Glieuaeiel's DJ

Swimming Pool (7:15) (LUCID)

The play I'm watching turns out to be rather experimental. First they pretend like the play was over, then they keep going. Then they even turn on the house lights and go offstage, but somehow I know that the play's not actually over yet. I wonder how they're going to catch everyone's attention again to continue the show.

Later, walking down a hallway, I realize that I'm dreaming. Time to go on an adventure! I'm carrying a backpack, which would be an annoyance to deal with, so I get in an elevator to take it back to my room first. But then I realize that that's stupid. I'll make it disappear instead. Setting it against the wall of the elevator, I focus on it. How to make it disappear? I imagine being able to see the corner of the elevator through the backpack--just a wireframe. Then fill it in with some colors . . . the dream doesn't feel stable . . . it was a bit dangerous to try to control things this directly . . . but just a bit more . . .

Suddenly, the backpack disappears! Immediately, the dream feels twice as vivid, twice as stable. Success! Now I go straight to the floor of interest, instead of going back to my room first. After getting out of the elevator, I start taking off my clothes. Then I pause to do a reality check: I wouldn't want to be doing this in real life. Although, now I think on it, why would I want to do it in a dream, either? It's kind of taking a lot of time to remove every blasted item of clothing. Well, whatever. As I continue, I think about what I want to do with this dream. I remember one of my dream goals: "swim beneath the ocean."

Later, I look through a window. Gravity and architecture aren't quite behaving properly; the exterior of the building slants diagonally away from the window, ending many stories below in a pool at ground level. I dive out the window and splash into the pool. Darkness and confusion reign for a few moments as a bodiless voice narrates something about symbolic significance of water, representing protection from the danger of the outside world. Moments later, I break the surface and see undulating hills of water all around, like small ocean swells. The narrator then says, "You know what else represents protection?" and suddenly a girl floats into view and up to my side. She's not wearing anything.

Obviously, the expectation is that I'll take this chance to have sex. "Squirt me," she says with an encouraging smile. I give her a wry look and reply, "No." I'm not interested in doing that right now, although I do "squirt" off to the side just to acknowledge the temptation, or something. We pick a direction and start swimming that way. On a whim, I decide to go in for some manual stimulation and reach between her legs. She doesn't react, though. "That doesn't do anything for you?" I ask after a few moments. She shakes her head and replies, "Like I said, I'm trying to quit." Soon, I wake up.

Personal Tutoring (8:20) (LUCID)

Alone, I'm exploring a castle. After a while, I realize that walking is taking too long, so I take out my bike and start riding around instead. But even that gets boring, and I start wondering what else I could be doing. Just like that, I remember my dream goal about swimming in the ocean, and I realize that I'm dreaming.

Moments later, I find myself again underneath the water in a swimming pool. Dumbledore is tutoring me in dream control. Rather than trying to force myself to the surface, he says, I should trust the dream to buoy me. This strikes me as real wisdom. I hold myself in cannonball position and focus on the sensation of being lifted and turned by the water. Soon, I wake up.

Christian String Quartet (9:00)

I'm sitting in a public area when suddenly I hear an acoustic guitar behind me. Cool, live music! When the string quartet starts playing a song, I'm not sure exactly what it's about at first, but I suspect (slightly uncomfortably) that it's Christian rock.

Previous hours:
Feb 25, 0:27-8:40
Feb 26, 2:38-9:03

Fragments (LUCID)

[Okay, I know this was a lucid dream, but I didn't have time to record it at the time, regrettably. Here's what I can remember.]

A topless girl is in bedroom.

Later, I reset to a checkpoint in a bedroom. I unplug the ethernet cable. Outside there is a TV. Earlier I was tasting Goldfish and some other food. I go out to a glowing hall. An old man catches my attention: I wonder if he's my dream guide. I approach him and open my mouth, but he cuts me off.

"Shut up, just shut up and follow that guy," he says, pointing. "We'll meet you here in a few hours. Don't look for us; we'll find you. Shut up and follow him."

So I do. I catch up to the other guy. He comments that I was the fastest person to catch up so far. I arrive in a common area with people wearing Hogwarts uniforms. They've been training their lucid skills inspired by the Harry Potter universe. Right now they're trying to jump up and touch the high, vaulted ceiling of the room. Someone says something about having enough brains. They don't think I can do it because I've only just started training. But I try, and after a few warm-up jumps, I manage it. Somehow a backwards roll is involved.

Shenanigans and Skydiving (LUCID)

[I don't remember how this dream began, but at the beginning of our tale I am lucid, I'm standing in my room near the exterior wall (with a window), and I've decided to go outside.]

I consider crashing straight through the wall using a shoulder, but I think in this case something more elaborate would be safer. I back away from the wall, staring at it carefully. I'll try to use a fireball to blow it up, but in order for that to have even a chance of working, I need to have a pretty clear idea what I imagine it would look like. I concentrate on the wall, imagining it heating up. The colors start changing: the wall becomes red-tinted, or maybe purple. I thrust my hands at it, and the wall turns black and splits into triangles in an isometric pattern. As the triangles shrink and fade away, I charge through the wall. I realize the explosion wasn't very realistic, but at least I did get through.

I start jogging down the road. I'm wearing clothes again [I took them off at some previous part of the dream], probably because the weird explosion made me lose concentration and the feeling of lying under the covers made me unconsciously feel like I should be clothed. So as I'm jogging, I take them off again. Since it's fairly early in the day, I pass only a few joggers going the other way, which is probably a good thing given my state of undress. There's a lot of construction on the road--so much that only a narrow path for joggers remains, going down the middle. I go down the path. At the other end, the path even narrows a bit more, just to make absolutely clear that no cars are allowed to go this way. There are three guys my age standing up there, waiting for some cars to pass. Once the cars are gone, two of them start pranking the other. I hang around for a few minutes in order to see what's going on, but then I decide that this could get ugly and I'd better get out of here. I turn around and go back the way I came, but not before I give the guys a thumbs-up to take the edge off of my departure. It occurs to me that I'm using that thumbs-up trick a lot in this dream. [I think I did it once before to my mom before I left the house.]

