All DJ Entries

I run an art academy for troubled kids. One boy of 15 is scarily talented and destined for fame. He promises the students that if he becomes a big artist he will come back and wisk them all away.

But in walks my cousin. She seduces the boy. He loses all interest in art. We all know he now will never amount to anything more than a sex slave for an old nympho lady. My cousin and the boy hop into a car and peel out of the academy.

The other students and I refuse to let her steal him. We can’t give chase because we have no vehicles. We do have a few little red toy jeeps. Standing in the yard it very slowly dawns that this whole situation could be a dream. I look at the students worried faces and decide that if this is a dream I will do everything in my lucid power to rescue our artist.

I take a plastic toy car and place the palms of my hands on the door. I slowly slide my hands in opposite directions along the vehicle and it lengthens. I smile and think, “we ARE dreaming”. I continue to enlarge the vehicle until a bunch of students can fit inside. I do the same to the second toy car. Another batch of students climb into it. They all leave.

But I have no vehicle. “I need a car.” I say to the dream. Another toy vehicle appears but it looks like a miniaturized child’s car bed instead of a battery operated toy car. It’ll do. I lengthen the toy just enough for me to sit on it. I think for it to move forward. It goes, jerkily at first, then smooths out the faster I go. I catch up to the other two vehicles. We see the artist far ahead of us pull into driveway.

We all pull into the drive and are met by a giant black bear that will not let us pass. The bear is chained up. The students will be safe. I super leap into a tree to see where my cousin went. She has turned into a crusty old farmer who drags the boy toward the barn. I look down and see the grass is cut into C shapes and they slide and shift into curvy patterns. They mean something but I don’t have time to decipher.

I jump down to the bear. It rears and is a good 4 feet higher than me. I leap up and hover before its face, place my hand on its forhead and sing, “All is well, all is well, all is well, to you I tell.” The bear calms and flops lazily onto the ground. Some kids stay with the bear. Others come to rescue the artist.

We get to the barn just in time to see a pick up truck speed across the field. The students run back for their car. I pick up a stick and hold it in both hands behind and across my butt. I sit on the stick and lift into the air as if on a swing. I fly along in this manner close behind the truck. The students in the car catch up. They want a flying swing as well. I tell them to hop on a stick and fly along. They do, but ride theirs as a witch will ride a broomstick.

We catch the old farmer and the boy going into a concert hall but they escape when security confronts us. I have no time for this and push them backwards. They blink out of existence with a strange bwooping sound like defeated video game baddies. We rush into the concert and split up to find the artist. I’m far too impatient to search so sit and whisper, “Find me.” The artist steps out of the crowd and sits by my side. I tell him this is a dream and I demand he tell me what he really is. He only ever gives me cryptic replies like, “I am somewhere.” Or “I am dark matter.” When he asks who I really am I tell him, “I am the Walrus.” We both laugh.

He never tells me who he is and eventually we get lost in the concert music.

Dream from Sept 21st
7 hours sleep

A woman and I are running from a pursuer, another woman. "Faster, faster!" the first woman urges me. "Don't look back, it will slow you down." I don't see why I have to run away, but fine, I'll play along... I do look back, however, and I'm surprised how close the pursuer is. This motivates me to try to put some distance between me and her, so I run harder... and yet I can't seem to make much gain on her. I'm perplexed: I know I should be able to do this, I'm dreaming, it's not like I have to rely on my physical stamina. I wonder if the answer is in running with more short strides rather than trying to cover more distance with each step, much as one is advised to run in WL, so I try out variations. I'm making progress, but concentrating so hard on my running form is becoming tedious. "Imagining running is almost as hard as the real thing!" I comment to the woman fleeing with me. Getting bored with this situation I decide to put an end to it, and succeed in sprinting ahead to the point where I can turn a corner and leave the pursuer's field of vision, at which point I figure I've made a fair escape.

However, it turns out that my pursuer had an accomplice: I now find myself in a struggle with a huge brawny man with a shaggy brown beard. I perceive him as a Viking, and I'm aware that his name is Torvald. He is connected somehow with the woman who was chasing me earlier, and is likewise an antagonist. Our struggle manifests partially as a kind of combat, but it feels as much like a battle of dream control as a physical battle.

