lucid

Wait, didn't I leave this place . . . ? (LUCID)

While walking around in Barcelona, I see something that I really want to take a picture of. Unfortunately, I recently posted to Facebook some pictures of the plane taking off that took me from Barcelona back to the States. It would be silly to add more pictures after that one, since you'd think pictures of the plane taking off should be the last ones in the album. But wait--there's a good reason for that. Logically it shouldn't be possible to take any more pictures after that. Unless I came back to Barcelona somehow . . . ? That's absolutely ridiculous; obviously I'm dreaming right now. (I do a RC to check, though.)

Sweet! What should I do? I should do one of my dream goals. What were they? Swim beneath the ocean, and talk to my future self. Let's do the ocean one. Where will I find an ocean? Maybe I should just walk over to the beaches on the Mediterranean. That would take a while, though. Fortunately, I see some water just over the small hill running parallel to this road. I walk to the top of the hill, but the dream is very dark. I start shouting "clarity!" and "light!" in alternation. I go on for a while, and my shouts get angrier as I continue to be unsuccessful. There are flickers of light, and bigger flickers, but nothing seems to stick. Eventually even the flickers die out and all goes dark. [I seem to recall having woken up and written down the dream after that, but when I actually woke up later, nothing was written.]

[I'm back home now, so I intend to return to regular updates.]

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

Sex with My Cousin (LUCID)

[Okay, yes, awkward subject. The label "lucid" makes it seem like incest was a dream goal of mine, which I assure you is not the case. And it should go without saying that in waking life, although I do think she is attractive, we are certainly just relatives, with all that that entails. Please don't shun me!]

I'm outside, near a cottonwood tree, when I realize that I'm dreaming. I try to force things to happen, but the dream blurs, and I remember that it's better to try to work within the dream logic. How might I fly into the air within this system? I notice a strong wind at my back: perfect! I let myself be blown into the sky.

What next? I know that it's considered cliche and unrefined to try to have sex in a lucid dream, but at the moment I feel like doing it, and to hell with what everyone else thinks. Again, I try to think of how to make this element come naturally into the dream. Where would I find an interested girl? Hmmm. Probably I can just imagine that she's flying in the sky somewhere out there in the distance where I'm going. And indeed, I soon notice a distant speck growing larger, which turns out, unexpectedly, to be my cousin. We hold on to each other to keep from flying apart. Clothes disappear and not much copulation happens, because I wake up.

Frags:

• playing a really awesome new platformer

Previous hours:
Feb 15, 1:40-3:25
Feb 16, 3:50-9:00
Feb 17, 23:56-9:26

Holes in the Sky (LUCID)

Wandering about New York at night with some buddies, we come across their old high school. It's closed now, but we're in the mood for an adventure, so we break in. I'm not totally comfortable with this, and even though there was no audible alarm when we opened the door, I suspect there might have been a silent one. No sooner do I voice this concern to my friends than the floodlights come on and the police catch us.

Later, alone, irritated by the police and conscious of my lucid powers, I decide to walk around the perimeter of the school and telekinetically make writing appear on the chalkboards I can see through the windows. Let them try to explain that tomorrow morning!

Soon I wake up, but on a whim I do an RC and find out it was an FA. It's pretty dark, so I try to shout and make it brighter. That doesn't work, so I stop a moment to think. What would be a natural way to alter the dream and make it lighter? Aha! I direct my arms at the ceiling, and a square portion dissolves away to let in some reddish light. A pretty good solution, if I do say so myself.

Later, while I'm working on something, I see a couple of girls in bikinis off in the distance. I make a note of the location, but honestly what I'm doing now seems more important to me. Soon after, I wake up.


Previous Sleep Hours:
Sun Feb 3: 6:07-12:37

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.

Contentious Parking Spot (LUCID)

[The alarm woke me up at 10:00, but I fell asleep at about 10:07 and had this dream sometime after that. Content warning: some sex at the end.]