Walking up the driveway to my house, I feel like I'm giving up on the dream, like all my adventures are over. I look over my shoulder at the clouds. They seem an awfully long way away, but I might as well take a risk and try something new! Putting my arms into Superman pose, I blast off. As the clouds approach, I wonder if they'll feel chilly or misty. And indeed they do, sort of. I fly through a few layers of clouds, looking around at the cumulus cloudscapes. Experimentally, I blow some air at the cloud I'm flying through, and indeed it seems to thin a bit in the place I'm aiming the air. Then I decide that's enough of that, and I start falling back towards the ground. At first I try a cannonball shape, then I try pretending to dive headfirst, but then I decide to adopt a spread-limbed pose as if I'm skydiving. Unfortunately, the ground is already approaching very quickly. Just a few seconds later, I reach behind me and mime pulling a parachute cord. It works, but I'm still going too fast. It looks like I will land in my front yard. Spying a tall tree, I shoot a grappling hook from my right wrist. It tangles in the branches. Then I shoot another from my left wrist, sort of jerking my arm sideways so that the hook swings around another tree trunk like a tetherball. Increasing the tension on both arms simultaneously, I'm able to slow myself almost to a stop, hanging a foot above the lawn. Then I drop the rest of the way, attempting to release the grappling hooks so I can walk. It doesn't work too smoothly until I pretend like my right pinky nail is a small knife, which I use to cut the wire. Then I walk towards the front door of the house and wake up.

Frags:

• I'm singing an improvised melody, trying to incorporate some fast scales as a unifying motive. One of the scales works really well, ending up on the right note at just the right time. But the next one is rather less smooth, and I stop my improvisation with a rueful grin and an apology to my listeners.
• A man suddenly stops talking to do a strange pose: some kind of contorted lunge. While posing, he's a naked woman.

Meanwhile, in High School (6:59)

I'm sitting at a table in a room filled with tables, working on an assignment, when I see someone out of the corner of my eye. It's my mom, sitting at another table, trying to catch my attention by waving something. Exasperated, I acknowledge her, but she wants to start a full blown conversation. I pack up my things and say, apologetically, that "I just can't right now." Predictably, Mom gets furious. I walk over to her table (Dad's there too) and try to explain that I'm old enough now that she can't expect me to share every detail of my life with her. My voice sounds like maybe I'm about to start crying. Nothing doing, though. Looks like I'll have to pack my own lunch and find my own way to school, today.

I go back downstairs and check the time. It's later than I thought! Forget packing a lunch, I'll barely have time to shower and get dressed. I also think I should do my laundry, but when I look into the basket, I realize that I have more clean clothes than I thought. No need to bother, then. But later, when I actually go to choose an outfit, I have trouble finding clean shorts. I'll have to do my laundry tomorrow, which will be harder since it's a weekday and I'll be busy.

Dad drives me to school. I'm sitting all the way in the back of the car, and I'm surprised to see some orange traffic cones passing by my window. Some road work near the left turn just before the high school's parking lot. Looks like Dad's doing what he's supposed to be doing.

I take a seat in the classroom. I've decided that while I'm back home, I may as well sit in on some Spanish classes at my old high school to get in some extra practice. The teacher, a dark-haired man, begins the class by introducing himself and explaining about the course textbooks. Apparently he wrote one of them--part of a series of textbooks on a variety of subjects, all published in the same format but written by various guest authors. At one point, the teacher switches to English for a bit. His accent is kind of cute. Then we go around the class and introduce ourselves. I don't know anyone there, obviously. When it comes to be my turn, I explain that I'm actually a college student. There's something of a commotion from another student in the class, and I wonder if maybe he's doing the same thing as I am and I should have recognized him? That would be embarrassing.

At one point, the teacher's been talking about something, and he asks the class which of us consider ourselves to be "a member of that crowd?" I'm one of the few who raises a hand. A few minutes later, I realize that he might have been asking which of us have had sex, but with so much circumlocution that I didn't realize it at the time. Oops. Well, if so, I'm sorry for misrepresenting myself, but there's not much I can do about it now. Besides, I'm in college, they'll have expected it of me, anyway.

The teacher starts a presentation, and everyone puts away their drinks. Except one is still on the table, and one of the students accidentally knocks it over, spilling soda pop everywhere. The teacher interrupts his lecture to go find cleaning supplies, and I try to help out by mopping up some with a napkin. I hope that my helpfulness is a mark of being more mature than the majority of students in the classroom. But the teacher holds out his hand to throw away the napkin for me, and I let him take it, even though it sort of undermines what I was doing. Anyway, the napkin wasn't very absorbent, so now there's pop on my hands. I need to find a sink. I find one in the hall only a few feet away from the classroom.

A lot of the students are handing out out here until the presentation starts again. I look around and see an office whose name plaque carries a very strange title. I wonder if high schools can hire people to do things as strange as that because they're government-funded. Someone walks past me and into the office, and I wonder. I also talk to one of the students outside. They tell me they wanted to go to the big concert today, because it featured a big presentation about Mormonism. I had heard about the concert, but I didn't know it was about Mormonism, and now I'm kind of sad I missed it, too. [IRL: The concert is this afternoon, and it has nothing to do with Mormonism.]

When we go back into the classroom, there's a stage at one end, complete with curtains and a podium. A man at the podium tells us that as a surprise, Mitt Romney has come with his campaign team to give a presentation. After this introduction, a few people walk out on stage. I'm not sure which one is Romney [although IRL obvs I know what he looks like], and the introduction kind of trailed off, so it's not surprising that the applause is slow to start. It's also very quiet, and peters out quickly. One of the campaign people says "Wow," loudly and sarcastically. Well, I'm not sure what Romney expected. We're mostly Democrats here at my university.

They launch into the presentation, which is an animated, rhetorical speech delivered while the campaigners circle and crisscross the room, making sure to invite each audience member personally to agree with what they're saying. It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Somewhere, I've found a pillow, and I clutch it to my stomach like it's some kind of security blanket. I stare at the floor, only half listening. I feel like I've read this argument before, somewhere, anyway. Something about how the Democrats are trying to convince you not to vote Republican because of what the Republicans /won't/ do, but when election day comes, you need to vote based on what /will/ happen. And so on. One of the campaigners notices my aloofness, so he gets up in my face and tries to engage me by giving me a manly punch on the shoulder. I look at him expressionlessly and say in a carefully controlled voice, "Please don't do that again." The man puts on a mock-surprised face and looks around at people nearby as if to invite them to start bullying me, but in the end he just leaves.

