recurring - interpretations welcome!

PART of a dream. i would not mind an interpretation.

there is a older white minivan - a chrysler town and country to be exact, but the totally boxy looking '80's one - parked facing downward on a slight hill with no other cars around. sometimes there are small children (between 1 and 4 in quantity) sometimes there are old people, sometimes it's just one or 2 "normal" people, but there's always some kind of people life in the vehicle.
this minivan is a kind of experiment or test vehicle used for training purposes for a type of entity of which i'm not sure yet. and in every dream, the van blows up - but always in a different way. it seems that the people who are in training (never the same as the people in the van) are supposed to fix the van or prevent it from blowing up or do something with regards to the van without thought to the people inside. sometimes the people inside die, sometimes, they're just severely hurt, but they're just left there.
along with all this, there is a corporatey sciency aspect to it because there is always reference to and a flash to a very clean and clinical looking office setting where muckety-mucks are sitting around a conference table analysing the explosion and casualties and how the van did this with this stimulus, etc. etc. etc.

this little vignette has shown up in my dreams for the past few nights, whether i've been dreaming about something similar or not. and sometimes the van blows up more than once, kind of like in a loop. AND IT'S REALLY WEIRD. so, you take it from here. what kind of sex do i need to have now?? *grin*

the original "tiger beat"

i'm selling all my books to this used book store. and i'm doing it one box at a time because, well, because i fuckin' feel like doing it one box at a time. and it's dangerous because they make you stay in the store while they look through and price what you're selling.
i fell into the trap the first day - i went traipsing about the store looking around and found a used thrush hermit cd!!! they're canadian and you can't get ANY of their shit here!! so i bought it. i made $44.50 on my book sale and spent $6.75 on the cd, netting $37.75. i told the guy that they were going to get it back anyway, i consider it a "rental" fee. this really isn't going to help my reason for doing this.
the second day, i came in with a plan: find a book - preferably something with several copies on the shelf and one that i haven't read before - and sit in one spot and read the book while they price. so i did.

the book: herodotus, "histories".

i'm head-over-heels for the writing style of this book. maybe it's the interpreter. maybe it's how it was originally written, i don't know. but it reads like time's first "tiger beat" magazine. "tiger beat" magazine with greek names.
"atys did this and this and this. and then corseus did that and that and that. and then they sent all this gold to this god's temple. but that was only according to the persians! wait 'til you hear how the greeks told it!" et cetera, et cetera, et cetera (in the king of siam voice).
there are 4 (maybe more) accounts of daughter snatching for wiving in the first 3 pages alone! this is choice reading!
do they really have whole college classes on this book?!!? it's AMAZING. i'm so in love with the ridiculousness of it. love love love.

fuck perez hilton and people magazine - read herodotus!!