All DJ Entries

It's Your Destiny (6:58)

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

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

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

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

Gingerly (6:58)

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

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

Burnt Sugar Cookies (6:58)

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

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

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

Springtime Traditions (6:58)

Spoiler for Springtime Traditions:

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

Frags:

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

I had commented on my Music Technology teacher's band video on youtube. I had some sort of vision, instead of watching the video the dream was the video, and I saw someone drumming nicely. The video was dark red. I commented saying "FUCKING INCREDIBLE", and my Music Technology teacher Rob 'liked' my comment! Then I read it and saw it say Jaspers Revival and realized that was his band! I think he then sent me a message telling me he'd have to block me due to teacher relationships with students, which I expected.

Suddenly, I was actually in Music Tech at college. The classroom was very similar to my actual class, but something wasn't right. It was lighter than usual, and I was sat at a computer where Rob's computer normally is. Rob was showing me sample kit downloads you can get on Newgrounds. The website that Newgrounds linked to was white with blue links. I zoned out a bit, but realized I had already downloaded these sample packs at home and told him this. He realized and stopped talking. In the top right hand corner of the Newgrounds page where it has the username, I think his username was "WorldDestroyer" xD But then I checked back at it, and it was just a string of numbers and letters

Now I needed a cigarette, and it was some sort of strange day like an open day or the air brick days we used to have in secondary school. Rob wasn't in the class currently, so I thought it'd be safe to walk over to the pen and have a fag. I think I saw Ryan, Will, Tom and Charlotte briefly who persuaded me to come for the fag. I don't know why I didn't follow them, as I turned right somewhere and walked down a very dark, spooky corridor. There were 2 steps going slightly downhill, and as I approached them I saw Rob walking up them, which was awkward. I reminded Rob that we had a 10 minute break (don't think we did) and asked if I could go for a cigarette. He said no! Annoyed but thinking of going for one anyway, I continued walking in the same direction, and ended up in a weird little assembly hall. The tables were green in the shape of frogs, and the room was big and dark. I remember thinking that this is the assembly hall that I don't personally use. However in reality I don't use any assembly hall

DJ Log: October 7, 2012 – 7:00PM (USA Eastern)
• NON-DREAM • NOTES • DREAM • LUCID •

(Note: After an exhaustive weekend running sound at an electronic music festival, I get back home and decide to take an early evening nap after surfing the 'net for a bit.)

I am sitting in my truck in the driveway of my parent's old house. My Mom is in the driver's seat, talking to Dad on the phone and I am in the passenger seat. My brother is sitting in the back seat playing with a small electronic game. The weather is mixed rain/snow and the snow is building up on the trees on the mountain. Occasionally, the snow falls from the trees and a couple of small branches break off as the snow crashes to the ground. My brother jumps out of the back seat of the truck and runs off. I roll down the window so I can hear the snow falling from the trees.

Mom finishes up on the phone and tells me that Dad's flight was diverted because of the storm and he is currently in Delaware. She said it would be another 2-3 hours before he could get a different flight home. I told Mom, “I'll pick him up at the airport. Just let me know when he is supposed to arrive.” I look at my watch and see that it is 8:88PM. I just roll my eyes and look out the window again.

I see my brother running into the woods. Once into the woods, he fires off a couple of shots with his rifle. I get out of the truck and quickly follow him into the woods. When I get there, he tells me that he just threw the smaller rifle back the trail because it jammed. He walks off and reloads the larger rifle. As I walk back the trail to retrieve the jammed rifle, I see that there is a horse hanging out in the woods just a bit further back. As I approach, I can hear that the horse is laughing and exchanging jokes with my brother. I walk up to the horse and exchange a hi-5 and a fist bump. As I walk away, the horse says, "have a good one, dude!", then laughs some more.

I walk across a small bridge over a stream and look at my watch again. It says 8:88PM. I tap the watch face a couple of times and look again. It still says 8:88PM.

Suddenly, I wake up. I lay in bed for a moment with the palm of my left hand firmly planted against my forehead. Once I confirm that I have clear recall, I get up to write this DJ entry. As I walk to the computer, I cuss myself for missing so many obvious dream signs.

