Glieuaeiel's DJ

It's Your Destiny (6:58)

A red-haired anime girl repeatedly walks up to my character and hands him a note. Half the time, she folds it into a paper airplane and blows it at him like she's blowing a kiss. The other half is a similar animation that also involves her blowing something at him. It's obvious that only these two animations were made, and they alternate randomly for variety. In both, after she delivers the note, she uses a pink rod about the size of a penis, which turns into an umbrella, and she floats away.

Some girls I know who have played the game before tell me that no matter how you play it, your character ends up with that girl. It has something to do with your destiny. I'm resistant to this idea, but there's clearly a different girl following me around in the game to enforce my destiny. The next time I see her approach, I get ready to do battle. I'm not exactly excited at the concept. I have a premonition that this battle will involve throwing fireballs, though, so at the least it will give me inspiration for lucid dream control, when I ever have one again. [D'oh!]

Indeed, one or two golf-ball sized fireballs are thrown. We also try setting traps on various pieces of furniture, but I'm not sure exactly how to set them off. Anyway, this girl is herself not an expert at this kind of fighting, so I'm not completely flattened. Some people my age are standing in a nearby driveway (it's dusk), which complicates things, because I think we're supposed to keep our abilities a secret. As I'm looking around, I notice an uncanny coincidence: of the three groups of people standing nearby, all are holding or manipulating a car tailgate/rear bumper, and our spells start affecting all three bumpers at once. It's such a strange coincidence that I start to wonder whether maybe destiny has something to do with it.

There's a man walking around the bar, singing enthusiastically along with the background music (which is Copeland's Hoedown). Our battle ends at the same time as the music.

Gingerly (6:58)

My family is walking into a building through a room with a lot of dog poop in it. Fortunately, there's a clear path around the side. Unfortunately, my mom trips and falls into the dirty part, then rolls through the dirty part before coming to a stop. That last part was totally unnecessary. She could have stopped herself somehow. My sisters are making loud, disgusted noises.

On the way out, I consider going around the other way, but it turns out that there are a ton of cobwebs between the car and the wall of the garage. Not worth it. So I go ahead of the group back around the original way so that I can open the door. We're talking about how this was just a routine checkup for our dog, but last year's checkup was routine and it led to discovering an illness which she hasn't recovered from to this day. So we're hoping for good news, but we're worried. We're also trying to coordinate times and places, because there's something I need to go to on my own, and someone else will have to pick me up.

Burnt Sugar Cookies (6:58)

Last night, someone made SO MANY sugar cookies. Dad shows me the box. They're all a little burnt, so they're brown rather than beige. They're going to be used as rewards. Dad also shows me the container which is supposedly full of grease from all the cleaning that had to be done afterward.

We try talking to my middle sister about something stupid she's doing. Mom's been trying to convince her to stop, but she isn't listening. I decide to pipe up and try to calm things down. I admit to her that I don't know as many of the details of the situation as Mom does, but I still agree with Mom's assessment that she should stop. I try to give some reasons, but I'm not sure that she listens.

Later, we're sitting around the dinner table. Dad tells everyone about how I've solved some of my professor's "Challenge Problems." I hadn't been planning on bringing it up, because that would be bragging. But now everyone's looking at me expectantly, so I say yes, I solved two of them. "Both of which I've already seen from other sources," I add. My eldest sister says encouragingly that there's no problem with that; it's all about "unifying the notation." I nod. I'd never thought of it that way before.

Springtime Traditions (6:58)

Spoiler for Springtime Traditions:

There's a video choreographed to "Rite of Spring." Right now, we're at the frenzied section towards the end of "Mock Abduction." Perhaps unsurprisingly, the accompanying video shows three couples lying parallel to each other, having sex. The video cuts are all over the place. I have a feeling I know what's coming. Indeed, on each of the last chords before "Spring Rounds," everyone convulses together. A helpful white label appears on screen, too, saying, "orgasm." I wake up messily.

Frags:

• Someone asks me my year in school, so I hold up three fingers. "Fourth?" they ask. I suppose the little short wall between us might have gotten in the way, so I raise my hand higher and say, "Ah, no, third," and they say, "Ah, of course." I wonder if my pinky wasn't folded over far enough the first time.
• There's a free bottle of alcohol lying around, so I grab it. Reading the label, I see that it's apparently bourbon. Excellent; I haven't tried that kind yet. [IRL I have this thing where I kind of want to try all the different kinds of alcohol, and then maybe never drink again after that. Who knows.] I put the bottle in my backpack. I still feel weird doing things like that; I feel like it should be illegal for me to possess alcohol. But it's not, anymore.
• I witness an awesome piece of scenery, and I try to impress it on my memory. It might have involved clouds.

