teodreams

Shortest nightmare ever

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:56:12 GMT

No, I haven't forgotten about my dream journal--it's just been so long since I actually had and remembered a dream worth recording. It's not a very common thing for me, you know.

Dream/nightmare had on a full night's sleep that started at about 3:30 AM on Saturday, April 12, 2008.

This one was actually stupidly short--no more than 30 seconds to a minute or so. (At least as far as how long the scene would have lasted had it happened in real time. Dream time is, of course, weird.) I was just outside our apartment complex. It's sort of a gated community type deal, and outside the gate is a straight road that's almost more of a really long driveway since it doesn't lead to anything else once you're on it. There's a T-shaped intersection where that road meets a real road, and I was standing on the corner there. It was the middle of the night and it was overcast, but still very bright--either the moon somehow was magically bright enough to illuminate the night despite it being overcast, or there were magical streetlights that were able to illuminate the night in the exact same colors a full moon would use. All in all, it was incredibly beautiful--not a soul was out, and the weather and lighting were perfect. It was the kind of scene I would have loved to just explore--simply walk around, seeing how everything looks in this lighting, and enjoy the solitude. Unfortunately, I suddenly noticed there were cars coming.

Now, I might have mentioned this before, but ever since seeing part of a certain traumatic movie at a young age, I am deathly afraid of cars driving past me while I'm on foot. It's uncomfortable enough in real life where I'm just being paranoid and no one's really going to pull over and kill me, but my dreams always seem to put me in the worst-case scenarios, possibly because I already have that fear and my dreams are subject to the "whatever you do, don't think about pink elephants" effect. Of course, I suck at lucid dreaming, so I can never tell the difference between the two until I wake up later. Until then, all I know is that my worst fears appear to be in the process of being confirmed. :(

Nervously, I ran down the street a little (back toward the complex' gate) and hid behind a tree...well, hiding behind in the sense of standing next to it, at least. I figured that wouldn't do a whole lot if anyone was looking for me on foot, but it would at least help to obscure me from from passing traffic, especially in the middle of the night.

Realistically, hiding behind the tree on the right sidewalk would probably have made more sense, since my current position has a few moments where left-moving traffic turning left onto that street (like the cars are in this image) would be facing directly at me. Then again, I didn't really have time to run across the road just to get to the other tree. (Also, realistically, there wouldn't be trees directly in the middle of sidewalks, but hey.)

Both the cars turned onto that street and drove into the complex, passing and completely ignoring me. I thought I was home free, but then the semi also turned onto that street, and the semi apparently saw me, as it quickly pulled over next to the (camera) left sidewalk, just past the two trees--directly between me and the complex.

I had two choices. I could run onto that top street and trying to find some destination or another in the random undefined void. I'd be faced with trying to reach something--anything--despite the fact that absolutely nothing is within walking distance on that street and I'm being a guy on foot being chased by a semi. Or, I could attempt to run past the parked semi to get back into the complex, and presumably safety of some sort. I took my chances with the latter option, and ran down toward the complex.

The door of the semi opened, and out stepped a figure wearing too many layers of baggy clothing for me to tell anything at all about him except that he was probably male. Picture a Super Solver, only with long pants, everything being a more subdued grey monochrome color scheme, and significantly more menacing. He was holding a bottle in one hand and a rag in the other, and it didn't take me very long to guess what those could be for. I couldn't avoid plowing directly into him, but my last deliberate action was to turn my head to one side just before doing so, presumably so that his first attempt with that thing would hit my cheek instead of directly over my face or something.

The instant that happened, I woke up with a start and all the associated bonuses--panting, rapid heart rate, and so on. I can honestly say that hadn't happened in a very long time, but I guess I have to reset the counter now. ("It has been 0 days since Kjorteo was horrifically traumatized by a nightmare.") Anyone who's read more than about two or three of these teodreams entries knows that avoiding random thugs trying to kill me is more or less a recurring theme in my dreams at this point, but what got me about this one is how vivid it was. For someone whose dream memory is usually so poor that it's been...how many months? since the last time I had an actual update for this thing, this one's details were so clear that I was actually able to describe my assailant and draw a picture of the scene.

Which makes it especially unfortunate that the evil came, because it really was a beautiful night.

I miss her so much

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:05:23 GMT

Dream during a short sleep that started at about midnight on Thursday, December 20, 2007.

This dream started with me visiting my parents for Christmas. Unlike many of the completely illogical dreams I've had and written about here, this one actually seemed pretty well-grounded in the laws of reality,at least at first. I mean, I am going to visit them, and the argument I had in this dream is based on a major complaint I really do have in real life. (Though we haven't actually gotten into an all-out argument about it quite yet.)

I was sitting down, while my parents were busy setting up a screen for ancient home movies. For the record, I hate old home movies. I utterly despise myself as a kid, and old pictures and especially old home movies instantly fill me with something bordering between extreme discomfort and rage. I also somewhat value my privacy when it comes to my extended family, and was dismayed (this is in real life) to learn that my grandmother is apparently working on some sort of newsletter that I'm going to be in. Christ. I didn't even do anything this year. "Kjorteo is still weaving, like usual." I got the keyboard, I guess, but that's really none of their business and I will be extremely pissed if it turns out my parents leaked that to her and she broadcasted it to the entire network. Nothing like "Ohhhhh, I heard you're a piano player now, oohhhhhhhhhqhehtfhgafhg" from people I barely even know. God damn it.

Er, anyway, back to the dream. It was home movies instead of a newsletter this time, but I recall that grandma was still involved in this whole endeavor...somehow (this would be the one part of the dream that didn't really make sense compared to real life, I suppose,) and I was just as mad about it, and I got to use a line that I had come up with in real life, and was itching to get to throw, but the opportunity never arose.