You get what you pay for (7:08)

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

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

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

Recreational Vandalism (7:08)

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

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

Frags:

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

Someone Else's Dream (6:29)

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

Spider Cleaning (8:06)

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

Conference (8:06)

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

Out With a Bang (8:06)

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

[Sunday, September 30th, 2012]
I'm with my Dad and my little brother Casey- and possibly Nathan too. We're standing outside, at the bottom of our
old house's driveway... there's furnature everywhere as if we're inside. He explains that the band Primus is the best
thing ever- so I start hearing Primus songs in my head and they apparently start playing to everyone else too. I start
drumming with metal clothes hangers on anything I can find. I drum pretty close to the beat of the songs like My
Name Is Mud, Jerry Was A Racecar Driver, and Kalamazoo but I get extremely tired fast. I switch to plastic hangers
and continue and its a lot easier. I drum the intro to Kalamazoo and then start singing the part that comes in and it
sounds pretty good. I can stay on beat very easily. (I would never be able to do this in real life.)

At another time, I'm also at Nathan's house. It's late and I shouldn't be there or something- but I just use the excuse
that I need to grab something. I don't remember what it was that I "had to grab" but it got me inside for a second. It
probably had to do with WoW.

Before all of this- I was driving east on Wickenburg Way and looking for a certain white/blue building on the left. (It
was very unvivid and unspecific of a dream.)

(Recall escapes me. I'm gonna go read up on recall techniques soon.)

[These dreams were not very fun. I felt kind of sad this morning.]

Pop Music vs. Classical Music

Listening to a pop song, I realize that the intro is taken from a piece of classical music. But they really messed up the phrase when they took it out of context and changed it like that. I'm frustrated. I try to find a family member, so I can explain to them what the problem is.

Malicious Shower

Trying to avoid notice becomes somewhat more difficult when my sister shows up in the restaurant. Mentally, I change my disguise to a short-haired Korean woman with a strong accent. I walk to my sister's table to ask her a question, and after we exchange a few sentences, I realize that she thinks I'm one of her new students just arrived for orientation. My disguise looks just like one of the students she just met.

The manager of the restaurant comes over to say that I can have as many samples as I desire before deciding what to eat. After he's gone, I decide to try some of what my sister's table ordered. The trouble is, it's still in a tin baking pan, and whenever we try to cut a bit off of it for me to eat, the pan just spins in circles. There's not enough friction. But eventually we hold it still long enough for me to cut halfway through and rip the piece the rest of the way off. It tastes good. I wind up for a high five with my sister; it's funny because we're both wearing oven mitts on our right hands. But afterwards, I worry if that might have blown my cover.

I wander around the restaurant and arrive at the conveyor belt that customers use to return used dishes. It's similar to the oversized baggage claim in that there are a limited number of slots. You have find an empty slot and try to slide your dishes into it as it rotates past you. A slightly awkward kid from my school is in line in front of me; I doubt he has the chops for this. Plus, the employee overseeing the conveyor belt points out that there's only one slot open. The kid tries to slide his tray at the slot, but he hesitated too much, and it hits the rubber divider. The overseer takes the tray and puts it in the next available slot, and then it's my turn. Fortunately, it looks like there are a lot more open slots, now. But it turns out that I miss, as well.

I have to go to the bathroom. I haven't seen one in this restaurant, so I walk through the big hallway connecting the restaurant to the other business in this building. The main room of the other business is very tall, and small circular tables dot the floor, spaced pretty far apart. It's a nice room, very open. There's a big window in one wall, and the others are painted in light colors. It's the second time I've visited this room; I was here once before my sister came into the restaurant. And yes, there is a bathroom!

I go inside, but when I go into the stall to pee, I'm doused from above with a lot of water. I try to get out of the shower of water, but then another one starts above my new location. It's like there are fire-extinguishing sprinklers all over the ceiling, with laser detection so that they start pouring whenever anyone stands under them. I mean, I wouldn't mind the shower, but I don't think I have any way to dry myself off. Oh, wait--there's a brown towel hanging from a hook just inside the stall. Good thing I thought to bring that. I go back into the stall and try to pee, but it's difficult. I have to hold up the toilet seat with one hand while standing pretty far back from the bowl and aiming my urine carefully.

When I wake up, no, I don't actually have to go to the bathroom.

Unsanitary

[Content warning: this one features poop.]