I easily resist Torvald's initial attempts to subdue me, but his immense confidence makes me wonder if I should doubt my own. I go on the offensive and try to put him out of action more permanently, trying various tactics to destroy his body. For instance, at one point I imagine his body being crushed by a great weight from above, and although this has him stretched out supine on the ground for as long as I'm actively thinking it, he is soon back on his feet. I try crushing his heart and throat from inside his body, but he is only briefly inconvenienced.

I wonder if fire would do the trick, and visualize Torvald's body burning to ash. Though I've said nothing aloud, he appears to understand my intentions, and rather than actively resisting like he did with my other attacks, he simply denies the efficacy of this approach. "Fire won't work," he tells me flatly. I refuse to acknowledge this and continue contentrating on the image of fire consuming him. "Fire won't work," Torvald tells me again. I'm thinking: how could this be? It's my dream, isn't it? Fire should work if I say it should work. So I redouble my focus on the fire. With patient indifference, Torvald insists: "Fire won't work." I find this disconcerting, because apparently my confidence is unable to overcome his. Aren't I the dreamer? But there is no time for philosophical questions; we are still in combat. I switch tactics: if he is resistant to fire, how about ice? I start to try to freeze him—even if it doesn't destroy him it might at least slow him down temporarily—but Torvald has found the opening he needed and pins me to the ground.

Torvald's inexplicable ability to ignore my attempts to burn him makes me wonder if I should worry that he could actually harm me. But I have a superpower too: as the dreamer, I am invulnerable... aren't I? I decide to play it safe, and secretly project my "real" identity to the roof of a nearby building. It is a large square brick structure about 8–10 stories high, and I crouch behind the low brick railing that surrounds the flat roof, tempted to peek out at the combat occurring down below but not wanting to let Torvald see me and discover the trick. So I transfer my perceptions back to my body on the ground, which I now regard as a mere DC, and thus disposable. If my attacker succeeds in destroying this body, it won't matter: I've secured my identity elsewhere. Torvald actually glances up toward the roof when I think this, and I quickly realize that I need to guard my thoughts as well.

"Do you have someone watching me?" Torvald asks. I am relieved, because although he suspects that there is an observer on the roof, he hasn't seen through my whole trick—he doesn't seem to recognize that the person up there is actually me. I project a new thought toward him, gleefully: I recall how undercover police have been tracking him, and that I've been using our encounter to distract and delay him until they were in position. Maybe none of this was true earlier, but it doesn't matter: this is a dream battle, so it is true now! When Torvald looks back down at me, I grin mockingly and deliberately call him by the wrong name, "Harald," just to annoy him further. The game is up, and my undercover officers move in and force Torvald to release me. I'm not sure what happens to him after that... pleased with having solved the dilemma, I simply walk away.

What's next? The last incident was not one that I had intended, but now I'm free to work on tasks. I enter a wide clearing and wonder if I should try the Dragon Age task again. I've always liked the idea of aligning dream space with fictional environments from books, films, or games, but I'm still trying to figure out how to do it. I suppose the first step would be to remember a concrete environment from the game and try to insert aspects of it here. I played DA:I just last night, so I should be able to access those memories... but as I seek them out I feel a tremor of dream instability, and decide not to push it. If there's a risk of waking, I should put that task off until later. For now, there are still a few TOTMs I haven't tried this month, and I decide to work on those.

"Taste a rainbow." That one is easy to remember. I imagine a rainbow in the sky, and produce something very faint and not at all rainbow-colored. The colors are largely ochres and earthtones, and not even in proper lines but arranged in a more tesselated pattern over the arch. I'm not being a perfectionist at this point, so I accept this as a "rainbow" and shrink it into a stick of candy in my hand. The colors have changed in the process, and for some reason the candy stick is white with swirls of red and blue. Still not rainbow-colored! But I take a bite. The texture is interesting, lots of little pieces that crunch between my teeth, but the flavor is a real disappointment: vague, muted, and blandly sweet. Apart from "sweet," no other descriptors really present themselves. This won't do. A rainbow should taste more unusual than this! I decide to start over.