"Teo, will you come help us with this?"
"No!"
"You won't??"
"Absolutely not! Look, I've only barely come to terms with the fact that I won't be able to prevent this mad scheme. I'll be damned if I end up assisting it."

Understandably, at this point both sides were pretty irritated, so I got up and went to this big box of food on the kitchen table to see what was for dinner (which mom was working on.) There was a kind of...well, picture a kind of pasta outside with rice stuffing. So, um, rice ravioli, I guess. It seemed a lot more complicated in the dream. Either way, and both in the dream and in real life, that actually sounds really good.

Things had cooled down a little, so I went ahead and said how good that looked. Then I walked back toward the chair, and randomly looked over to the right.

And there was Duke.

Duke, the miniature greyhound we had, who died years ago, was apparently back, sitting there, and looking cute.

"...Duke?" I asked in disbelief.
"Yeah? What about him?" My mom threw back nonchalantly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to have him there.

Just as I was about to further question that, Dixie came in from outside, waddling toward me in that way she always had. (She wasn't exactly the most slender dog.) Dixie has been dead for a while in real life, too.

At this point, I was in complete cognitive dissonance mode. On one hand, I've had many dreams involving their return (I even had another one just before "Escape" that I didn't write about because it was too short and incomplete) and apparently was actually able to recognize them as such within this dream. On the other, I still wasn't able to actually detect this particular dream as such. I sure was suspicious, though. After asking my parents if this was a dream (because NPCs in a dream would have a totally unbiased opinion on that, I'm sure,) I threatened with "All right. Explain to me how it is that these two dogs are here, or I'm waking up."

Mom gave me a convoluted story that I actually missed most of, involving one of our neighbors being sick, and mom looking after their animals when they were unable to or something, but the gist of it was....

"Wait, so you're telling me that we've only had these dogs for two days?"
"No, just Duke. Dixie we've had for about a year." (In real life, the timeframe on acquiring them was the other way around.)
"And in this time, Dixie's only slept on my bed once?" (In real life, this wouldn't have been that unusual, because I always slept with my door closed. I guess my subconscious was harping on the fact that Dixie and I were quite close and forgot about that particular detail.)
"Um, yeah...duh?" Like this was the most normal, obvious information in the world and there was something seriously wrong with me for not having grasped it by now.

"You have to understand..." I started, kneeling next to Dixie, and giving her a pet. "I come from a world where these two have been dead for several years each. And..." Suddenly, I couldn't take it, and broke down. The next line was interrupted by all-out sobbing. "And I miss Dixie so much." I picked her up, flipped her over, and held her, like I always used to in real life. Every detail I remember was there--her weight in my arms, the pressing against my chest, the sound of her heavy breathing (again, she wasn't the most slender dog in the world.)

Then I woke up. And I woke up relatively early for when I went to bed (six hours of sleep,) even though I didn't have an alarm or anything and was fully intending to sleep in.

I'm not sure what to make of all these dreams involving reunion with Duke and Dixie (but especially Dixie.) On one hand, it's always hard to wake up from them, like I just had them but now I've lost them again. On the other, the details in this one were spot-on and so incredibly vivid, that it was about the closest I'll ever get to being able to see her again.

The weird thing is how frequent they are. I mean, I'm not that traumatized by her death in real life. It completely ruined me at the time and I took quite a while to stop crying, sure, but I can function now. It's been years, and I'm fully capable of hanging out with friends and having a good time, being in a good mood, laughing at jokes, without the specter of my old dead dog still coming up. I thought that meant I was over it. Well, I'm grateful for being able to function in the day, at least.

Here's an appropriate song.

Escape

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:37:48 GMT

Dream/nightmare had on a full night's sleep that started at about 12:00 PM on Friday, December 14, 2007.

The beginning of this dream featured me, yiffyraptor, and a third person who was a friend of ours, hanging out in my house. (Which was an actual house that was mine, for some reason. The layout was based on my parent's SF house, as usual.) I honestly can't recall who the third person was. Logically, the third person should have been slither, since we're basically a hanging-out group at this point, but I don't think it actually was. Huh.

Anyway, the phone rang. Me being super-paranoid, I determined this was a clever ploy to establish that we were home so that...I don't know...bad things could happen. So, I just let it ring and then listened to the message as it was being left. It turned out to be a pre-recorded advertisement for some store or something, so thinking the coast was clear, I terminated the call by lifting and then quickly re-hanging up the receiver. (In real life, this probably isn't how phones work.)

Mystery friend #3 informed me that this was an incredibly dumb move, since if that was someone trying to get us, my terminating the call like that in and of itself was confirmation that we were, in fact, home. No sooner does he say this than I turn around and see a sniper literally right next to us, drawing closer.

This part bears some extra physical description for how many contradictions with real life the scenario would have had. He was on the ground crawling toward us, literally crawling, like what army snipers do when they don't want to be seen or when they're doing that drill where they have to crawl under a bunch of barbed wire. He had one of those stupidly long-barreled full-fledged sniper rifles. And he was right next to me. That barrel was practically poking my leg, even. One would think that if you went through that much trouble to try and snipe someone, you would remember that a sniper rifle is a ranged weapon. Physically, the man had a full-blown movie tactical ops suit from the neck down, but no helmet, giving a clear view of his head and face. He was elderly, with a completely, completely bald head (not even that patch of hair that wraps around the back of the head at around ear level) and a long white beard. Well, not Gandalf long or anything, but longer than normal, and only the goatee part. Picture if Charles Darwin dressed like Sam Fisher, shaved his head and the sideburn/muttonchops part of his beard, and tried to kill me.

