non-lucid

No recall for 8/20.

Moving Day
I'm moving into a college dorm of some sort, although I'm not carrying anything. I head up a stairway that's crowded with college-age kids, all chattering happily and getting to know each other. I see someone that looks an awful lot like Cara F. and for a second I think it actually is her, but then realize I'm wrong. The idea of a… dolphin-person?… comes into my head and I'm not sure whether I'm looking for a creature like this or if it's just a random mental image. There's a bend in the stairway and I continue up. Apparently Britney Spears is somewhere in the crowd; I pass a girl with black hair and hear her announce "I don't know about all that, I just know I'm talking to Britney Spears right now."

The stairway lets into a lobby-like area. There's a board with a list of names and their expected arrival dates; I'm on there and my date is listed as the 18th, which I know is "today", at least as far as the dream goes. There are only a few people listed under this date, but a lot more are arriving on the 19th and 20th, so I must be a little on the early side. Next to my name (just my first name) is my email address, but it's written strangely, with parentheses inserted and the @ sign spelled out as "at". I realize it's a spam blocking measure… but everything on the chart is hand-written, so what's the point? Also, obfuscation aside, I don't think my email address is actually spelled correctly.

I realize that instead of moving in right away I could be out socializing with the others and breaking the ice a little… it's typical of me not to think of something like that until after the fact.

Dark Tower Continued
I'm with a group of people I don't recognize, walking through an arid, sandy area that's not quite a desert but pretty close. Somehow I understand that we are acting out the Dark Tower series, namely the events of the last two books that I haven't read. There is a small green plastic disc on the ground (embedded in the ground) that is significant but I don't know why. I look into the distance and on the horizon I can see a blur of neon light. As I continue to stare, the blur resolves itself into a steadily flashing sign that says "SEPPIPPI". Each letter is individually lit and in its own color. I know that Seppippi is the name of a town or city; however, I'm slightly concerned about what I'll find when I go there. The sign itself looks normal enough, but I know the world has moved on and I remember what happened when the characters in the Dark Tower visited the city of Lud. I can't see anything of the city itself, just the sign, so I have no clue about what awaits.

Gem Collecting
I'm at work collecting gems (again like Gravity Rush). This time I am actually able to shift gravity, so I'm making short flights down hallways and into cubes to snag gems. It occurs to me that I am only half-dressed and I'm in the office after hours, and I have a specific worry of B from IT discovering that I'm here (even though there's nothing technically wrong with me being here).

Gravity Ball
I'm outside in a classy city setting that strongly reminds me of Gravity Rush's Hekseville. It's late afternoon. My parents are here celebrating their birthdays/anniversary? I try to jump into the air but am disappointed that I can't gravity shift like Kat. I have a small purple ball (looks like a gem from GR) that, if I leave it alone on a surface, will start bouncing all by itself. I throw this in front of me, thinking that *somebody* (who?) will see me with this and change their mind about me not liking fun things. (Odd sentiment that I don't really remember.) The ball bounces away from me and disappears over a ridge - it's the bed, it's actually disappeared under the bed. I'm mostly awake at this point. I nimbly (lol) leap out of bed, again thinking how impressed the mysterious third party must be, and feel around under the bed for the ball. No dice. I figure that since the ball attaches itself to surfaces I'd probably be able to feel it bouncing if it attached to a sheet or something, but I don't feel anything.

Job Application/Vampires and Guns
Outside Newbury Comics, talking to a girl. Originally I was with A. but apparently went off by myself. I go inside the store and start a conversation with the manager; she's pretty friendly and we hit it off. Eventually she says, "You worked at Absolute, right? Ever thought about working here?" (I have a false memory of Absolute being some sort of music-related business.) I say yes, I've always wanted to work at a place like this. She gives me three numbers to call, and after I write them all down she says that if I'm calling to apply for the job, I should only call the third number. I turn to leave and say, "Thank you very much, I'll be in touch!" and she just responds with a disinterested "Yeah," which is a little surprising.

Outside in the parking lot, 2 groups of people are playing some kind of vampire card game against each other. One card I remember is "Solane," a short, pixie-like vampire dressed in a naughty nurse kind of outfit. She is sitting waist deep in a sea of blood and drinking it with a straw. The card strikes me as extremely scandalous, even though the artwork itself (subject matter aside) is tastefully drawn. Anyway, I want to leave but can't while the game is going on, so either I get a card of my own that has a gun or I get an actual gun and point it at the leader, a girl with long blond hair. Her underling (a very big guy but otherwise nondescript) points his own gun at me, yet I feel like I have the advantage.