Spoiler for Unsanitary:

I have to go to the bathroom, so I start peeing in the front hall, naked. There's a place for me to do that, there, but there's no place to poop, so it's bad news when poop starts coming out, as well. I couldn't stop it because I had to finish peeing, first. Fortunately, it's pretty dry. Although I don't really want to, I don't have much choice, so I put my off hand under my butt and try to hold the poop there. I decide to go into the bathroom, since I suspect my sister is in the family room, and she probably doesn't want to see this. When I open the bathroom door, I'm taken aback by the mess. There's a house centipede on the floor, and also a trail of what looks like wet grass leading out of the bathtub. I wonder if it's marijuana--maybe my other sister was doing something in here. It would be just like her not to clean up after herself. But I'm just going to have to deal with the mess, because I'm in sort of an emergency situation.

Slushie Shop

Dad and I are on the way to an event I want to attend. It's an hours-long drive from my house. We're passing a slushie shop, and Dad asks me if I want anything. I don't, really, so I reply, "Only if you're really hungry." He stops anyway, so he probably only asked me because he wanted to visit the place himself.

Another day, we're going to the same event, and we stop at the same shop. This time, they're understaffed, so they tell us it will take half an hour for the slushie to be ready. It takes a moment for that to sink in. There's no way we have half an hour; we didn't build that much extra time into our schedule. My soccer game starts pretty soon. But we stay anyway. While we wait, we sit at a table with two employees of the shop. One of them gets to talking with my dad about the four districts of Denver. One of the districts is mentioned by name, and the male employee starts talking about a building in that district which is associated with the gay rights movement. He's in favor of it, and he's frustrated with people who are making trouble for the building. After he leaves, the female employee apologizes for him, saying that he doesn't understand that gays are degenerate people [or something to that effect]. I don't respond, since I don't want the situation to escalate, but I reflect upon the apparent fact that everyone against the gay agenda is just a homophobe.

Another day, we're going to the same event, but this time my mom is driving me. We stop at the same shop. My mom tries to pour the slushie from the machine herself, but it doesn't go too well. Worth a laugh, though.

Procrastination

As I'm driving in the right lane along city streets, something important falls out of the passenger side of the car. I really don't want to go back for it. It seems like that would be a huge hassle. On the other hand, I need that something when I get to my destination, so if I don't stop now, I'll just have to stop later, and that would be even more of a hassle. Reluctantly, I look for a place to pull off on the shoulder. I'm not going to turn the car around; I'll just park and walk back. The brakes don't work very quickly, so I miss the first spot I was aiming for, and I have to use the next one. It's right next to a residential driveway. I hope the owner doesn't mind.

Chocolate Graham Crackers

I'm lying in bed in the morning. There's a lot of cereal in the bed with me; my personal stash. But I'm leaving for college in four days, and I'm not sure I can finish all of the cereal in time. I decide to have cereal for breakfast. It's a mixture of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and chocolate graham crackers. Carefully, I dip each piece of cereal in milk using my right hand, then put the dipped piece into my left hand to hold. I'm still in bed, so eventually I'm going to have to carry all of this to the kitchen table.

Incentive

Students are given one piece of candy for each point they got on the last assignment. I got 20/20, which is nice. The students handing out the candy give me two packets of colorful chocolate spheres lined up in a line, then a few extra pieces of some different kind of candy. I'm confused, because I thought there were ten spheres in each packet, so I shouldn't have gotten any extra. But it turns out there are only about eight, so it works out.

Flute Solo

As a favor, I've asked a teacher to come play a piece of classical music for me. Now, another teacher and I watch as she performs an arrangement of it for solo flute. I had been worried she would refuse, so I'm glad she's doing this. She's quite good. In fact--is she somehow playing two lines of music at once? I listen closely but am unable to decide. Perhaps she's just switching between the two lines of music depending on which one has the moving notes. She reaches a climax in the music with lots of fast, leaping intervals. During the slower section after that, she interrupts the music to say to me, "Have fun practicing that." (An ensemble in which I play will be learning the same piece, soon.) A phrase later, she stops playing again to say something else, and eventually she stops playing the piece altogether, once it's clear that there are just a few slow chords remaining. The other teacher, who has been holding up a triangle in preparation to play it with the last chord, mimes teetering on the brink of playing then falling over from the waist. She's obviously saying she's disappointed that the flautist didn't properly finish the piece. After this, I think there's one more piece for us to go over.

