Nefarious manufacturing
June 30th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
Somehow, I agree to a date with Nissa. I am nervous and pessimistic in a way, but I am cautiously enthusiastic also because, as I tell myself, Nissa is pretty neat. We agree on 10:00 in the morning of the next day somewhere along Madison Avenue.
I decide that I will go to sleep early so that I can awake in time. This doesn’t work out (as is typical): I read or work or putter about until the wee hours and wake up at “22:30″, which I know is actually equivalent to “2:30 PM”. I am awoken by a small child, who is staying at our house, who is prowling about my room with my SLR (which is safely stowed in my closet) taking pictures of me sleeping. He is free to do this because my room was spick-and-span (it is _astonishingly_ cluttered at the moment with Rotary Auction purchases — I can only sleep on a little corner of my bed). I don’t want to give away that I am awake, so I give him a few weird sleeping poses for him to capture.
He stays and takes a whole bunch of pictures, so I eventually have to give away my wakefulness. I give him a jokingly hard time about his taking pictures of me while I slept, and he goes away. It’s at this time that I realize that it’s “22:30″.
A large number of people begin to show up to my house and enter my room, which is quickly set up as a factory for useless, decorative clay bricks with designs printed into them. It becomes and enormous warehouse with huge, inexplicable machines. There is something nefarious going on (very complex, I’ve forgotten it). I know most of the people there, including Nissa. Most of the rest of my dream is spent working up the courage to go up to her and apologize. I never actually get around to it.
iPod’s competition
June 30th, 2005 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I must be buying electronic devices to sell for profit or some other not so legal activity, but I end up coming into the possession of an mp3 player that is not an iPod. It cost $400 (or maybe $399) new. I am thinking, “I should just keep this for myself, it’s not too expensive, and I would like to have one.” The machine has a small screen with only one line of text that can be displayed, much like a non-graphing calculator. To the right of the screen, there is a mysterious gauge and there are two large, unmarked buttons on the bottom. To the left of the screen is an abnormally large play button. The overall size of the player varies; sometimes it is no larger than my pinky finger, other times it is necessary to use two hands to carry it. Somehow, though, I lose it, which disturbes me very much.
Also, I was breaking up with Ariana. She had tatooed (or maybe just hennaed) my name all over her body, which also disturbed me very much. She didn’t seem to understand, and kept saying, “I don’t think your mother would agree with you…”
Extemp at Concrete Disneyland
June 29th, 2005 by Sean Fraga; no comments
This was a huge tournament–triple-flighted extemp, seven speakers per panel (compared to nationals: double-flighted, five/panel) and it was held on one level of a very concrete, very upscale-corporate Disneyland. The buildings themselves were grey, and three stories high, with sliding glass doors and were set close together, with just cobblestone footpaths between them.
I exited the stairwell on the wrong floor and was somehow in the middle of a Beauty and the Beast playground.
Later, we (the team?) took a shuttle to help a single mother and her daughter move into their new house. I left to use the bathroom, which had flat-panel screens on the toilet and counter. These were so absorbing that I stayed in the bathroom for a long time–so long that I worried that the team had left and that I had missed my speaking position.
I came downstairs to find the daughter asleep on the floor. Outside, down a stone path was my team. I was the seven speaker in the third flight, but woke up before I had to compete.
Pseudo-lucidity
June 29th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; 5 comments
I am driving along a highway and coming up on a very complex interchange. I need to get to the airport, which is probably Sea-Tac, and the only way to do that is to exit on the left and then immediately cross all the traffic on the new highway and exit again on the left. I have worked this out before when I went to the airport for the previous leg of my journey.
I make the first exit, but become distracted for just enough time to be trapped in the far right lane. I decide that I ought to get off this freeway as quickly as possible. The road immediately curves to the left and a small ramp exits straight from my lane, under another overpass and out of sight. In a split-second decision, I take it and immediately find myself on foot in the airport. It was a short-cut that I had not realized was there.
Because I was leading the people I was traveling with, I immediately begin to worry that they will become confused and not make it to the airport. I either call them on a cell phone or think about calling them on a cell phone.