No recall.

Más Despacio (7:06)

I'm sitting at a bar near an adult I've recently met when, on a whim, I say something to him in Spanish. Hardly missing a beat, the man responds in kind. It's clear he's more fluent than I am, and I'm worried this may have been a mistake. Nevertheless, I reply. He says something so fast that I actually have no idea what it was. After internally struggling with myself for a second, I reply, "Más despacio, por favor." He repeats himself a bit slower, but I still don't catch it. I say so, but I tell him not to worry about repeating it again, because maybe it was a mistake to try this. He insists, though, and this time I understand that he was saying that his wife knows about as much Spanish as I do.

Animation Studio (7:06)

I'm with a group of students roughly my own age, some a bit younger. We're exploring some kind of museum, or maybe it's an animation studio. In some of the exhibits, there's a trailer playing for some new animated movie, and I make it a goal to see all of the trailers before leaving. One of the rooms has an unusual second floor, almost like a system of catwalks, except in the same architectural style as the room below, which involves a lot of white. On the lower floor, most of the group is reenacting a scene that involves moving in slow motion. I'm participating, but I still wander up a staircase to the second floor. I find a section of floor that's transparent glass--there aren't even any reflections on it, so it looks like it's not there--and it turns out that the rest of the group is right underneath me. I wonder if they notice me apparently walking around on air above them. Then I go back and find a staircase in the corner of a room--it's so narrow that you have to squeeze through feet-first like you're spelunking--and I return to the first floor. In slow motion, I walk back into the group of students. I pass a blond girl whose current pose shows a bit of crack above her pant line, but when I look a second time, there's not even any midriff showing.

Later, I walk into a room, looking for someone to talk to. Indeed, there's a girl in here whom I know from high school, but the first thing she does is shoot a Nerf gun at me. Then another guy jumps out from behind some chairs, and they start having a Nerf gun battle. So much for talking. There's a trailer playing in this room, and I think it's the only one I haven't seen yet. So that's good, at least.

"I think you like me" (7:05)

I meet a group of people near my house. We discuss something. I'm particularly impressed by a certain old man, so when the group splits to go its separate ways, I decide to follow him. A little way down the road, he turns around with a smile to say, "I think you like me." It must have been pretty obvious that he was my favorite person there. Oh well.

Later on, I'm taking a train with him and with one other person closer to my age. There are a few women sitting at a table in the station where we get off, and one of them promises to kiss us if we make everything go smoothly. It's an unusual promise, but I like it.

We're off the train and it's about to pull away from the station when I remember that I forgot a deck of cards on board. There's no time to explain, so I dash back in, grab it, and run back to a door. The train's already moving at a good clip, so I'll have to dive and roll. There are too many railings and banisters in the station, and outside the station, there's still a concrete sidewalk. And the train's still accelerating, so this will get more dangerous the longer I wait. But suddenly the sidewalk gives way to grass. I can't hope for better, so I dive. Right about when I hit the ground, my alarm goes off.

Horse and Lava (8:45)

I sit down to play a game I haven't played in a while. I don't mean to play for very long, but when I finish the first level, I'm intrigued enough to play the next one, as well. I don't remember exactly how it goes, and it seems like it will have distinctly different game mechanics than the previous one.

It involves riding a horse around a 3D landscape. If you fall too far, your horse lands on all four feet and just stands there, but the screen fades to black and you start again from the place you fell. I guess they didn't want to make a horse death animation, in case it traumatized the little kids that play the game. Anyway, I manage to climb down a cliff into a red, rocky canyon crisscrossed by streams of lava. I don't think I was supposed to come down this way, but I complete the objective and then find my way out of the canyon by the way I was supposed to enter. Jumping over the streams of lava takes precise timing, and you can feel the heat of it at your back. I keep expecting some difficult enemies to appear, but they never do.

At the mouth of the canyon, three ghostly ancestral figures rise out of the sandy ground. They declare that since I have succeeded in my objective, they will allow me to do one final task to gain their assistance. We start to travel together across the sands, then the scene fades to black and reappears again at the beginning of the next level. My character laughs and tells his horse that he can't come, this time, because of the nature of the task. So it looks like I'll be doing this level on foot. Well, that's different enough that maybe I should try this level, too. I try out the controls for walking around on foot, because I'm not really used to them.