Standing Room Only

People standing in the back are having a hard time seeing the presenter, so they keep shifting around in a counter-clockwise direction. Even though I'm back there with them, I think the constant shifting is more annoying than not being able to see. Cynthia, standing next to me, agrees. (Cynthia's a college housemate of mine, a year older than me.) Suddenly, the whole audience starts moving. Apparently the presenter noticed all the milling around in the back and decided to try to fix things himself. So now those people have made him interrupt his presentation. I hope they're happy.

As we're moving around, I stretch my arms over my head. Realizing that my left arm is behind Cynthia's head, I decide I might as well put my arm around her shoulders. It's a bit of a cliche, but I need all the help I can get. At first, Cynthia doesn't react. Then she moves my hand from above her shoulder to under her armpit, and says, in a surprised voice, "Glieuaeiel, you've put your arm around me." Like she's known all along that we're interested in each other, and the only slight surprise is that I would choose now to make a move. Then she calls me a first-year, which is an unfair dig at the fact that I'm younger than her (since in fact I'm a third-year). She's always been one to worry about not acting her age, though, so maybe it really does bother her. Anyway, it's actually a bit uncomfortable walking around in this position. [I guess the arm-around-the-shoulder thing is best used when nobody's moving.]

The presenter is saying something about wizards and what effect the concept of wizards had on our childhoods. Shortly, everyone starts moving around again, and I get separated from Cynthia. I wonder if I should try to find her again, but I decide she'll be fine on her own. I try to help out by moving some music stands, but then I realize that I'm not sure where they should go. Still holding the stands, I find a seat near the front of house left, then set the stands in front of me. Someone reaches past me to grab one of them, and I realize that the stands were supposed to be distributed so that everybody gets one. I keep one stand for myself and hand the last one to another person sitting near me.

Frags:

• A survey about preferences in fiction genres uses the word "tranny" to mean "the protagonist of a science fiction novel." It must have been written by someone old, who didn't realize that nowadays the word is an offensive term for something entirely different.

Out of Order

The members of the adventuring party start singing. It's a very pretty song. I like it a lot. But I can't remember why they're doing it, so I flip to a different part of the book to try and figure it out. That doesn't answer many questions, so I flip around again. Now, before all of this, I'd been near the end of the book. But by the time I'm done, I've found a chapter back in the first third of the book that I don't remember reading at all. Oh, dear. I guess I must have skipped these chapters accidentally, when I was trying to find my place after setting down the book for a while.

LMMS

I open a new project in Linux MultiMedia Studio and start composing. The idea I have in my head uses the string section, so it would be nice to have some good samples for that. I remember that I configured a couple for a previous project [IRL: true], so I open that project and try to copy over the instruments. It works pretty well! Now I guess I should start thinking about how to use percussion. Should I use it to reinforce the string accents, or do they stand well enough on their own?

I was ice skating with two friends I'd just met. They were both girls. One had straight ginger hair that fell approximately down to her shoulders (maybe slightly longer). I don't remember what the other girl looked like, but I think she had black hair. There were other people there, too, but I didn't know them.

The ice rink was outdoors and fairly small. Ice skating was a lot easier than I find it IWL. I was actually going rather fast most of the time. Every now and then, I'd fall over from being careless and inexperienced, but it never hurt. One time, when I fell forward and put my hands out to catch myself, I let myself continue sliding across the ice on my hands and feet (the blades of my skates were touching the ice) because I thought it looked cool.

I eventually woke up (or so I thought) and considered trying WILD but decided not to because it was already morning and I didn't think I'd be going back to sleep. After a couple minutes, though, I changed my mind. Here, weird dream logic took over, telling me that WILD involves walking around the house. I went downstairs but then realized I was only wearing a towel, so I decided to go back to my room and get dressed, but I woke up before I did.

I did a quick reality check to confirm that I was actually awake this time but soon went back to sleep anyway.

This time, I was at church with my friend Giana. There's a little room by the sanctuary that no one ever seems to use; that's where we were. I asked her a question (though I can't remember what it was now).

"Yeah, but no killing," she responded. This confused me, but then she made a comment about some game.

"I thought we were talking about real life," I said.

"I'm talking about our game," she told me. At this point, I assumed that she and Emma (another of our friends; the three of us make up our little trio) had made up some game last week when I wasn't there.