I immediately screamed, took a quick sidestep to get out of the way of the gun, and gave a Mario-esque stomp to the guy's back. (Fortunately, the relative badness of the idea of sniper-crawling up to absolute point blank range on someone seemed to apply even in the dream.) I think I tried to shout a deliberate warning to Yiffy, too. Then I ran for it. In hindsight and with waking-world logic, this was probably also a bad idea, since I probably could have successfully disarmed and defeated him from an advantageous setup like that, rather than running and giving him the chance to get up and come after me. My dreams are seldom known for their perfect application of waking-world logic. (See also: Pretty much every single other entry in this journal.)

Faster than you could say "Completely unexplained abrupt scene change," I was in a large school building. This wasn't a "sometime later" thing, though--I ran and was still running, but all the sudden I was running in a school. This is where it really got scary. See, I was being chased and couldn't really hide, so I had to actually get out of there entirely. Unfortunately, there was all sorts of questionable activity going on in pretty much every square inch of the parking lots and immediate surrounding areas of the school. None of it was actually aimed at me, but all of it was the sort of thing I could get in serious trouble for interrupting. A drug deal here, mafia-looking types throwing some body bags in a dumpster over there...basically, the general theme was "situations I could get killed for witnessing." Every time I stepped outside, I almost stumbled into one, so I had to go back into the school and look for another door. Of course, inside the school, I was still being chased. This was never really resolved; I woke up after about the eighth failed attempt to find an exit. (No, really. I'm pretty sure I counted.)

And once again, my nightmares involve a sense of isolation and paranoia; with the exception of that Yiffy and whoever else it was at the very beginning, I was alone, because every single other character was on the opposing side. (In this particular instance, the school was completely abandoned, so it was just me, the guy chasing me, and the random criminals inconveniently placed at every conceivable exit.) Every telephone call is the bad guys either trying to confirm my presence so the killing can begin or play Scream-esque mind games with me. Every car is always full of hostile types who will pull over and make with the killing as soon as I'm spotted. And God forbid I ever run into anyone in person, because they'll brandish their gun on sight and that will be that. And, of course, the most intense action-y part once again involve trying to escape or hide from people with guns, as usual.

I'm really beginning to wonder about that.

Lemon Head

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:21:02 GMT

Dream during what was supposed to be a nap but turned into "Eh, screw it, I'll sleep in" that started at about 3:30 AM on Saturday, November 10, 2007.

This dream was presented in a very cinematic fashion; it was basically a movie. It appeared to be something along the lines of a recent Marvel superhero movie--you know, the kind that's half origin story and half newly-formed superhero kicking the asses of the people who killed his family/disfigured him/whatever in the origin story half. This was the tale of the mighty Lemon Head. He, um, had a lemon for a head. While being able to survive, let alone perceive sights and sounds without an actual head (though at least he couldn't speak) is pretty much a superpower in and of itself, I don't think he had anything special going for him beyond that. Well, Batman-like "amazingly-trained strength and reflexes," perhaps, but in the Marvel universe, being a normal human with such a superhuman physique that your strength and reflexes are on par with low-level mutants is kind of like being able to read.

The story started in an incredibly Orwellian school. There were literally thought scanners by all the doors that sounded an alarm if anyone with subversive thoughts tried to enter. Our hero was an ordinary non-rebellious kid just like all the others, but one day he went into the building, and once already inside, encountered some sort of artful dodger-like mysterious other kid who told him about some sort of rebellion. Our hero didn't immediately take it to heart or anything, but kind of filed it away in a "Huh, that's interesting" kind of sense. Unfortunately, that was about sixty seconds before the class filed out for recess, and having the word "rebel" in his head when he tried to leave the room tripped the alarm. Cut to some headquarters or something where people actually monitor these things, and cue a panicked discussion between two guards about how an alleged rebel could be caught leaving the school without being caught entering it first.

They send a squad of guards immediately, but the kid's teacher intervenes--apparently he and the monitors are in radio contact or something. Basically, rather than let the guards show up and summarily blow the kid away, the teacher tries to talk him down first. He calls the kid to come back. Since the kid has no reason to suspect anything is amiss yet, and apparently this guy is well trusted and his favorite teacher ever or something, the kid readily comes back. Reentering the room trips the alarm again with an alleged rebel entering the school this time, but the guards seem to understand it's just the kid being called back.

However, things go downhill inside the school. Apparently this teacher is none too trustworthy despite the kid's trust, and he sort of starts going on a "Hey guys I'm not secretly radiating evil or anything" speech. The kid notices a small and thin but incredibly long chain on his desk (like http://www.martymagic.com/images/chains,%20ear%20cuffs,%20etc%20022.JPG , but whip-sized) and tries to secretly pull it away while the teacher is talking. Apparently the kid's father (?) knew that this teacher was absolutely deadly with chains--like, to the point of being a superpower; he could do with chains what Bullseye could do with small projectiles. The kid manages to remove the chain, but the teacher just scoffs, asking if he thought that would disarm him when he's completely covered in them. I completely didn't notice this before--or perhaps this detail was retconned in by the dream after being mentioned--but he was basically dressed like Jacob Marley.

He just snapped a random chain off of his shirt, then did something incredibly silly (though keep in mind that the Daredevil movie was more or less the inspiration for this dream, I think.) He held his hand out straight, with the chain held between his middle and ring fingers. About three or four inches of it was on one side of his hand, the rest on the other. He then started spinning it, faster and faster, until reaching more or less blur speed. The large length on one side was basically comparable to spinning fan or helicopter blades, while the small length--and I swear I'm not making this up (well, my dream is, but still)--extended and held a straight position while spinning just as fast as the helicopter side, and was basically a power drill. The teacher moved the power drill end to the kid's forehead for a little trepannation action, and the kid collapsed as all faded to black.

