dream fragment

03/21: The Price Is Right is back in dreams again, this time in animated form, in to the style of PBS (Public Broadcasting Service)-style shows for kids such as Arthur (R.I.P.) and WordGirl, and like the dream on December 4th, it's Showcase time again, but in a classroom-like setting. This time, there is a "category" that tells the four remaining students things about a Showcase they're trying to bid on.

The dream, like one of the Wayne's World films, shows all the possible endings, and one of them it decides to show is when one of the students overbids on their Showcase, gets booed, and has these red "down" marker like objects thrown at them. There was also another possible ending where all the students overbid on their Showcase, gets booed, and has the same thing that happened to one student, happen to all of them.

However, there was one student who feared this monster that would be out to get him if he lost, kind of like me when I was younger -- well, my elementary and middle school days, but I never really explained it to anyone. I forget his/her/its name, but it resembled like a typical villain from an anime, as they're usually blond-haired, and this one was no different. I'm guessing this one was male, dressed like a "scene" kid (possibly skater/emo mix) revealed in dark shadows.

Watching the events play out on TV in my room, I ask in disbelief, "What is Weston Gardner doing on a kids' show?", and the dream ends at 6-ish in the morning before any of the students on the show in the dream reacted to it. (also, that wasn't the "monster" the student feared.) (Personally, I think the mysterious character the dream showed looked like a mix between him and professional wrestler Jeff Hardy -- minus the hair dye.)

(Fun Fact: Weston was actually a contestant on The Price Is Right 12 years ago in Season 39 (2010-11), show #5263K -- aired out of order on October 13th, 2010, actually airing on September 22, 2010 in an afternoon showing, in the place of the long-running soap opera As The World Turns, which ended after the 2009-10 season in the U.S. on CBS. He won two prizes in the Drew Carey-created pricing game Rat Race (a late-Season 38 debutante) totaling $3,614, and later went on to win his Showcase, accumulating $28,638 in cash and prizes, including an extra $1,000 in his Showcase Showdown -- that's where they spin the big Wheel to see who qualifies for the final round of the show, simply named "The Showcase", and the three contestants that got up on stage to play a pricing game try to get as close as they can to $1.00 -- without going over. He passed the first Showcase, which included a boat, to his opponent, and she overbid. Oh, and the show re-aired two days after Christmas 2010 on December 27th.)

I had a heck of a bad day yesterday (mentally having to play the protagonist and antagonist at the same time in the morning), and it was stressful. I just have to learn not to take game shows and their results way too seriously, which I had been doing since my teenage years, and quite frankly, I think it was anxiety and depression-inducing. I just have to find a better way to manage mental health and anxiety. -WM86

12/1: It's the Showcase round on The Price Is Right, however, like the latest edition of the video game, Decades, the top winner and runner-up podiums are switched, TW on the left, RU on the right. Drew Carey reads the actual retail price of the Showcase of the player on the left, revealing that he had overbid. He reads the ARP of the player on the right's Showcase, an attractive brown-haired girl, and she ends up winning about $45,000+ in cash and prizes; apparently both of them had a good day in the episode. The scene after the Showcase reveal made no sense, but I do remember George Gray (the announcer on my country's version since Season 39; got the job permanently in April 2011) announcing a line similar to Jeopardy! long-time announcer Johnny Gilbert (a legendary game show announcer now in his 90s) since mid-Season 38 (currently) of that show, "From the famous Bob Barker Studio in Hollywood, this is George Gray speaking for The Price Is Right, a Fremantle production!"

A scene later, I find myself in the passenger side of what appears to be my dad's car, parked in front of a shopping center with what appears to be other cars with numbers in the upper-left corner of their windshields, likely tuners, but nobody was inside. Skies were overcast as well. This scene reminded me of dreams I had in 2012 where I was sitting in the passenger side of a car and random things happened.

