The birth of Cookie Girl
December 29th, 2007 by Jenny Crimp; no comments
I am being born into a body identical to my present body, but it is made of either clay or cookie dough. As I gain consciousness, I worry that my limbs have not been properly attached. I think it is because I am having a hard time moving them. I wonder who to blame for my faulty construction. Then I realize this is not how bodies are made, so I must be fine, and go back to sleep.
The Fish in Victoria, and other adventures
December 27th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am riding my fixed gear bike around in Seattle. I am in two places at the same time: in one place, I am listening to a man tell me about how dangerous it is to ride around without brakes and without a helmet in the rain. I am also riding around without brakes and without a helmet in the rain. When it dawns on the man what is going on, he punishes me by making me travel across the city to obtain a skateboard.
I set out on my bicycle. It is getting dark. I don’t recognize any of the roads but I navigate them with confidence; there is an unusually high concentration of eight- and nine-way intersections. At some point I pass through fremont, so I figure that I must be going to ballard to get my skateboard. When I get it I am surprised by how short it is, it seems almost unrideable. I abandon my bicycle and return to the U-district. When I get to a residential area near the university, the man who sent me on this voyage jumps out from behind a fence and knocks me off the skateboard, sending me crashing into a greasy pool in the road. He congradulates me for completing my journey and suggests that we hang out sometime. “The fish and chips in Canada are delicious,” he tells me, “we should go sometime.”
“But the skateboard – isn’t it unusually short and squat?”
“No, you’re wrong.”
——
He leads me to his car and we get in. He drives onto the highway, going north. It is morning. He is my professor, but I can’t remember for what class. I also can’t remember his name. After an hour or so, I ask where we’re going.
“Canada, remember? The fish and chips there are to die for.”
“But I left my wallet back there in the puddle! I don’t even have my ID, they won’t let me into the country!”
He seems supremely disappointed in me. I offer that we could go another time, maybe next week, but remember that he is a professor and obviously doesn’t have time to go to Canada every weekend. I feel awful for wasting his time after he so generously offered it to me. He comes to a large bridge that I’d never seen before.
“Where are we?”
“Oh, this is the bridge to Kingston. It just opened six days ago. It’s an architectural marvel – not only is it the longest bridge in the world, it also has a world-class cultural museum along the shoulder.” As we drive along the bridge, I can see traditional native american masks enclosed in glass boxes on pedestals whiz past.
“We could go to the art museum in Port Angeles” I offer, though I know that it is probably the worst art museum ever conceived.
——
We arrive in port angeles and get out of the car. Someone whispers in my ear, “dude, you’re wearing girls’ clothes … you might want to get rid of them.” I realize he is right, I am wearing entirely girls clothes. I take them all off and start walking towards the museum, ignorant of my indecency. Someone screams; someone else laughs. I run. Around every corner are two or three people waiting for me to expose myself to them.
I decide that it is better to wear girls clothes than no clothes at all.
First dream, long time
December 25th, 2007 by Alex Walton; no comments
People are arrested for ordering certain foods on the menu. We have white numbers floating above our heads, I am 20. I replace a man who has been arrested.
I am moving in to a room with an orange carpet; old and huge, antique china everywhere. There are windows, very dusty/foggy, letting in big shafts of light. Enormous spiders (bigger than my hand) are crawling across the walls. I kill one with a basketball. There is a huge ladybug, too, I don’t harm it. It flies out a window I open.
She enters through the front door into the entry hall. Then she comes into the room I am (the orange one) and stands in front of me. She says, “I’m really glad I came.” I put my hands on her stomach (cupped) and our noses are close together. Her number is an even integer less than 10. I am extremely happy.
Changes for Brian
December 17th, 2007 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
Brian Lindvall had had his sex changed as a small child because his parents had wanted a boy instead of a girl. He had also had all his teeth removed.
She probably won’t be allowed to fly with them again
December 10th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am on an airplane. The flight attendants are passing out plates of cookies and brownies to each of the passengers, but they are doing it in a really inefficient manner. They walk from the very back of the plane with one plate of cookies or brownies to the very front, then pick someone at random, walk to them, and hand them the plate. One person is doing this while three other flight attendants are socializing near the back. The seats, instead of all facing the same way, face various directions and are spaced far apart. I get really impatient as I watch a fat man in front of me eat all of his brownies but can’t imagine getting my own plate any time soon.