There is a gap here in my memory, but we, most likely Ben, Greg, Max, and Mr. Gans (the people with whom I flew home from Philadelphia), are eventually boarding our flight. I sit in the first few rows, probably next to Mr. Gans. Ben or Greg, I think, sits in the two seats opposite us, and is of ambiguous gender.
Within a minute or two, I realize that I have forgotten one of my bags. I have my messenger bag, but have left behind my rolling suitcase. I find it strange that no one so far in my experience at the airport has bothered to check my ticket or take stock of my luggage. I walk to the front of the plane, and no one seems to mind that I’m about to exit. When I get to the door, however, I can see out the window that we are at cruising altitude on a stormy night. It is raining (which is illogical). I am distraught by having lost my bag, and can’t quite believe that it has happened. This disbelief leads quickly to a revelation.
We have only just entered the plane a few minutes ago. It would be impossible for us to be at cruising altitude already. I conclude immediately that I must be dreaming.
It’s worth noting here that I do not realize the extent to which I am dreaming. I only assume that the reality in which I forget my bag, and perhaps that I take a short-cut to the airport, is a dream. I assume that I am truly traveling, but have not yet boarded the plane.
I remember all the thought I have done about lucid dreaming and realize that this is an opportunity not to be wasted. As I walk back to my seat, I become more and more certain that this is a dream. I raise my arms to my sides and turn them into enormous clawed wings. From a few rows away, I am able to grasp the heads of Mr. Gans on my left and Ben or Greg of ambiguous gender on my right and jostle them about in a playful fashion. As I sit down next to Mr. Gans, I begin to tell him that I can do that because I am dreaming.
(This was my first experience with lucid dreaming. I don’t even know how lucid it was… I may not have been controlling my wing transformation trick in the first place. I didn’t even realize how much of the experience was a dream. It is possible that I just had a typical dream _about_ realizing that I was dreaming and did not actually understand that I was dreaming. On the other hand, I have no idea where that line is.)
Orange Dots
June 29th, 2005 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
Night before last:
Some sort of official went to a car full of my friends that Arykah was about to start driving and told them through the window how their idealistic liberal values were wrong.
I was behind Kris in my house either pushing him around or perhaps grabbing him around the stomach being astounded by all the things in my house. All our possessions seemed to have come from the Rotary Auction and thus were all labeled with bright orange dots. The orange dots got brighter and brighter until they became the only thing I could focus on and they signified capitalism and how everything is purchased and unnecessary.
Last night:
I was with people who were buying food at some jiffy mart and a homeless person requested that we give him our gum so we threw it across the check out counter (after paying for it) and it became fried chicken flavored and in the shape of a straw and he grabbed it outside.
The straw became a T&C deli-style plastic container full of fried chicken and he sat down to eat it at a table.
I sat down too and it became avocado soup that was good and creamy and thick. We dined together and talked about lots of things. When he was done he had to concentrate hard not to throw up because it was more food than he was used to eating and richer. He conquered his stomach and we high fived.
(Maybe I woke up and went back to sleep?)
I was talking to Ari outside the LGI and I asked her who she had taken to the banquet. She said two people. One was this hot sophomore who was a firefighter and thus had a nice body that he liked to show off (she showed me a picture and he looked like this shy arabic kid from peace camp). The other was Meghan Gladstein. Meghan had come to show the sophomore was he was up against. I tried to express that there was a big problem in their age differences.
She asked me about my social life and I said I didn’t go to Tolo and she got distracted and I finished describing my social life in my head.
Very Strange
June 29th, 2005 by Anna Scott; no comments
I kissed a woman named Anna.
?
I think she was Asian or maybe Hispanic, in her twenties, and she doesn’t really exist, but maybe she is based off of people who do? I have no idea. The rest of the dream had to do with escaping on a boat from someplace, which was kind of like a school or a book store.
Coordinating capacity
June 28th, 2005 by Joel Bombardier; no comments
Emma and I were inside Eagle Harbour Congrigational Church (EHCC) and I was standing around in the middle of the ‘Fellowship Hall’ just standing. Emma was in the corner sitting crosslegged behind a paistry cart that was filled, stacked really, with electrical equipment, VCR’s etc. Very complicated.