12/3: Students, likely middle to high school-age, were walking with their backpacks in the street that looked eerily similar to the road that leads to my apartment. In reality, there's a community center and a multipurpose center nearby. L.L. Bean was the manufacturer of some of the backpacks, as those were the ones with the wearer's initials on the top, as I saw a lot of students in middle school with these. I didn't see any of these in high school, however. The dream then focuses on a student's backpack with the initials "LEK", a female. I didn't get to see the rest of the dream play out as my alarm clock buzzed and my phone vibrated.

(That kinda explains why I have a Google Images tab up in Firefox searching for the L.L. Bean backpacks with the students' initials on them since this morning.)

-WM86/DFW

06/20: I find myself leaving someone's house in the evening hours. The scene shifts to what appears to be a restroom in one building, which looks as if it were left unattended, as it was completely filthy, where I apparently go by accident, only to find what appears to be a bounty hunter putting someone or something in custody.

As soon as that scene ends, I find myself walking to a movie theater after being told by someone in the first scene that Van Helsing (the 2004 action film starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale -- which I actually have on DVD) was being remade with different actors, and it released in theaters. I didn't go in, but I did see a colorful cast of characters hanging outside the premises dressed in an unusual fashion (punk, Goth, emo, etc.), just like what I saw leaving a movie theater 17 years ago in 2004 with a group after seeing the exact same movie in May of that year. The dream also ends there.

I rarely get dreams of movie theaters nowadays, as the last one I had was on May 30th, 15 years ago at the age of 20. In addition, this dream was in the perspective of two people: a colorful teenage girl who went to see the movie, but was distracted, and a mysterious person who went to an unclean restroom by mistake and couldn't unsee what was going on. All I can remember now out of the two characters is the girl. I believe the girl eerily resembled a cross between Vanessa from the Syfy television series (played by Kelly Overton), Claudia from Warehouse 13 (played by Allison Scagliotti), and Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams in the days between Riot! and Brand New Eyes when her hair was dyed red-orange.

Before waking up, I had noticed flashes of purple and orange as well.

WM86/DFW signing off.

12/24: Apparently, this dream was a continuation of the events from the dream I had 11 days earlier on the 13th. I believe I was ordered to -- like the characters in the YA fiction writing project I've been working on for the past seven (2012) years, and the revision for the past four (2015) -- take the girl with the turquoise hair with magenta streaks in it to a so-called "meet-up", which can only take place in a public place such as a convention center.

However, here, the dream skips several scenes, and like one I had a couple of months before, I find myself in what appears to be a parking lot -- minus the girl with the emo/scene-like turquoise and magenta-dyed hair. There, I find a lot of teenagers socializing with each other until I stumble across a small group of people, both girls -- one with brown eyes and blonde hair; the other with blue eyes and brown hair. I try to get the name of the latter, but that turns into something even sillier.

"I'll give you a few clues to who I am." The girl with the blue eyes and brown hair responds to me -- though now I don't remember the rest of what she said. Then a few scenes later at a park picnic table, I have the papers the girl from the December 13th dream was looking for, trying to figure out the identity of the character. A few scenes later after a bus ride, I catch up to the girl that I saw outside the convention center in a room that looks like mine in the apartment I currently live in, but the dream ends at 4 A.M. after we exchanged words.

I believe she was a mix between someone I knew since my days at Underwood Elementary (August 1995-June 1997, except I'm 11 days older than she is) and YouTube user 540merlin's teenage (at the time when I watched some of his videos in the 2011-12 year) daughter, Amanda -- and come to think of it, I'm starting to think the character is either the half-sister of the character introduced in the dream I had on December 13th or even could be Cassie from a dream I had three years ago on March 29th. I also believe that she could also bear a striking resemblance to either the Deschanel sisters (Emily and Zooey) or Reese Witherspoon -- when she dyed her hair brown in 2004. I'm also certain the character may have also been in an all-girl rock band, too, as she wore a short blue tank-top. Not sure if the character's personality is similar to or a mix between Canadian singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne and Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams like the December 13th dream character, though.

Once again, as I've said in previous entries, I don't mind getting dreams that remind me of scenes from TV shows and movies or possible scenes to put in my writing projects. I am also still trying to nurture my inner child after yet another rough week. I even tried to recreate the dream character in one of the video games I got as a Christmas present this year (Need for Speed: Heat, PS4 version), right before my indecisive mind had other plans and just HAD to turn it into a creative writing exercise.

