Glieuaeiel's DJ

Mom's Army

My mom is an evil wizard. We would be able to deal with that, but apparently she is somehow using her powers to give similar powers to other people as well. I discover this when I overhear some men talking about how they're on their way to a ceremony gain those powers and join her army. They say that she's planning to convert one percent of the world's population, then stop, allowing them to rule over the rest of humanity. This is bad news for me and the rest of my family.

Cruelty to Animals

A woman from the housing system has taken my family's dog for a walk while we're on a camping trip. While most everyone else is distracted, I see the woman use the shock collar to zap the dog for absolutely no reason. This makes me very angry, and I immediately report the event to my dad.

Frags:

• bugs being scary
• "fly -- over [illegible] northern realms"
• orchestra audition

Politeness (6:55)

I'm sitting at a table with my dad while Mom does something nearby. Dad is ostensibly talking to her, but he's talking about the one time he and I went to get a pumpkin milkshake together while on a road trip. [IRL: this has never happened, but I did have my first pumpkin milkshake a couple weeks ago.] Apparently it was one of the few times in his life where I wasn't rude to him. I was being nice to him. I think it's creepy that he's reminiscing so much about it, especially when I goes on to say the state in which it happened--no context or anything, just "Indiana." I don't really know how to explain to him that I think he's being creepy, so I decide just to be rude and hope he gets the message. I tell him to stop, and when he asks why, I just get up to move to a different room. Obviously, he thinks this is immature behavior on my part--being rude just because he's accusing me of being nice sometimes--but it's a fair enough price to pay if it means he'll stop trying to have conversations like that one.

Tenacious Moth (6:55)

I'm sitting outside at the picnic table when a moth flies at my head. Frantically, I swipe my hands through my hair, trying to get it out, but it won't leave. It doesn't seem to have a healthy fear of being crushed. I suspect it has a romantic attachment to me, or at least to some other person who often sits out here at this picnic table. But the sensation of moth's wings in my hair is really disturbing, and eventually I swipe so much that I jolt myself awake. A few minutes later, my alarm goes off.

[These dreams were not very fun. I felt kind of sad this morning.]

Pop Music vs. Classical Music

Listening to a pop song, I realize that the intro is taken from a piece of classical music. But they really messed up the phrase when they took it out of context and changed it like that. I'm frustrated. I try to find a family member, so I can explain to them what the problem is.

Malicious Shower

Trying to avoid notice becomes somewhat more difficult when my sister shows up in the restaurant. Mentally, I change my disguise to a short-haired Korean woman with a strong accent. I walk to my sister's table to ask her a question, and after we exchange a few sentences, I realize that she thinks I'm one of her new students just arrived for orientation. My disguise looks just like one of the students she just met.

The manager of the restaurant comes over to say that I can have as many samples as I desire before deciding what to eat. After he's gone, I decide to try some of what my sister's table ordered. The trouble is, it's still in a tin baking pan, and whenever we try to cut a bit off of it for me to eat, the pan just spins in circles. There's not enough friction. But eventually we hold it still long enough for me to cut halfway through and rip the piece the rest of the way off. It tastes good. I wind up for a high five with my sister; it's funny because we're both wearing oven mitts on our right hands. But afterwards, I worry if that might have blown my cover.

I wander around the restaurant and arrive at the conveyor belt that customers use to return used dishes. It's similar to the oversized baggage claim in that there are a limited number of slots. You have find an empty slot and try to slide your dishes into it as it rotates past you. A slightly awkward kid from my school is in line in front of me; I doubt he has the chops for this. Plus, the employee overseeing the conveyor belt points out that there's only one slot open. The kid tries to slide his tray at the slot, but he hesitated too much, and it hits the rubber divider. The overseer takes the tray and puts it in the next available slot, and then it's my turn. Fortunately, it looks like there are a lot more open slots, now. But it turns out that I miss, as well.

I have to go to the bathroom. I haven't seen one in this restaurant, so I walk through the big hallway connecting the restaurant to the other business in this building. The main room of the other business is very tall, and small circular tables dot the floor, spaced pretty far apart. It's a nice room, very open. There's a big window in one wall, and the others are painted in light colors. It's the second time I've visited this room; I was here once before my sister came into the restaurant. And yes, there is a bathroom!