This time I put more work into the rainbow itself. I first visualize it, then focus on the faint transparent arch until it becomes more clearly visible, but this also has the consequence of making it more material. Now it appears like a physical object, a two-dimensional vertical banner in an arch about ten feet high and twenty feet long, right in front of me. I work on correcting the pattern so that it has rainbow colors in properly aligned stripes... I see some improvement, although it is a C+ effort at best. It looks better than my last attempt, anyway, so I approach the "rainbow" and try to take a bite directly out of it. The experience is like... chewing on a shower curtain. It really feels like I've put a sheet of plastic in my mouth, although the material is soft enough to crush between my teeth. Again the texture is more prominent than the taste. I put all my attention on the flavor, trying to detect anything describable, and think maybe I get some underlying fruity notes, but again it remains vague and uninteresting. Taste and smell are the least developed of my dream senses... I wonder if I could improve them if I worked at it?

I feel like I have adequately completed the task, anyway, and wonder what to try next. In all my efforts with the rainbows I had hardly paused to note all the people sitting at various tables around this clearing, like picnickers, but observing them now, I figure it might be fun to try the magic show. What would a stage magician do? I guess the most basic tricks involve having something up one's hat or one's sleeve? I notice that I am completely naked, which has long since ceased to embarrass me in dreams, but gives me a mischievous idea.

"What's up my sleeve?" I start circling among the various tables, challenging the audience members to come up with a response. One of the first responses is: "Following a guy from Eton to [...]?" (I forgot the second place name.) This answer reminds me of the earlier scene, and how I resolved the conflict with Torvald. This DC must have been one of my officers! "Are you an undercover cop?" I ask him in reply. He grudgingly nods. "Not anymore!" I'm joking about how he has just blown his cover, but it also feels like an appropriate analogy to my own lack of sleeves... I'm not "undercover" either.

I continue asking, "What's up my sleeve?" and collect various other responses from the audience, all of which were non-sequiturs... but I reasoned that the illogic of the question itself (since there was no sleeve) invited such creative responses. After hearing from seven different people, I realized that I might have trouble remembering all this when I woke up, so I stopped and went over their answers again, one by one, to help fix them in memory. Already I had trouble recalling two of the answers, but one of the DCs helpfully reminded me, additionally pointing out that the answers varied between the metaphorical (things that never could go up a sleeve) and the literal ("Three shekels" was one of these answers, I think). Meanwhile I was getting ready for the grand finale to my show, when I would reveal my own answer to the question. I had been planning on the groaningly obvious "Nothing!" and was ready for the big reveal when I noticed that something had changed... now I was wearing clothes, including a short-sleeved shirt. I realized that if I was going to go for the groaningly obvious at this point, I would have to answer "My arm!"

I felt myself start waking up, and I already had a lot to remember and report so I didn't resist the process. I woke up slowly enough that I was able to concentrate on those seven answers from the DCs and hold them in mind, with what felt like excellent clarity and accuracy. And then something happened... as I crossed the threshold, despite all my care and preparation, the memories abruptly tattered, the details dissolving. The only one of the seven answers I could still remember, and that incompletely, was the first—and that I suspect only because it was anchored by its reference to the earlier scene.

Guiding someone along a path, I send them around a river as I navigate the rocks and earth in the middle wearing waterproof boots. I slip and fall in the icy water up to my waist, feeling the water get in my boots. Happy they are dry, I ignore the accident and we move on. Reaching an adorable old city made from red stones, we take a break to eat. Many meditators are also relaxing here for a lunch break, having a good time together.

A woman tells us all that it's time to go back for the next meditation, and we all get up and start walking along the road. I follow them this time rather than taking the cold river pass.

Suddenly, I am somewhere else almost like a time traveler, but without the continuity, rather a gradual fading out and back in. I think it would be nice to go back to that town from earlier, and set out down the road toward it, this time in the evening. I find myself on a longboard, and enjoy the ease of travel along the flat road. As I approach the town, I see it is now fenced off, and a van is parked just inside a chain link gate. I roll closer and some people see me. They are doing something that would upset others and cause trouble if more people knew about it. To protect themselves, they try to kill me in case I might tell someone.

