From the ``peculiar dreams'' department we have a third-person vision that nagged at me last night. I wasn't involved except a passive recorder of odd events, kind of like my waking life. The centerpiece was an onion. Not The Onion as in the satirical news web site [1], but an onion as in one sitting in garden dirt outside the suburban house. This was for some reason a particularly valuable onion, grown by the first winner of the US edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, although that fact was coincidental to its value. On top of that, his wife was supposed to be the celebrity Mariana Mastriani.
As far as I could determine after waking up, there is no Mariana Mastriani, though hers certainly sounds like a celebrity name. Probably she was an early 60s celebrity, since I knew The Flintstones had her parodied as Mariana Marblestriani. That indicates she was famous enough to be on The Flintstones in its earlier seasons, when the writers cared any, and tried to make acceptable geological pun names. In later seasons they couldn't give a pebble and would just throw ``rock'' on the end of a name, giving pathetic performances like ``Texarock'' or -- as not in this case -- ``Mariana Mastrianirock''. Also in that era Betty doesn't say anything except to endorse what Wilma said, usually by saying ``Wilma's right'' or ``And that goes for you too, Barney.'' And Wilma doesn't say much except to warn Fred either.
I knew full well that Mariana Mastriani was not married to the Millionaire guy, so in my dream looked her up on the Internet Movie Database, I believe, and determined that she was really married to David Mastrian, note the difference in last names, which was something they did because they were famous and thus eccentric, and that explained that. What it explained I don't know, but it satisfied me, though a couple more times during the night the sight of the onion returned. I recall them being quite happily married.
[1] Am I alone in appreciating their article about Samuel F B Morse wondering why nobody made a movie about his code, but also noting that the given code samples are anachronistic, since they're in Continental rather than American Morse Code, which included such insanities as spaces within a single character? It's a silly thing to notice, but no sillier than the rest of my dream, of which this was not part.
Trivia: One of Samuel F B Morse's earlier, unsuccessful, schemes was to charge admission to view a six-by-nine foot canvas, Gallery of the Louvre, he painted with miniature replicas of 38 paintings from the Louvre. Source: The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage.
Currently Reading: War for the Union, 1862-63: War Becomes Revolution, Allan Nevins.