I go inside, but when I go into the stall to pee, I'm doused from above with a lot of water. I try to get out of the shower of water, but then another one starts above my new location. It's like there are fire-extinguishing sprinklers all over the ceiling, with laser detection so that they start pouring whenever anyone stands under them. I mean, I wouldn't mind the shower, but I don't think I have any way to dry myself off. Oh, wait--there's a brown towel hanging from a hook just inside the stall. Good thing I thought to bring that. I go back into the stall and try to pee, but it's difficult. I have to hold up the toilet seat with one hand while standing pretty far back from the bowl and aiming my urine carefully.

When I wake up, no, I don't actually have to go to the bathroom.

Unsanitary

[Content warning: this one features poop.]

Spoiler for Unsanitary:

I have to go to the bathroom, so I start peeing in the front hall, naked. There's a place for me to do that, there, but there's no place to poop, so it's bad news when poop starts coming out, as well. I couldn't stop it because I had to finish peeing, first. Fortunately, it's pretty dry. Although I don't really want to, I don't have much choice, so I put my off hand under my butt and try to hold the poop there. I decide to go into the bathroom, since I suspect my sister is in the family room, and she probably doesn't want to see this. When I open the bathroom door, I'm taken aback by the mess. There's a house centipede on the floor, and also a trail of what looks like wet grass leading out of the bathtub. I wonder if it's marijuana--maybe my other sister was doing something in here. It would be just like her not to clean up after herself. But I'm just going to have to deal with the mess, because I'm in sort of an emergency situation.

Slushie Shop

Dad and I are on the way to an event I want to attend. It's an hours-long drive from my house. We're passing a slushie shop, and Dad asks me if I want anything. I don't, really, so I reply, "Only if you're really hungry." He stops anyway, so he probably only asked me because he wanted to visit the place himself.

Another day, we're going to the same event, and we stop at the same shop. This time, they're understaffed, so they tell us it will take half an hour for the slushie to be ready. It takes a moment for that to sink in. There's no way we have half an hour; we didn't build that much extra time into our schedule. My soccer game starts pretty soon. But we stay anyway. While we wait, we sit at a table with two employees of the shop. One of them gets to talking with my dad about the four districts of Denver. One of the districts is mentioned by name, and the male employee starts talking about a building in that district which is associated with the gay rights movement. He's in favor of it, and he's frustrated with people who are making trouble for the building. After he leaves, the female employee apologizes for him, saying that he doesn't understand that gays are degenerate people [or something to that effect]. I don't respond, since I don't want the situation to escalate, but I reflect upon the apparent fact that everyone against the gay agenda is just a homophobe.

Another day, we're going to the same event, but this time my mom is driving me. We stop at the same shop. My mom tries to pour the slushie from the machine herself, but it doesn't go too well. Worth a laugh, though.

Procrastination

As I'm driving in the right lane along city streets, something important falls out of the passenger side of the car. I really don't want to go back for it. It seems like that would be a huge hassle. On the other hand, I need that something when I get to my destination, so if I don't stop now, I'll just have to stop later, and that would be even more of a hassle. Reluctantly, I look for a place to pull off on the shoulder. I'm not going to turn the car around; I'll just park and walk back. The brakes don't work very quickly, so I miss the first spot I was aiming for, and I have to use the next one. It's right next to a residential driveway. I hope the owner doesn't mind.

Chocolate Graham Crackers

I'm lying in bed in the morning. There's a lot of cereal in the bed with me; my personal stash. But I'm leaving for college in four days, and I'm not sure I can finish all of the cereal in time. I decide to have cereal for breakfast. It's a mixture of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and chocolate graham crackers. Carefully, I dip each piece of cereal in milk using my right hand, then put the dipped piece into my left hand to hold. I'm still in bed, so eventually I'm going to have to carry all of this to the kitchen table.

Incentive

Students are given one piece of candy for each point they got on the last assignment. I got 20/20, which is nice. The students handing out the candy give me two packets of colorful chocolate spheres lined up in a line, then a few extra pieces of some different kind of candy. I'm confused, because I thought there were ten spheres in each packet, so I shouldn't have gotten any extra. But it turns out there are only about eight, so it works out.

[Drat! I got the month wrong. Also, sorry about my absence, there. I've been trying to install Linux on my laptop. . . .]

Crash Landing

I'm in an episode of Doctor Who! I'm in a flying craft when I hear some team members calling for help. I expect someone else to help them, but no one does, so after a minute I go over there myself. The two team members, a man and a woman, are sitting side by side, flying the craft from a sort of detachable pod on the side. There's also a giant, black grasshopper in the pod with them. It's not moving, but it looks dangerous, and I assume that's what's worrying them. I get in the pod to help them, but it looks like we're going to have to crash land. We're going too fast; there's no way anyone should be able to survive this. But somehow, with myself at the wheel, we just glide to a halt on the ground. No one's even bruised. I look over at the two other people and say, with a wry smile, "I have no idea how that just happened."