With that, I have to wrap this up as I have a big day today -- and it's Christmas. WM86/DFW signing off.

12/15/18: Seeing that I was working on my writing project that has taken me 23 years (yes, 1995 at age nine) to get perfect after getting skills in 2003 and improving on them, the "writing-project-discussion" dreams returned after a seemingly long hiatus.

Saturday's dream was split into three parts, in which the other two didn't make much sense. The first part had me looking for what appeared to be journal pages just like one of the first drafts I tried to write when the main character I had, Number 25, was female. The dream took place in either Raleigh or Cary, North Carolina, leading me to believe it was the latter. Like dreams I had in 1993 in Maryland (age six or seven), late 1995 (age nine) and last year, the skies were overcast and took place either in the afternoon or evening, but there were no computer screens nearby. I did, however, see a girl with dark brown hair and brown eyes, though. I tried to wave at her, but she didn't pay attention.

I have a feeling this was the same girl in dreams I had between 1993 and 2015. Her last appearances before this were on October 8, 2012, March 14, 2013, November 2, 2014 and December 17, 2015. The one on March 14th, 2013 didn't make any sense, as she appeared near what appeared to be a malfunctioning waterfall (again, with overcast skies) with a cardboard sign above her head, in black ink and in sentence case, reading "James Lafferty". I think I got that dream as it may have been something I did online before going to bed that day at age 26 (I'm 32 now). Like the last four dreams before this one, she also had no spoken lines here, either.

The building was a cross between the top floor of one of the two story classrooms at Adams Elementary I remember going to in 1994-95, the final year for me to attend said school (sadly, nowadays, Adams is no longer a traditional school; instead, it has been converted to a year-round school) and the top floor of classrooms at Wake Technical Community College, where I went for class my first and second semesters (2005-07). All I remember was saying, "We don't call them that!", possibly in reference to the missing journal pages, which did something unremarkable like the Chaos Emeralds in the Sonic the Hedgehog series of games, usually found in Special Stages.

12/16/18: This time, I found myself at a house eerily resembling the one my late grandmother used to own in Magnolia, North Carolina in Duplin County before it was sold, that I last visited in 2011 on my 25th birthday.

I see a girl driving a BMW M3 convertible, chassis code E36, colored in a shade of blue trying to cut the grass before apparently speeding off, giving up. I see what appears to be a family of all girls, going inside to see a picture of a couple from Salinas, California after talking to a woman with green eyes and blonde hair, middle-aged, apparently talking to me about her daughters, who apparently were pretty attractive. I had a feeling they came to North Carolina from California, which is exactly what my parents did (returned) when they had me 32 years ago. Another girl tried to cut the grass with a bicycle, but punctured the big tire, which made no sense whatsoever.

I've been receiving writing project suggestion dreams since 2017, and some of them are helping while some just aren't. Either way, I'm going to be busy, as writing young adult fiction is no walk in the park. WM86/DFW signing off.

11/3: After a few scenes that didn't make any sense, like four months ago showing my grandma's house before she passed away nine months ago, everything picks up after a dentist's appointment (I don't really have one until three weeks later).

I am walking with a character down a hallway that looks like a cross between a backstage area from WWE Monday Night RAW, SmackDown! Live or Impact Wrestling and the hallway from a backdoor leading to an office, locker rooms and the backdoor of the gymnasium at Southeast Raleigh Magnet High--which, like certain young-adult fiction projects I've written--had arcade machines. The person I walk down the hall with is possibly Ashton Hobbs from Contestant 25, a young-adult fiction book series I'm currently working on and has taken me over 20 years -- September 1995 to be exact (I was 9 at the time) -- to get perfect.

The next scene makes no sense, and was like a scene from a typical TV sitcom or movie after a school bully/main antagonist has done enough damage. I then see a locker room where a possible student is coughing, stuffed in a locker. The character and I then exit the school where this redhead teen and what appears to be his parent or his mentor were parked in line one spot ahead of us smiling and waving at me before my alarm clock buzzes at 6:45 this morning. I, however, do remember an OC ReMix playing - a remix of the opening from the 1989 Commodore Amiga game Shadow of the Beast - one of the first OC ReMixes on the site since the site's introduction in 1999.