We left the little room and found Emma waiting for us. Giana wanted me to download some music and play it for us, so I did (actually, she just took my laptop and downloaded it herself). When it started playing, I asked if there was a censored version, since the music had a lot of swearing in it, but she said no.

At some point, we somehow ended up outside in a field. The music had stopped playing, switching to a slideshow of pictures instead. One of them was a demotivational poster. I don't remember what the text was, but the picture was a poorly photoshopped image of a cross between a lion and some other animal (can't remember what). I then alt-tabbed over to DreamViews and started typing up my previous dreams in my dream journal before waking up and realizing I'd have to type up my DJ entry all over again.

[Monday, August 27th, 2012]
The recall starts at a party inside of a strange building. [**1**] (The Blueprints are in my img/ref folder.) The whole place is dark, walls painted black, but flooded with neon lights and bright stars on the walls that give the party an outer space kind of vibe. Maybe it's this vibe that gave me... THE ABILITY TO FLY. Without being aware of my dreaming, I could levitate and simply flap my arms to push myself high into the air. But I wasn't able to will myself up... I would slowly drift downward if I didn't flap. The building has a pretty high ceiling, but plenty of places to fly and sit up high.

I'm in backroom when I suddenly have the idea to try and perform in front of the party on-stage. I see some other musicians close-by and convince them to play with me. I put on my guitar strap as we make our way to the stage.

Once there... I begin wondering what the other musicians prefer to listen and ask them: "So what kind of music do you listen to? I listen to mostly 98 KUPD and 93.3... rock and alternative." (I asked this same question to a friend in WL named Brandon the day before this... I was trying to figure out what to listen to while driving with him.) I was suddenly aware that they might not know these stations, I remembered we were currently located in Phoenix... but then dismissed my doubt when I realized they had the same stations. I told them I listened to "Deftones, Incubus..." and more that I can't remember. No one really was responding. That's when I glanced down at my guitar strap and realize there's no guitar on it.

Amazed at my stupidity, I fly back to the Backroom and look for my guitar. Nathan hands me my red Fender Squire and I remember thinking, "Ugh... this'll do..." and Alex reminds me that it's all I have- in response to my thought. I head back to the main room, flying again...

My memory fades...

Only one dream fragment that I can remember, and not a very detailed or interesting one…

I’m in a school cafeteria––some weird mixture of my middle & high school cafeterias. I’m sitting at a table with some of my friends. At least, I remember Abby and Christopher (two of my best friends) being there, and some other random people.

Christopher has an iPod with him, and Abby and I steal it (or, you know, just take it away from him temporarily––not like we’re taking it from him forever). We start messing with it and making some weird playlist. His iPod has some weird feature where you can like, make a playlist within a playlist. So, our playlist actually has like four parts or something. It’s pretty neat.

(I guess it would be kind of pointless, but it would be cool if it actually existed seeing as I tend to make such long playlists... Haha.)

AWAKE
DREAM
LUCID DREAM
DREAM SIGN
NOTES

I've got to say, I didn't actually think this dream meant anything at all at the time. But I was reading the entry in my DJ (My actual DJ that is) and I think it says a little something about myself. I'm not sure about the chronology of the two dreams I had last night, I remembered the other one before I remembered this one, but I feel like I dreamed this first.

I step out of the passenger seat of my dad's car onto the pavement. I don't see who it is dropping me off. The buildings along the pavement looks like the opposite side of the road to where I have my guitar lessons. But I don't cross the road, I turn around and start walking down the street. After walking a few metres or so, I hear someone calling 'Skiddo!' behind me (Skiddo is my nickname at school, it's sort of a variation of my surname.) I turn around and see one of my female friends from school called Chase, who I was briefly very into, calling me as she gets into my dad's car, through the passenger door I left open. I'm a little confused about why she was calling me and then didn't say anything, so I question reality a little. But I shrug it off and turn around. The road I was walking down is suddenly really crowded with DCs. Everytime I try and go around someone, someone else cuts in front of my path. It's almost as if the DCs are deliberately trying to stop me getting to my destination. I'm not sure if I transitioned into another dream or woke up, but that's the last part of that dream I remember.

So, the reason I think this dream is sort of a reflection of myself goes like this:

I was opposite the music shop where I have guitar lessons, but I didn't go in. I think this represents me choosing other things over the one thing I'm really passionate about - music.