Next, there was a hospital scene. The head was apparently lost and had to be amputated, and somehow, rather than this being instantly lethal, he was given a metal thing to wear on top of his neck with a Captain Hook-like straight spike, to which things could be skewered and held in place, I suppose. When he came to, there was a tiny (ping-pong ball sized) stuffed baseball there, because the doctors had a weird sense of humor or something. They fed him by pulling the front of the prosthetic up and just dumping food right down his throat, which somehow worked. Look, I don't know either, okay? :( They fed him a random assortment of pretty much everything, then when they opened the trap again, all the lemons (which had been dumped down whole, like everything else) were summarily returned. From this, they somehow concluded that he likes lemons. I don't know...I would have concluded he doesn't like lemons, since they're the only thing he didn't eat, but whatever. They put one of the lemons on his little head skewer, and thus, LEMON HEAD was born.

If I'm not missing my guess, it probably would have gone on to have a training montage to explain why he's in with Daredevil and Batman as far as "He's just so in-shape that it's basically a superpower," then him fighting crime, and probably an ultimate showdown with the chain-wielding teacher and whatever criminal element he undoubtedly had connections to. Hell, maybe he even joined the mysterious rebellion, Robocop 3 style. Unfortunately, as soon as the initial hospital scene concluded, I woke up.

Murderer's Gunmen, untitled racial thing

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:30:03 GMT

(These two are pretty bad. I'm here to write down my dreams for archival purposes, not to upset anyone, so...uh...be warned.)

Dream/nightmare had on a full night's sleep that started at about 7:00 AM on Wednesday, September 26, 2007.

I was hanging out in a bar that was in the basement of some building. There was a rather shifty guy in a trenchcoat who loudly announced that he had a present he called the "Murderer's Gunmen" that he was going to present a little later. Hello, ominous.

Rather than leave immediately like someone who's not criminally stupid, though, I spotted this one guy I used to go to High School with. Apparently he was really good at air hockey and demanded challenges, so I stepped up. Now, at this point, it's worth mentioning that the dream version of air hockey played a little differently than what you may be used to. For one thing, it was played on a pool table, so it had the eight pocket configuration rather than one slot on either side for the goal. For another, for...those things you hold on to to hit the puck, we started out with tiny little watch batteries...though I was able to upgrade to a poker chip at some point. Finally, apparently no one minded that there was junk on the table that blocked a large portion of it off. In fact, there was an (apparently immovable) pool cue in the middle of the table in a \ shape, which perfectly bisected the table and the number of available pockets (the three on the left plus the one on the bottom middle on one side, the three on the right plus the one on the top middle on the other.) We only played on the left half of the table, and I had the bottom middle pocket for my goal, while he had all three of the ones on the left. You'd think that'd have given me an unfair advantage. I did win 14-0, but the issue of fairness was never raised at all--he seemed to simply accept that I had kicked his tail.

Then, the shifty guy called for silence with a loud "Attention, everyone," and made like he was going to start a speech. Oh FUCK. I may have been too stupid to get out when I had the chance, but now I seemed to be able to call in advance that he was going to give a supervillain speech and then shoot up the place. Fuck that. I bolted for the door before he could even start talking, and I think I kind of slammed into him and briefly knocked him down on the way out. As I made a mad dash for the stairs, I overheard him say something to the effect that he'd treated the entire building with some sort of smelly compound that's impossible to remove, so next time we met, he'd immediately know who I was from the smell. Fair enough--I was trying to escape, not disguise myself. Ideally, we wouldn't be meeting again anyway. Unfortunately, he also decided to send a minion after me for a more direct approach.

I run up the stairs a few times until I'm at the second floor, and see an elevator. Okay, decision time: You're being chased by a gunman. You're on the second floor and have about a 15-second lead so far. Running up the stairs is a lot slower than riding the elevator, -and- you get tired after the first few and slow down even further. On the other hand, you have no idea if this is going to be one of those elevators where there's a two and a half minute wait between pressing the button and actually getting in. Of course, taking the elevator back to the first floor would probably be the only way out of the building if the gunman is taking the stairs--there probably aren't very many escape options from the roof, and running back toward and past him to take the stairs back down probably wouldn't work very well. Oh, and whatever path you decide on, your 15-second lead is evaporating while we're sitting here thinking about it.

What do you do??

I never got to find out, because the paralyzing fear of the decision point was enough to force me to wake up.

Also, see? Remember what I said before? All my nightmares are about trying not to get shot for some reason.

Subsequent dream after an aborted attempt to wake up (woke up, fell back to sleep, had second dream) the same night.

This one was more cinematic. Basically, it was a movie. It was also very racially sensitive, so I apologize if it offends anyone. Though, it's not like I'm in full control of what I dream about, and besides, it was about racism, kind of like To Kill a Mockingbird. No one accuses Harper Lee of being racist. :( (In retrospect, I think reading about the nadir of American race relations right before bed might have been a mistake.) Anyway....

The main characters in this story are a kind of regular-guy protagonist and his buddy/sidekick, and two very young little girls (sisters.) The protagonist was black, everyone else without exception was white. It started with it the hero and his buddy working on a car or something (they're mechanics? That part wasn't very clear) with the TV in the background, and it's suddenly broadcast on the news that the two girls had been kidnapped, police were searching for them, etc. Based on the clues given, the protagonist thinks he recognizes the place they're being held. Now, in real life, this is what anonymous tip hotlines are for, whereas "I think I'll head over there and stage a vigilante rescue mission without telling anyone" is a horrifically bad move. However, this was my dream, so shut up. :( So anyway, off they go.