Quickly turning around, I kick off fast and tuck into a speedy position on the board. Despite going uphill now, I manage to gain speed just through willpower as I outrun those guys in their van. I turn down a dark road, and lose them. Hopefully for good. A guy approaches me as I am looking at dark places to hide along the road - in a tree, next to a fence, etc; and he tells me there is a key to the car right underneath it, and points to a car in a nearby parking lot.

I was with my parents at night/dusk in Washington. We were in a place on the water with a lot of trees, darkly wooded. We were getting in the old rusty van we used to have, and my parents explained to me that we had to leave because if we didn't this one dude would kill us. He told us the recent stories of the deaths of several other prominent people in the area who somehow opposed the guy in a public forum, but then he killed them one by one. As he told me these stories I saw them happening, how he hunted them. So we left, but my dad handed me my old CD case. In it, there were a bunch of newspaper clippings and notes implicating this guy in his crimes. Somehow we got separated and I ended up in a little diner outside of town but still in the woods at night. The diner was pretty big and had faux-wood paneling. It seemed to be a house that was converted to a diner, as it had side rooms from the entryway that were used by employees. I tried to show a waitress my evidence to get it out there, and she believed me. I told her to take it and turn it in to the police as soon as she could. When she left the table, a couple of cops showed up to eat. I spoke with them casually for a minute, and then went to one of the backrooms that the waitress had put the evidence in. As I walked up to it, I saw that the lights were off and the door was open. The big bald guy from the bar that I threw out was in the dream, working for the murderer, and he was just stepping out of the room as I walked up. He had taken the evidence and was leaving to destroy it. As we locked eyes, I didn't know what to do to stop him and I woke up.

The world had been taken over by a totalitarian regime, so Leah and I decided to escape to Peru. We took a plane there, and then as we left the airport we saw an endless column of tanks rolling out to take over the place. Leah and I avoided them and went out of the city. As we were walking across a field a little ways out, we saw a military train carrying tanks going by next to the field. There was a 10-foot tall pedestal in the middle of the field that I had not noticed before, and it had a rocket launcher mounted on the top. A boy ran out to it at about the last third of the train, and began shooting at the cars, blowing several up. Leah and I kept going; I was unsure if I would have attacked the train myself had I seen it, or kept my distance. We went into the woods bordering the field, and a river ran past through it with large concrete steps leading down the bank to it. They were mossy and slippery. A group of teenage-20 year old boys showed up and began harassing a smaller group of younger boys who were there already. I tried to lead Leah away from them, but we could only go through them to get where we were going because of the river. The leader of them noticed me as I walked past him reclining on the steps and asked me (without really giving me an option) to join him. I told him no, thank you and he explained that I didn't really have a choice because someone as good-looking as me was going to be with him. I stomped my foot right next to his face and explained that I was not going anywhere, and went on my way. They began to give chase, and then I woke up.

The world had been taken over by a totalitarian regime, so Leah and I decided to escape to Peru. We took a plane there, and then as we left the airport we saw an endless column of tanks rolling out to take over the place. Leah and I avoided them and went out of the city. As we were walking across a field a little ways out, we saw a military train carrying tanks going by next to the field. There was a 10-foot tall pedestal in the middle of the field that I had not noticed before, and it had a rocket launcher mounted on the top. A boy ran out to it at about the last third of the train, and began shooting at the cars, blowing several up. Leah and I kept going; I was unsure if I would have attacked the train myself had I seen it, or kept my distance. We went into the woods bordering the field, and a river ran past through it with large concrete steps leading down the bank to it. They were mossy and slippery. A group of teenage-20 year old boys showed up and began harassing a smaller group of younger boys who were there already. I tried to lead Leah away from them, but we could only go through them to get where we were going because of the river. The leader of them noticed me as I walked past him reclining on the steps and asked me (without really giving me an option) to join him. I told him no, thank you and he explained that I didn't really have a choice because someone as good-looking as me was going to be with him. I stomped my foot right next to his face and explained that I was not going anywhere, and went on my way. They began to give chase, and then I woke up.