The field trip is over and everyone's figuring out how to get back home. A tallish guy walks down the line of students, trying to make eye contact with me. I'm pretty sure he's trying to ask me if I want to take the bus with him, so we'll both have company. When he reaches me, I assure him that I will (after verifying that he's talking about the same route as me); in fact, I had been planning to take the bus anyway. Our stop is at 58th street.

I get off at an underground stop and ascend the stairs to the surface. I emerge a couple blocks south of my dorm, in a neighborhood I usually try to avoid for safety reasons. The trouble is, I don't want to look scared, either. Thugs would find that encouraging, and innocent residents would find it insulting. So I try to maintain a measured pace as I walk to the corner.

I see two men my age coming my direction. I now have an agonizing decision to make. Do I run and be labeled as a prejudiced bigot, or do I keep walking and be mugged? Fortunately, they're far enough away from the intersection that I think I might just reach it far enough ahead of them that I don't need to worry. Unfortunately, when I turn the corner, I find that the dorm is still two blocks away, rather than the one I thought I remembered. Holding my pace, I try to stay calm.

Soon I'm in a car, turning a corner to find some empty street parking. In fact, there's a sign that states only people from my home state are allowed to park here, and two of the spots are labeled with the logo of the university in my home town. (I go to college out of state.) Apparently they're very organized about their parking around here. I pull into the spot. When I step out of my car, though, one of my high school friends is standing there.

"I'm going to have to move your car," he jokes. Apparently he uses it on a daily basis. Perhaps he even has a claim on it, because he actually goes to school at that university. [IRL: I'm not sure where he goes to school.] I assure him that he needn't bother; since I barely use my car anyway, I'll just put it in one of the long-term spots in the nearby underground parking garage. It's a bit of a nuisance, but hey, I'm a nice guy.

The parking garage is four stories deep, with a curving ramp going down. Once, I miscalculate the turn, and end up having to perform an elaborate K-turn in order to get the car aligned well enough to go down to the next level. On the third level, I find some empty spots, but they're far enough away from the ramp that I'm worried I wouldn't spot the car right away. It's a given that by the end of the quarter, I'll have forgotten completely where I parked. It'll be easier to find the car if I put it in one of the close spots on the fourth floor. So I keep going down, find a spot, and park.

Now my car is disguised as some kind of lightweight wooden framework [??], and I realize it would be very easy for some obnoxious fellow to pick it up and move it somewhere else. In fact, there's a guy trying to do so right now. I walk back to the car, thanking him not to do that any more, and I try to manifest some tent stakes into my hand so that I can pound them into the ground and hold the car in place. But obviously, if I'm manifesting things into my hands, I must be dreaming, and of course tent stakes are then a ridiculous waste of time.

I'm a bit fed up with half-lucid dreams where I get nothing done, so I throw caution to the winds and try to force the dream to change to one where I'm having sex. To my surprise, the dream doesn't immediately fall apart, and a few seconds later I'm lying on the floor with a plump woman in a white sweater leaning over me.

"You get two kisses," she says with a stern look, clearly implying that I will get no more. I accept this. The first kiss seems a little off, though, and this isn't really what I wanted to be doing anyway. I change my mind and try to change the dream to actual sex. The woman, now directly on top of me, thins somehow and becomes naked, and now this is definitely a sex dream. The girl says something about being 18 again. A few seconds later, it's over, which wakes me up.

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.

Ask Her (LUCID)

The party is happening at an indoor swimming pool. The building is three stories tall, and most people are hanging out on the balconies of the upper two stories, overlooking the pool. There are all sorts of staircases to climb and all kinds of ropes and structural supports hanging around the ceiling, so I'm having a blast swinging around the room and over the pool doing flips and leaps.

While I'm taking a break from this, walking down one of the upper balconies, a portly, bearded man falls in next to me.

"You were doing pretty well out there with all those flips," he says.

"Yeah, because--" Suddenly I remember that such acrobatics are a dead giveaway that I'm dreaming. I give the man a sideways look. I bet you anything he asked me that question just to make me realize that. "Because gravity doesn't work the same here, because I'm dreaming. I bet the other dream characters are pretty mad at you right now." (Everyone knows that dream characters are in general opposed to the dreamer's becoming lucid.) I'm proud of myself for remembering the phrase "dream characters."

