States of Mind
November 30th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am with Cynthia and we are going on a date. We are at a movie theater in downtown Seattle. We get popcorn in a large red jug, typical of a movie theater, but decide to go on a different kind of date before actually entering the movie. We end up walking around downtown in search of a better date to go on, but it is very cold and snowy and neither of us have a coat, so we are walking slowly and huddled together. My grandpa (J) appears and I get embarrassed because I have not talked to him for so long. He reaches into his wallet and hands me a $100 bill and walks off, seeming really happy about something. There is an old homeless man behind us, and my grandpa gives him a $100 bill and a $1 bill, which slightly offends me. The homeless man looks confused.
Soon my aunt Cindy appears and apologizes for my grandpa’s behavior, explaining that he is very drunk. I understand. I am self conscious about still carrying the tub of popcorn in one hand. She runs off after my grandpa, leaving Cynthia and I to continue to look for a good date.
the dance move is the origin
November 30th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am on an aircraft carrier with a completely empty landing strip + deck in the middle of the ocean. Suddenly all of the pilots, mates, captains, soldiers, and miscellaneous crew run out on deck and execute an elaborately choreographed dance move that involves throwing their legs over their heads and a back-flip or two. It is perfectly timed and looks really impressive, especially considering everyone is evenly spaced across the entire deck of the ship. I wonder how they managed to calculate the surface area of the deck and briefly try to think of a parameterization to integrate which would yield the answer, but nothing comes to mind. It is also unclear where the origin is.
Menace on the Train
November 30th, 2007 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
I was riding a train. The person sitting next to me, possibly one of the guys who (in reality) hit on me while I was tabling yesterday, put his arm around me or something. I asked him not to do that, but he persisted. “I’m monogamous,” I told him, “with someone else. Who is in California.”
He teased me about how lame it was to be monogamous, and how what he was doing didn’t matter anyway. I explained my theory of monogamy to him, but then added, “and also, I don’t know you. You might be a threat to me.”
He escalated his advances, and I kept asking him to stop. Eventually I told him if he kept doing that I would ask to change seats. I became louder in my protests, until an elderly woman sitting in front of me noticed. When she turned around, he tried to get her support for what he was doing, which at that time involved his hand on my butt. She saw and said, “I wouldn’t want to get cancer on my butt.”
I tore myself out of the seat and away from him, but as I tried to relocate, a whole bunch of my socks appeared where I had been sitting. I realized they had fallen out of my bag and scrambled to pick them up, but the train stopped and I ended up getting out.
When I looked back at the train, the cars had been taken apart. One had been loaded onto a truck. I knew that my seat and baggage were in different cars. I ran towards the train, but missed it. I said “my train!” rather weakly to a bystander.
At this point, I realized that I was asleep and woke myself up enough to know that I didn’t really need to be on the train.
Instead, I found a seat on a nearby pillar, from which I could see a bunch of employees leaving a big box electronics store. They had lime green uniforms. I went inside the store with them a little bit and heard them say some insulting things about the store. I was a little bit shocked.
Getting married is like jumping out of an airplane with a parachute that may or may not function
November 29th, 2007 by Jenny Crimp; no comments
After dance class at Burien Dance, I walk out into the lobby, hurriedly changing out of my dance clothes as I make my way over to the bag in the corner. As I lean down with no shirt on I realize that the lobby is full of small children, and a boy is staring at me. I frown and cover my chest up, but don’t feel like I need to apologize to his mother nearby, because nobody had warned me about the small children, and normally not wearing a shirt in the lobby would not be an issue.
I say goodbye to Kris and go into the bathroom in my parents’ house. After I sit down on the toilet I realize that the shower is on, and my brother must be in there. I warn him not to come out. Just then, I become suddenly aware, as I’m sure Nick does, through some silent signal, that Laura is about to complete the final test in her training by jumping out of an airplane. We both fear something will go wrong, so I run out of the bathroom, and Nick follows after he has donned some yoga pants and silver sparkly clogs.
He stops at the flagpole at my grandparents house when we see her start to fall, but I continue to run down towards the water, because I had a vision that the parachute was defective. I yell as loud as I can as I run, “Someone has to save her!”. The parachute is unleashed, but doesn’t open, and Laura plummets into the Sound. The neighbors are just waking up, and apparently the sea level has risen, because one of the neighbors bolts from her deck and dives straight into the water, which should be half a mile away. I start to swim out as well, and the neighbor reaches the spot where Laura went in first. She dives down and pulls her out, then begins swimming to shore. I keep swimming towards the spot, and when I get there, I look straight down. Then I am sucked in. I’m falling more quickly than is possible in water, and as I near the glowing blue part at the bottom, I realize that I am actually falling through the air and I’m about to hit the water.
we are boys but it is heterosexual
November 26th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am on a sunny beach with a fat boy about my age. I feel sorry for him because he is fat, so much so that I am compelled to have sex with him. We are both boys but it is definitely heterosexual sex. His bodyguards are nearby but they aren’t looking.