I had a dream that made very little sense.

However, I remember a handful of it. It started with something very drastic that happened on my property and Northbranch. Someone who I was trying to stop must've caused the death or something very very bad because after he had accomplished it he was able to escape and I couldn't forgive myself for not being able to catch him. It got to the point where me and a few of my friends went to this unknown place, and through some occult method, they were going to try and solve or undo what horrible thing had happened.

Oddly one of my friends grabbed a defibulator and tried to zap me with it, and I didn't know why. He did zap me, and then I fell to the floor in pain. It turned out as they were dragging me, that they were going to attempt some sort of time travel.

The next thing I know I was on the street in front of my house. The street was very very busy and it took me a while to get across. Then I approached my house and oddly enough a few things were different. I checked my phone and my phone said that it was 10 days earlier, but when I went into the house asked my mother she said that it was the next day. I had thought that it had not worked at all but that I asked her and she told me that it was the year 2000. This makes no sense to me, because many things were different but they were also new.

So in the end, my reality was tampered with. =( ... The logic of my dream was utterly inconsistent.

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.

Meats and Sweets

I'm trying to get food at a cafeteria. I've already been through the line once, but somehow I just got a lot of different kinds of meat. Even though I'm not exactly a vegetarian, I feel bad, since I've eaten meat almost every day this week. So I need to go through again, but I don't want to wait patiently in line, so I try to dart in and snag food where there are gaps. After a while I look at my tray again, and apparently I've been grabbing mostly desserts and other simple carbs. Dammit, why is it so hard to put together a decent meal?

Bus Escape

A man's being chased. He passes a building where two female celebrity actors are having a women-only event. It's about to start and there are a whole line of women outside, waiting to get in. Most of them are topless; I guess that's required in order to gain admission, maybe. Anyway, the man pushes his way through the crowd to try to hide inside. They decide to let him hide there for a while. But eventually he has to leave. A city bus driver offers to help him escape, so the man gets in and the bus starts careening around the city. Sometimes there are groups of people visible on the sidewalk that cheer when the bus goes by. They think the bus is coming to pick them up, and they're happy about it because they've been waiting for an unusually long time.

Glacier Simulation

I'm watching an exposition of various different computer models for the behavior of glaciers in the face of climate change. The camera flies over a 3D time-lapse of different glaciers forming and moving, floating on a dark sea. The present model is vaguely unsettling, with swooping camera movements and lots of little ice formations forming and disappearing everywhere. I mutter to myself that it's kind of scary. Then there are people playing in the water, throwing ice at each other, or something. Someone accidentally dies. The creator of this simulation is shocked, saying that he never guessed something like this might happen. He'd just wanted to make a fun game, I guess.

Frags:

• eating pea soup

Bottomless

Towards the end of the women's choir concert, a soloist walks on. I don't recognize her as one of the members of the choir. Her first few notes have pretty bad tone, which I realize must be because she hasn't done any singing yet in the concert (so she isn't warmed up). As the song goes on, she doesn't get much better--although she does have a nice stage personality, so the song's still enjoyable. But eventually she stops and goes into the bathroom. It's kind of dark, so I'm not sure about this next part, but . . . when she comes out of the bathroom, it looks like she's not wearing any pants or underwear.

Dreamer's Tales

I'm reading from a random dream journal on DV. The writer uses a large, boldface font. The basic story is that he's incapacitated the leader of the bad guys, but he's still looking around for the rest of them. Then he realizes that in the time he's been looking, the leader may have woken up again. For all he knows, the leader could be standing right behind him, right now. The DJ entry stops there. I'm delighted to realize that I understand why: the sense of being followed is sometimes scary enough to cause the "Abort! Abort! Nightmare!" response. Overall, I'm impressed with this dream and with the way it was told.

Revelry

My dad is laughing about something he just heard from one of his friends. Apparently, that friend just received a call that his son was arrested in Philadelphia. As far as anyone knows so far, he got drunk with some friends, and they decided to fly over there to watch our state football team play an away game? Either way, it's hilarious.

