memorable

1. I'm taking a trip with my college friends into New York City. We ride the subway, then get off and start to negotiate taxi prices to get to our next destination. There are 15 of us, and the lady at the counter just kind of laughs when we ask if we could get a decent rate. At this I snap, and pull out a sniper rifle. I order everyone to the roof, and they obey fearfully.

Everyone lines up along the ledge of the roof, while I take a fortified position near the back. I start sniping, one after another, and feel great sorrow when I catch one of my friends with a bullet. Soon the police arrive, but without proper backup, and I snipe several of them. I then notice a stunning woman in a white dress swinging her legs out of a nearby window. I put my scope on her, but then notice she too has a rifle. She smiles at me and starts shooting at the crowd. Eventually the police get a machine gun emplacement set up and start to pepper my position, and the concrete blocks that shield me start to give way.

I awaken into my dorm room at college, where I get up and breathe on a mirror. I start writing the salient points of the dream in my breath as my friends are playing Mario Party in the background on the N64. It's hard to get the words to stay (failed RC), but I feel satisfied at some point. I then real awaken, angry...

2. I'm playing backgammon and discussing world issues with former president Bill Clinton.

3. I go to a concert in Columbus Ohio where Avenged Sevenfold is doing an experimental set and recording it directly to Youtube.

1. I arrive at my college for a new year, but as I'm unsure where to go I end up meandering through random hallways. In one of them I find my friend Mary T, who directs me up to her room. She's very happy to see me, and we hang out by playing a music theory game using a piano controller against another friend via Skype. Soon we start to cuddle, but as we do we're rudely intruded by an orientation activity. The RAs are leading a "Parade of Geeks," dressed in suspenders and huge glasses. They take my friend CW from the room after asking "Is anyone weird?" and Mary and I join him in support. I get lost on the way and stumble into a succession of other rooms on the floor. One contains freshmen girls from my old high school, another is an office space, and another is an apartment housing my roommate from the research station and his father.

2. CA and I are the only survivors of a pandemic that is changing all of my college into gibbering lunatics. I commend her as she singlehandedly diagnoses the disease and develops a cure.

3. I'm present in the final level of a Paper Mario game that takes place in the bar level from Guitar Hero. I am playing bass in the background, but when the final boss shows up I start to interact in the Paper Mario world. My dialogue is extremely cocky as I fight rather poorly, but as people criticize me I say I'm roleplaying. Another band leaves in fear and I insult them, leading to one of their members and I exchanging insults. He ends up kicking me in the face, which loosens the glasses I'm wearing.

4. I am watching a dinner show at the Dollywood theme park. Each guest is given a light gun to interact with the show as it goes on. As the show starts, the main character boasts how presidents (Bush father and son) and other dignitaries love it. The seats then move backwards to proper viewing distance for a massive screen, where a trippy music video appears. In the video, a redneck pharmacist has placed the world in a stupor by distributing colorful pills in colored Solo cups. The audience seems to enter the music video, and there's a crowd marching single-file through a large mansion.

At this point, I remember the main character declaring that the whole thing is a dream, and I feel a mild awareness for the rest of the scene. However, I don't feel any control and the faintest of physical sensations, so I'm not counting it as a true lucid. For some reason, I know my name is Vincent in the dream, and my body has split into several selves. One looks like the waking me, but several are burly black men and one is a golden robot. I feel pulled away from the march through the mansion, and my other selves go exploring with me. The robot leads the way to a golden cabinet, where I see a camera and a cell phone. Out of the corner of my eye I develop an X-ray vision and see the two objects go down a shelf in the cabinet. I know that to go further into the mansion, I have to move the objects myself, as the vision was an illusion.

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.

V and I are attending a movie, a biology documentary about wetland habitats. The screen is huge and very high-definition; underwater photography, alligators, and birds are all shown in stunning detail. After watching for a while, we move closer and closer, and finally close to kiss. The ensuing makeout is full of energy and passion, and I vividly feel both tongues writhing. There's so much energy, in fact, that she knocks out the filling from my front tooth. Its texture, hard and ugly, now enters the dream, and my brain pulls me out presumably to avoid that feeling.

I wake up (IRL, not a false awakening, thanks to RCs and my own dream journal), but when I go back to bed the dream has continued with a shift of scenes. We're now in the bathroom of the movie theatre, preparing to have sex. I try to hurry up and begin to piss... and I keep pissing. I notice, too late, that the urinal I chose has someone's shit blocking the drain, and soon the water starts to overflow. I have no choice but to continue, but as V knocks on the door to check on me the urinal breaks out of the ground! Water, piss, and shit start flowing everywhere, and she steps in the refuse with her heavy boots. The mood is, to say the least, ruined. I stumble out of the toilet trying to clean myself up and salvage the night, but another student from the research station, S, is crying to herself and washing glassware in the sink. I have no peace and wake up very frustrated.