I wonder if I had gotten this dream last night after viewing the Wikipedia articles of Ross Powers and Kelly Slater on Wednesday on my Surface tablet that led to the image of the redhead teen at the end of the dream. However, if I view the Wikipedia article of James Lafferty, nothing happens dream-wise. I've also had some pretty strong dreams two months ago before my doctor's appointment and the finals of the U.S. Open, too, but it's probably too late.

I think this dream was trying to tell me to watch what I write sometimes, although I have never in my 21-year writing career (yes, again, 1995) written about bullies doing these horrible, unspeakable things like what was demonstrated in my dream last night.

The dream started when I rode in a car to the house of my late grandmother (mom's side) who passed away six months ago. From there the telephone rang as I was told that I had a dentist's appointment soon. A week later in the living room of my dad's house, I sit in the recliner in the living room asking my dad if he had any money to pay for a plane ticket, as it was all the way on the West Coast in Los Angeles. Dad had his TV tray with his big laptop on the table and his female friend who visits was sitting on the couch.

A few weeks later in the dream, I find myself in Los Angeles...but unfortunately, it looks like downtown Raleigh. I hear a rendition of Ain't It Fun by the band Paramore that is the work of British pianist Sam Yung (it's also on YouTube), and just as soon as the first verse ends (when he stops playing for a few seconds), the actual song's chorus plays with band frontwoman Hayley Williams' vocals just like it sounded on the band's 2013 self-titled album (which I enjoy, by the way), bass, electric guitar, percussion and all. I remember saying something about copyright. I also remember being on a bus near the back when I heard it. I suddenly have this feeling where there really wasn't a dentist's appointment in LA and that I may have been tricked. As soon as I heard Williams' vocals, I jumped and felt a funny feeling in my right leg and stomach. (I think this may have been my first lucid in a while.)

I remember dreams I've had from 2013-15 where towns and cities in southern California (Los Angeles (twice), Hemet High School, but one scene later) look like places in North Carolina that I may have been before (dentist's office in 2013, downtown Raleigh in 2014 and a random section in Wal-Mart in 2015 that looks like none of the stores I've visited in the state), leading me to think the two states are fighting over me and/or my writing works. I've also had Paramore dreams before, but Williams' hair has been different colors than the trademark red or orange.

(I credit the Carmen Sandiego series of computer games (I saw the game show on PBS first when I was younger) for inspiring me to do research on the two states in 1998-99 in the 7th grade.)

3/31/16: Two days ago when I took an unexpected Garfield-like nap (I honestly don't know what I was doing before then that resulted in this), I ended up with a snippet of a dream similar to one I had around 2012-13 after a reboot of Need for Speed: Most Wanted released on seventh-generation consoles (there were cars, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay and had a car not in the game); except here, it was shortened after a character was introduced, named Alex.

When he was revealed, I saw something that looked like a mix between Nintendo's short-lived Virtual Boy red screen and modern-day pinball DMD (dot matrix display). I suddenly woke up when a DC--more than likely Alex--threw a hard sucker-punch similar to Nathan Scott on One Tree Hill and Luke Ward on The O.C. to an unknown subject in the face. Also, when he was revealed, there were Japanese hiragana/katakana symbols below his name. So this leads me to believe he's half-Japanese. I don't get why he would randomly get into a fistfight with another individual.

However, one night later--after an almost brutal day, I find myself in a high school classroom (I think it was either a Southeast Raleigh or Sanderson High classroom) where teenage DCs are trying to get the autograph of the main DC who I think was starring as the lead on a show airing on either MTV or Freeform (formerly ABC Family)--also a teenager, but female and she's trying to get to know all of the students, including myself, as I think I was going undercover as a student. She also has some colorful streaks in her hair as well. I then see some stuff related to The Price Is Right that made absolutely no sense whatsoever and is not how the show works before my alarm clock beeps at 6:45 in the morning.