Unethical (8:45)

This game has a top-down view similar to Heroes III. I'm currently being told how the two nations I'm looking at have been unfairly put upon because of their small size. In fact, on the map, each "nation" has a grand total of two buildings. It's an example of that tendency in video games to compress the world. Right now, one of those buildings is being robbed of all its valuables, because the nation doesn't have enough guards to patrol it. My parents send me over to grab some of the loot.

The interior of the building is covered in rolls of coins. When you click on a coin, it disappears, revealing some of the floor underneath. One of the first structures I reveal is one of those ones that enhances your stats when you visit it. That makes me feel a bit better, since it seems I was intended to visit this place. I hear some of the high officials of this nation discussing the robbery. I'm not sure where they are, and I'm not sure why they're not coming in to find me if they know it's going on. I feel bad for them, though. I take my loot and go back home.

My family starts doing stuff with the loot, and suddenly I become utterly convinced that this was unethical. We didn't need this stuff. At the very least we could have left it for some other, needier people to steal. I try to explain this to my parents, but they don't agree. I try to take inventory of some of the loot to prove it to them. Most of what I took was coins, so probably 99.9% of the value of the loot came from that. But we also took a lot of food, so I try to sort it in order to get some kind of handle on how much excess value we took. It takes some time to get everything together. The whole time, I'm just feeling a sort of righteous anger at my family. I get through to them, a little bit, but I still need to gather up all of the candy we took. My family all start eating Starburst and--to my incredulity--dropping the wrappers on the driveway. Littering, on top of theft? I yell at them a bit and then start peeling the wrappers off of the ground (they're wet). There are way too many wrappers here for them all to have been dropped in the last few minutes. They must have made a habit of this over months.

Soon after, some cars pull up at the bottom of the driveway. Law enforcement, probably. I'm happy they're here, even if it means I might get in trouble for being involved.

Oops (8:45)

Birgitte walks onto a bus and announces herself. She has brownish skin. There's a big man standing on the bus with his arm around a girl with blackish skin. It is understood that this man is Gaidal Cain, so he must've mis-identified this other woman as the one he was destined to be with. Oops. He look sheepish. Stepping away from the other girl, he attempts a suave introduction of himself to Birgitte.

Frags:

• a youtuber who makes videos about sexuality

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.

You get what you pay for (7:08)

A couple of my cousins are in town, and Mom is driving all of us plus my youngest sister to a class. My sister and I aren't in the class, so we're just coming along for the ride before Mom drives us somewhere else. But when the class starts, to my surprise, Mom starts lecturing. It's a class about conducting an orchestra. Quietly, I remark to my sister that it seems like we'll have to stay for the whole class. She looks outraged.

I decide to open my brand-new conducting baton. For some reason, it's hard to see from the outside what the baton will look like. When I tear open the plastic-and-cardboard packaging, I discover that it's some sort of assembly with a handle and four identical attachments that look like big hexagonal construction nuts. The handle emits a broad-angle red laser, which you can focus to a narrower beam by adding one or more of the nuts (which are apparently lenses).

After testing this out, I'm angry. I just read somewhere that conducting batons work by blocking the light from objects behind the baton, so you can see it. But this baton just emits light of its own, and there's no way it's effective. I'm mad about what I got, as I'll tell anyone who will listen. Honestly, instead of all that fancy laser stuff, it would have been even cheaper to make a typical white plastic dowel, or whatever. Why couldn't they have done that? Mom stops her lecture to come down and see what's bothering me. I realize that I only paid six or seven dollars for this baton, which is really cheap, so I shouldn't expect good quality. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

Recreational Vandalism (7:08)

While riding the subway with a friend, I happen to have a couple of baby carrots. I wonder if they're strong enough that if I stuck them into the window, it would open and close a few times and break off entirely (sort of like jamming a gear with a wrench). Even before I say so out loud, my friend suggests we have fun and vandalize the train. Well, okay. So I do the thing with the carrots, and my friend does something similar about six feet away, and it turns out to be really effective. Half the side of the train on our side breaks off, exposing us and the rest of the passengers to the wind. The train pulls up to the next station, and I try to act nonchalant as I get off, despite the fact that the car around me is completely destroyed.

Of course, there is an investigation. My sister is very angry with us for having done what we did, so she helps the investigation assemble evidence against us. Once, I come across a big pile of evidence on the floor, and I wonder what would happen if I just took some of it. I'd probably get in trouble for obstructing justice, though, so I leave it. When the day of our interrogation comes, my friend and I try to be extremely friendly so the investigator will be on our side.