Fragment
Climbing a snowy mountain i just recently came down from, together with a traveling party that reminds me of Lord of the Rings. I get the sense we're going the wrong way by going up the mountain, yet it's something we have to do for some reason.

Walking Through Town
I'm walking down Salem St. toward Medford Square. There is a quadriplegic sitting/lying on a bench on the sidewalk. Several other people I pass seem to have physical or mental problems of their own. As I near the four-way intersection I can hear several kids running aimlessly across the street in my direction. "Filio! Filio!" they call out, trying to get my attention, but I know not to give it to them since they're just going to try to pickpocket me. The kids' parents call after them sluggishly, telling them to slow down, and as I keep walking I am very aware of my wallet in my front pants pocket.

I turn the corner and... something about wanting to go to the movies. There's a line of people standing a little ways down the sidewalk from me, and I can hear whispering. As I walk to where I think the theater is, a strange thing happens: every time I stop, thinking I've arrived, I'm actually standing in front of a small decrepit shop with a hole in the wall where the proprietor, an older black woman, looks out. She shushes me and tells me as quietly as possible that the theater is actually further down the road (with the implication that it *used* to be where I'm standing but something happened to change things). This odd sequence of events happens four or five times. By the time I actually get to the theater, which I think is called the Showbug?, I have lost all desire to see a movie and just want to get out of here.

Cinnamon Sticks
In the kitchen. A. is taking a shower, and he's taking forever, so I decide to have a bowl of cereal while I wait for my turn in the bathroom. Something is wrong with the cereal because the milk gets all sludgy and brown, but this doesn't bother me. What *does* bother me is that while I eat, I keep finding these long, hard black bars in the cereal that look like plastic (but I think to myself that they're cinnamon). Somehow I keep finding these "cinnamon" sticks, even though each time I fish one out of the bowl it looks like I've gotten all of them. I find four or five at least.

Once A. is done with the shower he goes into his room (which is across from mine, for some reason) and tells me to come in so he can show me something. He shows me a very primitive DOS-era computer game with bleepy PC speaker music apparently done by Masashi Hamauzu. The music is very simple and repetitive, and really annoying; the game itself doesn't even look finished (graphics don't seem like they're all there) and I'm not sure how A. is managing to play it in its current state. I'm starting to get annoyed because I know I'm going to be late for work.

Centi Pizza
There is a particular brand of frozen pizza that is supposedly all the rage right now; in fact it's attained legendary status as some sort of superfood. However, I've never had it because the store I shop at has never carried it. (Later I learn that this is because supplies of the pizza are tightly rationed for some reason--maybe overwhelming demand?) Today I'm in the store and everyone is buzzing because THE PIZZA IS HERE. At first it seems like I'm not going to be able to get my hands on any because while there are free samples available, people apparently needed to reserve a sample in advance! But as I'm walking around the store that doesn't actually seem to be the case. I start to see samples set out everywhere, with labels like "Try this tonight for dinner!" The pizza is basic cheese and pepperoni and comes in little bite-size rolls. I take one and pop it into my mouth. It's lukewarm and doesn't really taste like anything special--I can faintly taste the pepperoni, but otherwise it almost has no taste at all. Yet after I've had one bite I discover I can't stop eating it. I NEED more. I'm walking around the store eating handfuls of pizza bites, and I can see open pizza boxes everywhere because apparently store employees and customers alike are all just WOLFING this stuff down. I see M.M. from work, who holds up a pizza box and says "Hey Coyote, did you hear about the new pizza they finally--" and I interrupt him with a cheery "Yup, way ahead of ya!" Apparently this pizza goes under the brand name of "Centilavi" ("Cantilavi"?) or just Centi for short. I think E.L. from work is also there.

There are also other pizza samples in the store, but they're from a different maker and they're whole pizzas, not bite-sized things. I take a bite of one piece and discover it is actually pizza cleverly interwoven with large sticky blocks of pasta. It actually doesn't taste bad (it's similar to the Centi pizza in that I can't really taste anything) but the idea of a pizza-pasta hybrid grosses me out, so I stop eating it. Another piece (of regular pizza this time) is supposedly "super spicy" and features some kind of meat with spicy sauce, but again I can barely taste it, and what I can taste doesn't seem spicy at all.

