Sailing the Noosphere

100th DJ entry! Woot!

1. I have bought a bag of pot from my brother's friend D.H. I smoke it, and sure enough I get a very high/drunk feeling in dream. I approach a mirror, and see that the pupils of my eyes are rapidly dilating in and out to an unnatural degree.

2. I'm on a rafting trip with my graduate adviser. My raft tips over, and I fall into the filthy water of the river. I find myself almost trapped beneath another raft commanded by a fat kid, but do manage to escape.

3. I'm driving my brother's car around town. I notice that many of the billboards and street signs are covered in graffiti. I also notice that my brakes are unresponsive, so I'm forced to drive dangerously, rolling through stop signs and barely avoiding many collisions.

1. I'm engaged in a massive pillow fight at the old research station. All of the fellow researchers are there, along with a couple of high school chums. After a while, I jog off into the dark to explore, where I meet one of the researchers, E.D.

2. I run onto the Cincinnati ballpark's right field. No one seems to act immediately; the announcers booms out, "They don't tell us this shit." I make an arc to center field, where there's a wall and a door that lead out to the river. A burly black security guard with glasses makes a move to stop me, but I easily maneuver out of his way. I vault the wall and head for the door. The guard appears again; this time he actually grabs me and I'm forced to punch him. My getaway vehicle is a Burger King delivery car.

1. I'm part of Ganondorf's wedding party. The ceremony is to take place in a skyscraper, which we enter through a doorway labeled "Weddings for Demons." As we ride up the fully mirrored elevator, I take note of my dress. I'm in all black with a long coat, and pull out a magnum from a side pocket. Others on the elevator roll their eyes and tell me to put the damn gun away.

2. A bunch of college friends and I are in a zombie apocalypse theme park, almost like laser tag. We're gearing up for the first round, and the only improvised weapons we can find to use are musical instruments.

3. I'm racing RC cars with my friend Q. We're on a farm so there's plenty of space, and my RC motorcycle rips along the paths to take a strong lead. I soon miss a turn, however, and the vehicle ends up falling into a lake. A bunch of rednecks are swimming, and they start to throw the motorcycle deeper into the water and fry its electronics. I drop my controller in the water too and start to cry.

4. Someone has time-traveled back to make the Confederacy beat the Union, and I'm watching the ripple effects as they take place in the present day. Surprisingly, not much changes, but all the advertising signs become much more blatant and stereotypically Southern.

I'm driving with my friend Z., and we pull over to a rest stop to chill and get gas. As one of us is pumping the gas, a policeman comes over and asks to see our identification. When we show him, he gets a serious look on his face and tells us we need to come with him. I know I haven't done anything wrong, so I make some excuse about needing to dig around in the car for a bit and then floor the accelerator. We engage on an epic chase sequence through rolling green countryside, and eventually I manage to shake him by doubling back at a turn.

I head to another police station and report the activity. The officer there takes me seriously and hauls the other one in for questioning. He uncovers a whole ring of corruption where officers drive people out to the middle of deserts, take their money, and leave. The dream shifts to an explanation of the charges and the whole conspiracy before I wake.

1. It's a boring night at the research station, so to pass the time I lean my face against the window of my room and watch people come and go through the courtyard below. CA goes to do laundry, then John L and Joe C go out to find stray animals. They return to the kitchen, where my dad is present to tell tales from the hometown animal rescue. The rescue clinic was apparently so successful that it was able to "hire" concerned volunteers at a dime a pop. After this I false awaken into my bed at home. I get up to brush my teeth, but I don't spit right and swallow the disgusting toothpaste. When I look at the mirror, I see Chinese characters with subtitle translations that say "That toothpaste was disgusting." (A failed text and mirror RC if I ever saw one)

2. I'm walking through Cincinnati with P at night. We have been shooting at an Astro van with our guns to try and get it to explode, but nothing's been happening. We decide to head into a foreigner-owned restaurant for greasy fast food.

1, My brother is playing a variant of the Plinko game on the Price is Right game show. As the disks drop through the machine, he has to push sticks into them, which reveals yellow circles. Five circles before a failure means victory. However, he soon loses. In his disappointment, he steals a tabletop version of the game called Klinko from backstage. After he leaves, Bob Barker reveals that hidden under the tabletop was a dazzling array of jewelry.