Frags:

• Two of my cousins have come to visit. I have a sort of friendly crush on one of them.

Someone Else's Dream (6:29)

There's something strange and kind of scary going on. One at a time, a couple of my friends and I have been drawn into this dream scenario. The rule is that the last person to arrive is in control of the dream, even if they don't know that they're dreaming or don't have good dream control. It's scary, because that person could unknowingly force you to do very dangerous things. I'm discussing the situation with my friends when suddenly a new person enters the dream, a stranger to all of us. It looks like a small four-footed creature with wings. We're worried, but then someone points out that the new entity seems very attuned to their mental state--they've already realized they're dreaming, and they're trying to escape. Indeed, the creature is energetically bouncing up and down. After a few moments, it disappears, leaving the previous dreamer in control of the scenario.

Spider Cleaning (8:06)

I'm in the basement of my house when a brusque girl comes walking up to me. She's been sent to clean out the spiders. I hadn't realized there were any spiders, and I say so. In response, she points at the ceiling of the bathroom. There's a sort of shelf made of cobwebs, with a couple big spiders on top and another clinging to the bottom. Oh. Wow, that's actually kind of scary. Then the girl starts swatting at the web with a broom, and the spiders fall to the ground and start crawling everywhere. Naturally, this makes me jump around a lot, and I'm impressed by how the girl seems totally unfazed.

Conference (8:06)

My partner and I are sitting down to have a civil conversation with the villains we've been tracking down. We accomplished this civility by trading parts of the skin from our face. So one guy has darkly tanned skin above his upper lip, and paler skin on his jaw and chin. The other guy has mostly dark skin, except that his lips and a patch of skin around them are lighter. (There are no scar lines at all, so it's not grotesque; it's just weird seeing such stark contrast in skin tone.)

Out With a Bang (8:06)

It's been a long story, and it's drawing to a close with the sole performer remaining on stage dancing to an upbeat musical number. With the final note of the music, she strikes a pose, and at that same instant, my alarm goes off and wakes me up.

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.

[I've decided to start including some timestamps: when I got in bed, when I got up, and when I recorded each dream.]

In bed from 11:18 to 9:05

Beware Lava 3:29

The eldest competitor first learned to channel a long time ago. An image of burning matchsticks appears. Then the matchsticks burn almost all the way to the point where the person holding the matchstick would get hurt, and the fire gets blown out. That's what happened to his ability. But he's still part of this competition. He's competing against two of his own students, both female. They start in separate, nearby rooms in a Minecraft world, underground. I'm playing as the teacher. He walks around the halls and sees that the doorways of the rooms of his students are blocked by collapsed ice. He's competing with them, yes, but he still feels like he should be nice to them. Back in his original room, he finds a back passageway that he can open using his ability to conjure fire. It leads into the room of one of the students. Then he shoots more fire, but he quickly realizes that it's getting out of control. The student in the room doesn't yet even know he's there, so he'd better warn her.

"Run!" he shouts. Without waiting to check that she does, he drops the wide bucket of water that he was holding. That water is an important resource, and he can't allow it to warm up. Heat is dangerous, here. I start trying to conjure some ice by first pressing 1 to select fire, then Enter to conjure a ball of fire in my hand, then 2 to switch to ice, then blowing on the ball of fire to freeze it, then throwing the ball of ice into a pile on the floor. All of these different buttons are tripping me up, and it's not going very quickly. Suddenly he notices that he forgot to freeze one fireball before throwing it on the floor. It's probably warming up all of the ice balls, making them completely useless. The air in the room feels very warm, and when he picks up the bucket of water, it's warm, too. The floor is especially warm, which probably means that there's lava rising below, melting the ice out from under his feet. It's time to get out of here. There's not even enough time to gather up what few supplies he has. He just runs--back into his original room and over to the far corner, then out with the pickaxe and start digging furiously. To where, he doesn't know. He has no supplies, so he's basically starting over.

An announcer starts speaking over the top of the video, something along the lines of, "Will he survive, alone, without resources, in the dangerous world into which he heads? Find out next time on 'Impossible Minecraft Campaigns!'" Meanwhile, the man is thinking that this was only the first of three episodes, and he's worse off than he was at the beginning--so it's unlikely he'll even survive the next one.