The man chuckles. "Yes, I suppose they are."

We walk a few steps while I ruminate on the favor he's done me. "You know, I come to this pool almost every night," I say. "But I've never realized before that it's a dream. So thank you."

We go our separate ways. I do some more acrobatics. [I lose most of my lucidity almost right away, probably because I was determined just to go with the flow so the dream didn't fade away.] At one point I dive towards the water, only to pull out of it at the last moment using a breast stroke. I'd forgotten how useful the breast stroke is for flying.

Later, I'm talking to a group of friends on a balcony. They seem to think I have a crush on one of the girls here, someone named "Anna." I don't even know what she looks like, but they're all determined that I should talk to her. "You should ask her," they say. "Just ask her!" I leave for a little while. When I come back, I see a kinda cute girl standing a few feet away from my friends, though a lot of people have left the balcony since last I was here.

"Is that Anna?" I ask.

"What?" says the girl I'm talking to, glancing in the direction I'm indicating. "No, that's not her. Anna's younger than that."

Younger? So she's in high school? Why would they think I have a crush on a high school girl? Weird. Well, at least I proved that I actually don't know who she is. It occurs to me, though, that this might just be how I start relationships: I have to wait for the girl's friends to insist that I ask her out. That's a depressing thought.

I walk back to a staircase, where another group of friends invites me to play a game. A girl produces several two-inch lengths of floss, which are flavored with a randomly-generated flavor. We each have to take one and try to describe what it tastes like. I am very impressed that she's somehow discovered how to encode a randomly-generated flavor in a little piece of string. "You all keep complimenting me on my acrobatics, but this"--I say, holding out my piece of floss--"is really much more impressive." Then we all put the floss in our mouths and spend a few minutes sucking. I'm having a bit of trouble with mine, because seemingly the flavor's not very strong. The people to my right start writing down their impressions, and finally, they ask me what I think.

"You know, I think mine is just . . . lemon." I was certainly not expecting to get such an ordinary flavor, which is probably why I had such a hard time identifying it.

"Oh, so you mean it was boring," my friends say, commiserating.

I wait a bit for the next round to start, but it looks like that will take a while. I make my apologies to the girl hosting the game and depart. I explore some back staircases, which are deserted except for me. It takes some effort to climb all the way to the top, so I'm pleasantly surprised to find that the last half-staircase (from the landing between the second and third floors to the third floor) is only two steps long.

I walk out into the hall. I hear some noises from a bathroom, and a janitor comes out with cleaning supplies. Awkward.

[I have no recollection of having visited this pool before. But I suppose my dream-self would know better than I about something like that.]

Jedi Tricks (6:00) (LUCID)

I'm sitting in a room with my mentor and my fellow apprentice when a messenger comes running through the door. Someone is gravely injured, and they need our help in order to save her. Immediately, our mentor gets up to leave, and he beckons us to follow.

A stretch of floor in the hallway is unsafe--it collapses underneath you if you're not careful. Our mentor runs up to it and jumps across. It's a very long stretch of floor, so he has to use the force to propel himself horizontally. It's an impressive trick, and he calls it the "Seven-Meter Jump." I'm not sure I'm skilled enough yet to pull it off, but I jump anyway. It looks like I'm not quite going to make it, so I add an extra burst of horizontal motion at the end. Then I turn around to watch my fellow apprentice cross. He jumps up, grabs some handles on the ceiling, and swings across that way. Clever.

We reach the room with the patient. There are dozens of people already there--participants and helpers in the energy sharing ritual which our mentor will moderate. He starts giving orders, and everyone gets into position. There's even a big, shaggy dog involved. Then the ritual starts, and it's a bizarre sensation. It feels like it's over in moments. Afterwards, the other participants start enthusiastically talking about it and checking the time. We're all wondering how long it actually took. I overhear that it's a quarter after the hour now, but we came in there at around ten till. Wow, that ritual really messes with time perception.