The guy is right, and he manages to deal with the kidnapper somehow (I missed that part) and save the girls. So now we have the guy, his buddy, and the two girls in the guy's car. Suddenly, the reason why this might not have been the best idea comes to light: since the police were unaware of this scheme and are looking for the girls, it's now going to look very strongly like he's the kidnapper. The fact that he's black basically seals his fate, because apparently this whole thing was set in an incredibly racist time/place where they were just looking for excuses to take down black people. Even the slightest theoretical implication that this guy might have kidnapped these precious little white children? Oh, he's screwed.

For a while, the movie seemed to involve trying to get the girls back to their home without being caught. That ultimately failed, though, and the guy was caught. Of course, hearing his side of the story (and even having the girls vouch for it) did absolutely nothing, and the guy was promptly arrested. And by "arrested," I mean he was put in shackles while the police officer walked about a block away, and demanded the guy follow. As he was walking, an angry crowd started to form. It started with jeers, then eventually small rocks were thrown, then bigger rocks, then they moved in to use the too-huge-to-throw rocks as melee weapons. The guy was stoned/bludgeoned to death, and given the circumstances/racial tension, no one really cared. Even the officer came back after a while to find out what was taking the guy so long to get over there, saw the aftermath, and basically said "Oh, okay, nevermind then." The whole thing ended with a shot of the buddy and the two girls crying. Nothing beyond that was really ever resolved.

Sparrow 2

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 23:30:42 GMT

Dream during a full night's sleep that started at about 8:00 AM on Tuesday, September 11, 2007.

The dream appeared to start near the conclusion of a vacation our whole family was taking at some big fancy hotel...complex. I say complex because just about every single business and location in the entire town was a part of the hotel. There appeared to be a hint of intrigue to the history of the place, but it wasn't touched on yet as of when the dream started.

I entered one of the rooms in a big central plaza-like area, which happened to lead to a small bank office. Three things that make no sense in the real world, but were just assumed for the purposes of this dream:
* I needed to get my name legally changed for some reason.
* To legally change your name, all you have to do is fill out a name-change form. Banks have a bunch of blank ones just lying around. They're green.
* I normally kept a lot of them on my person for some reason, but apparently was without them for once (left my wallet at home or something?) so I had to get another one. How embarrassing.

Just to try and show off their technology (but in a friendly, convenient way, not a sinister Big Brother type way for some reason) all I had to do was tell the clerk my name, and she came up with my full address, and added "But apparently you live in Colorado now..." (I'm assuming that was the location of the hotel.) "...but you're leaving today?" That's strange. I thought we were checking out and going home tomorrow. I certainly hadn't packed yet or anything. I explained the situation but added that her info must just be wrong or something, and left.

So I got that taken care of, then went back to the plaza and out. The next phase of whatever I was supposed to be doing involved meeting my sister, waiting with her until my parents arrived and going somewhere for some reason...I forget this part. As soon as I got in the car, though, I noticed she had a friend of hers or something (I forget who it was, now,) and we were moving. This was odd, both because she was supposed to wait for our parents, and also because they had the keys. (Apparently, in my dream logic world, you can get into a car, but you need the keys to actually use the ignition and drive off.) She was hijacking the car! She was doing it by stuffing very small traces of gunpowder into the ignition keyhole, and each time it went off, it would make the car propel forward a good ways. Steering worked normally, so she was just sort of "driving" it away like that. (Note to would-be carjackers: I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that in real life and would actually be a monumentally bad idea.)

I had no idea what she was up to, but I wanted no part of it, so I demanded she stop and let me out of the car. She did. Now, I had to get back to the hotel...er...the part of it my parents were at, probably standing there wondering where everyone is, so I could explain the situation. I ran. Unfortunately, my sister wasn't going to let me foil her plans that easily. The car backed up and then started keeping perfect pace with me (don't ask me how she did that with the gunpowder trick, even within the rules of this dream,) and reached out the window and poked me repeatedly. I couldn't get away, since I couldn't out-top-speed a car and they could just any level of my pace below that. The dream kind of turned into an RPG at this point; the poking attack was a special move that could only be used while in a car on someone who wasn't, and caused massive stat drain every time it connected. She gleefully exclaimed that this was going to make me so weak that even the next level 1 random encounter would easily kill me. Then, she suddenly appeared on the sidewalk in front of me. (???) As if proving her point, she poked me in the chest, and down I went, instantly defeated. Assuming I was out of the way and no longer a threat, she and her friend sped off, to parts unknown.

At this point, I had two options. I could either respawn at the hotel...er...the main part of it, or get up and keep going from here. The first option was far preferable because the main part was where I was trying to get to anyway, and I left my wallet and phone and stuff like that there, so if I wanted to contact my parents, clearly I should get to where they are instantly and then have the phone in case they left already. So, because I'm dumb, I went with option two, getting up from where I stood and trying to run back to the plaza. Sigh.

Amazingly enough, I encountered them on the way, looking around and trying to find either of us. When asked what happened with her, I simply responded with "Her treachery knows no bounds" and told both of them to get inside. Inside. Where it's safer. You know, in case they come back and have any more car-to-sidewalk attacks. I said I'd explain everything later, but for now, just trust me and get inside. Dad was helpful enough to immediately do as told, but mom tarried, staying out on the sidewalk looking around for another good thirty seconds after we were in. Finally she came, and as if to make up for the trouble that stunt caused, she locked the door behind her when we were in. I didn't realize she had the key to...wherever we were.

I surveyed my surroundings. There were three of us (mom/dad/me) and three random hotel workers, all of whom appeared to be older men. There was a staircase leading down in the corner of the room, and I have no idea what was down there, if it was just a storeroom or a passage that led to other parts of the complex or what. However, surveying the room itself, there were no entrances or exits whatsoever aside from the door mom just locked and the staircase. Apparently we were safe.

