March 18 - Chess

And in a burst of luck, I was wrong. I remember at least part of my dream now.

This is from toward the end of the dream, but still. Apparently I'm involved in this whole big underground blackmarket type service for playing some funny game against other people. It was apparently taboo because of its associations with cannibalism or something, very strange. Anyway, this hub for the game trade is this jeweler shop. You go to the jeweler sometime after 3 PM, and look at his display of gems very carefully. They contain a hidden code in them, and when you deduce the code, you know the current combination to this lock. You use the lock with some color-coded keys, and if you use the right two keys in the right order, it opens the door. Then the jeweler knows you're part of the trade and can pull out his game card that lists various different types of games that you play.

...But that's just how the dream ended. Here's how it begins.

I'm in this sort of real-life version of Wired.com. There's news stories floating around or something, and my brother shows up at one point and there's some clowning around and stuff.
Various hijinx insue that I don't remember the details of. Anyway, the dream proper begins when I apparently start learning more about Scientology. The wired.com-like place starts focusing on Scientology and I start wrapping myself into the group. Apparently this is all for the purposes of infiltration, but just when I'm almost in the group, I have this nervous breakdown. I come crying to my parents, say I can't do it, it's too hard, blah blah blah. So I run up this gigantic hill. I keep going and I reach the top and apparently it's turned into some sort of freaky weird quest, because I'm passing these increasingly weird sets of objects. I don't remember all of them, but one of them was a bomb, an apple, and... something. I collapse HUGGING the bomb. I look up and see some sort of reward, again for the quest that I'm suddenly on. Apparently there's a squirrel on my team because one part of the reward is this giant acorn. I actually don't remember the other parts, but at this time I'm high on the hill and am eating this apple. My parents are down below and are talking about how I'm refusing to do this Scientology thing (yeah, I know, perspective and context are about as slippery as an eel taking a bath in vegetable oil). So they start walking down the hill. I start eating one of three Granny Smith apples. Another of the three gets dislodged from the hillside and starts rolling down the hill. The hillside starts getting increasingly steep and I start slipping. By the time the apple rolls down and is in front of my mom, I'm clinging on a cliff for dear life. My mom gets my dad and they apparently think the apple is some sort of omen for some sort of supernatural monster that had introduced itself to them before via apples, but then they get close enough to the tree that I'm now clinging to, and I tell them, nope, it's just an apple. But could they get me down from the tree?

Well, I'm clinging on to the top of the tree, and they're at the bottom. So my dad whips out his magic powers, which apparently are totally freakin' sweet. He uses this sort of mathematical translation or something: two steps up, one to the side, and you form this L shape.

Then you TWIST in the air ninety degrees and the L-shape twists with it and this portal opens. You step next to the portal and rotate it again the right direction ninety degrees and it opens on the other side in another portal location.

I stepped through the portal he opened at the top of the tree and appeared in the jeweler shop.

Sadly, this is where I start forgetting the order in which things happened. I kindof think after the incident in the jeweler shop I got locked in a bathroom by some political fanatics and harassed by Ronald Reagan who threatens to casts some votes, which is apparently incredibly bad for the cause I'm fighting for. He starts doing that and then I wake up.

March 17 - Strong Bad

Well, this is late and I only remember the one dream now. It's nice and weird though. Sadly, this replaces today's dream that I unfortunately just forgot.


Dream #!: Strong Bad

This dream is loosely affiliated with Homestar Runner. Anyway, it starts out with Strong Bad going to an alternate universe or something where there's this giant car or something and he's driving over a bunch of people. There's some sort of resistence group that's against him driving over people, and then he drives up a ramp and does that move where you fly through the air in slow motion and then jump out at the apex of your arc. He whips out a hammer and does this whole slow-motion fight scene with everyone. At this point perspective shifts and I get a body. I fly up in the air and watch as lots of people show up and he starts being ridiculously outnumbered. At this point I'm like "holy cow, I'm flying, I must be dreaming." The dream turns lucid and I start commenting to myself about how this is a lucid dream. I say to myself that I should be able to control the dream. Then I wake up.

March 16 - Teeth / Apocalypse / Eyes

Dream #1: Teeth

Well, there's a couple details here, but the gist is that I dreamt I was REALLY obscenely tired (like, opening my eyes was hard work and it was highly bleary), and that my teeth were dangerously loose. Then I dreamt that I woke up and was lying in bed and my teeth were loose and some had come out and were floating around in the mess that was my mouth in early morning. Then I realize that there's a bunch of teeth in my mouth, reach up, but the movement parallels in real life and it wakes me up and I realize that I was dreaming the whole thing.


Dream #2: Apocalypse

So. Kind of a long-ish dream here. Let's see if I remember it all.

Starts out at some point with this scene in a courtyard kind of deal. There's the base of an elevator shaft for some reason and various emergency exits and stuff. Don't remember all the details and don't care to: this only sets up the rest of the dream.