I go back down the hallway with my fellow apprentice. We enter a stairwell with a railing, and I take this opportunity to practice some acrobatics--doing flips over the bar and bouncing off of the walls; that kind of thing. My friend does some, too. Then I realize that I must be dreaming--unrealistic acrobatics seem to be a theme, recently.

Without pausing to plan, I just start doing stuff. Nothing in particular, just whatever comes to mind--always making sure to observe what's going on and try to work creatively within the existing dream framework. For instance, I look at my hands to find I'm holding some Oreos. I squeeze my hands into fists and open them again to reveal handfuls of nuts. I decide I want to float around, so I start hopping up and down on the floor of my bedroom. Gravity's not behaving as leniently as I'd like, but I just keep trying. Somehow, some cubes get stuck to my feet, and bouncing on top of other loose cubes joins them all into two big cubes. Then gravity is a lot less strong, and I can float into the air at will. I'm approaching the ceiling, and I decide to try to go straight through it. After a moment of darkness, it works! I'm worried about waking my parents, though. A couple of times [I think], I return to the stairwell to do more acrobatics. They're really quite fun. At some point, I wake up.

Nonchalant (8:06)

Spoiler for vaguely sexual content:

I'm in the living room of the house, masturbating. One of my parents passes in a nearby hallway. I try to nonchalantly hide my penis behind my neck. [?? Obviously, this is not anatomically possible.] I suppose it works, because no one freaks out.

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.

Superheroes (8:07)

To their surprise, a group of friends discover that they all have superpowers. The superpower is unique to the person. One of them can create force fields, which comes in handy when villains begin shooting energy bullets at them. Still, she barely gets up the shields in time, which makes her friends nervous enough to shout at her a bit. In the middle of a sentence, someone realizes that the villains just shot a "seminuclear bomb" at them. They all shout and panic, and the bomb goes off. From a distant perspective, you see a cylindrical shield appear around the group just in time to protect them from the blast.

Thinking they've succeeded, the villains approach the area of the ocean where the group of superheroes had been swimming. Soon after they reach the spot, the shield disappears, presumably releasing radiation poisoning into all of the villains. They all start making funny faces. I'm curious about how this movie is going to depict radiation sickness--it seems like something that would be difficult to cartoonify.

Autumn (8:07) (LUCID)

It's a beautiful fall day. I'm walking over the grass in a section of woods where all the trees are bare of leaves, and I'm not alone. There are dozens of people nearby, walking every which way, although I am traveling alone. I reach the crest of a small hill, but rather than walking down the other side, I keep on walking straight into the air. I suppose that must mean I'm dreaming, but I'm not sure I feel like doing anything about that.

On second thought . . . I do a reality check to get into the mindset of dream control. I still have to prove that I can exercise some kind of control over fire. I decide to try to use lightning. Looking at a nearby tree, I gesture at it somehow. To my surprise, with a flash and a bang, a bolt actually strikes the tree. It's on fire, now, but the fire is highly stylized. The tree is covered in a bunch of orange and black sprites--little crescent moons that randomly switch from left-facing to right-facing. I'm not sure that counts as actually starting a fire. I turn to another tree and try to hit it with lightning, too, but this time, nothing happens.

I give up on the lightning, and try to set the grass on fire with a sweeping motion of my arm. A ramrod-straight, paper-thin line of flame about a dozen feet long appears on the ground, but it doesn't interact much with its surroundings. I try to make lava from the foothills flow down through a nearby riverbed, but that doesn't really work, either.

Carefully, I look up at the clouds above me. I worry that without any trees or grass in my field of vision, the dream will start to come apart. The sky is pretty, but I look down again quickly. A little later, and without any apparent warning, the dream just stops. My vision's not black, per se, but I can't see anything.

Novice Author (8:07)

A novice author has recorded a video explaining the story behind her recent short book. She starts by reading something apparently from a writing textbook, about how it's a good idea to write the ending first, then pretend to get flustered by all the complicated detail and explain to the reader that you'll have to go back and tell it all from the beginning. I recognize that technique from a lot of the books I've read, and apparently the author does, too, because she looks up from the book to interject a short phrase meaning something like, "Just like they do in the classics!"