2/26/16: I haven't had a catfight (a fight involving two or more people, or girls, to be more specific) dream in six years.

This time, instead of a classroom like in 2010, it was inside a WWE-style ring equipped with ropes and turnbuckles--and I was in the middle, trying to break up a fight between two girls. The aggressor, who appeared to have been of a mixed race, was kind of a cross between Beyoncé and Ashanti mixed with America Ferrera, and had mannerisms identical to Shane McMahon of the WWE's Attitude Era (Shane: 2000-01 (including the Alliance (WCW/ECW) storyline)) and Ruthless Aggression era (Shane: 2006-07) and 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Kyle Busch--years (2008-14) before the near-career-ending crash near the final lap of the 2015 season-opening XFINITY Series race at the Daytona International Speedway.

The girl she was bullying, however, while yelling the words, "How about I start with yours?", holding her 6 to 8 feet in the air, was a mix between Lauren Conrad, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Alicia Silverstone, and had mannerisms similar to 1-time WWE Champion Jeff Hardy, known for his high-flying aerial moves and UFC great Ronda Rousey, known for her savage, devastating armbar submission holds that usually puts an end to matches in the UFC in the women's division, which she competes in at about 12-14 seconds, in which most of those led to championships--before Holly Holm showed up and shocked the MMA world by beating her by TKO. I think this DC had French-braided her hair, similar to Rousey's in her fights (I think). It ended the same way after she shouted to the mixed girl, "Wait--what are you doing?!". She flips the mixed girl over, turning the countered body slam into a Rousey-like armbar. I am not sure what to do, as I didn't see the mixed girl try to tap out and then the dream ends.

This dream taught me two hard lessons: to watch what I eat--especially at night. I'm never doing that again, that's for sure. The other was to never give up, as a month ago, my grandmother passed away at the age of 89 and I didn't know where to go or what to do and everything intensified.

12-18-15: Everything's been up and down like somewhat of a crazy game of Magic # (a Pricing Game on The Price Is Right with an impressive design that scared the crap out of me when I was younger when it appeared from a fade-in) months after I updated my Dream Journal. Also, I've been busy with other things, including a personal blog during that time.

Last night, however, left me with some inspiration to write after a heck of a bad day, as most of the stuff (the plot, some characters) in Secret Agent 25, or SA-025, for short (my attempt at a YA novel), are inspired by dreams I have had since the 1992-93 year living in Maryland (when my parents separated in 1991-92 and I was 6 going on 7 at the time) to now.

Ever since I started on SA-025, I have had a series of strange dreams involving possible characters, and most of those DCs had no spoken lines--even Wednesday (which was uneventful) and last week when it marked the return of the 'office buildings outside my room window' dream, something recurring since 2006-07.

This time, it was a possible scene from later on in the series of SA-025, where possibly another Agent 25 was talking to someone, and this transpired:
"Does this mean we'll move to South Florida?" Agent 25 asked.
"No." A female chaperone said, sternly.

Later on, Agent 25 and the woman went inside the building, looking like a library, where there was another woman sounding like a strict teacher I had at Southeast Raleigh Magnet High in the 2001-02 year, trying to give words of motivation, and just before the dream ends, there's a teenage girl with what appears to be a Surface tablet and it appears she is logged on to Twitter at a table, similar to a dream I had in the 2014-15 year, having brown eyes and brown hair, but she has no spoken lines as Agent 25 looks over her shoulder like a teacher. She also had a pink case to carry her Surface.

I have a feeling this may have taken place in Hemet, California, as the villainous Sterling clan's mansion in SA-025 is there, and the dream suggested it gets turned into an underground library. It could also have taken place somewhere in North Carolina, too, where a building for villains may have also been turned into an underground library.

I also have a tendency to throw DCs into my book as well, so I'll see what happens. Turning the Sterlings' mansion in my attempt at a YA novel into an underground library may not be such a bad idea. I don't mind getting dreams like this, personally.

(For those who don't understand, YA stands for young-adult fiction. It is a popular genre of books amongst teenagers.)