So I go inside the building and apparently it's kindof a cross between a dorm and a summer-camp type of weirdness. It's time to go to sleep and there's this large array of bunks surrounding a central shaft, sortof like a hotel atrium. So I'm going up to my bunk and apparently people make fun of me because my bunk is dirty, but I get in, and for some reason am rolling around in it, and there's this girl who shoves me and I go flying off and into the space over the shaft, I fall and scream something like "HELP ME!" and then I hit the ground. I kindof think this is when this mysterious woman who apparently was SUPPOSED to be in my bunk instead of me says something like "the time stream has been altered. Now I am done for." and I'm lying on the ground with broken bones and for some reason I don't understand everyone is running around as if it was some huge deal. I see a friend from high school who comes over and I raise my arm or something to tell them that I'm alive. There's some sort of funny stuff happening and there's more friends from high school, and then I go unconscious.

When I wake up Mr. Exposition kicks in and I'm told that as a result of my falling, some missiles got launched at this thing in the middle of the ceiling (there's this whole little backstory about how someone was trying to help me out and launched the emergency stash of missiles instead) and it turns out that the launch automatically triggered more launch of missiles, which went to various places in Europe I think that caused casualties, except the missiles owned by Israel, which got launched toward some country in South Asia. So apparently there's millions of casualties and I feel like it's all my fault but then I remmeber this woman and it turns out that actually no, it's HER fault. There's this whole scene where I try various strategies to get everyone out of the dorm, because apparently there's high levels of radiation or something. Various stuff happens and I end up getting out, following one of my friends from high school around. We end up in some new location but then there's this backtrack thing and my friend ends up apparently back where we started inside the exclusion zone, but this time it's a pair of houses in each other's back yard, and I go inside after the girl and we pick up these huge stashes of candy bars, because apparently they were left behind and they'll improve morale, and then just about everyone else (at this point, pretty much all people I knew from high school) shows up to start collecting stuff and they remark about how altruistic the two of us are, gathering candy bars for them.

There's kindof a time skip here and other than some sort of tour of some sort of facility where there's these four dudes whose police badges are only visible when they glow in the dark, except that that's actually only true of one of them and we don't know which one, and some really hard-core post-apocalyptic accomodations, we end up traveling back in time to fix this whole thing.

We end up back in the original zone of the disaster, only now apparently the whole thing was instigated by a pair of characters from Angel (sometimes it's Angel and Cordelia, sometimes it's Wesley and Fred) kissing. We manage to prevent this from happening, and there's this whole thing about a hugely bright light, and then it's fixed and everyone starts clapping. Since nobody is supposed to know that we just kindof saved the world, this is a bit of a plot hole. And then the entire gang of us points out that this is a plot hole in one of the stranger moments of this whole situation.

And then we all live happily ever after and the dream ends.


Dream #3: Eyes

Various details escape my recall here, but one scene is towards the end of the dream and is burned in my memory. Something about a mom named Joyce. This part of the dream is being narrated by her daughter's diary and I kind of think this is supposed to be related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Anyway, the daughter is talking about her mom, using some strange language like "arkbuilder" and "tanner". Apparently she has some mixed feelings, somewhere between "well, she's a nice, strong woman" and "she's really annoying." In any case, the daughter ends up describing her eyes, which look really creepy. Here's my memory of the image.

Obviously that's not exactly what it looked like, but the central part is pretty accurate and I do remember that there was this sort of web of white strands surrounding it.

That is not a normal-looking eye. At all.

Dream Signs - Pain / School

Well, it's kindof early to say on some of these things, but I think I can conclude on a couple new dreams signs.

1. Pain. It shows up when I die, and it's shown up a couple times since then. I can conclude at this point, I believe, that if I experience a great amount of pain and don't particularly care, I'm probably dreaming.
2. School. I'm not in high school anymore. And yet I find dreams about it. Dreams about a gymnasium, me going to high school, a high school classroom. If I'm back in high school, I'm probably dreaming.
   

March 14 - TV / Delusions

Been having trouble remembering my dreams recently. Today's dreams are more like fragments than anything else.


Dream #1: Barack Obama and Television in the classroom

Something about Barack Obama comparing moderation in politics with getting up to get a glass of water in the middle of the night. You get a sip of cold water and a sip of hot water. He liked the cold water so he filled his glass with it, but as he reached the bottom of the glass it got TOO cold and he had to stop.

A classroom talking about TV networks. Somebody talks about some weird names of broadcasting where there's a big network of various products started by a person that falls apart. I think the name "Amputatable productions" showed up at one point. I also kindof think we had the standard hoopla about me at a desk figeting with stuff.


Dream #2: Delusions IF game

Something that's pretty similar to the IF game "Delusions" in terms of the opening sections of the plot and the setting. The only thing is that the goal of the project is to create decent spices, apparently, while the only thing they have successfully created is some aphrodesiacs.

