Glieuaeiel's DJ

Secret Santa (5:37)

My RH calls me into her office to receive my assignment for our house's secret santa this year. I also overhear the person before me getting her assignment, which has something to do with a basketball team. Apparently she really hates this team, because she almost starts shouting at the RH in her annoyance at this assignment.

I go back outside, where there's a party going on. My secret santa assignment walks past with a group of her friends, and they drag me over to where people are dancing. I'm still no good at "party dancing," though, so I'm not sure what to do with myself. I just stand there awkwardly amid all the flailing arms. Then I notice some volunteers trying to get through the dance floor carrying trays of drinks. I try to move out of the way for them, but I know that very few other people will.

I notice that I'm not wearing any pants, just briefs and an extra-long T-shirt. Well, if no one's bothered by it, then I guess I won't bother to change. It's kind of fun going around like this.

Someone hands me a cup, telling me there's a really delicious new drink in it. I try it, and it's pretty good. Looking over at the bar, I see the bottle that it came out of. It's marked "5% alc/vol." Now I think back on it, the drink did taste like there was alcohol in it.

Green Soccer Ball

I'm walking along a hallway with a group of people, languidly dribbling a luminescent green soccer ball. The narration tells me that it is a ball of Nutella, and it belongs to one of the guys walking nearby, the leader of the group. We go into a big room with rows of shelves, and the rest of the group starts passing the ball among themselves, trying to keep the ball's owner from getting it back. But this isn't just friendly teasing, it's malicious. Round about this time, I know I'm dreaming, but I try just to focus on what's going on around me, so that I don't leave the dream. Once, the ball rolls up to a shelf near the ball's owner, but he's standing on the other side of the shelf. Using magic powers, he zaps the ball with a bolt of lightning, and it disappears and reappears next to him. Three people start running towards him to get the ball back, but he zaps them all simultaneously, and they fly backwards to the end of the room.

Then he turns to me. To him, I know, I'm with the other people. But somehow he's willing to give me more of a chance, maybe because I respect him. (By the way, I'm a girl right now.) He warns me that he's about to zap me. Then he shoots the bolt of lightning, and I conjure a shield in front of me, in the form of a fuzzy ball of white light. The shield absorbs the lightning. He tries again, and I block it again. I guess he's impressed, and we start a conversation. But the other guys in the room are all watching us. Suddenly grinning, the guy walks up to me and takes both of my hands in his, one in each. I'm confused until I realize that he means to teleport us somewhere more private. The destination is a camp of soldiers on the eastern edge of Skyrim.

Hank Dreams (9:11)

I'm in a museum, learning about Hank Green's approach to lucid dreaming. There are several different tiers to it, and Hank warns people against trying the most vivid version without lots of practice. Personally, I think he's just being jealous about his ability to do that version, but whatever. The tour group enters a small movie theater, where we'll watch a video that has something to do with the dangerous effects of the most vivid version, which Hank calls a "Hank Dream." The video starts with Hank lying in a bed, sleep-talking to Marilyn Monroe. Some of his friends are standing around the bed, of course, including the one videotaping the whole thing. It's all in black and white. After a minute, Hank says, "Marilyn, stop. Stop! I'm already married," and everyone in the movie theater laughs. Then Hank starts sleepwalking as though blind, groping around the room, trying to find someone. The people around the bed back up, and suddenly I realize what is about to happen. "Oh, fuck," I say, jumping out of my seat and trying to get away from the movie screen. Hank stumbles after me, presumably intending to do to me whatever he had been about to do to "Marilyn." Drawing on my tae kwon do, I assume a back stance with my hands in double shooto position, preparing to fend him off. John Green laughs and explains the rest of the story: "Eventually she [Hank] gets so mad that she poops at you and storms off, and you LOSE. Except you hit her enough that after a moment she goes like this:" From a kneeling position, he slowly widens his eyes and straightens his back in an expression of surprise, then falls over backwards, apparently unconscious. It's all very comedic.

Frags:

• '"who are you?" violin player' (7:05)

Close (7:05)

I've just come from a formal-attire event, so I'm pretty well-dressed for this birthday party. I'm introduced to a relative of someone from the year above me in high school; they look uncannily similar. In general, I'm seeing a lot of people here whom I haven't seen for a long time. Several of the girls are giving me smiles and hugs and other forms of physical contact. It's a good feeling.

I walk around the house and find an acquaintance alone in the kitchen. I don't know him too well, so it's a bit awkward trying to make conversation. Later, I run into that relative-of-a-friend again, but she introduces herself to me with a different name. I realize she must be a twin--I seem to recall them telling me something like that. "You must be ____'s sister," I say.

When I try to leave, I need to recover an ID card from somewhere. But when volunteers at the event were going around using the cards, they managed to switch everyone's around, so we're all walking around comparing cards and trying to find our own. I wish the volunteers had been more careful. I end up holding a set of papers held in sheet protectors, fastened by a key ring. Later I give them back to someone who lives at the house. Apparently they're letters he's received. He keeps them in sheet protectors because of their emotional significance.

Legacy (7:05)

Suddenly, Dad speaks up from his workstation to announce that he can't maintain the Quantz website anymore. (This website has to do with geology, not webcomics.) He goes on to explain that he forgot to add a "--" to a statement decrementing a variable, and he considers this a sign of his age. He doesn't want to keep coding, and he thinks it's time for me to continue the legacy. He's going to give me an administrator login. Behind him on the computer is the splash screen for the website, which currently shows an animation of my name, a password field with a blinking cursor, and the word "Soon. . . ." Family-run business, indeed.

I decide to humor him, so now we have to go outside and perform maintenance on the system. There's a sort of crawlspace near the driveway which is covered in cat litter. Dad says the inventor of cat litter lived here before us, so this crawlspace was the first of its kind. I can't see the bottom, so I take my time lowering myself into the area. It's awkward. The entrance is sort of like an oversized staircase, except that the ceiling isn't high enough so you almost have to slide down on your back.

Companions (7:05)

I'm in a neighbor's house. They have a lot of pets. I might even say, too many pets. There's a bird's nest in an upper corner. I can't see what's going on, but from all the noise, I suspect maybe the birds are having sex. There are some cats and dogs, and also a giant rabbit. The rabbit is vocally angry about being locked in a cage, except it's not actually in a cage, it's just lying in the middle of the living room. Someone who lives in the house comes over, and the rabbit hops away. I hope I didn't offend the person by implying that they don't take good enough care of their pets. The rabbit poops out what looks like a hot dog, and the person tosses it into a nearby pen containing yet more pets. Presumably they will play with it. I suppose it would be expensive caring for this many pets, so you would have to be stingy about things like pet toys.

At one point, I'm playing with my family's cat. He's lying on his back, swiping at me with his claws. I've never understood why this cat never learned to play less violently.