DrRoy

And not only that, but a dream within a dream, too! And not only that, but a WILD within a dream! Quite thrilling.
(STARTS NON-LUCID) I was in this complex entertainment building. We were getting lost, and my parents were disagreeing over priorities in getting where we wanted to go or something. Finally we arrived in a theater where we got portable see-through armrests. In order to get to the next level on the screen, people would have to find the various things going on, point them out, and receive a 3-letter code for doing so. At the end of every level we would have to go out and act out parts (or something, I don't remember.) Finally, we were chased out of the theater as what might or might not have been part of the act by soldiers dressed like toy-soldiers. We ran up the staircase (very homey) then found out it was a dead end, got out, ran outside, set up defenses (there were a lot more of us outside than in), and started attacking. Somehow the dream transformed into me reading the most blatantly soulless sales and marketing ad I'd ever seen (and I'd seen it in another dream sometime), then looking up and realizing the ad was happening to me (involving an impossibly well-groomed woman of indeterminate racial profile asking me if I wanted to come to the meeting and that there would be Froot Loops and cake). Somehow THAT dream went to me at Grandma's house, somehow finding a second floor, and then somehow finding a spaceship on that floor, taking it out for a test drive (using the clear armrest from earlier as a piloting device), and then being immediately followed by the U.S. Government's spaceships. I was told to cease and desist or I would be destroyed. I panicked and (falsely) woke up. I tried to go back to sleep because I felt only half-awake and fought with SP (but a dream version nothing like the real thing; it felt and looked like being submerged in deep blue (we're talking toilet-levels of blue) water. So after I successfully WILDed my way into a LUCID dream within a dream, I'm rewarded with another false awakening (only this time I know it. I know both were false awakenings because both times I awoke to the sight of a ceiling fan, and my room doesn't have one of those.) I immediately RC'd by noticing some colorful cartoon animals. I clapped my hands and noticed the sound was off. I tried to get the sound to change to cowbell, but I couldn't think of a way to passively make that happen before I spun off into cartoon land, then awakeness. I did spin to maintain lucidity after I realized I had tried to actively force too much, but I didn't know what to do after that. However, I do know that next time this happens, I will be flying a spaceship.

EDIT: First *intentional* lucid dream.

I felt tired early, so I figured I'd go to bed at 10:00. I wake up at 1:30 from a dream and now I can't get back to bed. I figure I might as well write what I remember.

I was at Northwestern, but a different Northwestern. It resembled ours in locations of buildings, but they weren't as tall and there was a definite slope down from North to South campus. Also, there were many more gravel-paved roads. (When I dream about Northwestern, it is almost always this version.) I was getting back from something and then decided to get in disguise and join a couple in a van later that day. I carried a textbook and a basketball with me. The white van was parked on a basketball court behind a gym. The man in the couple had a mustache like Lt. Dangle from Reno 911! and they both dressed like tourists, as did I. As I circled the van to get in, there began a bunch of bickering like an old married couple, and I decided to throw in knowledge from my textbook about the peculiarities of marsupial birth. When asked why, I scrawled on the side of the seat as I got in, "I TALK ABOUT KANGAROO REPRODUCTION SO WE DON'T HAVE TO TALK ABOUT OUR MARRIAGE." Even though we were in a van, we stepped into a couple of elevators lit with art nouveau-style lights. We did so without any memory of leaving the van. On the second elevator, people stepped out of our way as we got on, and one of the couple said the only thing that hadn't been said in character, along the lines of "At least we have a little recognition down here." It then occurred to me that in joining the couple, I was infiltrating a cult that was trying to brainwash the student body. We continued driving and bickering until we got down south, arriving in a downtown Evanston that looked like the town square from Groundhog Day. There was a guy in black and red playing violin, and it was one of the most sad, beautiful chord progressions I had ever heard. The mustached man and I dumped a bucket's worth of coins into his hat, and at that point the violinist and I chatted about how if you got enough money, you could get Mack truck merchandise to sell. It was a lucrative business, apparently. Jump cut to the image of a Mack truck hauling manure down a highway, then to a shot from an NBC promo for a reality show that would involve the contestants having to carry the manure to places. He was wearing jean shorts, had fallen over, had some manure on him (it looked more like overcooked spinach than actual manure), and was addressing the camera. Then I woke up.

