say about it;

Snapdragon (or flapdragon) is the name of a pastime that delighted Victorian children during the Christmas season. A shallow bowl was filled with brandy, raisins were tossed in, and the brandy set on fire. Players tried to snatch raisins from the flickering blue flames and pop them, still blazing, into their mouths. The burning raisins were also called snapdragons.

How is it we don't now have children's games involving fire and liquor, where the winner is likely the one who gets third degree burns?

I'm on spring break right now, so on Wednesday I threw caution to the wind and went to the library. Not the sad little repository of right wing propaganda we have here in Santee, but the downtown San Diego library, the three storey hardcore shit. I'd never been in there. Which is sad for a few reasons, one of which is that it fulfilled my childhood expectations about libraries from watching Ghostbusters over and over and had a labyrinth of books.

The place was actually pretty crowded, too. I was there for research for my upcoming comic, which I'm saying is basically set in 1952, though I may make stylistic deviances. It's also going to be set in a fictional city, but I thought I might use some real detail about San Diego in the 50s as a starting point, so I found the "California room" on the second floor of the library, a rather small room attended by a guy who looked and sounded like Spaulding Gray. I felt really awkward asking him questions and getting him to bring old maps from the back room but he was actually very patient with me.

This is the San Diego city directory from 1952, by the way;

Leather bound. Dopey little advertisements in leather. Some things in this country used to be better.

Anyway. Bees!