The school friend / crush calling me from behind and then not saying anything. I take this to represent outside distractions putting me off my goals by taking up my attention with meaningless things.

Finally, the crowd of DCs trying to stop me walking down the road, and cutting in front of me. Realising that DCs are in fact representations of my own subconscious mind, that meant that I was stopping MYSELF from walking down the road. I think this means that I myself, am stopping myself from achieving my goals. For example, whenever I walked around one DC, another would cut across my new path. This reminds me of me making up new excuses for not meeting potential bandmates, because I was very nervous about meeting new people.

I could be wrong about all of this, but I'm considering it kind of a breakthrough.

Airport

A bunch of my buds and I decided to go to the airport together. We've been delayed in various ways, so I'm relieved when one guy finally gets back with our boarding passes so we can head to our respective gates. I start speedwalking along a hallway. There's a stranger about to cut me off going around a corner (I'm squeezed between him and the wall), so I try to dart past him. The only trouble is, someone else tries to do the same on his other side, so we all end up crashing into each other and making a really awkward scene. I hurriedly apologize and start lecturing everyone about what a bad decision we both made there. The other guy apologizes also (as much to me as to the stranger, it seems), and I recognize him as a high school friend. But I'm desperate to vacate the scene, so I dash away again without saying hi. I feel bad about it, since I never got a chance to talk with him over summer break, either.

As I walk through more hallways, I see a girl a bit younger than me trying out a kind of play microphone. From what I hear as I pass by, it changes your voice so you sound like a robotic alien.

I reach a green tile ramp set into the middle of the floor; it's about twenty feet wide. I set down my things beside me and happily slide down it. There are lots of twists and turns, forking paths, and side hallways. I start to feel a bit confused about the layout of the airport. Once, I shoot off the end of a flat section and gravity doesn't work too quickly, so I crash lightly into a vertical wall a few feet farther forward. I'm frustrated that the ramp didn't work properly, but I'm not injured or anything. I continue going down. A girl comes sliding out of a side hallway, and I recognize her as a housemate right before we crash into each other. We both laugh about it. Behind me, I hear some people from the group I arrived with. They're talking about how it's later than they thought it was, and they were supposed to be at their gate quite a while ago. Upon hearing this, I realize that I'm not even sure what gate I'm supposed to be going to.

Well, that kind of takes the fun out of sliding. I get off the slide and fish my crumpled boarding pass out of my pocket. It's the smaller part, the stub that ushers usually take when you go into the theater. I hope I still have the other part. But whatever, gate information should be on this part as well. When I look for the gate, I'm horrified to see that the terminal is specified not with one but with FOUR letters, which seem to follow a complicated pattern of upper and lower case. This airport is far more confusing than I feared. I have no idea where that terminal is, much less how to get there. I'm probably going to miss my flight.

Uncomfortable Music

There's a concert coming up, and I still need to practice the music. I pull it out and start working, but it's the most uncomfortable music I've ever played. I feel like I'm engaged in spiritual battle with some demonic entity, and the music is feeding it, making it stronger. I decide to stop practicing before the music kills me.

But now it's concert time, and I still haven't practiced. This is one of those orchestras where you only get a couple rehearsals and you only get the one concert, so if I don't do a good job on this concert, I may as well not be in the orchestra at all. So while we're all sitting on stage warming up, I try to get in a bit more practice. Realistically, though, it's too little too late.

Climbing Rock

One of the main attractions in this building is its indoor climbing rock. Its surface is rough but its shape is roughly ellipsoid, and its dimensions in meters are about 15 by 20 on the base, and 3 high. It's granite, or anyway some kind of gray stone. The sides are a bit steep, so the attraction is that it's challenging to get on and off of it, but once you're on top you can run around and play games with the other victors.

I finally reach the front of the line, and I reach the top without incident. I don't have anything to do up there, though, so I just walk across to the other corner and try to find my way down. Turns out this side is much steeper than I expected. As I'm clinging to the rock, a building employee walks over and sticks something on my arm. I can't pick it up since I need my arms to hang on, so I use my forehead to try and press the thing more firmly to my arm. I'll look at it later. Anyway, I fiddle and shift around for a few minutes without making much downward progress, but then I notice that some "rungs" have been cut into this side of the rock a few feet to my right: rectangular gouges about two inches deep, spaced like the rungs of a ladder. I use them to get down, but then I start feeling like I cheated, and I start wondering whose idea it was to put rungs on the climbing rock, anyway. I see my old math TA standing nearby, so I ask him if there's a more legit way to climb down the rock in the place I had been trying to do it. He doesn't know, but during the course of the conversation I become convinced that for the sake of my own self-worth, I need to go back onto the climbing rock and try again.