From behind, a woman crooks an elbow around my neck and good-naturedly shakes me a bit. Addressing herself to someone I can't see, she asks, "Is this called 'egging?'" (as in, "egging someone on"). Ah, so she's playfully imitating the campaigner. The person says yes, it is, so she laughs and releases her hold on my neck. Pressing herself against my side, she murmurs, "There's someone touching you right now, and you don't seem to mind." Bemused, I try to think of a socially proper way to respond that it's okay because she's a woman. But before I can, she lets go of me, and I can finally turn to get a good look at her. To my delight, I definitely recognize her from somewhere. While I'm snapping my fingers and trying to place where that was, she just introduces herself again as [XXXX]. Surprised, I tell her I remember her as a campaign assistant for [XXXX]. She laughs and says no, then dances off to the other side of the room with another girl. I'm reminded of the friendship between Meekakitty and Nanalew. Suddenly, the dream ends, and I wake up. For a moment, I think that it's only been about two and a half hours since I fell asleep. But that must have been a FA, because it was more like six and a half.

Supermarket (8:15) (LUCID)

I'm in a supermarket, and at some level I'm aware that this is a dream. As I walk through the crowded checkout lanes, I look closely at all of the faces that I pass. Each one is unique and distinctive and interesting, and I wonder whether they all come from people I passed on the street in waking life. I read somewhere on a forum that that's where they come from. The dream seems pretty stable, but I feel compelled to keep moving, or else it will fall apart. I walk up to a cashier and ask her for the credit card that a customer just gave to her. "Sure, one moment," she says, and then she hands me something, but it's not a credit card. I leave the checkout lanes and continue through the store. It crosses my mind that this counts as a lucid dream. Cool; I haven't had one of those in a while.

I decide to call Mom on my cell phone. I worry that maybe I'm actually sleep-calling her in waking life, too, so I try to think of conversation topics that wouldn't sound too bizarre. Meanwhile, I'm still walking quickly down one side of the store, looking around at everything. The store's wide entrance is coming up on my left. I can't think of anything else to talk about, and Mom seems more confused than anything, so I just say goodbye to her and hang up. I leave the store.

Somebody's angry at me for turning out into the road in front of him, but I'm sure I wouldn't have done it close enough that you would actually call it "cutting him off." I decide to play out the scenario to see what actually happened. I get in the car and start driving toward the hilltop road that passes near the supermarket's parking lot. Indeed, there's almost a solid line of cars coming that direction, with one little space in the middle that perhaps I could grab if I timed it right. But there's something strange about the road configuration that makes me think I wouldn't be able to accelerate quickly enough to avoid pissing someone off. Okay, better to avoid that.

I stop the car and get out. There's a mid-sized lake to the right of the road with a big yacht anchored near the shore. A bunch of sailors are walking around over there, presumably on shore leave. I start walking along the narrow path between the lake and the side of the supermarket, going over to see what's going on. But then one of the sailors starts walking along the path toward me, shouting something about me not being allowed to come this way. An irritating fellow, but only doing his job, I suppose.

I keep walking, but suddenly I need to poop. I remember how in the past this has always made me panic and wake up, only to find that I didn't have to use the bathroom at all. Well, I know better, now, so I'll just go to the bathroom in the dream. I squat in the middle of a grassy lawn and start doing my business. The sailor is still walking towards me and shouting, so I interrupt him to warn him that even though I've avoided behaving "beaverishly," if he keeps it up, I may have to. (Apparently, in this situation, "behaving beaverishly" means that I'll strip totally naked just to annoy him even more.) Going to the bathroom is taking a long time. Some of the sailors are running close nearby. I hope for their sake that they don't accidentally step in any of the poop. The sailor still won't leave me alone, so I carry out my threat by pulling my T-shirt over my head. This makes my vision go completely black. Oh, darn.

I wake up to a confusion of covers. After a moment, I figure out that somehow I've come into a squatting position. Uh oh. Looking down, I see that my worst fears have come true--there's quite a bit of poop on my covers. Despairingly, I try to wrap up some of it using the sheets, but it's not enough. This will be hard to deal with. Then it occurs to me that there's something distinctly nightmarish about this situation, and I tell myself exasperatedly, "Come on, wake up for real." And I do. [No, I never did have to go to the bathroom. Why my dreams always do this to me, I don't know.]

Pop Quiz (9:42) (LUCID)

A smart math major I know is pacing the front of a classroom. He's quizzing me about details from my previous dreams tonight. I know I definitely missed a few when I wrote them in my dream journal, so this will be a perfect opportunity to recover them--my unconscious itself is telling me what they were! He mentions something about a homework assignment, and a few different people named Erik. [Ironically, I can't remember the details of these details.] It occurs to me to wonder if he's even telling the truth. I have no recollection of the events of which he speaks, so he could easily be inventing them, and I'd never know. Still, I wake up and write them in my dream journal. Only, it was a FA, and when I actually wake up, I can't really remember them any more.

College Medley (4:06)

On a college forum, one of the residential houses has posted something that they shouldn't have. One of the house members has edited the post to add a lot of his own text, in red font, pointing out why it was a stupid decision to post this online. I can empathize with his frustration--it's hard to stop a hundred different people from doing something stupid.

We're not sure who will be teaching our math class. Suddenly someone offers to call a professor he knows. I recognize the name--it's one of my old physics professors. He was . . . not very formal . . . when it came to math, so I'm worried at the prospect of taking a math class with him. I try to communicate this to a nearby classmate of mine, but then I realize that that classmate might not have been in physics with me. Oops.

This classmate and I take turns driving each other around. We listen to classical music while I'm driving, but when it's his turn, I can't find anything but pop on the radio. I've no idea how to make a good soundtrack with such music, so I decide to stop fiddling with the radio. Then we see a truck careening around a corner ahead of us, passing us to go back the way we came. That must be the professor arriving. We should head back.

As I'm getting out of the car, I see to my shock that there's a crocodile lying across the path in front of the car. It's too late to jump back inside, because the crocodile charges! Yes, it's as fast as I've always been warned that they are. Desperately, I try to fend it off with a chair. Eventually I scare it off by singing very loudly. I continue singing as I run down the path towards the house, knowing that the crocodile could return for another attack at any moment. Sure enough, it does.