A Cleaner Workplace
I'm leaving work, but before I go I have a conversation with someone about how much cleaner the place used to be when it had a full complement of cleaning staff. I pass through a number of small rooms and hallways on my way to the exit (it's a pretty labyrinthine workplace in my dream, apparently). Just before the exit there's a large room that serves as a warehouse area; the left side of the room is fenced off to create a corridor for foot traffic. In the warehouse is a woman who starts out looking vaguely like S.W. (medium-length blond hair) but ends up having dark, very curly hair by the end of our conversation. We talk about the same thing: the office's former cleanliness. The woman mentions that we also used to be fully OSHA-compliant (I think she said OSHA) and I have a memory of seeing some sort of chart with green dots on it that illustrates our former compliance levels. "If you go way back to the 90s," she says, you'd see a real difference in how things looked. I start to laugh at this, thinking she's making a joke by saying "back to the 90s," but then realize she's not laughing. I quickly apologize and say that I've only been working here since... 2008 (it takes me a minute to come up with the year) so I wouldn't know what it was like back then. She nods. While we are talking, a few more people have come into the warehouse, and I'm suddenly aware that they're all standing fairly close by as if they're listening to us. (One of them looks like J.R. but has his hair in a ponytail.) I suddenly feel uncomfortable bitching about the workplace in front of them. I'm about to leave the woman with one last assenting remark that her observations are right on the money, but because of the onlookers I change my mind... and then am at a complete loss for what I should *actually* say. I stand there with my mouth open for almost 10 seconds while I try to come up with something. Finally I say something like "If we meet again, I'd like to talk more about this" and this seems to satisfy her. I walk away and realize I don't know her name and she probably doesn't know mine.

Car Murder
There's some sort of incredible new model of car that I may have been test driving (this part of the dream is hazy). I'm walking down the sidewalk to get to where my car is parked and pass one version of this model, but it's not my car. I can hear a group of young guys partway down the street heckling loudly at someone's car because it's the shiny new model, and I know instantly that they're looking at my car. I increase my pace and hope I don't find them vandalizing it or anything. I get there and discover that my car is actually kind of a hybrid of old and new: it has the new model's frame (or maybe just part of it?) but still has its old tires and the same beat-up front license plate. Well, when I say it has its old tires, it actually only has *two* of those tires: both the right front and right rear tires are completely gone, yet the car is upright and balanced as if nothing was missing. I think the gang stole the tires (I am dimly aware that they're surrounding the car) but I don't see any signs that anyone there is responsible for the theft, aside from the continued heckling. As I watch, the car suddenly bucks, like a horse, all on its own; the front of it bends in a weird way as if there's some kind of extra joint in the hood. This gets a louder jeering from the crowd. One guy approaches the front of the car, and suddenly the car bucks again and somehow *grabs onto him* with its front fender. The car rears up high in the air, then comes down hard, slamming the guy into the pavement. He brokenly tries to get to his feet, stammering "But I--" and the car picks him up and begins to roll forward, slamming him down again and again and again until there's nothing left of the guy except a smear of red paste stretching down the road. I am standing on the sidewalk, stunned, with my mouth open. From across the street the guy's mother comes running out of an apartment. "Joe! JOE!" she yells. There's a pause and then the mother lets out a wordless, resounding shriek that echoes off the buildings. At this point I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to be held accountable for Joe's murder (even though I had nothing to do with it) since I'm the owner of the car.

[small skip] The mother is kneeling on the sidewalk next to me. I am next to her with an arm around her back for support. I can see blood on her dress. She talks quietly and seems much calmer after her initial outburst. There is a tight group of people surrounding the two of us, but they are friends. I don't feel threatened at this point, since it doesn't seem like the mother is looking to place blame on anyone for the incident. (A calculating part of me knows this is because I made sure to be by her side and befriend her from the get-go.) For some reason we're talking about mental health, I think. I don't remember much of the conversation except that at one point someone asks "Well, how's Chihiro Onitsuka* doing these days [with her issues]?" Someone replies that she's hanging on, but barely, and that the national health system "let her off with a warning," whatever that means. It's an odd conversation but suggests that mental problems are pretty heavily stigmatized and that people have few if any resources when it comes to seeking help for them.