The rungs on the rock go all the way down to a hallway below the floor on which the climbing rock is located. I'm not allowed to go back up the rungs, so I'll have to find some other way to the floor above. There doesn't seem to be an elevator in sight, and I begin to wonder whether this building is designed to make it difficult to get back to that floor.

I wander around for quite some time. In the process, I come across a darkened room with a bunch of merry-go-rounds or bumper cars or something spinning all over the place on the floor. I need to cross the room, but it'll be hard to do that without getting my shins severely bruised. Seriously, who thought this room was a good idea? I do some desperate dives and jumps and hops, and somehow I make it.

At another time, I see something in the wall that looks like an elevator button, and I press it without thinking. A second later, though, I see that the windows in the sliding doors on this wall are showing me an underground tunnel, not an elevator shaft. This button must call a subway train. Horizontal transport rather than vertical. Sure enough, a train soon comes roaring up to the station. Ha ha, very funny, building designer.

Finally I find some hallways populated by people, and I even recognize some of them. They're students from my university. I'm surprised to note that a lot of the girls look quite attractive. Isn't my school one of those where you're supposed to need a special pair of goggles for this kind of thing? Maybe that's not true! That would be cool. Anyway, I go into a room where some acquaintances of mine are having a baking party.

Road Rage

I accidentally drop a rubber duck behind a movie screen playing Finding Nemo. Damn it. I'm going to have to tow it out with my car. I get in and start zooming down the highway, swerving haphazardly between other cars and going just about as fast as my car can manage. Once, I start passing a car just as it starts passing the car in front of it. Meanwhile there's yet another car in the far left lane, so for a few seconds there are four of us cars driving side-by-side in a three-lane highway. I don't care. I'm angry. Eventually I decide it's time to turn around, so I pull one of those parking-brake 180s and shift gears without putting in the clutch. For a while I dodge traffic going in the opposite direction until I find myself on the right side of the highway, halfway between two lanes and tailgating both cars in front of me. One of them suddenly brakes, and I almost crash into it. That was a bit too close for my liking, so I try to give them a bit more space. But there are cars everywhere and I'm still trying to get things under control when I look up and there's a white screen with the word "Nemo" right in front of me and I swerve just enough to crash into the screen broadside, and the car comes to a halt. The rubber duck falls out, rolls behind the movie screen, and this time rolls all the way under the refrigerator as well. Damn it, now I'm never going to get it out!

Party at Alex Day's

Tonight is an orchestra rehearsal. It's the first one, but it might as well be the dress rehearsal, since we only get a couple of rehearsals before the concert. I decide I should wear concert attire, just to get used to it. I'm running late, so I resent the few minutes it takes to turn on my laptop and check my email to find the one where the conductor tells us what concert attire will be. By the time I'm dressed and outside, it's five minutes to seven. I can't remember whether rehearsal is scheduled for six or for seven, but in either case, I'm going to be late. I decide to go anyway, because even half a rehearsal is better than none when you only get two in the first place.

Unfortunately, there's some car trouble. It takes a few minutes to work out, and then Dad and some of his friends give the car (in neutral) a push down the road. I start running down the road after it, trying to reach it before the road curves and the car crashes into the fence. I barely get there in time, diving into the car to cheers from the group still standing around my driveway. I dove too far, ending up in the passenger seat, so I climb back over to the driver side. I stick in the key and twist it, the engine comes on, and I turn the steering wheel. As I drive out of the neighborhood, I try to think of what else I need to do in order to get the car under control. Maybe I should turn on the radio?

Later, I'm walking. I decide to take a shortcut through some buildings. It's a more direct route, but I'm not sure if there actually is a path all the way through. I go up some stairs, down some stairs, and through some arches. The buildings are made out of butterscotch-colored stucco (or plaster or something; I'm not sure what it's called). Suddenly I see an arch that opens onto an apartment full of people, including Alex Day and my sister! Alex invites me in, and we start talking. There's a really fun atmosphere at this party; I'm impressed. I wonder if Alex and my sister are dating. Just for fun, sometimes I answer Alex's or my sister's questions in Spanish. He invites me to stay, but I insist that I must be going: I've got places to be and work to do. My sister explains that Alex feels threatened by my productivity as a musician. Hmmm. Interesting.