Kris your dreams are getting to me
November 22nd, 2007 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
I was part of a murder ring. I killed two people in an office building without feeling much remorse. I didn’t know who they were or why I was killing them, just that I had to.
I realized my murdering was keeping me out of school, so I registered for some classes. I had trouble printing my schedule, which really had to be done on a huge sheet of paper. Later I realized I hadn’t attended any of them.
I entered the room adjacent to the one in which I had killed two people, without being recognized, although I knew I would be soon because I had looked into that room right before the murdering. I walked purposefully through the room, looking for Joel Bombardier, who was also part of the ring. I found him on an elevator, much shaken from his most recent kill, but prevented him from discussing it inside the building. He kissed me but I made him stop that also because of my monogamous relationship.
I tried to play a piano but the keyboard and the inner piano parts were in separate rooms.
Hell
November 21st, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I died (nothing new).
I am walking down a wide, paved road with walls on both sides with my mom and brother. The cracked clay walls, grape vines, and humid air feel like Italy. We arrive at a line that crosses the road and a banner hanging over the line that indicates the entrance to hell. My mom and brother stop and I try to think of something witty to say to them before I leave them for eternity, but nothing comes to mind. Evan Stewart is there also.
“Evan, you’re going to hell?” I ask, surprised.
“Everyone goes to hell” he replies. This was something I did not know.
Some old women emerge from the other side – apparently they were granted exit from hell. Evan bumps into one, making her drop her briefcase on the hell side of the line just after she crosses into not hell. She turns around to pick it up, but when she tries to come back into not hell for the second time her passage is blocked by an invisible wall. She starts screaming and beating against the wall as Evan walks away smugly, no longer required to enter. I say goodbye to all three of them and cross the line quickly.
I am with Ariana, Joel, Tim, Adrian, and Joji. I comment on how weird it was that we all entered hell at the same time. I ask everyone how they died – Ariana was hit by a bus, Adrian was bitten by a snake, Joel was electrocuted by a toaster, etc. I can not remember how I died. We walk towards the hell dormitories with all of the other initiates, but the buildings look more like hell frat houses. Cans and bottles and other trash litter the yard. The building is completely black and dilapidated. Ariana and all of the other dead girls go off to the female hell dorm. I wonder if they keep boys and girls in separate dorms so they don’t have sex but remember that, according to Dante, sex isn’t pleasurable in hell. I am suspicious of the truth of this as I also can’t seem to see any levels or people in coffins or frozen lakes holding Brutus.
We arrive in the dorm. Inside is as gross as any typical college dormitory but not what I would have expected from hell. Veteran members of hell taunt us and make jokes as we walk slowly down the hall towards our room. Someone tells us to not worry about booby traps in our rooms, which makes me worried about booby traps in our rooms.
I find an empty room and go in. There are faded plaid sheets on the over sized beds and large, down covers. There are desks for two people and memorabilia lining the shelves over the beds, like this is the room that somebody grew up in. Joji comes in and asks if he could share my room. I lay my head down on the pillow to see if there is a booby trap and nothing happens. I realize that probably wasn’t the best way to test for a booby trap in my pillow.
-switch to second story line-
I am on drugs and being chased on foot from the police. I run up a dark residential street, then cut over a block and jump in a bush. They run past me. I wait a minute, emerge, get on my racing bike which is waiting for me outside the bush, and casually ride away. I come to a block which only has two large, blackened, dilapidated buildings remarkably similar to the hell dorms but obviously abandoned.
A middle-aged woman sneaks up behind me and, without warning, suddenly brings to my attention a row of bright lights hanging from the top of the building. I sink to my knees in hopeless despair as the world seems to stretch and bend around the lights as if the lens in my eye is changing shape. I know that ghosts live in these buildings and that only dead people can see those lights. I start to cry, and the scary woman comforts me and tells me, warningly, that I have to leave. I walk towards my bike but a supernatural force picks it up, hangs it over the roadway, and shatters it into a million pieces. The scene is repeated to the smallest detail: I sink to my knees in hopeless despair as the world seems to stretch and bend around the falling fragments of carbon as if the lens in my eye is changing shape. I start to cry, but pull myself up to run away. I look back and see that the largest piece still intact is the jumble of cables coming from the handlebars. A tear escapes from the corner of my eye, then I turn around and keep running.