One complete dream, one fragment (would have had two if I hadn't been woken up):

Fragment: Mainly thinking up new album covers and songs for the new Kanye West album. The only cover I can remember with any clarity is Kanye from the banned cover sitting on the throne with a crown from one of the other covers. I don't remember how the songs went, but they gave me the same odd emotional reaction as the others.

Dream: I went with my family to a store. The floor was white tile, and the aisles were very tall and black. There was this odd white cube with a glass cube inside it on top of the checkout counter. The aisles were set in a long hallway, and were perpendicular to the length of the hallway. The walls on either side were windows. I was expressing interest in a drink mix that would taste like music. You needed amounts of six different powders plus a seventh for the particular song you were interested in, and the store only had four of the six, but I decided to try it. I had some The Strokes-flavored powder, mixed it in, and the drink tasted pleasantly Strokes-ish (like Someday, especially). At that point, I decided to trek down the long hallway, and found myself in a room with large (like 3x2 foot) tiles shaped like playing cards. I had been in this room before in a dream.

I haven't been able to remember a dream in what seems like forever, but I remembered two last night. Somehow this happened when I was on a terrible sleep schedule (accidentally napped for 2 hours, didn't go to bed until 5am), but I'll take what I can get.

1: I was going to a gigantic airport in the sky with my dorm friends and there were many sculptures suspended outside. There were minimal-to-no handrails. We got on this huge airship (I mean like a propeller-driven floating cruise ship with all the amenities) and we hung out until one of my friends in a lounge chair fell over the edge. Nobody was in the room at the time, so I had to let everybody know, except I woke up before then. Kinda depressing.

2: I was at this convention and I bought this game, then immediately warped back home where I could play it. It was pretty fun: there was an underground level where you had to find things with a metal detector but you could only move slowly, and there was a level where you could grind on the rails of a rollercoaster. The intro took place in a colorful half pipe. The controller looked like that of a Dreamcast. The game even had an option for content unlockable with a copy of a Ratchet and Clank game. I had to keep the system hidden, though, because nobody knew I had bought it.

Also, I tried to WILD after the nap. I could feel SP happening, but then I did RCs and I was still awake.

I was with a travel partner, and we had recently checked into a Chinese hotel. We dressed sharp and were on the run from our pasts thanks to something we had no control over. A series of events and meetiings with mysterious people in the music room in the basement led us to believe someone was going to try to kill us, so we left, me without my dress shoes because I didn't have time to put them on before we left. A few blocks away, we heard gunfire and screaming, and my view switched to a TV that said it was because Chinese people were getting outraged over things Americans had texted recently. I woke up as I crouched, barefoot, behind a table in a Subway.

I remember that for some reason, I had to win a debate with Glenn Beck. It was more complicated than that, though. I remember walking through my neighborhood, and at one point, I saw a red go-kart with two college-age students trying to drift down a straight street in front of me. I went south towards a downtown area, and started communicating with friends (I don't know how) over how to break into Prince's house, though I didn't know why at the time. I made a few passes reconning the house, which looked normal, with wood flooring. Eventually my friend broke in, but I was able to watch the action like in a movie. He went down a few carpeted stairs to some carpeted catwalks with golden handrails, like in hotels. He then attempted to get to the ground floor of this hotel-like building, but Glenn Beck was there, because apparently the reason we broke into Prince's house was to get into Glenn Beck's house, and somehow I had come in through the front door, making the break-in unnecessary. Glenn Beck yelled at his face, and we then watched some Glenn Beck show, with footage of me speaking with a cartoon of a rooster in the background, implying I was a cock. At this point I wasn't wearing pants (I know there was something that caused it to happen, but I forget), so I took some of my pants out of Glenn's closet, how they got there I don't know, but on the way to the debate I tried researching flash floods on the internet on the way there because I had seen some storm clouds in the background when I was watching his show. Then I woke up. Quite a vivid dream, especially with the go-kart.