Board Game Foul (7:07)

In excitement, I accidentally bump the game board, and pieces go sliding everywhere. Dang it, that's such a board game foul! Except somehow magically they stayed in their original configuration, they just slid off of the board. Phew. Okay, so now I just have to move them carefully back onto the board. We start giving the pieces vocal commands, and they go back to the board as if marching in formation, turning together and doing about-faces and everything. When the last piece gets back into position, though, I don't recognize the configuration. Is that really what the board looked like? Now the pieces are actual, life-size people, and I'm standing on the ground with them. Part of the configuration involves people crouched on all fours, each one with another person standing straddling them. I shout that I don't recognize the scenario, and a man shouts back that that's because we haven't played this one yet! Before I can reply, we're under attack, and everyone is moving. A woman dressed in furs brandishes a sword at me, and I figure that I'd better fight back.

Feces (7:07)

[This is my second dream about poop in recent memory. What the heck?]

Our pet dog is about to start defecating in the yard, so I'm trying to force her out through the gate to the other side of the wooden picket fence. The trouble is that I'm about to start defecating, too, and I don't know how much other poop is already lying in the yard. I could step on it at any moment, so I need to watch the ground, but I also need to focus on getting the dog out of the yard. It's an impossible situation, and gross. I wake up, sort of.

Notification of Acceptance (7:07)

I've been playing a handheld game, but the battery's almost dead. I save quickly, then shut down. The computer asks if I'm sure I want to turn it off, giving a list of files that will be deleted. Since I just saved them, I think it's safe to continue shutting down, so I do. Then I plug it in and turn it back on to check whether the files are still there. When I check in the game save location, I find an old version of the files--the most recent one wasn't saved! Then I check the other location, and the new version isn't there, either! Oh, no! Then I enter some kind of computer recovery mode, and I find a bunch of swap files (or whatever) that the text editor uses while it's in use. Some of them contain almost-up-to-date versions of the files, thank goodness.

Later, my orchestra conductor is walking around the dorm, notifying people personally that they've been accepted to the orchestra. I watch as she knocks on one door and it is opened by a pair of boys who look like they're about seven years old. The boys tell her about how they're in the middle of taking a practice SAT right now, but they don't look like they're in a big hurry. How did they get into this university at that age, and without taking the SAT? I peer into the room, and I see the practice SAT on the TV screen. It's a sort of video game. The current question has something to do with baseball, and there's a timer counting down from about two and a half minutes. I hope they don't lose the game because of this interruption. Then my alarm wakes me up, which makes me happy. No wonder both save files disappeared, and no wonder those kids were so young.

Frags:

• An old woman points out that my mother couldn't have been a cat, because then I'd be a kitten, and I'm not a kitten. Her observation has more to do with my age than my species.
• I'm watching a TV show. I notice that many (probably half) of the people in the current scene are naked. I'm glad that, here at least, the TV industry has gotten over its insistence on censoring nudity.

Cave Channeling (6:58)

Rand al'Thor is in a giant cavern, being attacked by a fairly weak enemy creature. He tries to use the One Power to make its brain explode inside its skull. The first one or two tries are unsuccessful, and in the meanwhile, the creature is hurting him. But eventually he succeeds.

At another time, someone is trying to levitate a giant rock and drop it on his head. But he manages to deflect it and send it into the depths of a chasm.

There is a dock in this cavern that seems suspicious. Rand does something to it, and a round, apparently dead fish pops out of the water and lands on the wood. After making sure it won't suddenly come alive to attack him, Rand takes the fish back to the place he's made his camp, wanting to cook it. It seems like too much effort to conjure an entire stove to heat the fish, so instead he just warms up one patch of the rocks.

At another time, there is some kind of confrontation on a rock platform jutting out from a wall. The camera for this scene is level with the platform, but a great distance away. You see a woman run from the platform into a doorway in the wall, followed by a man. A heartbeat later, the man comes flying back out and slides backwards along the platform as though punched with considerable force. A few moments after that, there is a burst of fire from the doorway and the woman comes running back out, crying or screaming or in any case in desperate need of healing. I'm impressed by the creativity of the cinematographer, to shoot the scene from such an unusual angle as that.

Back on the platform, there is a discussion going on. One of the Forsaken, Sammael, is lying to a main character. He claims that he's not Sammael. There's another person from the Age of Legends present on the platform who knows the truth of Sammael's identity, though. That person frowns at Sammael whenever he lies about himself, but doesn't immediately say anything to the main character.

Asmodean and Sammael get to talking, and eventually it comes out that one of them is gay. He turned to the shadow mainly because of the difficulty he had in admitting this fact, and also because the other one didn't return his feelings. While watching this, I think wonderingly that it really has become cool to include gay people in all the new TV shows. I also hope that somehow having had this important discussion, the two of them will make up and get together and join the good side.

Passing the Time with Lanfear (6:58)

[Major spoiler for book five of WoT! Also, this dream involves sex.]

Spoiler for Passing the Time with Lanfear:

Lanfear, clad only in black underwear, is lying on a table, masturbating. She's in her headquarters, somewhere, and I guess this is what she does with her free time. I'm sad to learn that she's still alive, since that means Moiraine's sacrifice was for nothing. There are about three men in the room with Lanfear. One of them walks around and gets in a position to have sex with her from behind. I assume he's doing this without asking her, so chances are when she notices him, she'll blow him to smithereens, or something. But to my surprise, she doesn't do anything right away. Only, a few moments later, the man simply disappears, then reappears dressed in a woman's outfit, complete with a wide-brimmed, white hat with a flower.

At one point, Lanfear says something, and suddenly her underwear disappears. Somehow I suspect this was a trap laid by Rand. She triggered the trap a while ago, setting the weave, but it didn't do anything noticeable until just now, when one of the words that she just said set off the effect. Clever. She gets up as though about to go somewhere, and I wonder if she means to do it naked.

Gendered Web Browsers (6:58)

I'm talking to my grandma when she says something about web browsers "for girls." With an internal groan, I try to explain to her that web browsers aren't gendered. I realize that she's from an earlier time, where the distinction between the sexes was more marked, but I have to do what I can to advance the cause of gender equality. I expect to have to repeat myself a few times, since she's hard of hearing, but to my surprise she understands me pretty well. I look at her ear to see whether she's wearing her hearing aid. Her ear looks strange--it's more like a cavity in the side of her head than a projection on the outside of it--but yes, the hearing aid is in. Well, good for her.