While the video credits are rolling, the girl's roommate comes into the room wearing a bathrobe. She's just trying to get her laundry from the machine, but as a joke the vlogger intercepts her, and in the struggle the robe comes untied. Eventually the roommate does manage to put on a pair of underwear. Then the vlogger's top comes off, too, and they sit down on the ground and start kissing. I'm pretty sure this is the first time either of them have explored this part of their sexual orientation, so, good for them!

Frags:

• A volcano goes off and we have to climb up a series of gigantic, cubical cliffs in order to escape the lava flows. The cliffs have a consistency similar to tofu. I take a few wrong turns.

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.

Ceiling Parade (LUCID)

With a cheer, the students start walking. It's time for the "Walk the World" parade, which is what it sounds like, except most of the time you're walking on the ceiling. First, the group starts walking up a side wall in order to get to the ceiling. I'm worried about this, since I'm not sure my dream control is strong enough to defy gravity in this way. I get to the ceiling, but I'm at the very back of the parade, and I keep falling behind as we start to walk through the halls of the building. Even though I'm trying to speed walk, I'm still not fast enough. But then, somehow I change my mental approach to the situation. I'd been concentrating too much on how hard it is to walk on the ceiling, when I should really try to take it for granted and enjoy the experience. So I do, and suddenly I'm easily able to keep pace with everyone else. I even jog for a bit and pass a few of them. I hope this isn't a really formal parade where I'm supposed to keep my place in line; if it is, they'll probably be mad at me.

Soon, we're no longer a single trail of people. There are students running every which way all over the building. I notice there are stairs all over the place, which I realize doesn't make sense. No architect would design a building with stairs on the ceiling. But there's not much I can do about it, since I'd have a hard time imagining what a ceiling does look like from the perspective of someone standing on it. There are limits to imagination. Anyway, I see a grinning student cross an intersection in front of me, and I notice he's walking backwards. That looks like fun! So I get in front of/behind him and do the same thing for a while.

Sometimes I'll take a turn and end up in a hallway with no other students. I wonder if I should be worried about this, but I decide not to be. On one of these occasions, I find myself in a concrete stairwell, and I decide it's time to abandon this parade. I'll challenge myself by trying to find my way back to my dorm room. I feel a bit uncomfortable about not doing any of my declared dream goals, such as setting my fingers on fire by snapping, but I think getting back to my room is more important. So, let's see, where am I? The sign next to the door up there says "6", but that's upside down, so I must be near the ninth floor. And my room's on the fifth floor, so I have to go down four flights--which will actually seem like going up four flights, since I'm upside down. Okay. Let's get going.

I go around twice without incident (though I feel a bit disoriented), but the next landing is unusually dark. This is the perfect place to try that finger flame thing! I stand still and snap my fingers. Nothing happens except the lights flicker a bit at the edge of my vision. I try it a few more times, reminding myself that this is a dream and I can do anything I want to do. Still, nothing happens. I wonder if it would be helpful to have a small flame from another source to use as inspiration. Where could I get a flame like that? I try shaking my hand to joggle a couple flames loose, but it doesn't work. I try striking my right index finger on my left arm like it's a match (I'm proud of thinking of that), but it doesn't work either. By this time, there are a couple other students on the landing with me. My vision's also gone funny, like there's a second image overlayed atop the first. I try not to pay attention to it, because I think it means I'm waking up. I snap my fingers a few more times to show the other students what I've been trying to do. This time, I can feel a sort of heat and crackling in the air, but there's still no visible flame. Still, I'm a bit excited, and I notice my vision's cleared up again. I guess that small success pulled me back into the dream. But I don't have much time. Suddenly I realize it might be a good strategy to visualize success--try to imagine what it would look like to snap and have flame appear at your fingertips. Imagine how it would flicker, what effect the light would have on the surrounding environment. I have a good feeling about this strategy, but before I can test it, I wake up.

[I've no idea when or how I became lucid in that dream. Also, I've never lived on the fifth floor.]