[note:] Emma and I are scientists, additionally we are racing to discover, something, first. This also takes place about 20 years ago, however I retained knowlage from the present.
I walked over to Emma and sat down next to her. She looked puzzled as she stared at the backs of the equipment. Dozens of wires and connecting plugs ran from each different piece of equipment to others, additionally there were wires too that were spliced into some of the connecting plugs that ran to different plugs of connected to pieced of metal on the outside of some of the equipment. After a moment of waiting Emma picked up a electrical plug (male) and inserted it onto the back of a VCR looking device. Suddenly LED lights on the back of the equipment flickered on, there was a mechanical buzzing, some beeps, and there was a feel of intence electricity in the air.
Immediently I stood up. Emma had also stood up and looked very pleased and excited. She took out a peice of paper that looked like a lab sheet from any science class. She began to briskly fill it in. Durring this time we moved out from behind the cart of equipment and walked into the kitchen area of EHCC.
There was two people, a mother and a daughter, the daughter being about 17-18 ish. They were also scientists and working over a large pot of simmering tomato sauce in the corner of the kitchen.
We came over and tried to share our scientific findings with them (for the intrist of science) even though there was competitin between us. However, they refused to share their information with us. This greatly frustrated us, we bagan pointing at our data and pleading/demanding that they share their information. They gave us the cold shoulder.
All of a sudden their experiment was compleated and the mother shouted in glee and they hovered around the pot blocking out view of the contence. then the mother got out this redicuously antiquiated camera and brought it very close to the contence of the pot and took a picture. Intuitivly I knew that she was taking come sort of extreme macro shot. “That didnt turn out, hold still” the mother said as she took a second shot (I was thinking about how there was too little light in the kitchen for the shot to turn out). then the mother removed the slide, looked at it and exclaimed in joy.
Mayhem insued. Emma and I tried desperatly to look at their data (that they wrote down on their lab sheet) while the mother and daughter tried to hide their data from us. We bagan to mock and pester them in our frustrastion of loosing the race (for the prize) and their incapacity of looking beyond self-intrist.
Eventually the mother offers to give us a hint to what they discovered, we accept and she screams “We discovered a new element!” We respond with disbelief and I race to the counter to find my periodic table (from the present) and figure out what element they discovered. I only had six peiced of paper but a I couldnt find it.
We began mocking them and kicking them and making them miserable. It got very juvinile “Hey smarty, what are you going to do? Think me to death. Yeah. Thats right college girl.” etcetera.
(fuzzy)
Later durring the mocking part there was a flash-back to when the mother was younger. She wanted to jum n her husband’s shoulders so she climbed a electricl pole and sat on the cable. Then the cable broke and she fell down there was lots of police and fire fighters there and all the neighbouts came out to see.
We return from the flash-back and We are in some ones yard, and the daughter is all dressed up in a formal suit (old fasioned) and smoking a pipe, the mother is standing on a balcony taking pictures and directing her to stand in different poses. It is shady and there was recently lots of sapplings planted around the yeard, in preperation for the awards celebration for the pair winning the race for the prize. I am hiding in the bushed and I jump out and kick her. Then I wake up.
Italia
June 28th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; 3 comments
My family is in Europe somewhere and stops at an outdoor Italian restaurant where the menus hang from logs suspended in the air. I decide that I will order iced tea and, in coordination with my brother, chai with either soy or cow’s milk — he’ll order the other and we will share.
I stand and stare at the menu, searching for some pasta to order. For some reason, I can’t seem to understand the menu. Everything seems to have meat or to be totally incomprehensible. My only hope is for a dish called “Dos Amigos”, which has no description but has a picture of two little boys smiling together. My family attempts to prod me into ordering this, but I yell, out of desperation, “It’s just a picture of a couple of buds!”