Grandma takes me to a room full of computers to demonstrate her point. All of the computers are showing the desktop, and most of the desktop backgrounds are pictures taken by the computer's user. The pictures tend to feature moments from family history--birthdays, vacations, that sort of thing. Admittedly, a lot of these pictures look like they could only have been taken by a female. Grandma sort of has a point, but I still feel like there's something she's not understanding.

Urine (6:58)

Someone from my family is trying to shoot a pet video about a dog. We're all outside in the back yard. They try to get it to do some cute tricks and then howl for a while. They're going to autotune the howling into a cute melody. [Actually, while I'm watching them shoot the video, the howling is already autotuned. It's like I'm half watching-them-shoot, half watching-the-video.]

Later, there's a pet rat sitting at the top of the hill. It's about two or three feet tall. Its trick is that it can pee on command. When I learn that Mom and Dad are planning to have it do this trick, I try to dash out of range, but I'm not fast enough. It feels like I've been hit by a sprinkler from behind. That rat has demonically good aim, and it always makes sure to hit absolutely everyone in range. Well, crap. Now I'm going to have to take a shower.

I look around to see how fared the rest of the family. Mom's not wearing any pants or lower underwear, and she's peeing while standing up. [For some reason, I just take this in stride.] I start walking back to the house, carrying a jar of the rat's urine. My sister is saying something about how we should have collected more urine to donate, and my mom is disagreeing with her. She says that the place accepts only a small amount of urine with each delivery, so there's no point collecting more.

Grappling Hook

I'm playing a James Bond video game on multiplayer. On my end it's two-person splitscreen, but there are four players in the game altogether. The person on the lower screen suddenly stops, and I freeze as well because I was screen-looking. But we're nowhere near each other, so I start moving again, hoping that he didn't notice. He's currently in a skirmish with the other two players.

I enter a warehouse. There's a metal cabinet in the back corner that looks worth investigating. I walk up to it, and eureka! Among other useful items, there are a couple of bazookas. I take them, then screen-look again. Accidentally, I swear! But this time the lower screen corresponds to one of the other two players, and both of them are running up behind me. I try to turn around and get them with the bazooka, but my character is moving really slowly. "What am I, encumbered, or something?!" I say in frustration. I've never heard of encumbrance in James Bond games. But that must be what it is--there was too much big stuff in that cabinet. I get off one rocket, and then the others start firing rockets as well. Damn. I get to the bottom of the metal ramp leading to the cabinet; the other two people are standing there, too. The range is really too close to be using rocket launchers, but I shoot again, anyway. And I die. Grr.

I respawn on a lower level of the map, near a raised highway. I decide to try out my grappling hook. There's a target for it (a small beige circle with a sort of raised knob in the middle) on each of the lampposts near the highway. Using the grapple here is a shortcut from the lower level to the upper level, so I see why it would be useful. I shoot the hook at the target and the wire pulls me up, but that just leaves me hanging a few yards off to the side of the highway, swinging slightly back and forth. I try to pump my legs to get a large enough swing that I can jump onto the highway, but I can't get it large enough to be comfortable with the leap. I let myself back down. I try again, this time standing farther back from the light. I'm not going to give myself any time to swing back and forth and lose momentum--the moment I get high enough, I'm going to release the hook. Since the wire will be pulling me forward, I should have enough sideways momentum to reach the highway. It works!

Now I just need to figure out how to go _down_ using the hook. I go out on the balcony of the third floor of a building. It's dark out. There's a security guard in the parking lot below, locking up for the night. The grapple hook target is right on the railing for the balcony, so I attach the hook. I expect some kind of automatic animation showing me sliding down the line, but nothing happens. Well, I guess it's more realistic this way. Manually, I toss down the line. Some how the line attaches to something at a diagonal slope, so when I send my gear down, it slides out into the night like it's on a zipline. The security guard sees the gear going past and starts beating it up with a baseball bat. Shit, that gear's expensive! Hurriedly, I pull the gear and the zipline back up to the balcony. It only takes a couple of tugs. The guard peers in my direction, then suddenly points at me and starts shouting--and running towards my building. I'm not sure how he plans to get up here, until suddenly he shoots his own grappling hook at a target on the edge of the sloping terra-cotta roof that leads straight to my balcony. Uh oh. My only chance is to run past him while he's busy getting up here. I jump over the railing and onto the roof. It's hard to keep my footing as I run to the roof's edge, and I end up slipping over the side and landing on the ground with a painful thud. Okay, realistically, there's no way for me to escape from this. So I wake up.

Ziplines and Triangles (LUCID)

I'm hiding in the woods from the delegation of thirteen Aes Sedai who have come to take me away. Crouching beneath the bushes I listen to them walk nearer, I hope they will not find my hiding place. Wait, no, there are fifteen, not thirteen. That doesn't make sense; thirteen is the magic number. Oh, right--just five Aes Sedai, with ten wood nymphs to guide them through the trees. I look up from the book for a moment, thinking rather lecherously that at least I'll be able to imagine that the wood nymphs are topless green women, like in Shaiya.

My hiding place has become my bedroom on the ground floor of my family's house. I hear a knock on the door, and I know it's because the wizards have found me. They mean to take me away with them to train my magical powers in a distant school, but I don't want to go. They'll be polite about it, at least at first, so I open the door to find my youngest sister with one of her friends. They hand me a letter, which I'm sure comes from the people waiting outside. I take it, but then I flip off the girls (they don't react) and shut the door.

Later, I decide to go outside and look at the cars in which these people arrived. There's no one in sight as I walk down the driveway, but there are six or seven unfamiliar vehicles parked along the sides and along the road. Some look like they came from the early 20th century, and they're painted rather garishly with the names of the institutions to which they belong. I'm not sure how many of them belong to the wizards, and how many to other groups that happen to be in the same area.

When I return to the top of the driveway, I decide to drive in the Pathfinder. It's parked in such a way that it faces down the driveway, so I just hop in and drive it with my bare feet. I don't even have my driver license with me, which kind of bothers me, but this is rather fun. As I go down the driveway, I realize that it will be hard to turn around, so I brake and try to turn the car so that it goes between two of the big pines along our driveway. I slide sideways for a bit, but eventually I make it through and onto the lawn. I realize that I've never gone off-roading in the Pathfinder before, even though it's an SUV with a very off-road-y kind of name. It's fun, bumping along in the grass, but I have a bit of trouble getting the car back onto the driveway where it started. So I get out and walk the car, instead.