March 10 - Islam / Hospital

Dream #1: Islam and Politics

Sort of a religious dream, which is weird for me. It begins with me at home in the dark, in a sort of nod to the meta. I wake up, and apparently it’s time to go to school in the morning. I’m following my brother to school, only in my dream my brother isn’t my actual brother, it’s one of my friends from school. They’re running on ahead and I’m desperately trying to keep up. There’s this little interlude where I ask them about their dream, and we talk about how our dreams were about Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton holding an election at a street intersection. Apparently Barack Obama had the vote stolen from under him or something. Anyway, I’m following my brother/friend to school and he’s running on ahead, I yell that he knows I’m not an endurance runner like him, when suddenly he veers off to the side, and then I am suddenly running past my house again, and I go inside, and my parents are there and my brother is playing the piano. I go in and am eating breakfast, and I talk to my parents about church. Apparently it has since become Sunday. I’m apparently raised Muslim in the dream, and I ask whether or not it is typical to ask for forgiveness of transgressions on the “day of divinity”. Apparently it is, and it feels slightly weird to me because of my aforementioned Muslim upbringing. I start to wonder why the heck I dreamt about this practice in my dream, and then I wake up.


Dream #2: Paralysis and Hospital

Don’t remember how this dream started. At some point I find myself on a bus, and apparently I’m like a fugitive or something, because I end up having to use this paralytic on someone and take them onto the bus, but it backfires on me because the paralytic causes them to bleed whenever their muscles shift position and it gets gruesome pretty fast. So I have to take them to the hospital. We drive the bus to the hospital, but it’s not a normal hospital. We enter via the ER entrance and are told that they’ll be people to help carry the person in, but we find ourselves in one of those discount grocery stores with the concrete floor and stuff. We pass through that area and find ourselves in a high school gymnasium. We wander around for a while and get lost looking for the actual hospital area. We find ourselves in this really ruined tumble-down brick place, with pennies taped to the wall for some reason and floors that look like they might collapse at any moment. There’s some holes in the wall that look out onto some very foggy ruins, and I can fly. I fly around for a while and find out that the fog is caused essentially by hot water pipes leaking hot water into the cold winter air, and I kindof scald myself at one point, but that’s about as much of the dream as I remember.

March 8 - Puppet Masters / Party

So, another day, another pair of dreams.


Dream #1: Puppet Masters

This dream is about a world in which I am apparently alone among a great army of monsters that look like my family and friends. Some stuff happened at the beginning I don’t remember too well, but I do believe that at one point we were at this festival and me and one of my friends were having pretzels. The main “plot” began with me being fed up with one of the people I know in real life when they stole my food and did some other mean stuff. I get home and I want to call the police. However, I discover that my dad is in cahoots with him. When I call the police, though, suddenly a booming voice says something like “You can’t get help in this universe” and my dad comes down the stairs and is talking on the phone about doing something to me. Seems like just about everyone is in on it but me. At this point I think I get taken to this room where I’m supposed to be turned into one of them via some sort of mechanism. I’m told that I failed to be successfully turned in the past apparently because I wasn’t evil enough, and that this transformation is necessary for the smooth running of society. They’re going to try again, though, because apparently I’ve done some evil things recently. So they hand me these tin cans that look like they’re gonna contain some food, but when the label peels off suddenly contact between them and my skin is intensely painful. Apparently the transformation begins when I attempt to stop the pain, but in my dream I’m some sort of weird person who apparently can withstand obscene amounts of pain. So I just hang around holding these tin cans that are giving me an obscene amount of pain. There’s some talking, I don’t remember the details, and then some people come in and talk about how apparently I won a cat in a raffle (a raffle I signed up for in the festival at the beginning of the dream). I’m supposed to go downstairs and get it. I go there, still holding my cans as weapons, and it turns out it’s mostly just a ploy to send an army at me to kill me. I figure this out, and when the army shows up I apply my cans to them but apparently they’re immune to the pain, and indeed, can cause it. This sort of queen woman shows up and I don’t remember the rest of the dream.


Dream #2: Parties

Don’t remember the whole dream. I kindof remember me going through this sort of Zelda-like dungeon crawl to find this white lacy cape that makes you invisible. Unfortunately, it gets stolen by the big bad (who I remember nothing about), and apparently there’s this green cape that can do a lot of freaky stuff like turn you invisible. Then it turns out that the entire white cape thing is a scam, and it’s JUST the green cape that turns you invisible. Apparently we’ve developed this spell that’ll swap the magic cape with a completely identical one with no powers. The bad guys get ahold of the cape and somehow I’m watching them at this party where everyone’s dressed up like stereotypically evil animals and then they start engaging in risqué activities that I really shouldn’t detail. Later there’s this second party with stereotypically good animals, but I end up NOT going to that one because apparently there’s an entry fee. At some point in this whole affair the white cape gets shredded and there’s this test for people, one of whom has some sort of disability that makes them involuntarily kick the desk they’re sitting at. There are these buses and a driver who has this weird name and is your stereotyped big muscled car aficionado.