"Okay, so..." I began, then suddenly halted. "Wait, can they be trusted?" I asked about the workers. Apparently this was now an intrigue-filled spy movie or something, where there was some sort of grand conspiracy and I had to keep an eye on who knows what I'm revealing. "They're fine," my mom answered, pointing to a poster on the wall I had somehow missed in my earlier appraisal of the room. "Sparrow 2 - Coming Soon."

Sudden, I knew, in an unexplained but already-revealed sense (as if this had already been established earlier.) Sparrow 2 was a video game under development, when something big happened to derail the project. Since then, the former Sparrow 2 development team was at the very center of this conspiracy (in the "likely target" sense, not the "they're actually in on it" sense,) just like the token group of kidnapped-one-by-one scientists in Sky Captain or any movie remotely like that. Just as mom implied, the Sparrow 2 dev team could certainly be trusted, and might even know more about what my sister was up to. (The fact that just having a Sparrow 2 poster on the wall was sufficient proof they were actually part of the dev team was just sort of assumed, I guess.)

Just as I was about to explain what she had done to catch my parents up on the situation, I woke up.

Three-part story

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:46:50 GMT

Dream during a full night's sleep that started at about 2:00 AM on Friday, August 31, 2007.

This dream was split into three parts that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

First, I was in high school again. (Sigh.) It was the end of the day, and we were listening to the customary end-of-the-day announcements. Unfortunately, things broke down severely. Toward the end of the announcements, the guy reading them actually broke with the script to loudly complain--over the PA system--about how the announcements team was in shambles because of excessive forced bureacracy; too many positions created that don't really do anything except serve as an excuse to hire more people, too many 7th-graders who suck even at that. His specific example was that he emphasized the difference between an Ember and an Ender, saying that a reasonable announcements team is only supposed to have one ember, but theirs has an ember, an ender, a junior ember, and a junior ender. Further explaining himself, he stated that the job of an ender is supposed to be filling out the official forms and such before the school demolishes anything, because there's apparently a state law that prohibits the school from bulldozing anything on their own property without first securing permission from PETA. Loudly grumbling about this law, he said "It's enough to make me want to join ____-____", both blanks filled by independent (he only joined them for the sake of his point) organizations that were apparently either anti-PETA or just stood for opposing goals. I remember one of them was "WOODIA," but I completely lost the other one. I thought to myself that ____ would have been a better example, but now I can't remember what went there, either.

Then I get home, and somehow that turns into one of the muppets from the Muppet Show (though an original one, I don't think there's anything in their roster that looks like what was in my dream) was retiring or something, and it was really sad. And he was there, and we were talking to him, and I asked him about it and he assured me that he's not disappearing forever; he's just going to appear a lot less frequently, both for the sake of not overworking himself and so that he doesn't get overexposed and lose his charm. I asked how often he'd appear, then, and he said roughly once a month.

Finally, we all walked into the garage, because apparently someone was about to leave and we had to see them off or something. There was a dog in the garage who was eerily similar to our old (now-deceased) dog Dixie. Like Dixie, she was a very obese female Italian Greyhound. Even the coloring was the same (bluish-grey and white) but her patterning was different and the shade of grey involved in this one was a little darker and more toward the bluish side. She even let me pick her up and hold her the way Dixie used to. And, of course, since this was a dream, she talked. Sometimes. I could ask her a question, and about half the time she'd just open up and answer me directly. The other time she wouldn't. It appeared to be random. For some reason, my mom was adamant in crushing any notion that this actually was Dixie. She really went out of her way to remind me over and over that they're not the same, that the similarities are coincidence, and that this new one doesn't or wouldn't recognize me. When I asked the dog about it, she seemed to give conflicting answers--sometimes she seemed to recognize me, sometimes she didn't. At that point I woke up, so I guess that was never resolved.

I seem to dream about Dixie a lot. I'm not sure if that means anything, other than good God, I miss her. She was the best dog ever. :(

Boat hijacking?

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 01:18:06 GMT

Dream/nightmare had on a full night's sleep that started at about 9:30 AM on Saturday, August 25, 2007.

The dream started on a little inflatable liferaft, with three people dressed for deep-sea diving sitting on the edge, about to do that thing where they fall backwards off the raft and land on their back in the water. I never figured out why divers have to do it like that. Maybe it just looks cooler. I should mention that this was not in the middle of the deep sea. In fact, it was fair to say we were pretty well docked. The liferaft couldn't have been more than six feet from the nearest pier, and the gigantic cruise ship to which this liferaft apparently belonged was about twenty feet away. (1.8m and 6.1m away for anyone reading this who isn't part of one of the last three countries in the world who are still stubborn about this whole metric system thing. But anyway....) The ship was docked and in port. There was a small ice spike (kind of like an iceberg, only really small) protruding from the water, and there was a lot of snow and such on the land. Apparently this was a good place to do deep-sea diving. I attribute it to dream logic; like that one time I dreamed I was out of Oreos I had sworn to bring for some important school function or something and went to the Oreo mine in my backyard to get more, sometimes things in dreams just magically make sense and you don't question them.

Anyway, I briefly took control of one of the divers (my dreams tend to alternate between omniscient movie-like perspective and actually being one of the characters, and no, that's not enough for me to actually realize this is a dream either) and put my hands in the water to test. Holy fuck it was cold. I mean, seriously, it was insanely, do-they-seriously-expect-us-to-dive-in-this? cold. Though, oddly enough, that stopped registering once we actually jumped in. And, of course, since this is dream logic, the scene instantly turned into a boundless deep-sea scene that looked like Discovery Channel footage, so apparently right in a port is a good place to go diving. So there. (Note: Don't try this)

We got off to a very poor start, because one of the other divers chickened out and did an incredibly sloppy dive that ended in his losing his mask. Without it, he was in serious trouble, since he apparently couldn't swim. (Sure, being able to breathe underwater negates some of the necessity of that, but I would hope real-world divers are expected to have the basic concepts of swimming down just in case. Oh well, dream logic.) I found it in all the thrashing. It didn't look like a very effective diving mask--in fact, it just looked like one-piece diving goggles. (only the kind for diving, not for Chemistry lab. I did the best I could with Google image search. Shut up.) I don't pretend to know how those helped with the breathing aspect of diving, since they didn't cover the nose. They attached to the guy's air tanks, though, and apparently they actually worked when he was wearing them. Apparently he breathes through his eyes. Dream logic. Moving on.