As I'm about to go back into the house, I see my mom in the garage. We talk about bikes for a moment. It looks like she's about to take something to the bottom of the driveway. It looks heavy. I ask if she wants help, but she declines. It must be about five in the morning; I wonder if she got any sleep at all. She works too hard. But without asking her a second time, I just go back into the house.

When I reach my bedroom on the top floor, suddenly I wonder if this was all a dream. I do a nose RC. It works! My bedroom is very dark. I decide to try verbal commands. "LIGHT!" I shout. "MORE LIGHT!" The lighting changes a bit, but it's not really any better. There are probably people sleeping nearby, but since it's a dream, that doesn't matter. "WAKE UP, EVERYBODY! THIS IS A LUCID DREAM!" My vision's gone wonky, like there's another image overlaying my bedroom. It looks like a curvy triangle, and I suspect it's the shape my covers are making in front of my face. Not good. Desperately, I try the light switch. Of course, it does nothing. I decide to abandon the bedroom and try my luck outside. I dash down the hall and into my parents' bedroom. As I run to their balcony, I shout some bullshit statistic, like, "Did you know that 80% of socks are hung on the sixth and seventh clotheslines?" Then I grab one of the socks that's hanging over a thick cable slanting down from the outside of the house, and I slide down the cable like it's a zipline, knocking the other pairs of socks willy-nilly to the ground.

I land in a large city plaza full of trees. Miraculously, the curvy triangle has vanished. It's a beautiful day, and there are a few people walking around. I decide to try speed-running down the sidewalk. I turn to my right, and I manage to get some speed, going perhaps twice as fast as I'd be able to sprint while awake. As I approach a heavyset guy my age going the other direction, I notice that he's looking straight at me. I slow down for a closer look. He's smiling, and he's got one hand held out like he's pointing a pistol at me. Well, that's weird, but maybe that's just how DCs say "hi" to people. I laugh and smile back, jokingly asking what he would have done if it turned out he actually shot me by accident. Then I realize that it wasn't a very funny joke. Oops. I elect just to walk away from that one.

The sidewalk ends at a highway where there are a lot of people standing around. Another guy my age tries to get me to play catch with a remote-control helicopter. Agreeably, I climb up onto a horizontal metal pole and get set to grab it. But at the last minute I chicken out. Those blades look dangerous. A few moments later, I [falsely] wake up.

I keep my eyes tightly shut. I might as well try to chain into another LD. I lie still, trying to picture the scene I just left. Then I wonder whether my theory was correct, the one about the blankets making that curvy triangle, and I decide it's worth it to open my eyes and check. Yep, there's that triangle. But wait, before I draw any conclusions, I should make sure I'm actually awake. I sit up and do a nose RC. Oh.

I decide to try using the makeshift zipline again, so I run through my parents' room and slide down. It's not as spontaneous, though, and everything outside seems to be darker and more indistinct. Moments later, I [falsely] wake up again. I lie underneath the covers with my eyes open, not sure what to do. Suddenly I notice the window. It's raining, and it looks like there's a sinister figure standing just outside, staring at me. I sit up in terror. Turns out it was just a tree and a strange trick of the light. I do an RC to find out that I'm STILL dreaming. I get out of bed and decide to try snapping flames again. Just one snap, and it doesn't work. I start trying to picture candle flames in my head, but suddenly I get very frustrated with the whole situation and I deliberately wake myself up.

[I forgot to check whether my covers in waking life were actually making a curvy triangle. I suspect they were not. Also, during the original LD in my bedroom, I said something clever involving the phrase "What the frack." Soon after, I tried to review the moment in my head so that I'd remember it when I woke up. But apparently it didn't work.]

Alex Day's Penis

Spoiler for Alex Day's Penis:

I've been watching Alex Day's newest video. It's almost over. As a grand finale, he apparently takes off his pants (though you can't see for sure, because only the top half of his body is in the shot). I feel like rolling my eyes. But then suddenly he starts messing with the camera, and there are a few frames in the resulting jumble of camera angles where I think you might actually be able to see his penis. It looks like he has an erection. This is over the top, even for him; I'm astonished that he got permission from YouTube to do something like this. There's one shot where he has an empty can of energy drink with the bottom cut out; he's holding it over the top of his penis, I guess to imply that it's longer than it is. I notice that although his penis is quite long, it's rather spindly as well. Heh. The whole time, of course, he's grinning like a maniac. I feel like I should finish what I started and watch this video to the end, but I don't like it. I keep looking at the play bar to see how much time is left.

Study Abroad

I'm visiting an old high school acquaintance while she's studying abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. Feeling brave, I decide to try talking to her in Spanish. She responds in kind, but she talks so fast that I can't really understand her. I do understand that she asks me how much Spanish I've done while in college. Slowly, I manage to formulate a response, telling her that I've studied a bit on my own but she's clearly better than I am, now.

Shootout

[This isn't really a legitimate dream, because it happened this morning when I was half awake and feeling too comfortable to get out of bed. But I definitely wasn't fully awake, and I think it's interesting, anyway.]

Not wanting to get out of bed, I'm entertaining myself by imagining various soccer plays that involve me scoring a goal. The first one is too slow, because I shot with the side of my foot. Ruefully, I remind myself that in order to get any speed, you have to have your knee over the ball and kick with the laces. Then I have more success. I bet the coach is glad about putting me in as forward. Our offense was hurting, before. I'm still frustrated with some of my fellow forwards. Then, one time at the moment when I take the shot, my actual, waking-life right leg jerks as though it's doing the kicking. Surprised, I wake up fully.

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.

Bottomless

Towards the end of the women's choir concert, a soloist walks on. I don't recognize her as one of the members of the choir. Her first few notes have pretty bad tone, which I realize must be because she hasn't done any singing yet in the concert (so she isn't warmed up). As the song goes on, she doesn't get much better--although she does have a nice stage personality, so the song's still enjoyable. But eventually she stops and goes into the bathroom. It's kind of dark, so I'm not sure about this next part, but . . . when she comes out of the bathroom, it looks like she's not wearing any pants or underwear.

Dreamer's Tales

I'm reading from a random dream journal on DV. The writer uses a large, boldface font. The basic story is that he's incapacitated the leader of the bad guys, but he's still looking around for the rest of them. Then he realizes that in the time he's been looking, the leader may have woken up again. For all he knows, the leader could be standing right behind him, right now. The DJ entry stops there. I'm delighted to realize that I understand why: the sense of being followed is sometimes scary enough to cause the "Abort! Abort! Nightmare!" response. Overall, I'm impressed with this dream and with the way it was told.