Diet

My mom served me way too much food. I'm on a diet, but I guess she doesn't know that, so it's not her fault. Still, I eat only a bit of one casserole, then I get up and leave without explanation. Later, I realize I should have stored my leftovers in the fridge instead of making more work for Mom, but it's probably too late by now.

Platformer

I'm playing a platform game with four player characters. One of them is Mario. I had hoped that the other three characters would have some A.I. to use while I'm playing the fourth, but apparently not. I have to switch between the characters myself, and bring them all individually through each level. You can really sense the evil of the enemies at the end of the level. I get Mario through, but I die when I try to use the next character, because I don't know its attacks very well. I try various button combinations similar to the ones in Smash Bros. and the character does a lot of different animations, but I have no idea what these attacks actually do. I try the level again, and I die again. The people watching laugh and ask me why I'm playing such a weak character. Later, I notice that I've been reset to the beginning of the level, and all four characters are back at the start. Apparently this game has a very low tolerance for dying.

Later, I'm watching Hank and company play the game on hankgames. It's a "highlights" video with a strange title. As the video plays, I come to understand that the unusual word from the title means "dying and then having your dead body killed again a few times." It's funny because it's like adding insult to injury. It happens a lot in this game.

Frags:

• inside with a few friends, asking if any of them has a lighter I can borrow

Date Reservation (LUCID)

As I walk past the front desk of a cafe, I see a high school classmate whom I've always thought quite attractive. I haven't talked to her in a long time, but unfortunately I'm busy. So when we make eye contact, I only say "Hi!" and indicate that I don't have time to talk. A few steps later, though, I regret it. It seems really rude to pass up the chance to catch up with an old acquaintance. I wish I was in the sort of world where I could just walk up and cuddle with people and no one would care. But wait, I am! I'm dreaming! I don't even bother with a reality check before I turn around and walk back towards her.

Hesitantly, I sidle up to her and put my arm around her waist. Her shirt feels like it's made of some kind of silky fabric. Her only reaction to this seems to be resignation; she continues talking with the front desk clerk, with occasionally a few words for me. I stare at her eyes. They're pretty, and I think green, but it's like looking at a picture. Nothing moves much, and I can't read anything from her face. Eventually she says, "Come on, our table's this way." I guess she's done arranging things with the clerk.

We have a circular table right next to a window. Every other table in the cafe has a dark surface, but ours is quartered in primary colors: one quadrant red, one green, one yellow, one blue. "Of course," I groan. Of course our table would be singled out in the most gaudy way possible. And when we get nearer, I see that my chair is covered in crumbs and other meal residue. Ugh. "Well," I say, "the only thing to do is wipe it off." We commence using our hands to brush the crumbs onto the floor. It takes a while. [Clearly I wasn't very lucid by this point.]

Meanwhile, the girl is giving me a few warnings. She says, "If this is about Uncle Bill, please don't be too awkward about it." Somehow she's romantically involved with him, I guess? It's become clear she's rather uncomfortable with the whole situation, and I'm starting to get uncomfortable, too. I wonder if maybe I should try to do some other dream goals, like swimming beneath the ocean. Maybe I could take her with me; she might like that. I ask, "Do you . . . want to go . . . somewhere else, after this?" But whatever her answer, I wake up a few moments later.

Insomnia

Spoiler for Insomnia:

[After waking from that last dream, I tried to picture it in my mind as I fell back asleep. But that only made it harder for me to fall back asleep, I think. I don't remember when I finally dropped off, but this next dream was probably inspired by those feelings of frustration.]

It's almost dawn, but I'm still awake. I woke up a while ago from a dream and I haven't been able to get back to sleep. I'm using the computer. Watching videos. Mostly porn. One of the "related videos" on the side has a title that starts with "OMG OMG OMG" and I'm very tempted to click it, before I realize that's exactly what the title's intended to do. The video's probably really stupid. I must be really tired, if I almost fell for that one. I don't watch it.