Someone next to me starts to smoke a cigarette. I wonder if she knows that this is a non smoking flight, but there are so many no-smoking signs around us that I imagine telling her so would accomplish nothing. Someone else gets nervous and runs to the front of the plane to tell the pilot. I hope that they don’t shoot for approaching the cockpit. The pilot comes on the intercom,
“Attention all passengers, I would like to remind you that smoking on board this plane is strictly prohibited. Although this plane is equipped with all of the emergency equipment required to make an emergency landing, we would prefer to not have to use it!” As he says this I look out the window and notice that we are dangerously low to a swampy, desolate looking ground. The woman continues to smoke her cigarette, raising her head in blatant defiance to the captain and slowly blowing clouds of smoke out of her mouth.
As the cabin fills with smoke the plane shudders. I can see cracks starting to form around where the wing joins to the body of the plane. Someone starts to scream.
The End of the World
December 10th, 2007 by Jenny Crimp; no comments
Chocolate (milk and white) has started bubbling up through the surface of the earth in tiny eruptions. Someone has taken the time to collect the eruptions in my house into small bowls, and put sprinkles on top, but left them on the floor. I feel obligated to drink the chocolate when I come across it, but I soon realize this is taking up a lot of time, and I should be writing my paper.
I ask my mom what the bubbling chocolate could mean, and she answers slowly and carefully, as if a five year-old had just asked a question on a very delicate subject. She tells me in very vague terms that it could either be an offering to us, or a warning from the beings that live on the inside of the planet and make it work that the end is near. She doesn’t seem to have decided which one it is, but I am sure the end of the world is near, and exclaim, “Why haven’t we listened?! Everyone needs to know this!” When I bend down and pick up a dish of chocolate next to me, I briefly see a glow of orange light from the hole it came from.
I hurry off to warn everyone-
But somehow I get distracted and end up in the basement with a group of people my age. There is something we are supposed to try that might be related to the end of the world, but I feel like my mother should not be there to witness it.
We are all stuck on a school bus headed to hell, but we haven’t yet accepted our fate, and panic about how we will sustain ourselves for the long journey. I point out that there is a refrigerator full of steak, as well as two freezers, also full of steak. I come to the very obvious conclusion that we should eat the steaks in the refrigerator first, because they will go bad first.
I am in the backseat of a minivan that only seats four or five people. My mom is driving, with my dad in the passenger seat and my brother next to me in back. We are both escaping some disaster and chasing a smaller, beat-up black car in a movie scene. All at once, we realize that the highway of the movie set is about to end, and there is a gap of dirt road ahead before the real highway begins. We all start shouting into the radio that someone has to tell the black car to stop or it will crash, but it is too late. The black car bounces violently over the end of the movie highway, the dirt road, and then back onto the real highway. We follow behind in the minivan at a slower pace. The black car finally stops, and the two people inside get out and walk towards our car threateningly. My dad gets out as well, but now he is actually a mobster. The two scary men come up to him and say, “What were you thinking, putting us out there like that? Do you know what could have happened, who could have seen us?” and my dad replies, “Just look me in the eye and tell me you’ll come back to the family without any objections, just look me in the eye and say that.” I have no idea what was going on there, but it was really intense.
A family going bald
December 5th, 2007 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
I found out about a seminar at a branch of my school that sounded like it would help me in my life, and bicycled pretty far to get there. Once there, I got on a long line of people waiting to get into the seminar. I waited for a while, and maybe read a little bit about the offerings. I started to worry that the seminar would not actually be interesting, and approached a group of hip-enough looking people who, after a few awkward tries, I was able to ask if I should continue waiting to go to the seminar. They told me it probably wasn’t worth my time.
I started to walk back home, realizing once I was a ways away that I had left my more comfortable shoes (which I imagined as grey canvass sandals with good arch supports) in the building, and had only my flip flops to walk back in. This made me decide to take off my shoes entirely, and walk barefoot. Soon I realized that I didn’t actually know if I was going in the direction from which I had come, and also that it would take me much longer to walk than to bicycle.
I came across a family eating a meal on a patio close to the road, and asked them which way UW was. All of the members of the family seemed to be going bald. This made me wonder if possibly they were not a family, but a gathering of cancer patients. They pointed in the direction I had just come from, which meant I was walking the wrong way, but offered to give me a ride in their car, as they were planning to drive in that direction anyway. I noticed that the mother of the family was able to hide the thinning of her hair by putting it up in a complicated way.
