Sailing the Noosphere

1. I'm cripplingly depressed, but I'm riding my bike anyway to meet my brother behind an old Blockbuster in my hometown. The store has been repurposed into a porn store, and I go in and buy something. I see my mom exit from the nearby Walgreens, so naturally I drop the porn and meet her. Rest of DJ is unintelligible.

2. I'm hanging out/jamming with my friend Scott A. in the basement of my house. Q and S.T. come over. I go to greet them, but in my clumsiness I start a chain reaction that breaks a bunch of lamps. None of my friends seem to particularly care, but I grab a vacuum cleaner anyway. As I go for it, I realize I'm hungry. I take the vacuum with me and grab my bicycle, heading to my college cafeteria. Along the way, I am insulted about my age by Nathan S. and other jackasses from college. I ignore them and head into the cafeteria, where I first enter the bathroom.

3. I'm playing a Star Trek version of the TIE Fighter video game. I successfully pilot a starfighter against impossible odds, several capital ships at a time. There's then a "trench run" sequence as in Star Wars, where I follow a freighter into a massive building. It's decorated as a nightclub for giants, and there's a critical spot on the floor that I need to shoot. I can't keep my craft steady enough to shoot and use the tractor beam at the same time and fail the mission.

1. I place a mail order for two large grey discs of "questionable literary material." They arrive in my backyard at a bad time, as I'm playing something with my brother and my mom is on the patio talking. I keep my cool and wait until night to bring them in, but both parents are still puttering around. My dad goes outside to get a radio; I perceive him like guard from Metal Gear Solid. I make a mad dash past him with the discs under my arm, then run up the stairs, stash them under my bed and get ready to go back out. My brother then enters, dressed in a little green man alien costume.

2. I'm playing some sort of Disney/Halo crossover game. Its first level is a straightforward run and gun with an HMG, but the second is sniper mission that my dad and I can't beat. I scan a crowd of faces with my scope, but don't see the character I'm supposed to kill. I shrug and give up, and the sniper nest turns into a hotel room.

3. I'm biking at a local college, where I see my friend C.W. I invite him to have lunch with me.

1. My family visits MGM studios at Disney World. One of the main attractions seems to be a large kissing booth with "famous people," but all one can see of these people is a pair of lips. There are text descriptions of each person under their lips, from Einstein to Disney himself and more. I explore for a bit, then head to the exit area, where a friendly Disney employee offers Purell hand sanitizer and a station for making PB&J sandwiches. As I exit into a garden, I look up at the sky and see two missiles streaking down towards the ground. I remark to myself how much the missiles look like breasts, then run to the impact site. My dad is nearby, pissed off, because the missiles were aimed at his bicycle as punishment for trying to enter an attraction through a forbidden doorway. He mentions he might not have been on best terms with Disney, as they caught him littering before.

2. Some sort of four-color version of the webcomic Cyanide and Happiness. The characters are attacked by a shark while on an ocean raft, and they hold it off. The dream ends when the characters start to peel layers off of themselves, revealing different shirts.

3. Vague account of bounding like a dog through a streetlight night...

1. I'm trying to hack around in Facebook to find a way to see V's profile again (after she's blocked me IRL). Soon, however, I don't have to hack, as she re-adds me just long enough to send a poorly written but very painful letter (I fail the text RC).

2. I'm biking with E and C from the research station in a upscale community, trying to make a lunch date with the rest of the crew. In retrospect, the community has been a dream location before.

1. I finally have returned from my research station, and I meet up with my old friend W at his house. He's suitably curious, asking all about my experiences, if I got lonely or bored and what I did for fun. I show him some of the things my parents brought me to make the time more enjoyable. This triggers a question of advice for his own presents, as his girlfriend's birthday is coming up. She's a nerdy actress, and he shows me two things he's considering.
One is a portable stage light that casts a brilliant circle on demand. The other is a bath towel with a built-in calculator (numbers go crazy, so another failed RC). I laugh at both and suggest the light as better. We continue to discuss girls until my mom interrupts us. We adopt a stony silence and sit awkwardly until W breaks it with a cheesy one-liner. I laugh so hysterically I fall out of the dream!

2. I make a trip to the Louvre in Paris with the students from my research station. I wander aimlessly along the corridors of art until I find a computer lab, in which everyone is hanging out. I feel mildly annoyed that we came all this way for everyone to ignore the art. In any case we all go outside, where Paris is covered in snow. This doesn't stop me from renting a bicycle and barreling down a sick hill with epic jumps. Eventually I wipe out in a crazy fashion, landing somewhat on my neck, even though the snow cushions my fall.

3. I'm on an Amazon river canoe trip with my advisor, and tensions are running high.

1. I've taken the day off to go shopping with the parents. We go to a Wal-Mart, and as usual I start goofing off. However, I soon find myself in a section of the store I've never visited before. It's a "premium" section, one for the extremely rich, even though the prices are still advertised as rollback (Fuck me, another failed text RC). They're selling things like ultralight airplanes and antique cars, but in the back I find a couple of Tour de France level bicycles. The first one I try has the wheels attached backwards, making it impossible to use, but the second is allright. I take it and start riding around the store with the wind in my hair, and feel silly but happy.
As I ride back to return the bike, my cell phone goes off (with the RL ringtone). I pull it out of my shorts, but with only one hand on the wheel I have no way to control what happens next. I crash through two panes of heavy glass in the back of the store, and stumbling from the wreckage fall over a plane! The manager comes up, angrily demanding that we pay, but my Dad only has $400 on him. I start to freak out.

2. I'm answering questions on Twocansandstring.com (an awesome website), when someone asks about spinach and Popeye. I start to answer, but wander outside to underneath a tree at my research station. V and one of the grad students wander over to me. V makes awkward small talk as the grad student strokes her, and I feel extreme jealousy.

3. Las Vegas has become a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by pop-punk style overlords. The streets, however, are filled with legions of metalhead zombies. Something happens to one of the rulers, and I see the teeming throngs rise up to take back control of the city.

1. Mom, my brother, and I are driving around downtown Cincinnati, when I notice some interesting graffiti on the side of a tall building. Everyone gets out of the car and starts to climb the building, eventually reaching an outcrop near the tags. One is simple to interpret and just says "Rage," the other is a design that looks like two capital "A" letters that share a leg. I think that the latter symbol is the tagger's way of representing A=A, the Objectivist tenet. This is backed up when I find (and start leafing through, missing a RC) a philosophy textbook. Details afterward are fuzzy, but the conversation among the family turns to something horrible, and I remember a crushing sadness. The textbook falls and shatters as we climb down, and eventually I start to sob.

2. I'm watching a movie-style overview of an epic bike race in Africa. Things quickly go over-the-top; one bike is a robotic monstrosity, one is ridden by an ape-man who carries jungle animals with him, and one is ridden by Spiderman. Crazy hijinks ensue, but details are kind of fuzzy.