But there's no time to think about that. Everyone gets out of the craft. The man who was next to me takes out a small model of the grasshopper and disparagingly throws it on the ground. Wow, was that all he needed to do to deal with it? Suddenly I remember that the only reason we needed the grasshopper was because it powered the craft, somehow. I'm glad to be rid of it. But then, from the place the model grasshopper landed, bugs begin to rise from the ground--one by one, but quickly, so that soon there'll be an entire swarm of them. And they don't look benign. The Doctor runs in and meaningfully taps his watch. Yep, it's time to get out of here. I try to run on ledges around the side of the cavern, swatting bugs away from my face. Eventually I get away.

Later, it comes to light that the structure in which we now find ourselves is a remnant of an ancestral civilization, forced to escape from its homeland.

Grammar Game

The point of the game is to take regular English sentences and "translate" them into an amusing American dialect. Something about switching from present tense to present progressive. One variant of the game involving the word "grandma" turns out to be pretty hilarious.

Roommates

I'm back at school, hanging out with my new roommates. First, we eat in the dining hall. I run into some awkwardness where I want to grab some food from a station, but there are other people trying to get around me, so I have to stand off to the side and wait.

Later, we go back to the room. There will be five of us living here, so we all try getting into the bed to see if we will fit. We won't all fit if we lie side by side, so I try putting my pillow on one end of the bed, while the four others decide to put theirs on the other. Hmmm. It's a bit awkward with our feet getting tangled in the middle, and also I think it's weird that I'm the only one on this side. I try to explain it jokingly, saying that I'm lonely over here. Someone suggests that my roommates from previous years switch sides, and I find myself hoping that my old roommate will refuse: I'm already worried that he thinks I'm attracted to him.

Later, I wander out into the halls for a while, then try to find my way back. I don't remember the room number, so I try a door at random. There are girls in this room, but also one of my roommates, so I'm not sure whether it's my room or not. I'm embarrassed to ask, too. Eventually my roommate comes to my rescue, telling me it's the next door over. As I go over to that door, I look around at the peeling paint and splintering wood in the building, and I realize that our house kind of got the raw end of the deal when we were moved over to this building.

Videobomb

Spoiler for Videobomb:

A woman tearfully tells us of a movement to capture videos of creatures with various numbers of legs. Probably she cares about it so much because it has to do with being friends with animals, or something. She tells us that there are still NO submissions about animals with seven legs, nor any for animals with eight legs. And there are barely any for six legs, either. She shows us the single submission they have for a six-legged animal. Bemused, my dad and I watch it.

A girl walks into a room with a couch. For a moment it looks like there are two other girls making out nearby, but the video quality isn't very good. "I wonder what that was about," I say. My dad grunts noncommittally. The girl is now setting up a camera aimed at a jar containing an unusual insect. It has a large, angular, black shell, about the size of a walnut. The plan is to remove the jar and try to get a good picture of the insect before it runs away. But when she takes of the jar, the insect scurries more rapidly than anticipated, and the picture she snaps isn't very clear. Her sister comes in to help her chase down the insect to get another picture. The video ends.

Then Dad and I click on a related video, where the girl explains some of the background to what she was doing. But it turns out she just says, "This is what my friend decided to wear to the video shoot," and then pans over to look at a couple of girls making out on the floor. One of them's only wearing the bottom half of her underwear. After a moment, the other girl comes all the way into the shot, and I realize she's not wearing anything at all. Perhaps it's sexy; I don't know, because I'm mortified to be seeing this at the same time as my Dad. I can't quite figure out what he thinks of it.

Gym Activities

[Warning: This dream makes no sense. Lol. I think I was half awake for most of it.]

A muscular announcer has just adopted a new stage name. He's discussing it with another announcer. They're throwing back and forth ideas for other, more awesome stage names that he could have chosen. One suggests "VenusMercury." The man admits he likes that one a lot, but he couldn't choose it because of trouble in some Chinese provinces named "Venus" and "Mercury." A map appears, showing that these provinces are at the western extreme of China. Then the video cuts to a field correspondent, hiking through the mountains in that area. She talks to the camera as she descends into a very, very deep crevasse in the earth. It's so deep that I suspect the video must be fake. Anyway, they reach the bottom, where there are two very long "flat escalators" (People Movers?) running parallel to each other in opposite directions. So you can ride them around in circles. They start doing an activity where the correspondent puts tape on the floor and the other person has to pick it up. Soon other people are playing the game, including myself. There are so many lines everywhere that it's ridiculous to imagine we'll get rid of them all. And you can't just erase them, because they're all outlined in black and you're supposed to leave the outline in place.