The restaurant personnel decides to help out. A short, black-haired woman comes out from behind the counter and invites me inside to see the dishes for myself. Although I was previously unaware that this restaurant had an inside, I enter and follow her to a table where there are seated my brother and a boy of approximately fifteen years at a table with a plate of pasta on it. The rest of the inside of the restaurant is deserted, but there is another dish on a nearby table that seems to be grape leaves wrapped around rice in a fist-size bulb, surrounded by some sort of pasta.
The dish on the table is a plateful of reddish tortellini in the shape of the half-moon date cookies that my father makes during the holiday season (he actually makes these), but quite a bit smaller. On top, there are two cones of rice wrapped in grape leaves. This, the boy explains to me, is why it’s called “Dos Amigos”. The boy lapses into Spanish from time to time. I inquire about the other dish, which is suddenly on our table also. He tells me that the bulb is actually cabbage wrapped around shrimp. Upon closer examination, I can see that this is true. I am disappointed, but indicate that I’ll order the “Dos Amigos”, using a little Spanish myself. My brother and the boy peer at me, as if to hint that we are in an Italian restaurant, you know. I lamely attempt to defend myself by pointing out that the boy did use a few phrases in Spanish also.
The boy takes a water glass from the table, which is mostly full, and shovels some of the tortellini into it. The tortellini floats unappetizingly. He hands it to me and I walk to the outside table to join my family, which includes my cousin Zoe (Zoe’s mother, Maia, is staying with my family for the weekend). During the walk, I realize that it was a bit uncouth to give me old food floating in water and not to include the grape-leaf cones that gave the “Dos Amigos” dish its name. I don’t particularly care.
During this succession, I am sometimes flying around on the peaks of a few dark mountains trying to keep myself and my friends from being somehow hurt by a force of evil. This story is fascinating and very complex, but I have forgotten almost all of it.
Additionally, somebody is getting divorced.
Mr. Holloway’s Mistake
June 28th, 2005 by Kris Skotheim; one comment
Mr. Holloway is teaching an Academy preperatory class and is clearing up a scheduling misconception involving a pair of parenthesis.
Funny that just a few hours after waking up I remember so little of this dream that I have to decode my own handwriting letter by letter to discover what it was that I drempt.
Train
June 27th, 2005 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
I was about to move out of my house by train and transferring everything in my room onto a train car. This included a carousel I had always had (I have no such thing) which had always been behind my dresser. It was full size but only a segment of a full carousel with only a few horses. My things were arranged in the car exactly as they had been in my room and the car was the same size. My parents were in the adjacent room and there was a stranger in the other bed in my room whom I accidentally stepped on.
Some time later when I was off the train, I found myself trying to get rid of some things I no longer wanted, specifically a bug-infested book. I was giving it to a boy who had some interest in it and might have been trading me for another book when the bug problem got worse and we noticed there were the same bugs in the same pattern on every page and then the whole book became entirely covered in bugs and I ran away, stepping out of my shoe, and my shoe became covered in bugs and I felt helpless to get it back but I approached it and I became covered in bugs and my mind realized there were too many bugs and woke me up.
When I went back to sleep, I was involved in a dramatic adventure that still had something to do with my leaving by train. At one point an important person lifted his pant legs and huge amounts of people came out, including a scuttling whore in really frilly clothing and eventually (after the people had stopped coming out of his pants and started coming from under the table behind him) a king and the person who played J.M. Barrie in Peter Pan. Somehow the people from the past got arranged on one side and the people who belonged in the present on the other (except J.M. was on the past side and I tried to get him back) and the people from the past were all ready to go and waiting for the signal. Cynthia was shouting “Kris needs to do the ceremonial bow!” but Kris was not in sight.
At another point I was interacting with some sort of hero who was probably not Kris but who I was in love with but at the same time aware that I wasn’t experiencing real life. I assumed I must be acting so I realized it was kind of weird when I got passionate and said I loved him. He said something like “that’s unexpected”.
Later I was at school, and told someone I was late for psychology. I was in Gans’ room talking to Molly Carroll and told her “yeah I just packed up my stuff yesterday. I’m moving to the east coast.” even though I wasn’t exactly sure that was where I was going or why I was going there.