Gaps

I'm writing in my dream diary when I realize that I'm running out of space: there are some more notes in the diary, below where I'm writing right now. I must accidentally have written on that page one time when there wasn't enough light to see what I was doing. I have plenty more stuff to write, though, so I need more room. I look back at the previous page and notice five or six blank lines on the bottom. I have no idea why I skipped those, but good thing I did! Now I have enough space to finish my entry.

Accio Glasses

I'm home between classes, working on something. When I look at the clock, I realize that it's way past time for me to be heading back to school. Class has already started. Even worse: I just remembered I have a worksheet due today. I meant to work on it during this break, but it completely slipped my mind. Hurriedly, I gather up my things from the room and start towards the door. I notice that everything looks a little fuzzy, and I realize I've forgotten to put on my glasses. I run back to the room in which I left them. They're all the way on the other side of the room, and my sister's sitting in an easy chair, reading a book. I suspect she's irritated about all the noise I'm making, so I try to make a joke.

"Accio glasses!" I say, pointing my hand across the room. That way, she'll realize I'm in a hurry (since I wish I could just summon my glasses, rather than walking to them). Hopefully she'll also think I'm in a good mood ('cause it's a joke), and it'll put her in a better mood (since it's a Harry Potter reference). Anyway, my glasses case rises from its resting place and floats across the room to hover in front of me. It opens, and my glasses float out and unfold themselves. Bemused, I reach for them. But apparently they were expecting me to reach for a different part, because they helpfully dart a foot to one side, causing me to miss. On the second try, I grab them.

Cast Iron

I'm being chased by a wild animal, a bear or something. Right in front of me is an alley guarded by a cast iron gate. If I can climb over the gate, I'll be safe. But the bear is right behind me, so I have to climb quickly. Once I start climbing, my arms and legs suddenly feel like they weigh fifty pounds apiece. They get tangled in the gaps in the cast iron, and I know I won't make it up in time.

I decide to try again. This time, I'm being chased by a gorilla with tentacles on its chin, like Davy Jones from PotC. But it's also farther back and I'm already halfway up the gate. I manage to get over in time. I watch as it runs up to the gate and starts climbing after me. Uh oh. I run to a door at the end of the alley, just a plain rectangle of wood, painted white. It opens inward, but the space behind is almost entirely filled by the door itself. I try to hold the door at just the right angle to squeeze around the edge, so that I can shut the door behind me.

Presentation Day

I walk into my English class, and the teacher says "Let's talk about [insert author here]." I'd completely forgotten about that reading. I remember him assigning it almost on the first day of class, but I thought he would remind us at least once before the day it was due! Apparently he expects us to keep track of everything we should be doing. Which is fine, except that I've failed that expectation. I'm supposed to have read an entire play, but I have no idea what it's even about.

A small group of students goes to the front of the room to do their presentation. Sometime during the course of class, I accidentally scratch a girl's ankle.

I wake up [falsely]. Taking a long, sharp metal stick, I go into the front hall and begin scratching the wooden floor, writing down my notes for the dream I just had. My sister walks by just as I finish writing the name of the girl I accidentally scratched. I notice she's looking at the name, and I'm worried she'll recognize it, or perhaps mistakenly associate the name with someone else she knows, who just happens to have the same name.

It is interesting to note that while James is the dreamer of this, I was the main character of it in a featured role/guest appearance. I will periodically post similar dreams in which I didn't dream, but appeared in. These will have a disclaimer and be tagged under "featured role/guest appearance"

Before the Dream: It is my birthday night and I spend it with my girlfriend and four other of my friends. There are six of us total. We spend part of the night on a pub crawl, as we visit as many bars in town as possible. The final count was 7, I believe. We take a taxicab back to my apartment and a pajama slumber party commences. Everybody passes out. My girlfriend Sarah and I in our bed, anoter couple, Mannie and Maggie, in the spare bed, our single male and female friends Randi and James sleep on the couch and floor, respectively. James, the friend sleeping on the floor, had the following dream:

Critters on a Train!