After a time, I try picking up another line, but the gym teacher cuffs me on the shoulder. Apparently class is over, and the basketball team needs those lines on the floor for their practice. I stop. I just watch as the team comes in and starts practicing. I contemplate practicing archery. It would be cool to be able to shoot an arrow while doing a cartwheel. There are a bunch of little kids in the room, and sometimes they get in the way of the basketball players.

I try to leave, but through the door there's just another gym. I'm not sure whether to try another door in the current gym or try another door in this new gym. I'm lost. I ask someone where the principal is, since chances are he'll be in his office, and if I walk in the opposite direction of the principal's office then I'll probably make it outside. The person points at a wall, and a green light appears. I know that the light is floating over the head of the principal. So I walk to a door on the opposite side of the gym. Now, I don't like the basketball players, so before I go, I make a bunch of bugs appear on the wall. Ten spiders, fifteen flies (to feed the spiders), and twenty bitemes. Hah! That should keep them busy. It'll probably also make the principal mad at me, but I'll be gone long before he gets here.

The door leads to the back yard of the school. There's a playground nearby, but no one's around. It's a dark, overcast day, and it's drizzling. I walk along the side of the building towards the front.

Professional Violinist

The results of my friend's audition are not what I had hoped. He was beaten out by an older, long-haired man; a violinist. But today when I come to the meeting, the group leader tells me that he has a special announcement about that violinist. He won't tell me what, but he tries to get me to guess. I can't imagine what it would be; the only thing I remember about the man was that at a previous meeting he played a very legato piece that just kept going and going without giving the player much of a break.

Once everyone gets there, the group leader makes the announcement. It's come to light that this violinist is actually a professional, and therefore disqualified for the competition. Hmmm. Maybe I could have guessed that if I'd realized that the legato piece was too difficult for anyone but a professional to prepare. It's confusing, though, to try and fit together all of the clues, so I give up. I wonder if the violinist feels angry about this disqualification, but no--it looks like he's just glad to be back on solid moral ground.

Leafblighter

It's time for break, so the group disperses throughout the city park to find a good place for lunch. I see a group of four of them heading over to the opposite side of the park, which seems like a good idea. I hurry after them, even though I'm a bit nervous because they're all a couple years older than I am. When I get there, they've set up a blanket on the ground to lay on, and there's a tennis match going on in the nearby courts. I wave and say "Hi!" as jovially as I can, and they're very polite about letting me join them. Only, when I try to lay down near this one guy, he grabs my shoulder, pulls me back, then sits me down in a nearby chair instead. The problem (although he never explained himself explicitly) was that I was going to block his view of the tennis match. I wonder whether the chair is his, or if he just took it from one of the nearby families who are also having lunch in the park.

Later, a bunch of us have gone inside for a while, and now people are starting to leave again. There's something on the wall, a machine about the size of a paper towel dispenser, and we're supposed to use it on the way out. One person seems very nervous about this, looking over the machine very, very carefully before using it. But there aren't any apparent problems, and before long there are just two of us left: me and one other guy. Suddenly, a green bug with a body roughly the size and shape of a leaf comes crawling out of the cracks in the machine. That must have been what the guy was worried about. "Is that Leafblighter?" I ask. The bug crawls back in the machine, and we start hearing screams from a room beyond the wall and above us, which we know is a kitchen. (Not death screams, just I'm-afraid-of-bugs screams.)

I try to continue as I was, but eventually I give up and announce, "You know what? I'm just going to finish my lunch outside." I walk over to the machine, but of course the bug is currently crawling around on it. I take my towel and swing it at the bug. It misses, but the bug does start running away, which means it's not on the machine any more. I use the machine, but then I look back at my towel to check for bug guts. I think I see a pair of antennae, but the towel's wrapped around my waist and I can't twist enough to see for sure. I take off the towel to get a closer look, and sure enough, there's an entire bug stuck to it. Suddenly, from the direction of the machine, a low, threatening voice shouts "Iba flogor!" and something heavy collides with the right side of my head.