Revelry

My dad is laughing about something he just heard from one of his friends. Apparently, that friend just received a call that his son was arrested in Philadelphia. As far as anyone knows so far, he got drunk with some friends, and they decided to fly over there to watch our state football team play an away game? Either way, it's hilarious.

Gaps

I'm writing in my dream diary when I realize that I'm running out of space: there are some more notes in the diary, below where I'm writing right now. I must accidentally have written on that page one time when there wasn't enough light to see what I was doing. I have plenty more stuff to write, though, so I need more room. I look back at the previous page and notice five or six blank lines on the bottom. I have no idea why I skipped those, but good thing I did! Now I have enough space to finish my entry.

Accio Glasses

I'm home between classes, working on something. When I look at the clock, I realize that it's way past time for me to be heading back to school. Class has already started. Even worse: I just remembered I have a worksheet due today. I meant to work on it during this break, but it completely slipped my mind. Hurriedly, I gather up my things from the room and start towards the door. I notice that everything looks a little fuzzy, and I realize I've forgotten to put on my glasses. I run back to the room in which I left them. They're all the way on the other side of the room, and my sister's sitting in an easy chair, reading a book. I suspect she's irritated about all the noise I'm making, so I try to make a joke.

"Accio glasses!" I say, pointing my hand across the room. That way, she'll realize I'm in a hurry (since I wish I could just summon my glasses, rather than walking to them). Hopefully she'll also think I'm in a good mood ('cause it's a joke), and it'll put her in a better mood (since it's a Harry Potter reference). Anyway, my glasses case rises from its resting place and floats across the room to hover in front of me. It opens, and my glasses float out and unfold themselves. Bemused, I reach for them. But apparently they were expecting me to reach for a different part, because they helpfully dart a foot to one side, causing me to miss. On the second try, I grab them.

Cast Iron

I'm being chased by a wild animal, a bear or something. Right in front of me is an alley guarded by a cast iron gate. If I can climb over the gate, I'll be safe. But the bear is right behind me, so I have to climb quickly. Once I start climbing, my arms and legs suddenly feel like they weigh fifty pounds apiece. They get tangled in the gaps in the cast iron, and I know I won't make it up in time.

I decide to try again. This time, I'm being chased by a gorilla with tentacles on its chin, like Davy Jones from PotC. But it's also farther back and I'm already halfway up the gate. I manage to get over in time. I watch as it runs up to the gate and starts climbing after me. Uh oh. I run to a door at the end of the alley, just a plain rectangle of wood, painted white. It opens inward, but the space behind is almost entirely filled by the door itself. I try to hold the door at just the right angle to squeeze around the edge, so that I can shut the door behind me.

Presentation Day

I walk into my English class, and the teacher says "Let's talk about [insert author here]." I'd completely forgotten about that reading. I remember him assigning it almost on the first day of class, but I thought he would remind us at least once before the day it was due! Apparently he expects us to keep track of everything we should be doing. Which is fine, except that I've failed that expectation. I'm supposed to have read an entire play, but I have no idea what it's even about.

A small group of students goes to the front of the room to do their presentation. Sometime during the course of class, I accidentally scratch a girl's ankle.

I wake up [falsely]. Taking a long, sharp metal stick, I go into the front hall and begin scratching the wooden floor, writing down my notes for the dream I just had. My sister walks by just as I finish writing the name of the girl I accidentally scratched. I notice she's looking at the name, and I'm worried she'll recognize it, or perhaps mistakenly associate the name with someone else she knows, who just happens to have the same name.

Pop Quiz

We have a pop quiz today. One sheet, front and back, short answer questions. There were a few short activities at the beginning of class, but apart from that we have the entire period to do the quiz. Which is a good thing, because I'm having a hard time with it. After what seems like a very long while, I check the time and I see that I still have an hour left to finish. That's better than I thought I had, but it will still be close. Some time later, the teacher (a woman) announces that there are still forty-five minutes remaining. A lot of kids behind me laugh at this. I know it's because they're already done, so they have forty-five minutes to do nothing. Well, good for them, but I know I'll need all forty-five. I keep trying, but I don't finish in time.

After a break, I return to the classroom. One of my high school math teachers is teaching, but he's in a very odd mood. Irritable. Impatient. Sometimes he laughs sarcastically for no apparent reason. He's probably unhappy with the way we scored on the quiz. I try to walk up to him and explain, but he's hardly paying attention to me. Eventually he bursts out, "I'm fed up with"--here he does a violent hand gesture--"mediocrity!" I'm not sure what to say to this, so I settle for saying in an angry undertone that people make mistakes sometimes, and he will just have to deal with it. I go back to my seat. Class starts.

Once, I answer one of the questions he addresses to the class. I get it right. To my surprise, he walks over and puts a jelly bean on my desk. I wonder if he's trying to apologize to me, or if he does that for everyone who answers a question.

Random Video

I've found a YouTube channel that does parodies of and/or tributes to various TV shows. I'm not sure which show inspired the video I'm currently watching. I wonder if it might be Legend of Korra, but of course I have no idea what that show is like. A man and a woman are talking. I think they are (or maybe were) a couple. The man is planning something, but the woman is one step ahead of him: she strips him naked, then tells him that she plans to kill him. Not because they're enemies, but because it is, regrettably, the only solution to a dilemma they've been facing.

The show jumps back in time to explain how the woman engineered this situation. The pair are having another conversation. She promises to show him something if he'll follow her. She also cuts off his clothing with expert use of a whip. He says something about the One Power, but then she reveals that she can channel it as well. The man travels to the location from earlier in the show. As he looks around, the woman appears about fifty yards away. Her arm is raised above her head, seizing something invisible, and it's clear that she got here using the One Power.

The man's chest features some smallish breasts, and somehow this seems appropriate to me. The woman is wearing a white, unbuttoned vest without a bra, and she doesn't trouble herself much about making sure that the vest stays in place. Her breasts are about the same size as the man's.

Frags:

• A vertical antenna capped by a sphere the size of a ping-pong ball sticks up from the middle of a large metal dish. The ball bursts in a sort of molten, fiery explosion. This means we've finally defeated the enemy.