The scene went back to the omniscient cinematic view and focused on the ship this time, as it was suddenly being hijacked. A team of gunmen came in and slaughtered everyone who got in their way and took over. Well, fuck. Just a quick note: I seldom get nightmares, but when they do, it's always gunmen. Either I'm a passenger on something that gets hijacked, or I'm alone and there's just one guy with a gun looking for me that I have to hide from. One way or another, every nightmare I have plays off my apparent fear of being shot. Which, apparently, is pretty significant, as even in real life, I rank the scene with the female hostage being forced to identify herself and describe her situation over the PA system in Air Force One to be one of the hardest things to watch I've ever...um...watched. It ranks right up there with Fargo pretty much in its entirety.

There was a scene amidst the chaos where the passengers were having a lovely elegant dinner party, being calmly observed from the corner by the waiter/butler/maître d'/whatever you call the well-dressed older British gentleman who was apparently in charge of the evening. Then, another butler or whatever approached the first, whispered something in his ear, and left. The first stepped forward, and addressed the guests as such: "My esteemed ex-guests..." There was some crowd murmuring wondering what he meant by that, not helped by the fact that he broke down for a brief second. He then pulled himself together and continued. "It is my duty to inform you that... you are free to go."

At this point, perspective switched again and I was one of the passengers. In real life, that would be the most vague speech ever, but I knew what he meant because I had seen all the carnage from the omniscient perspective. (Which...somehow transferred to this particular passenger I was now. Maybe he was psychic or something. Dream logic.) Apparently they were nice enough to free the passengers and only detain the staff. Were this an action movie, some brave passenger with an ex-military background would hide under the table so he could stealthily stay on board, then sneak around the conquered ship and get to the bottom of the hijackers' mad scheme. Well fuck that. My interest in not being shot was significantly greater than my curiosity as to even the basic premise of what the hijackers were after.

We left the ship, which was conveniently still at port, and the parking lot was right there so the freed passengers didn't have to wait to drive away or anything. (Are there parking lots in ports? Oh, who cares.) As we were leaving, I overheard conversation between two other passengers to the effect of whether it's better to be among the first to leave when a group of hostages are being freed (and run the risk of it being a trap and being herded somewhere) or to be among the last (and run the risk of the hijackers changing their minds or something after 3/4 of them left.) I joined in by simply stating that I preferred to take my chances with at least being on solid land. After all, all we had to do was get to our cars and drive away. Surely they didn't plant operatives in the individual homes and apartments of every passenger or anything. Once we were out of the port, we'd be fine.

Oh, fuck. My parents had both sets of keys to the car. They were the divers from the first part of this dream, so they were a little inaccessible right now. I happened across the idea of calling the...um...company people who would be in charge of whatever it was I was trying to claim, but I'm sure they wouldn't believe "My parents are underwater right now, can you please unlock/make keys/do whatever so I can take their car? Quickly, now. Oh, they have my ID, too, sorry."

Resigned to the fact that I wasn't using my own car to get out of there, I decided to try and get a ride. I wasn't particularly concerned with details--I don't care if they were going to Burger King, so long as there was a car getting out of the port and I was in it. I managed to find a group of four who looked suspiciously like people I went to high school with (though this wasn't revealed within the actual dream; apparently my subconscious is lazy enough to just reuse the forms instead of inventing anyone else and pretend they were new.) I asked if I could get in, they said sure, and I woke up before the dream had a chance to turn into Road Trip.

School and work

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 18:14:48 GMT

Dream during a full night's sleep that started at about 2:00 AM on Saturday, August 11, 2007.

This was one of those back-in-school dreams. I get those fairly frequently. It's almost always high school for some reason. The basic premise is that I'm in school again, I have a huge final in a few days, and I haven't even begun to go over the material. 99% of the time, it's English class and a huge daunting Faulkneresque novel I haven't even cracked open yet. This was no exception. Like most back-in-school dreams, I was totally doomed.

What made this one extra fun is that I was also back in my office job at the BLM. And to make matters worse, I had the job, but I had absolutely no idea what my hours were. I think I was in for a couple days a week, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what days. This was bad, because I hadn't been in in a couple days, and there was a fairly decent chance I had just flat-out not come to work when I was supposed to. Of course, I also really had to hope that my schedule happened to be weekends; there wasn't a whole lot I could do if I was supposed to be at work when I was also supposed to be in school. I had to call the BLM to figure out what my schedule was, but I didn't have the front desk in my cell phone's phone book, and I couldn't remember what it was without that. I did have a few random co-workers, but calling them directly just to say "Hi, can you transfer me to the front desk?" would have been embarrassing.

I was also dressed up fairly heavily for the BLM job. Like, apparently the only difference between the dream version of my job's dress code and a full suit and tie and coat was that the BLM apparently didn't make you wear the coat. I normally hate dressing up, but this time, I was considering going all the way anyway...if only because I was already there from the waist down anyway, and I looked kind of silly with everything but the coat. Also, for some reason, my hairstyle was one of those only-possible-in-anime looks where it was mostly shoulder-length and kind of spiky, but with one super-long ponytail in the back.