2. I'm driving with two friends from high school, Sam A and Matt C, just bored and cruising. As we pass through my neighborhood, we see a live bear decked out in Christmas wreaths walking down the street.

1. Mom and I are doing my back to school shopping at the mall. I wander off into the mall proper while she stays in the department store; when I return she has a $150 gift card to the store! We leave the store, and on the ride back she tells me how she saw a fight between a shopper and an employee. She was called to witness in a trial of the employee and got the gift card for her time. The prosecutor in the trial, however, was her former boss as a paralegal, and she expresses sorrow that she didn't continue her own legal career. When we get back home (to our old house), Dr. C from the research station is pulling out of the driveway in the station van. We wait for him to move, then I move in. As I do, however, I scrape the bottom of our new car.

2. The whole family, along with my (deceased) maternal grandma are going out to the movies. The film we see is made from a collection of short subjects. The first is set in the British Museum. In the movie, Mom and I often shop at their gift shop for ice cream and cupcakes. One day, after we buy our sweets, I'm suddenly attacked by velociraptors! I run and flail my arms wildly, still carrying my mom's credit card in one hand. Someone offscreen then throws ice cream at the raptors, which seems to pacify them. Relieved, I move to exit, but as I do I'm told that I owe over 24 pounds. Apparently waving the credit card orders food for whatever I "circle" with it. I refuse to pay, and finally it dawns on me to ask why there are dinosaurs in the museum. The film jump-cuts to a London park, where a young bird skeleton is shown stripped from escaped raptors. The short ends without resolution, cutting to a static screen where the audience is advised to use hand sanitizer. This I do, but the rest of the family looks at me rather oddly.

Soon enough, however, the second short begins. This takes place in Soviet Russia. The camera descends on a snowy provincial capital as a voiceover comments on the permanency of the ruling party. Something to the effect of if 30 members were removed from office, the party would still remain in power. The film cuts to inside the capital building, where the Russian government is in session. A senator from Kamchatka has something to say; one of his counterparts snarkily remarks how a disabled person could take the podium if they had wheels. The senator announces some sort of breakthrough, but promptly falls dead. His aide throws a white sheet over him, then pulls it off with a magician's flourish.

The senator is alive, but as the sheet is pulled further back, we notice he isn't quite right. In fact, he soon turns out to be hideous. He's a hermaphroditic freak, with breasts studding his body in odd places and an extra penis hanging off his chest. Somehow the whole family is now present in the movie and recoils at revulsion towards the sight. My grandma, a devout Catholic, starts screeching "That's heresy!" as I lose the dream.

I am walking along the expressway at the Cut-in-the-Hill near Cincinnati. A convoy of Fender guitar trucks passes to my left, each carrying a different model of Stratocaster guitar and each labeled with the make and price of its contents. One of these is called the "Super King" and is listed at $42000 dollars! Somehow I cross the lanes of traffic and open the truck, taking out the guitar. I call my mom, telling her that I'm holding a guitar worth more than all of our cars combined. Soon, however, I put the instrument back and start to walk home.

It's harder to walk up the hill instead of down it. I have to dodge cars, even jumping into a ditch in the median to avoid getting hit. A cop rolls by my ditch and takes a look at me, and I start to worry. My brother then walks out from nowhere and starts to walk with me. Soon, one of my back teeth comes loose and breaks away with a slight pain. I look at it, and am disgusted as it's completely black and cavity ridden.

1. I'm making a thrilling video-game style escape from an industrial type level. I'm not so much running or parkouring, although there is some of that. Instead, I'm solving puzzles where the penalty is falling down large pits. For example, to cross one I have to latch a carabiner shaped like a hummingbird to the right track above the pit and glide across. Below me is a horde of giants, reaching up to grab my feet and eat me. I think I may actually have failed once, but I re-spawned and took the right path. In another puzzle, I have to figure out the motion of a series of ladders and trains. I jump from one to the other, whirling almost out of control before I land on solid ground.