Later, I find a porn video whose title includes the name of one of my high school crushes. And the thumbnail even looks like her. I'm intrigued, so I watch it. It's kind of sexy, although she never takes off any underwear. I probably should have expected that. She was pretty classy when I knew her.

I look out the window and see one of my roommates coming up the driveway on a motorcycle. Huh. I hadn't realized he wasn't home. It's almost seven, so he must just be coming to grab his stuff before going to class. It's a school day. I suppose he slept at some girl's place last night. I'm a bit jealous.

I look back at the video. Surprisingly, now her bra is on backwards, although it has a wide strap. I hadn't noticed that, the first time through. She takes it off entirely--that takes a moment to register--then turns around and leans over. I lean closer to investigate, but a moment later I wake up. (Messily.)

House of Spirits

I'm playing a game where you live in a house with a bunch of spirits. Most of the spirits are evil, so you have to fight them. It's multiplayer, and there are a few other people in the house with me right now. We're going through the rooms trying to roust all of the evil spirits so that none of them will surprise us in our sleep. Usually they don't wake up if you just walk through the room, but they will if you say anything aloud.

While sort of alone in one wing, I accidentally talk to myself, and a spirit starts to coalesce out of the air. Oops. He offers to duel with me, and he even offers to let me use a pretty nice weapon (like a crowbar or something). That's much better than the weapons this game usually lets you use, so this sounds good to me. But spirits can be tricky, so I ask him what his own weapons will be. "Oh, just this metal letter opener and [some other sharp household implement]," he replies. Then he attacks, before I have a chance to realize that his weapons are much more dangerous than mine.

We battle through hallways and rooms. Some other people see us and shout and point, and try to come to assist me. In the end, we defeat the spirit. The rest of the group continues looking for other spirits, but I suddenly realize how silly all of this is. Ghosts aren't real, and I'm tired. I just want to go to bed. My dad sees me abandoning the hunt and starts arguing with me. In response, I try to explain to him that this house isn't even real. It's virtual. Not worth worrying about, see?

Car Argument (LUCID)

From the back seat of the car, I'm having a minor argument with my parents. The situation seems a little ridiculous to me, and when my mom leans over to reveal completely gray hair done in a long braid, I'm pretty certain I'm dreaming. After a nose RC, I'm sure of it. Thank goodness I don't have to deal with this argument any more. But as I try to figure out how to get out of here and start working on my dream goals, I realize that I'm waking up. The interior of the car seems to fade into the view of my bedroom from my bed. For instance, my mom's gray hair becomes a fold in my blanket. Well, that's too bad. [Thinking about this now, there's a good chance that that was actually a false awakening. I'm not sure, though.]

Snarl

[This dream was definitely inspired by the series of videos called "The Walls 2" recently recorded by Yogscast on YouTube, which I watched the day before yesterday. It also happened quite late in the morning (for me)--around 10:30.]

We're playing PVP Minecraft in 2-person teams. There are only two teams left. One member of the enemy team is chasing the other member of my team, while I in turn chase him. We run back to my team's base, then we sandwich him between us and kill him with swords. Excellent! Now, the other guy is hiding underneath the ground here. There are lots of holes in the ground and lots of tunnels, and it's all very confusing, so we're not sure how to get him.

We decide to build an enclosed room with a roof and a tower. So my teammate and I sit down with the Legos and start working. I begin by making the tower, which is a really tall wall built from 1x2x1 blue blocks. I get bored with how slowly it's going, so I try just spreading the blocks like I'm extending a folding telescope. It doesn't work, and my friend laughs at me for trying. Anyway, eventually I finish the tower and start working on the other half of the roof.

Suddenly I hear a violent snarl and I feel as though my head's been seized in the jaws of a big, angry dog. The snarl continues as it starts shaking my head back and forth, up and down, like a very erratic vibration. I spend a panicked second trying to decide what to do--is my friend playing a prank on me?!--before I wake up. It feels like the vibrations continue for a moment before they stop. I sit for a minute in shock before doing an RC and confirming that I'm awake.

[It's crossed my mind that maybe that was a seizure, but I doubt it. More likely I imagined it. Either way, it was a strange experience.]