*Oni is a wonderful Japanese singer.

I'm in my apartment with Josh. He says he's planning on getting me something with sapphire in it for my birthday (like a sapphire picture frame?) and he wants to know whether my room is an appropriate color first. We go into my room and look at the walls; they are sky blue, and in places they are shot through with rugged veins of white and darker blue - like the room has been carved out of a strange rock face. Well, the room will obviously match something made of sapphire, but I'm wondering why Josh doesn't know that my birthstone is actually amethyst.

---

I'm in a hospital bathroom that would probably be fairly spacious in normal circumstances; however, there are four people in here, and we are fighting--myself and one other person against two men who I identify as gang members of some sort. We are throwing each other against the walls, which are plated with mirrors, and these mirrors begin to shatter under the continued impacts. They don't shatter like normal glass, though; instead they break into many tiny pieces, but stay on the wall for a time before gently falling away as though they were paper. I'm not experiencing any pain despite the violence, but I do know that there's no way I'm going to be able to make it out of the hospital without running into the police.

Then everyone else in the room is gone, and I leave the bathroom to head for the elevator. When I reach it, I notice the "up" button is flashing rapidly, as if to signal that the elevator is partially broken and I can't go up. That's OK, I want to go down… but when I enter the elevator door, there is actually a staircase there instead, richly carpeted in what might be velvet. I make my way down the stairs; I don't have to go far since I'm only on the second floor. I emerge in the hospital lobby. Outside it is late afternoon and overcast. I begin to walk quickly toward the exit. Before I get there, though, I notice a couch (with a late-middle-aged woman sitting on it) and a table, upon which is a chocolate cake. The cake is there for visitors to eat, and I think about taking a piece for myself, but decide against it.

Now I'm outside the hospital and walking down the street. As I go, I pass Mom walking in the other direction. She's wearing some kind of dark denim blouse and a flared skirt--not something I normally see her wearing. As we pass, she gives me a look of recognition but doesn't say anything. [skip] It's nighttime and it has rained recently, since the road is wet. I'm still walking along the street, trying to get to my car. I pass a large clump of parked cars (is there a church service or funeral being held nearby?) before coming across my own car--and a man crouching by the driver's side window. He's writing me a ticket. "You were parked on the wrong side of the road for too long," he says in a half-apologetic way, then walks away. I'm dimly aware that the other cars on the street have also received tickets, and I'm not really mad; it's my fault for parking incorrectly, after all.

I'm in the car with Mom and possibly Josh. As I back out of my spot, I look over at the opposite side of the wet road and see leaves lying there. They are a mix of brilliant red and yellow and look almost petal-like rather than like normal leaves. Whatever they are, they're gorgeous. I have a bigger problem, though… I'm backing up the car but can't seem to actually *stop* it. In fact, I'm slowly speeding up. "Watch out for traffic if you're going to do that," Mom says. Thankfully no cars are coming. As I roll down the road, I begin to understand that I'm not going to get the car to stop normally, so I pull off into a parking lot, begin to downshift the car gradually into first gear, then throw the parking brake. The car stops, but I can feel it sort of quivering--the second I take the parking brake off it's going to start moving again. I don't think Mom was worried about the situation at first, but as I slowed the car down it seemed to dawn on her that we were actually in danger. Now she speaks to me in a quiet, fearful voice. She says it's OK if I want to keep driving, but if I do I have to promise to get myself help because I have "issues." The car is sitting just off the road at the corner of a four-way intersection; as I watch the road I see three or four police cars pass. I'm not sure where I actually want to go.

I'm in the world of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Specifically, I'm in Calla Bryn Sturgis with Eddie and either Susannah or Jake, plus a townperson I can't remember. Someone (one of us? who?) is being taught how to "throw the dish." We're standing next to a porch of a wooden country house in a field of beautiful, wavy green grass.

[I wake up from this scene and am convinced something is crawling on my leg. I leap out of bed and try to get it off. I have an idea that it's something from the Dark Tower world that will kill me if I let it bite me, which will only happen if I stay still, so I pace around my room for about 20 seconds until reality sets in.]