I am with 5 of my friends. My girlfriend Sarah, My best friend Mannie and his girlfriend Maggie, and our single male and female friends James and Randi. The feeling is ominous and tense as we stand on a platform at a station and board the back of a train. The train speeds off and within moments everything goes to hell.

A strange power flux affects the lights and power on the train. In the flickering of the shadows we can see that things were moving and we are not causing it. We can't tell what they are yet but they are the eponymous Critters from the 1986 film.



Things return somewhat to normal when the lights do. The Critters escape undetected and leave to feed on the passengers of the train in order to replicate and make more of themselves. A strange and enigmatic dream figure is helping us in the form of "the expert." We never meet this figure in person and only communicate to it through earbuds.What is interesting is that the "expert" feels like it was one of them, possibly a critter from a rebellion that didn't agree with what they were trying to do to our planet. the expert gives us the back story and tells us what we must accomplish.

We must stop the critters before the train reaches its destination: a densely populate metropolitan city. If the critters reach the city it will mark the beginning of the end of the world; invasion. Everybody is nervous but me. I lead the group and head off to investigate the ruckus. We manage to find and confront a cornered critter. The critter shoots one of its classic paralyzing quills directly into my girlfriend's throat. Sarah spurts blood all over the place and stumbles back. The critters swarm Sarah and feed on her flesh. She is the first to be killed.

In the room Sarah is killed, we discover a hidden critter ship, evidence of their invasion. We continue on, five of us now. Searching for the critters. They hide well, behind boxes, just out of view... yet we can hear them moving around on top of the train cars, and this gives us some sort of advantage in following them. Randi, our single female friend is panicking now that Sarah is dead and wants nothing to do with saving the world. Her only concern is in surviving. Thought the train is speeding toward a city, Randi has a bright idea and postulates that if we escaped into the last car of the train and separated it from the train, we could coast to safety. But I cannot deter from my goal, though I would love to keep my life, I cannot let the critters survive and make it to humanity or all will be lost and Sarah died for nothing.

James, however, believes in her plan and the two of them go to the end of the train. They are chased by more critters, who have exponentially reproduced. Randi and James make it into the last car but have trouble separating it due to the attacking critters. James manages to separate the car from the train, but is overtaken by a swarm of critters, sacrificing himself to ensure Rand's safety. With the car detached, it coasts away from the train to safety. Randi is the only other survivor of this tale.

It's strange to note that even though James, the dreamer, is killed by the critters... the dream continues on without him (as he takes an impersonal and omniscient observational roll, watching the rest of the dream play out)

Maggie has died "off-screen" which leaves my best friend Mannie and I, together alone, in James' dream. At this point everybody else on the train is either dead or dying, and there are countless critters. Mannie and I fight for quite a while together, I don't know how we manage to survive. Our plan is to get to the control room at the front, make the train go as fast as possible and switch it to a track that dead ends.

Mannie is killed in an ensuing battle, and the realization that everybody I know is dead (except for Randi) sends me into a stupor and rage. It's almost as if I absorbed Mannie's power when he died, because I become freakishly empowered and strong. I use the golf club I picked up along the way and go on a killing rampage toward the front of the train, more determined than ever. I reach the control center in the nose of the train and crank everything to where it needs to be. I switch tracks as the train surpasses full speed and I use the decapitated head of a critter as weight for the dead man's switch. I smash all of the other controls so the critters can't stop the train.

As the train nears its dead end crash, I am losing energy but remain confident in my actions. I fight as many of them as I can and dive off the train just before it was crashes. The train explodes, as each car goes up in flames. I see a few critters on fire in their rolling ball form on the ground and I smash them with what remains of my golf club. I am the only other survivor. The critters are dead. The city is safe.

★★★★☆

01/16/10

I coax my motorcycle to its maximum speed, streamlining my body as I approach the closing elevator doors. The elevator cab has already left for the top floor, and I strain to hold the metal doors open. In half a second, I'll crash into the back of the open elevator shaft and hurtle half a dozen stories into the secret basement of the compound.

Pause.