I ask Alex if he knows any way though the buildings so I can finish my shortcut. He doesn't, but he tells me I should ask Kim (Nieuwenhuis). "Her apartment's just upstairs," he says. "I spent a couple of days up there a while ago. It's one of the happiest places I've ever been." Well then. I guess I should go up there.

Just then, a group of girls run past in the hallway outside. They're laughing and running upstairs, and I think I recognize Kim among them. "Kim!" I call, hurrying to the doorway. But either it wasn't her, or she didn't hear me. No one turns around.

In any case, I think I remember this place. I think I've been here before. If memory serves, I should be able to go down this hall and around a corner and--yes! I'm outside! It should be easy to get to the concert hall from here. But then I realize that I've left my viola in Alex's apartment, so I have to go back for that. Somehow I start watching a new video of his that's based on a pun on his name: Alex Day vs. Alex Night, or something. There's a bouncing ball that turns into a bounding dog that turns into two smaller balls that Alex throws that turn into one bigger bouncing ball again, and so forth.

Frags:

• Watching an online advertisement for a cosmetic skin product
• Posting on the DV forums. I was glad when I realized I was doing this, because that meant I was actually participating in the forums beyond just my introduction thread.

Professional Violinist

The results of my friend's audition are not what I had hoped. He was beaten out by an older, long-haired man; a violinist. But today when I come to the meeting, the group leader tells me that he has a special announcement about that violinist. He won't tell me what, but he tries to get me to guess. I can't imagine what it would be; the only thing I remember about the man was that at a previous meeting he played a very legato piece that just kept going and going without giving the player much of a break.

Once everyone gets there, the group leader makes the announcement. It's come to light that this violinist is actually a professional, and therefore disqualified for the competition. Hmmm. Maybe I could have guessed that if I'd realized that the legato piece was too difficult for anyone but a professional to prepare. It's confusing, though, to try and fit together all of the clues, so I give up. I wonder if the violinist feels angry about this disqualification, but no--it looks like he's just glad to be back on solid moral ground.

Leafblighter

It's time for break, so the group disperses throughout the city park to find a good place for lunch. I see a group of four of them heading over to the opposite side of the park, which seems like a good idea. I hurry after them, even though I'm a bit nervous because they're all a couple years older than I am. When I get there, they've set up a blanket on the ground to lay on, and there's a tennis match going on in the nearby courts. I wave and say "Hi!" as jovially as I can, and they're very polite about letting me join them. Only, when I try to lay down near this one guy, he grabs my shoulder, pulls me back, then sits me down in a nearby chair instead. The problem (although he never explained himself explicitly) was that I was going to block his view of the tennis match. I wonder whether the chair is his, or if he just took it from one of the nearby families who are also having lunch in the park.

Later, a bunch of us have gone inside for a while, and now people are starting to leave again. There's something on the wall, a machine about the size of a paper towel dispenser, and we're supposed to use it on the way out. One person seems very nervous about this, looking over the machine very, very carefully before using it. But there aren't any apparent problems, and before long there are just two of us left: me and one other guy. Suddenly, a green bug with a body roughly the size and shape of a leaf comes crawling out of the cracks in the machine. That must have been what the guy was worried about. "Is that Leafblighter?" I ask. The bug crawls back in the machine, and we start hearing screams from a room beyond the wall and above us, which we know is a kitchen. (Not death screams, just I'm-afraid-of-bugs screams.)

I try to continue as I was, but eventually I give up and announce, "You know what? I'm just going to finish my lunch outside." I walk over to the machine, but of course the bug is currently crawling around on it. I take my towel and swing it at the bug. It misses, but the bug does start running away, which means it's not on the machine any more. I use the machine, but then I look back at my towel to check for bug guts. I think I see a pair of antennae, but the towel's wrapped around my waist and I can't twist enough to see for sure. I take off the towel to get a closer look, and sure enough, there's an entire bug stuck to it. Suddenly, from the direction of the machine, a low, threatening voice shouts "Iba flogor!" and something heavy collides with the right side of my head.