---

I'm in the upstairs bathroom of the house in Bolton (pre-renovation). Heidi is with me, standing just outside in the hallway. In the bathtub there's a little dish set into the wall with a small white plastic octopus/squid? on it. I touch it and for some reason have the idea that its name is Loly. I turn to Heidi and say jokingly, "Run Loly Run." She looks blank. "You know, like Run Lola Run? The movie?" I find it strange that she doesn't know what I'm talking about. Then for some reason I start trying to describe what an underwater reenactment of Run Lola Run, starring the octopus instead of Franka Potente, would look like. I forget most of this explanation (it obviously is pretty nonsensical) but at one point there is a giant hand that reaches down from the sky and into the water. At some point during my explanation I realize I am not talking to Heidi, but to a little kid that I identify as Ronan, even though he's too old to actually be my brother.

(July 11 2012)

I'm playing Spelunky again. The background of the level shifts with my character's movement: if I walk or run a single step, a tile in the background changes (explodes?) into something else. Thus my movement is key to escaping the level, since only by sufficiently shifting the environment will I reveal the exit.
---
I'm dreaming about Persona 5. There are at least three acoustic (voice and guitar) songs on the soundtrack, supposedly sung by Eri Kawai even though the vocalist doesn't sound like her. I see some music video clips of these songs, and "Eri" is in them - she's a short Japanese woman with bowl-cut black hair and a nice smile that reminds me a little of Makoto Ogawa from Morning Musume. One of the songs is called "The Full Moon Song"(?) and is apparently played during high-tension scenes.

The game itself involves terrorist attacks and actually feels a lot closer in tone to a mainline Shin Megami Tensei game. One attack involves giant globs of poison that are dropped from the sky and become poison rain; once they hit the ground they instantly turn into rivers of poison that burn through the cityscape like acid. I can see people scattering, and there is a car whose driver somehow loses control to such an extent that it goes careening down a roadway, taking out a whole bunch of people. There is a second attack that I think involves gangsters? and a third attack I don't remember anything about.
---
I'm at an office party where I'm saying goodbye to some coworkers who are leaving the company. The party is actually being held in my apartment, though. I'm sitting by the door watching people leave because I don't feel like being social. I know that most everyone in the room is going to an afterparty once this one's over, and (since I know I should probably go to it) I'm hoping that someone will reach out to me and ask whether I want to join them. I'm aware that I'll need to take the initiative, though.

Walking through the hallway of my middle school, past the library. I know I'm an adult but still find myself a little confused about whether I'm attending classes here. I reach the front hallway and head down to Miss Powell's room. There's a kind of eager anticipation at the idea of seeing her again after so long.

I'm inside the classroom and I don't see Miss Powell, but on a desk in the middle of the room is a shallow plastic bowl filled with chocolate-frosted cupcakes. I take a couple and see that there's also some kind of additional chocolate topping in the bowl that's meant to go on top of the cakes. I start to take some of this, but as I do I realize that there's actually no topping in the bowl; I'm just picking up more cupcakes. The bowl's almost empty, and I'm not even sure I want to eat any of them.

I'm in a submarine with several others, and we become aware that the ship is about to lose its balance/twist at a crazy angle underwater, such that the inside of the ship will be subject to massive pressure changes. (We'll probably all survive, though, for some reason.) I have this vision of a row of rivets that pop loose with a loud metallic clang one after the other.

Later in the dream I'm walking around a mall with Heidi. I could have been attending Mike and Andrea's wedding during this time, but instead I'm here pretending to be Heidi's husband while she has a lesbian wedding ceremony. Not that the ceremony is actually taking place or anything; we just seem to be wandering around the mall aimlessly. I get bored and start looking up information on Natalie Merchant. I learn that in her early career she and her husband had separate musical acts; she headed a group called Natalie and the Merchants. I wonder whether I'll find any information on her fake British accent, but I don't come across anything.

At some point I meet Mike and Andrea and we exchange photos on our phones. Apparently their wedding consisted of them and some friends hanging out in an apartment while everyone dressed up in some sort of marching band uniform. The whole thing had the atmosphere of a college party rather than a wedding.

I'm at work, but the layout of the cube farm is different. Karin and I are by ourselves in a corner of the room; our cubes are tiny, more like kiosks, and they fit chair, computer, and nothing else. In front of our cubes is the customer service section. I get an e-mail from one of them, a guy named Bryan something, and I walk over to his desk to help him with something computer-related. He and I have a friendly chat and I'm able to solve his problem.