[This dream seems to be partially inspired by the dream incubation (?) I did before going to bed. I imagined myself in a forest, chopping down a tree, when I realize I'm dreaming and then start throwing fireballs everywhere, starting a forest fire. The heat was an important part of the scene, although it was supposed to be awesome, not terrifying, like it was in this dream. There was even a time where I imagined holding a fireball and then blowing on it to turn it into a ball of ice. So it seems like the dream incubation did something, although it was very indirect, and it didn't trigger lucidity.]

Group Hug 6:38

[I don't remember the main plot of this dream, just a side plot that I probably remembered due to its uncomfortable nature. My middle sister has always been trouble.]

Spoiler for Group Hug:

I'm watching TV in a room with a bunch of people. My middle sister is lying on a couch that's directly under the TV, facing away from it. I hear a moan from that direction, but it takes a couple of seconds to register that that was not a usual sound at all. I stare at my sister, wondering if she's dying from some wasting disease. I wonder if I should ask her if she's okay, even though that would disrupt the movie. Then I realize that the moan sounded almost sexual. I'm not sure. She's covered in a blanket, so she could be. . . . I avoid looking at her directly, but from where she's putting her hands and the disgusted sounds the rest of my family is making, it seems like she's probably masturbating.

Later, the main plot has taken the family driving in a car to another place. We get out and I start talking to one of several men standing outside in a group. It's an important conversation, and our discussion basically resolves the main plot. Towards the end, one of the other guys in the group starts muttering audibly to himself. I can't understand what he's saying, but it's distracting, and I realize, delightedly, that that's the point. It's a joke that when you mutter to yourself, you never know what kinds of conversation you might be interrupting. Or that no matter how important your conversation is, you might still get interrupted by a random muttering dude. Either way, it's funny. We all start laughing, and then, to my incredulous surprise, we go in for a group hug. We pretend like we're going to exclude the muttering guy, but then we let him in. All in good fun.

Later, all that's left is to wrap up a few loose ends. My middle sister came with us because she wanted Dad to buy something that removes semen from a uterus. Turns out there was a secret passage that comes up underneath that couch. One can reach it by going through the false back of a cabinet under the TV. So she had actually been having sex with some guy who came through that passage. We never saw him, but when the truth came out, we also found out that she's worried she's going to spill some semen out from the way it came in if she doesn't get some kind of tool to remove it in a controlled fashion. So now that the main plot is resolved, Dad got her some kind of wooden thingy that looks a bit like a spool that should apparently do the job. That ties things up nicely, so it's time to wake up.

I open my eyes into my dorm room and check the time, to see if I woke up in time for class. The clock says the time is 18:90. Converting from military time, I'm shocked to find that it's already evening. Wait a second, that kind of ridiculous lateness usually happens in dreams. And there aren't ninety minutes in an hour. Hah! Nice try. I manage to wake myself up successfully.

Candied Brazil Nuts 9:03

Dad and I park in the driveway and go into the house. A serial killer has been living in here, so we expect there will be a lot of bodies. And yes, there are. A lot of movie stars. There's a living movie star with us now, a young (black) one, and it's tragic to watch his face as he sees all of the bodies. He knew these people. It occurs to me that I'm paying attention to the fact that he's black, when really it shouldn't matter. So I stop thinking about it.

After tidying up a bit, Dad and I get back in the car to head to the picnic. Taylor Swift is on the radio: "We are never ever ever getting back together." Except it's not actually her song--it's a rap song that uses the same chorus. Man, that's what frustrates me about rap. They borrow melodies from classical music and from good pop songs and they just reuse them without adding anything.

We get to the picnic and find Mom. She came earlier than us. She tells us that she meant to clean up the killer's house herself, but she had other things to do first. She didn't mean to leave us with the job. I'm not cross with her about it, but she seems like she's in a bad mood. Then Dad gets mad at me because I forgot to bring the hot dogs. I meant to bring the hot dogs, and I even planned out exactly which hot dogs to bring, but I forgot. One of my sisters tries to defend me by explaining this, but Dad says it doesn't change the fact that I forgot. I suppose he's right. My alarm wakes me up.

Renegade

A recent event has caused a member of the party to turn around and run back in the direction whence he came. The other five or six party members (all of whom are friends in real life) joke about how he's on a renegade quest for revenge--he's so angry about what happened that he's willing to go back an face a werewolf alone, rather than wait to ask for backup. Actually, he hadn't been planning on going back for that reason . . . but a few minutes later, as he comes in range of the werewolf, he decides to kill it. He activates the werewolf transition animation for himself, then (as a werewolf) raises a long, thin sword above his head and charges. He worries about missing, since it's difficult to get the timing right, but he manages to hit the werewolf. With the damage bonus from a charging attack, it turns out to be a one-hit kill!