Crocodile

I'm playing with a graphics editing program. I'm trying to make a realistic 3-D model of a tree. I've found some textures and random generation algorithms from various other sources, and I'm trying to see how well they can be combined. For example, the models for the fruit on the tree come from Skyrim. Now, I manage to generate a tree. But it's one of those strangler fig trees from the jungle, and the setting is just a basic North American backyard. Also, the branches sometimes have a weird orthogonal slant. I'm not sure exactly how to fix these problems, short of designing my own textures for a tree, and that would be very complicated. I also notice that there's a thin spot in the middle of the tree--not enough leaves there. I spend some time trying to make an extra branch and affix it manually. The patch looks okay from a distance, but when I enter the 3-D environment and rotate the tree by grabbing a branch and pulling it sideways, it's clear that the new branch doesn't quite connect to the rest of the tree. It's just floating in the air in the right general location.

I look over the white picket fence bordering the yard. My parents are visible through the glass doors of the next house. One house over, a big group of 9 or 10-year-old kids is having a pool party. And on the other side of the fence from the pool is a crocodile. Wait, what!? Sure enough, there's a live, fifteen-foot crocodile sort of hanging upside down off of the fence. I'm both terrified and excited by this. In any case I'm definitely going to stay up here in my tree. There's a guy crouching next to the crocodile, but I'm not worried for him. He's probably from animal control or something.

I call out to my parents. "Mom! Dad! Look, it's a crocodile!"

They open the glass door and come outside. "Oh, have they come to pick it up already?" my dad says. I guess they already knew the crocodile was here. Meanwhile, the kids at the pool party are still busy doing cannonballs from the diving board.

Suddenly, the crocodile snarls at my dad. He crouches, but he looks frantic and confused and there's nowhere to run. The crocodile lunges, and Dad trips backwards over a white plastic lawn chair, which falls between them. Then, to my horror, my mom jumps on the crocodile and tries to wrestle with it. "Shit!" I say, desperately. She should have run. I can't see exactly what's going on, because my mom's back is to me. I wonder if I should try to help, or if that would only get me killed as well. Then I see blood and bits of flesh spilling onto the patio. It must have gotten her neck. "Shit," I moan, overcome with horror at the fact that I'm watching someone die, and that someone is my mother. Somehow, I'm on the ground, and her body lands next to me. There's definitely something wrong with the shape of her neck, and there's blood all over. I wake up.

Math Seminar

I'm sitting in the audience for a math seminar. Absently, I look at the speaker for the first time in a while. It takes me a minute to realize that instead of Prof. S, the speaker is a very broad-shouldered man whom I don't know. He looks very strong, he's in shape, and he's not wearing a shirt. Huh. The man explains somewhat embarrassedly that he's advertising for a company whose logo appears on his shorts. Also, I guess he's the substitute teacher for the math seminar, and he's kind of hoping that we won't talk much about math, since he doesn't know much about it.

This is the second half-naked man I've seen in the math department today. I guess the female undergrads must be feeling pretty lucky. Anyway, after the seminar I walk onto the stage and see that the guy's not wearing shorts now, either, or underwear. He's picking up his clothes and getting ready to leave.

At some point later, I discover that I'm wearing only a T-shirt and underwear, and my shorts are around my ankles. I feel somewhat irrationally superior to the substitute speaker in that I decide to pull up my pants, instead of taking off my underwear like he must have done in the same situation. But I do recognize that I'm probably just jealous.

Math Book

One of my friends in the math department leads me into a side room where the floor is covered in dozens of packets of paper, printouts from various mathematical lectures and books. He hands me the printout of the last chapter of the book I've been working through. When I go back and add this chapter to the rest of the book, I take a moment to contemplate the book as a whole. It's in a very rough state: for example, after I add a couple of entries to the glossary at the back, I notice that some of the definitions end with commas, some with periods, and some with nothing. It will take some work to clean up, but I'm still proud of it. I think I understand a little better the essence of a math book. It's not all about the typesetting and the grammar--it's about the content, and content is what we have.

Piano Lesson

Three of us are sitting in a room, waiting. We're all musicians. A friend of ours is having a piano lesson in the next room. The two others decide to rehearse a tricky spot from the string quartet they'll be playing in the recital. I'm a bit uncomfortable with this, since I'm worried about the noise being heard in the next room. It looks like one of the older adults who's back here with us is about to come over and stop them, but then she decides it's unnecessary. I guess if she thinks it's okay, then I'd better not worry about it.

Frags:

• Playing a platform game of some kind.

Victory

In our last confrontation with this portly, evil wizard, we left him for dead. But something feels unfinished to me, and I decide to go back into his old home to see what really happened. Inside, I see a few grotesque, mummified corpses--remnants of our last encounter. Nothing seems alive. I guess it really is over. But then I watch in shock as one of the "corpses" starts standing up. It's the wizard!

Before long, the mummy effect wears off, and he's back to his usual corpulent self. He explains that he was just playing dead, waiting for me to return so that he could get his revenge. We begin to battle. Somehow I force him to start balancing heavy objects in the air. I keep increasing the weight, until finally after I add a piano, his wizardly powers can't take the strain and he collapses, his powers spent. He's still dangerous, though, and I need to break his focus somehow if I want to have a chance to defeat him. I remember that he keeps a pot of explosive powder on the coffee table--perfect. I knock it to the ground, and the resulting "bang" and flash of sparks give me the opening I need.

Shower Regulations

Spoiler for Shower Regulations:

At this camp, nudity is required at all times in the locker rooms, although there's still strict segregation between the sexes. It's early morning now, and I'm still a bit groggy. I need to go to the bathroom, but my unfamiliarity with social nudity has given me a slight erection, which would make that difficult. I decide to take a shower instead. I consider going back into the main room, but there might be girls in there that would see me naked.

Prank War

A group of younger kids is having a prank war with a group of slightly older kids. Somehow this involves an underground train, and a room behind the tracks from which you can't escape if there's currently a train passing by. In the most recent prank, the younger kids dared the older ones to steal from the adults the supplies needed to make a special kind of warm alcoholic drink. This includes hot coals and ethanol, basically. So the bigger kids sneak into the outer room. They can't see any hot coals, and the adults might turn around at any moment, so they frantically grab a dark rock and some hot ashes, hoping that when they heat the rock with the ashes, it will be as good as a coal. What they don't know is that the little kids were plotting to get them caught.

Frags:

• At some point the words "lucid dreaming" came up, but I don't remember the context and apparently it didn't make me lucid.