I get back to my cube, dimly aware that there is normally no Bryan, in fact no males at all in the customer service department. Someone, maybe Karin, says quietly to me, "They're scared of you, you know." This takes me by complete surprise. Why would customer service be scared of me? I'm a nice guy. I wonder what they say to each other about me...?

(skip) I'm leaving for the night and Erika is with me. Somehow I find myself in the foyer of my grandmother's house; it's mostly dark but there's light coming from somewhere. A noose and body are hanging from the high ceiling. I can't make out any features except for long blond hair--like Erika, although I don't react to this and she doesn't seem to notice the similarity. I have kind of a dull shocked response to seeing the body. Erika looks up and just says "Oh. Well," like it's nothing strange at all. Despite this, we run down a hallway to find another coworker, Tami?, and tell her about the suicide. She starts repeating, "Oh God, oh God," but seems to have the same kind of dulled, dazed response I did.

I'm with a couple of friends; we're making our way through a protracted commute via public transit to a train station/airport. As we get closer to our destination our surroundings gradually get flashier, with neon lights that give the area something of a futuristic look. We climb up the stairs to the boarding platform. I'm dimly aware that my friends are both carrying bags--and at that moment it hits me; I have nothing with me except my coat (which I'm wearing). Oh, damn, I forgot my bag. Again. (I have a sense that this is not unusual for me.)

I turn to my friends and realize one of them is Brian from high school; I recognize the other person but can't put a name to the face. "Guys, I just realized I forgot my bag," I say with an apologetic grimace. They sigh. We're going to have to go back to get it... well, no, why should they have to go back? "Go ahead without me," I say. "I'll meet you at J___ ______." (quick image of a map with place name overlaid and a blue "person" icon where our destination is) Brian starts to protest, but it's clearly just a courtesy, because when I repeat myself he immediately switches to a nod of assent. They leave. I don't know how I'll meet up with them since I won't be able to take the same means of transportation, but I guess I'll figure something out.

I slowly retrace my route. I dislike the fact that I'm going backward, out of the clean neon surroundings and gradually getting cheaper, more rural. It feels wrong, like I wasn't meant to travel in this direction. The details are fuzzy, but I end up at a mostly deserted train station which runs in both inbound and outbound directions. I start to think of how I can take the train and make a loop back to where I just was, nearly forgetting that I still have to go home and get my stuff first.

+fragments:
- possibly related to above dream, I am again at a train station but am a different person: a late-teens/early-20s African American girl. My dad is with me, except he's in some kind of small protective bubble and is dying. His last gift to me is a train ticket to my destination, meaning I don't have to pay for my fare. This is extremely touching (not because of what the gift is, but because I can feel his love for me so strongly) and I start to cry.
- something about a fight with Justin Bieber? (damn, I wish I remembered this one :p)
- other stuff I would have remembered had I not waited 12 hours to write this entry

(fragment: college lottery)
My father chooses which of his children will go to college (me or one of my two dream siblings) by making us choose an envelope. One contains a college acceptance letter; the others contain rejection letters/bundles of sticks?

Billy
There is a recurring character named Billy. This person is either an old woman who dies alone in an old mansion (a family friend--friend of my dream mother, who's dead?) and who I regret never getting to know when she was younger and of sound mind; or a young mentally disabled boy (my cousin) that I've never met and have no desire to meet. I'm in my old house in Lancaster (on Main St.) and Billy (boy version) is coming over w/aunt G. I have the idea that he is going to see one of the upstairs bedrooms because he hasn't been privileged to see an upstairs bedroom in the past, and there's the idea that doing so will confer some sort of magical benefit. I'm in the upstairs bathroom, which is just down the hall from my room, washing my hands. I yell to aunt G to just take him into my room for a second--my room is messy, but it doesn't matter; the point is that she'll see there's no actual magic involved. She yells back something about how no, it's not that, it's that the Department of Education passed a new rule mandating that kids like Billy be allowed _______ (something I don't remember). As I wash my hands I accidentally get a sheaf of paper wet--it's a travel itinerary from Delta Airlines with my name on it.