We ended up sitting on bar stools at a counter somewhere. On the floor were one or two clock radios, unplugged and with blank screens. I noticed that the son of the family had his bare foot on top of my bare foot. I moved my foot.
Later, I was with Adrian and (I think) my mother. We were waiting for Alyssa (my roommate from Guatemala) and her boyfriend to come. Whoever else we were with left the room for a moment and I kissed Adrian suddenly. His face was extremely soft and smooth. He seemed a little shocked that I had kissed him so suddenly, so I told him I had done it because of his soft face.
That was so predictable
December 5th, 2007 by Jenny Crimp; no comments
I am sitting in a bed next to Dean. There is something we are supposed to do next but we can’t decide what it is, so we sit there waiting, until he is allotted fifty small pieces of foil. I think that he wouldn’t use them to line the Pyrex bowl, because that would be too forward and obvious. He leans over the side of the bed so I can’t see him, and then leans over towards me and shows me that he has lined the bowl with the small pieces of foil. I tell him I didn’t think he would do that because it was so predictable and direct. He shrugs and tells me that is what was supposed to happen in the story anyway. I pause, then agree, and we wrap ourselves up in a blanket and start making out. Except I don’t think this consists of kissing, but more of rolling around together.
We roll around my parents’ yard for a while, and then out towards the street. I see someone walking up the hill, and see that it is Lucas, Laura’s ex-roommate. I stop the rolling for a moment to say, “Hi Lucas! Good to see you!” He says, “Hi! I’m coming to talk to Laura.” I tell him she’s in the kitchen, and continue rolling around with Dean.
I am on a ferry with Matt, Andrew, and Anna. All of the other passengers are incensed that there are no restrooms on the ferry, because they are commuters and they deserve restrooms.
I have an incredibly oppressive mother who has pushed me to the breaking point, and I plan on running away. I go out to the off-limits shed at night to make a copy of the key, but worry about attracting attention when I take the key out of the lock facing the house, so I take the key out of the lock on the other side of the shed. Then I wonder if the keys are different, so I take out the first key and compare them. This defeats the entire purpose to a task that had no purpose to begin with, so I wonder if I should make a break for it before I am imprisoned.
I want to make this video game. Ariana, you can be the witch (just be glad I didn’t catch you on fire with my mind).
December 2nd, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am with a pig and a frog at the end of a long dock. It is so long, in fact, that I can not see the shore. The pig argues that it is quite difficult to dive very far underwater. I am of the opposite opinion; in my mind, nothing is easier. The frog is not opinionated on the subject. To prove my point, I jump in and start swimming downwards.
Soon I emerge on the opposite side of the globe in the ocean at the foot of a large mountain. I realize that it is Mt. Everest, but it does not look super impressive to me. I dive back down and swim through the earth to the pig and frog to tell them of my discovery, but they don’t really feel like following me up Mt. Everest, so I transverse the ocean inside the globe by myself yet again.
I emerge to find myself inside a video game. I start to climb up the mountain, which so far only involves walking over small hills which are muddy at the bottom. I see someone else playing this video game nearby behind a tree, so I go over to investigate but they catch me on fire with their mind before I get close.
I determine that you can do two things in the game if you see someone: you can throw a rock at them or you can catch them on fire with your mind. Either action kills them and they have to start over at the bottom of the mountain. I start to run up the mountain again. After a while I see someone behind me, so I try to catch them on fire with my mind but they disappear behind a hill, out of view, before I can finish. I vault a rock over the hill to where I think the person is, which elicits a thrown rock in response. We keep throwing rocks back and forth for a while, all the time moving side-to-side to avoid eachothers’ projectiles, until he stops throwing rocks. I assume I killed him and move on. I come across a second person not too long afterwards and catch them on fire with my mind before they can do the same to me. Finally, I reach the castle at the top of the mountain.
I enter the castle, which is made of stone and has a tall tower protruding from behind the walls. I run up the stairs littered with charred skeletons and into the room at the very top of the castle. Ariana is there and she tries to catch me on fire with her mind, but before she can I wrap my legs around her waist and kiss her. Her hostile intentions vanish and she leads me to a room full of beds and other people arranged like a hostel. She leaves and I sit on the edge of my bed, talking to the other people there who beat the game. I wonder if they also had to kiss ariana …