No reason for that. I don't have to follow the rules, after all. I stand in the open air, looking up at the elevator cab as it slowly escalates to the top floor. That's where I'll find her.

Go.

I fly through the doors, over the pit below. The front wheel of my bike hits the far wall, and I twist

Speeding up the elevator shaft at maximum, up the vertical wall. Vertigo. Disassociated from gravity and catching up to the elevator cab, about to impact. I jump away from the vehicle; it fades away. Suspended in the air for a moment, and I reach toward the closed doors leading to the floor second-to-the-top. I pull myself in, catch on the small ledge there, hang for a moment, looking at the bottom of the elevator cab. It's moving towards me now.

Jump. Over the elevator, clinging onto the doors leading to the top floor. With a wave of my hand, they're opening...

I wake up. Damn it guys, could you break up a little more quietly?

Action Movie Physics. Scare Factor: 3.

★★★☆☆

01/14/10

She pours cream in her coffee, and I know she's the spy.

The woman sips at the drink as she turns and pushes into the crowd of people in the mall. I pull away from a conversation, follow at a distance. I can make out her long black coat, her long curtain of blonde hair. She breaks into a run, and I'm speeding after her. I'm falling behind, reaching out and (force pull) she's flying back into my arms. Hair falls away from her face - the wrong face. A body double. (I'm letting go of the woman, blending into the crowd.) Good.

She's going to make it fun.

I Spy. Scare Factor: 2.

Blondes and coffee seem to be a recurring trope.

It is late at night and raining. I walk along a sidewalk, without an umbrella. The rain drenches me but I don’t care, it feels nice. There are other people walking down the street in front and behind me. A long black limousine pulls up in front of me. I see a few of the other people that walk around me get pulled into the limo. It pulls forward so that the limousine sits directly next to me. The door swings open, and I don’t have a moment to react or escape. They abduct me into the back seat. The back of the limousine opens up… it is exponentially bigger inside than it looks from outside.

Several Men in Black suits and dark sunglasses surround me and the other captives. One by one, each captive is held down by multiple men while another injects an oversized hypodermic needle deep into the center of his forehead into his third eye… the mind’s eye which rests just above and between the brow crests. The threatening Men in Black purposely show me this on a few of the captives so that I know exactly what I’m getting into. Once each person is injected they go limp and enter a catatonic state. Even though I know this and that this danger will befall me, I cannot escape.

It is my turn now, and I fight against the men with all my might. They overpower me easily, incomparable in strength. I see the giant oversized hypodermic needle come closer toward me until I feel it puncture the skin of my forehead. It stabs deep into my brain and I feel the liquid enter me as the plunger pushes down. Something is released within me and my entire body is seized with the most intense energetically buzzing. (similar to Sleep Paralysis). The electronic current flows through my system. I initially wonder if it is heroin. I am catatonic in the back of the black limousine, and it feels so beautifully euphoric that it hurts me to the core.

An alien invasion was unleashed upon the earth by the Grays. These aliens were specifically body snatchers and shape-shifters. They were manipulators of the highest ability, akin to the reptilians. The problem was that anybody could be one of the invading aliens. A lot of people also didn’t believe me, thinking that I was just being a conspiracy theorist. My closest friends in the dream were aware though, and a hefty portion of the dream was spent thinking a specific individual was an alien, but I was wrong.

The alien turned out to be masquerading as an ally of mine. We managed to ‘evade’ the other aliens by hiding in a forest… but it was all just a ruse for the shapeshifter to get me alone. When just the two of us stood in the forest, it transformed into its original alien form and tried to infest my body, to make me its next host. I ran, and tried to escape but no matter how fast or hard I tried, the alien was right on my heels. At this point, the stress and fear catapulted me into lucidity and I realized I was dreaming. I decided to stop and face my fears, so I stopped and turned to confront the alien. I told it that it couldn’t hurt me in this dream world. At this, the alien cocked its head and stabbed its hand deep into my chest (Mr. Smith a la the Matrix style). I could feel the alien drain my life force, as I started dying. My feelings were of failure and lost hope… as even though I stood up to a dream figure… I ‘died’