The relief when I woke up from this one and realized that I did not actually have a final I was sure to fail and a job I might have accidentally abandoned was tremendous. I never did like public education. I blame all the back-in-school dreams I get on some form of PTSD or something. All I know is that I'm glad I'm a weaver now. Also, this is possibly the most anachronistic dream I've ever had, as I was simultaneously in high school, had my BLM job (which I only had during college,) and tried to use my cell phone to work out my schedule (which I didn't get until long after dropping out of college and moving in with yiffyraptor.)

Two videogame-related dreams

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:44:00 GMT

Dream during a full night's sleep that started at about 9:00 PM on Monday, August 6, 2007.

This one seemed to be about Neverwinter Nights 2, but with a made-up gameplay mechanic which I'm sure isn't in the real game. Basically, party members would occasionally get pissy and leave you, unless you successfully wrote them a letter to basically say you're sorry or whatever. The letter more or less looked like a Mad Lib, and you were supposed to write the appropriate words in the blanks, and if they were right, you'd get a point. I assume getting enough points would convince the character to come back. The recognition system seemed a little too forgiving, though, in that it appeared to mostly boil down to "Put something in this blank and we'll give you a point."

I recall the letter to the particular party member this involved having a line to the effect of (after proper words had been added back in) how I'm sorry that I considered everything from armor to even food and toys (?) in the party budget, but never once considered getting her a nice bow and arrow set. I recall being irritated with this, because it's patently untrue in the actual game; I try to look out for nicer bows for her and I'm always buying her more arrows. My main beef with her is actually that I'm more or less Lawful Good and she insists on trying to get me to let her loot things, under-report how much we recovered when recovering stolen goods and pocketing the difference, etc.

Subsequent dream after an aborted attempt to wake up (woke up, fell back to sleep, had second dream) the same night.

This one started with a plan to go to a theater and watch a movie or something. There was a guy in my group who was more or less an exact placement of this guy I used to know in elementary/high school named Chris, but for whatever reason, my mom came up with a different name for him and insisted I use that. It was four letters and started with an "E" (Eric? Elmo? Something?) but I couldn't actually remember it, even in the dream. We left, when I suddenly realized I had forgotten my glasses, which are kind of important for a movie theater. So, I went back home to get them.

Unfortunately, the dream suddenly turned into Pokemon at this point, and the bad guys from that game were so infuriated that I had defeated them time and time again that they...turned my house into some sort of five-floor teleporter maze dungeon, and promised I'd see the truth behind their plans if I found the four pieces of the formula or manifesto or whatever scattered around the place. My group was pretty pissed with me at this point, since obviously it was taking way too long to take care of this whole thing, and all I wanted was to just get my glasses and then go see a movie. :(

Blessing in disguise

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:19:33 GMT

Dream during a three-hour or so nap started at about noon on Saturday, August 4, 2007.

This dream mostly pertained to a certain song. Just like songs in real life, my recollection of the lyrics is somewhat vague--I tend to just perceive the vocals as another instrument, and seldom pay attention to what they're actually saying. The parts of the chorus I could recall, with Xs for placeholders (one X = one syllable, XX is two syllables but very close together, like from a single two-syllable word:)

Fly on broken wings, X X X X X X
Living on broken dreams, XX X X X X X

With "wings" and "dreams" possibly reversed or mistaken for something that sounds similar. I really liked it because of the second line. It has extra syllables but is crammed into the same-size line, so the end result is that the lyrics are faster-moving. The effect of fast-moving lyrics in the chorus to a song is something I've always loved. I'm sure it has to have a name, but I don't know it. For examples of this effect in action (which are almost all Edguy for some reason,) see:

Avantasia -- Farewell (At 2:00 even, Time telling me to say farewell, but I knew that I would fight hell, and I know we will/go for another time we can see, for another time we'll be free for no more farewell)
Edguy -- The Pharaoh (can't find a video anywhere, but it's the part that goes Don't you see that it's coming, it's near, the wise man screamed in the noble chamber/just a parrot in a rich man's cage, he's a jester on the court)
Edguy -- Land of the Miracle (At about 4:04, Take a look into the book of fantasy and poetry and you will see what you can feel is everything you need to heal your crying mind, the soul behind, and everything that you may find inside your head)
Edguy -- Tears of a Mandrake (1:33, On a merchantman, he counts his money, then he sails away, and to a certain extent, 1:57, After the storm, when the magic is gone, drown in the tears of a mandrake)

Apparently this song was the focal point of the dream, as it was either massively popular on the radio and such or held some sort of personal significance. Or maybe I just really really liked it thanks to that slight compression trick in the chorus. My memory fails a bit at this part. The song was entitled Broken Wings (or Broken Dreams, or whatever that word actually was,) and I was told that it was an old softer song (maybe a folk song, or something) that a metal band covered for the version I heard then. (Like what Angra did to Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights.) I think it was established that the song was some sort of rarity/B-side from the Avantasia project. (For those unaware, Avantasia is a series of power metal concept albums put together by the guy from Edguy and featuring damn near everyone, set up as a sort of opera with all the singers being given a specific part. Highly recommended.)

I guess there wasn't much more to it than that. Basically a dream about a fictitious metal cover of a folksy song about Broken Wings or something.

Well, except for the fact that when I woke up, the song was stuck in my head--including the second part of the chorus, which was suspiciously absent from the dream--and was instantly recognizable.

Fly on broken wings, X X X X X X
Living on broken dreams, XX X X X X X
Fly on broken wings, what a blessing in disguise
A blessing in disguise

It's a real song, cleverly entitled "Blessing in Disguise." It's not Avantasia, but it is Edguy, so I was close. (So there's Edguy again....) It is kind of a B-side, in that it's not on any of their studio albums but it is on the single/EP for "Superheroes." Pandora plays it all the time for me, which must be where I got it from. To my knowledge, though, it isn't a cover. I have no idea where that part came from.