[skip] Downstairs (still in the Lancaster house) I'm trying to call the airline to ask why my grandfather's flight has been delayed. Actually, I already know why it was delayed: the flight was canceled and not auto-rescheduled by airline. However, the cancellation had generated an abnormal error message and the airline had apparently tried to call me three times, using three separate phone numbers, to tell me what the problem was--so I just want to hear their side of the story out of idle curiosity. I soon regret the call, though. The conversation starts out OK but devolves quickly as the airline agent seems to be unable to understand what I'm saying. Eventually I hear soundbites of Billy over the phone--he is very, very loud (I have to hold the phone away from my ear) and sounds like he has a serious speech problem. A prompt comes up on my phone asking whether his voice was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard (yes/no). I answer no. This pisses off the agent, but I don't care.

Fixing Alarm
I'm trying to fix an alarm (looks like a smoke detector, I have the idea it's from "school"). I just need to change the battery, so to be sure that I don't accidentally mess something else up, I'm removing everything from the alarm that has to do with numbers. This removal extends to things outside the alarm as well: I turn off the radio because it either mentions numbers on the air/has a frequency made up of numbers, and I delete e-mails with numbers in their subject lines. (One email I delete is about some sort of evangelical Christian organization; it was forwarded to me by an aunt/uncle with the note "Adam, we were going to delete this email but then we noticed the view count on it". Apparently I had somehow already looked at this email 20+ times, and they somehow knew about this before sending it?) The battery in the alarm is protected by a panel with a grille that I think can be unscrewed to be taken off. I touch the grille with my hand but realize my fingers are wet, and draw my hand back nervously. I wake up at this point, so I actually raise my right hand into the air in waking life. My fingers are numb.

Indigo Girls in Dead Forest (fragment)
Amy Ray and Emily Saliers are dead (although they look perfectly normal) and have to figure out a way out of a dead forest maze - this is done by collecting giant body parts (eye, skeletal hand, vagina??) and using them as tools?

Obama Nukes Russia: The Roguelike
There's a wacky Japanese TV show that is somehow inspired by Yasutaka Nakata (who appears in the 3rd episode). At the end of each episode audiences combine a couple of items to make a new item; then, in the subsequent episode, they use the item they made in the last episode to make something else, and the pattern continues. There are three episodes and then the series goes off the air for 6 months, but eventually it comes back. I am in a grocery store and am using a kiosk in one of the aisles to assemble a montage of the first six shows. I put a whole bunch of clips together, then add some text in Impact font, promoting it as a great comedy. (Fragment here about meeting a yelling old woman in the store, something to do with her cart?)

Episode 12 (the last one) rolls around, and I am in the store with several Japanese people waiting for it to start. Suddenly (and I know this is going to happen about 5 seconds before it actually does) Barack Obama walks out from the neighboring aisle, smiling. Everyone is shocked, whispering his name amongst themselves; no one seems to have any idea how they should conduct themselves. Obama stands in front of the people and kneels on the floor ... or at least he tries to. His legs are very stiff, like he can barely bend at the knees. Eventually he ends up thudding to the floor, one leg at a time, into a kneeling position. In a halting voice, he explains that he has let down the "flower of the Japanese people" by allowing the U.S. to be vastly outclassed in terms of nuclear power (the impression is that the U.S. will be annihilated shortly because of this?). There is an ASCII (roguelike) view of the situation, which somehow illustrates the predicament.

A young Russian guy named Vinny speaks up. In a loud, brash voice that somehow morphs into a thick Boston accent (but only for certain words, like "car") he explains, using the ASCII grid, how Obama can maneuver himself around the board and extricate himself from danger. This is done in 12 moves, a number which is pointed out, like it's an achievement. Vinny is clearly very proud of himself and asks that the maneuver be named after him if Obama ends up using it. Obama thanks him; after a few seconds of thought, he says he will name the maneuver "the Luvie." He follows Vinny's steps, but I notice that they are subtly altered; somehow he is following Vinny's route but also managing to pick up several nukes as he goes. Eventually Obama reaches the staircase out and escapes from danger.

At this point the scene shifts fully into ASCII. The store is gone; the scene is now inside a Russian nuclear shelter. Obama has departed and Vinny is pleased with his suggestion, still very confident that Obama will use it. He decides to go above ground; he knows that doing this will leave him unprotected, but he doesn't expect a nuclear strike to actually happen, so he thinks it won't matter. Outside the shelter, there is a forest; right by the entrance to the shelter is a wolf. Vinny has sex with the wolf; shortly afterward, Obama nukes Russia and possibly several other countries. Because he's outside of the shelter, Vinny is the only Russian casualty of the nuclear strike.