-original story line-
Hell is not actually that bad. Basically we just hang out in our dorms all day and mess around. I walk over to Joel’s room across the hall to see what he is up to and it turns out that he just got a new stereo system, so I help him carry it over one end of the hall where all of the electronics are. There is a large wall covered in outlets and all sorts of stereo equipment, televisions, radios, and miscellaneous electronics are plugged in and making noise. We plug in the new stereo and some people come out of the rooms to listen to the newest auditory addition to what has become an unintelligible tempest of sound waves. We walk away feeling accomplished. I wonder what Ariana is doing in her hell dorm and if we’ll ever get to go outside.
Out of the Loop (or “oral nightmare”)
November 20th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am looking at my teeth in the mirror and I notice that one of my front teeth is missing. I realize suddenly that I haven’t been brushing my teeth and that it must have rotted and fallen out! I start to freak out. I know that teeth aren’t replaceable and that when one falls out it’s gone for the rest of your life. I look closer at the other teeth in my mouth and notice little cracks and holes here and there. When I touch one of my molars it cracks and falls out into my hand. It is completely hollow and very brittle and fragile. It grosses me out so much that I start tearing at all of my teeth – none of them are solid and they all break in half and fall out. Some pieces stick to my gums but peel off easily enough. Two teeth that I pull out are the size of small apricots and I wonder why I never noticed them before. I look in the mirror at my toothless mouth. I am home alone, but my mom will be coming back soon and I imagine that she will be upset when she sees me. The parts of my gums that stuck up between the teeth look sort of like small, pointy teeth themselves and I consider for a moment the possibility that nobody will notice.
I am at the dentist’s office trying to decide how to explain how I managed to lose all my teeth. I don’t think it will work this time to tell them that I floss every day. The dentist comes in and immediately understands the situation.
“You mean to say,” she asks, stunned, “that nobody told you?”
I become confused.
“You still had your biological teeth? You should have gotten those out ages ago!” She flips through some papers on a clipboard, bewildered. She leaves the room, but is back almost immediately holding something in her hand. “Here you are, sorry we didn’t get that cleared up earlier.” She hands me a set of teeth embedded in realistic feeling gums. I put it in my mouth and it fits perfectly.
The dentist explains to me that about a decade ago somebody invented perfectly realistic dentures that were as good or better than real teeth. Immediately everyone in the world except for me had their “biological teeth” traded out for the new dentures, eliminating any need to take oral hygiene seriously. Also it is much easier to floss the dentures because you can just take them out of your mouth when you need to reach the teeth in the back, but if you don’t want to floss them it doesn’t really matter.
insanity through swimming and politics
November 19th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I’m with Jenny on a beach on Bainbridge and I suggest that we swim to Seattle. We get in the water and start swimming. As we swim the city skyline doesn’t seem to get any closer. After a while Bainbridge looks just as distant as Seattle does (and always has), so I figure we must be half way there. Jenny gets tired and decides she doesn’t want to swim anymore so I wrap one arm around her and drag her behind me as I keep swimming. I see some large red jellyfish ahead but carefully navigate between them. I suddenly realize we are really close but that I’ve been swimming towards the part of Seattle with the large red cranes an shipping containers, so there isn’t anywhere for us to get out of the water. I spot a ramp that leads up to the Coleman dock parking lot, so I head in that direction. As soon as we are out of the water Jenny runs up the ramp into the throngs of people on the sidewalk. I jump after her but can’t tell which direction she went. I track her down by asking people if they just saw a really wet girl run by and by following the pools of water she left on the ground. I manage to track her up the stairs to the passenger waiting-area where I see her jump at my aunt Marjorie and uncle Erik. She starts arguing with Marjorie about some bill currently being contended that has something to do with what insurance companies are allowed to do in court. Their views on the issue are obviously in fierce opposition to each other’s. Somewhere along the debate Jenny refers to me as her boyfriend, which startles me. To defend her case Jenny pulls a framed pamphlet off her shoulder (which, until then, was secured by velcro) which explains a little about her opinion but mainly just doesn’t make sense. The pamphlet is largely composed of pictures of crayon drawings on white carpet and three or four actual words. Marjorie produces a stack of her own pamphlets and hands one out to each of us. It is less ridiculous but doesn’t particularly impress me. I don’t know whose side to take so I look at Erik and we exchange exasperated shrugs.
there was probably a big pile of bodies somewhere
November 18th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am standing near the edge of a very tall cliff. There is an organized line of people sprinting at me spaced such that another person reaches me every few seconds. Each time someone gets near me I grab them, stab them in the stomach with a large kitchen knife, and throw them headfirst off the cliff as they are dieing. As soon as I let go there is another person in front of me to stab. After a while I start to wonder what is happening to all of the bodies and what someone might think if they came across such a large pile of bodies as I am making at the bottom of a cliff.