Awkward

I'm sitting in a room with my parents and my youngest sister. Apparently she heard something at school today, because she asks, "What are tist-estic-cles?" She stumbles over the word as though it's unfamiliar. Oh, dear. As a male, I feel like I should be the one to explain this, but I can't decide where to begin. But then my parents jump in ahead of me and start explaining. I feel like they're not doing a great job of it.

[IRL, that sister is in ninth grade, so she definitely already knows what testicles are, but I guess my unconscious is a bit behind the times.]

Car Solves Relationship Problems

A man on a game show has just explained to the host that he's having some relationship problems with a woman. As far as he can see, he has two options, but both of them have disadvantages. The show host then jumps in to say that all is not lost, because he there's a third option by which he can get the best of both other options! Then the show jumps into a thirty-second explanation of the new option, which is something about buying a new car, because this thirty-second "explanation" turns out to be, basically, an advertisement for a shiny red sports car. The man is a bit nonplussed, and he wonders quietly (so that only I can hear) how many lights they needed to use to get those highlights on the car. By "highlights," I assume he means the horizontal white lines of reflected light along the side of the car that make it look extra-shiny.

No recall.

[I just traveled back to school, and it might take a few days for my dream recall to adjust to the new setting. Also, that means classes are starting soon, and I'm probably going to have a lot less time to write these entries. I'll still try to update every day, even if I don't have enough time to write down all the details. Hold me to it! ]

[Contains a mild SPOILER for book four of the Wheel of Time series. I remembered this dream pretty well when I first woke from it yesterday morning, but since then I've forgotten it. . . .]

Frags:

• Jenn Aiel, Rand al'Thor, something about clearing the land
• Siuan Sanche (post-stilling) and a blue knife

Math Battle

I forgot to bring my sword when I entered this dungeon. Swords haven't been allowed in the previous dungeons, so I've gotten in the habit of not bringing them. But now I'm worried that the creatures in this dungeon will be too difficult to kill without one. And a humanoid creature just appeared out of the darkness to attack me. It looks familiar, like the Draugr from Skyrim, but the name that identifies it is unfamiliar to me, so I'm guessing it must be a higher-level version of what I've fought before. Uh oh!

We exchange a few blows. It's not an easy battle, but I think I'll be able to defeat it. I must have gotten used to hand-to-hand combat while going through those other dungeons.

I know that there's a girl somewhere in the dungeon, an adversary of mine, who was somehow responsible for designing the dungeon. Eventually I catch up to her, near a wall with three thick, knotted ropes hanging from the ceiling in front of it. It's the final round of the math competition. I, the girl, and another guy who won the competition last year are the only three contestants remaining. We stand around for a bit while the rules are explained. There are three different math problems to chose from, one at the top of each rope. The first person to climb a rope and solve a problem wins.

Without warning, last year's winner says, "Well, let's go," and starts the stopwatch. It takes a couple of seconds for me to realize what happened. When I finally do, I feel like that was unfair of him, but I don't say anything--I just grab a rope and start climbing. It also seems strange that one of the competitors is in charge of the clock. The girl is behind both of us, somehow out of the running.

The problem at the top of my rope has many diagrams of pyramids constructed by stacking lots of spheres, only sometimes a group of spheres will be missing from the pyramid. As I'm struggling to understand what the problem is asking, the other guy says, "Why are you working on that problem? This one's much easier." Startled, I decide without thinking to switch to the other problem. The other problem has a diagram of a lot of dominoes arranged in a complicated pattern. You're looking at the pattern from off to the side at an angle (rather than top-down). I have trouble understanding what this problem is asking, too.

A bit later, I learn that only a few seconds remain. My answer sheet is still blank. I decide to leave it that way. Not a very good show, but I'll just try to do better next time. I'll try not to let people like that guy throw me off by making me second-guess which problem to do.

I go back to my seat as we wait for the results to be announced. For a moment, I'm confused, because it looks like there's someone already sitting in it. But then I look again, and it's empty. I must not have been looking at the right place.

The teacher starts discussing how to use graphing calculators to perform addition of "structs." I listen to the first couple of sentences, but then I tune out, because I already know how to do this. Suddenly I think I'm dreaming, and I wake myself up.

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.