Sailing the Noosphere

1. I'm walking through the Grand Canyon with a school trip. Everything is ridiculously clear and vivid; the sky is the bluest I've ever seen and the rocks are towering above. We go to climb some of the cliffs and the texture of the rocks is rough beneath my fingers.

2. All I remember is shaving, and shaving poorly. Whenever I draw the razor across my face, I nick it and draw blood. Once I even pull a sheet of skin off instead of hair. I'm hurt and frustrated.

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. My brother, dad, and I are at the animal shelter adopting a new cat. For some reason my brother empties his pockets, but all he has in them is a large and unwieldy knife-wallet hybrid with a combination lock. An Asian man grabs the lock and starts cracking it. He soon solves it and tries to leave, but I hook my finger in the lock and pull to make him stay. We struggle for a while and he calls me racist names, then pulls out a pistol. I then proceed to knock him out with my other hand and escape with the family.

2. I'm playing DDR in an arcade with some of my college friends. It only costs two tokens, but the machine has been modified to float and is very unstable on a pool of water. My friend Q starts to bash arrows on the machine, and I try to stop him from messing me up. I lose my balance, however, and fall into what turns out to be putrid water.

3. I am watching a Tupperware container with a hot dog and a bunch of Cincinnati chili. Suddenly the hot dog grows a tiny mouth and starts to eat the chili, eventually leaving the container spotless!

4. I can see my own aura, and it is green. Someone else (unintelligible notes) also sees it and comments.

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.

A number of circumstances have affected my recall and ability to post for the past week. But in any case:

1. A weird alternating dream; it began with scenes from an imagined Star Wars Family Guy. I remember a particular scene where Lois, toting a rifle, swung it about the cantina saying in a cutesy voice "Who's the murderer?" However, whenever a lightsaber cut was made, it seemed to cut through the animation. Through the hole would enter tentacles, as if from a Lovecraftian horror. It was like an oozing fungus, and as it consumed and grew I became physically ill. This change of scenes happened a couple of times before I woke up, breathing heavily.

2. In my grade school cafeteria, I'm playing blackjack. The cards aren't falling my way, and so I leave and go upstairs. I find myself upon opening a door in my own room. Soon V and J enter; V has a new haircut, but all the two can talk about is my own egregious bed head.

3. A huge earthquake breaks apart the continents, leaving much technology preserved but social and political lines in chaos.

4. I run parkour-style through a massive prefab house facility, only to find my research group seated in the middle in an already-assembled house. They are nonplussed and continue to play poker.

1. It's nighttime. I'm sitting around drinking something with a friend, when suddenly I start to feel pretty bad. The dreamview switches to a close-up of my digestive tract, which shows itself to be swollen and red and close to exploding. This continues for an uncomfortable time, showing different organs, when the view suddenly goes third-person. My body explodes, splattering blood on the dream "camera" and causing an elderly couple to comment on my rudeness.

2. My brother, my roommate, and I are chasing the girls who live at my research station around the halls. Eventually they start to fight back, and I do parkour down the (IRL nonexistent) basement stairwell to hide from them.