Finally I manage to break out of the level into a building (which I recognize from another dream after the fact). I take the wrong elevator but eventually break out into my hometown. For whatever reason I walk through a combination strip club/liquor store, then exit from there into a strip mall parking lot. I get surrounded by police, who accuse me of shoplifting and try to tase me. I start getting really scared and half-lucidly force myself to wake up.

2. I'm at a beautiful Japanese university with Dr. C from my research station. He drops me off by a riverbank and tells me to wait as he performs some errands. I dutifully wait, pulling out my laptop and playing Age of Empires II to pass the time. My mom randomly shows up, bringing hometown pizza and her homemade pie, and asks about my general health. By eating and conversation I manage to ease her worries and she goes away. I then wander off to take a leak. When I return, I see two kids in a pickup truck have stolen all my stuff and are driving away!

Frantically I run after them and end up in the main building of the university. I find all of my stuff set up just as I had left it in a hallway of the building. I play some more, then talk to a janitor about the school's study abroad program. Soon I wander into a busy stairwell, where Dr. C passes by, then the two kids who stole my stuff. V passes by me; she then passes by me again in the same direction, and this time she kicks me into the stairs and starts screaming that I deserve the pain. Apparently she heard something I said as "I want a domestic divorce," but this was the opposite of what I meant. I panic to tell her the truth, but the dream ends before I meet up.

3. I'm in some cartoonish epic of wizards and wizardry. A white wizard (white as in race) is on the run from a horde of black wizards led by his archrival and former apprentice. He runs into his house and sets the locks just in time to have the horde crash on his door. He draws his wand, then turns to face the nemesis he knows has teleported right behind him. The two draw, and they launch volleys of magic meant to kill.

4. The scene is set in an exotic hotel, where people are exercising nasty fetishes about the Warhammer 40K universe. Soon things shift to the hotel's courtyard, where the lead singer of the band Foxy Shazam is teaching a dance class.

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. I'm walking on the halls of the research station, and I see V coming back from a lover's tryst. As she climbs the stairs, her low-cut shirt reveals her cleavage, and I am overcome with jealousy. I then catch a glimpse of MB, living in a different room, and my vision zooms in on her computer, where she's texting a new interest.

2. V and I are playing D&D on the overpass of a local highway. Each of us pulls out a D20 and rolls, heedless of the cars streaking past us. I'm low to the ground, and as the dice stops, I notice the cursive 11 on its side slowly morphing into a 7. I PASS this reality check, and realizing I'm lucid, I manage to resolve the scene around me into waking-like focus and feeling. The pavement feels grainy and coarse, the sun is mildly hot, and I feel in perfect control of my arms and legs. Suddenly, she tells me to run for a football pass, and as she does I feel the ground beneath my legs and run. I feel the impact of the ball in my hands, and somewhat inspired by this, I do the turn-summon to place her in a cheerleader's outfit. It's blue and gold (colors with no particular importance) and very revealing. Confidently I stride up to her, and we engage in a passionate kiss. It feels just like waking life but when I try to turn things towards actual intercourse, I lose lucidity and fall out of the dream.

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.

My dad has taken the family out to the farm, but he needs to go back into town. I drive a regular-sized car to show him the way, but he's driving a massive tractor or threshing machine. Eventually we arrive in town, and for some reason pull into a construction zone. Dad starts to pull monster truck rally tricks with his vehicle, and continues without interference until quitting time for the construction workers. They kick us out, and we have to return the vehicles to the farm.

1. I'm reading a comic targeted at bass players, in some world where music is much more prevalent than it is here. Tabs are printed in comics like the one I'm reading, and the lessons show different famous groups' interpretations of the same song (Thelonious Monk's ensemble, as an example). The other page of the comic has parody scenes of real world comics, including a Peanuts parody in which Snoopy is preparing for anal sex. There are words printed, so I fail that reality check chance.

2. I see, in sequence, two car accidents. The first is horrible and flaming, but the only other spectators are a car of punk kids wearing sunglasses at night. They deem the chaos "awesome," and their dad, driving in the front seat, cries behind his own sunglasses. Secondly, I come across another flaming crash. This time, I go to help, but the passengers (all women) are unhurt and manage to walk out easily, disdaining my efforts to help.