this is all gonna matter some day! superserious.
Let's see if we can go for 10 posts' worth of dream archives! did i say 10? i meant 10-MILLION
5/26
had some pretty amazing dreams. one was about being very high in mountains, where birds had to flap their wings unusually hard to get around. i shared my observations with my parents, who were there with me. i imagined that if i could reach out precariously far enough, i could see my house. i did at least see many large buildings, including those on campus.
next, i was flying through the air with my parents, possibly in a jet, but feeling as though i was much more open to the air than i would be in a cockpit. we were at least flying next to a jet, which fired off a couple small missiles and one very large one, all into the sky in odd directions. we tried to follow them, but the big missile went off in a different direction. my mom said we should be wearing wind jackets. i noticed my parents looking older than they ever had before, but my initial concern was followed quickly by comfort and satisfaction with the lives they lived.
in a pro-wrestling arena with lots of flashy lights, Hulk went up against a much bigger guy who resembled the undertaker. he grabbed the hulk by odd parts such as his shoulder and ankle, and tossed him around
5/27
my advisor was testing some idiotic undergrads [whose papers i probably had to grade last night] on their ability to recall a certain saying. they didn't know, and asked all sorts of dumb questions aimed at trying to understand the question in non-literal ways. i couldn't help chiming in a few times to tell them they were way off. it seems they were in the bathroom of the house, because when i had to go, i realized they were there, and went to what i understood as Mac's room instead, which was on the bottom floor of the house with a window facing out into a backyard shared by neighbors. through the open window i heard what seemed like a familiar tune, and saw Brian playing guitar in the neighbor's back yard. he saw me and said "hey, what are you up to?" i told him something like he'd find out in a second, or "does that answer your question?" when i started takin' a leak. [i woke up with the tune in mind. thus "Brian in the Back Yard" was composed, for whatever it's worth.]
5/28
climbed a mountain that featured steps fashioned out of clay by wolves. once at the top looking down the other side, i sat and took pictures. my camera quickly filled up, so i switched to my phone, and that filled up too. i regretted not taking pictures of the clay steps. an undisciplined boy came up the mountain next to me with his frustrated father trailing behind. i showed him some of the pictures.
i woke up intending to quiz my students on fireflash bombs. [too much battlestations.]
5/29
I visited a big wooden fort in the forest, and climbed up a wall to talk to a young boy sitting on the second level of the wall. He had blueberry pop tarts, and I was hungry, so i indicated a request to have one and he obliged. I put my hands together and made a little bow to him, and wished I could repay him. he suggested I could collect firewood, and i happily agreed. when i asked, he said i could leave it on the rock at the base of the wall below me.
Jon Stewart visited this fort and talked with one of the community's leaders. the inhabitants customarily walked around half-naked in the woods, so Jon followed suit as he walked with the leader. (i'm not entirely sure this was supposed to be funny.)
the fort prepared for a defensive battle [a la battlestations]. their true leader appeared in the center. his name was Froedrich, and he was surrounded by other strong guys with names derivative of his, such as Froedrich Froedrich and Not Froedrich.
I wondered how the people in this fort lived so simply. they said they kept warm with fires. I climbed a little higher and saw people resting in a narrow space below the roof with plenty of wool blankets.
A very strong man with glasses patrolled the forest with two large wooden sledgehammers. he swung them easily with one arm each, and broke branches for firewood this way (though he seemed to be having fun like I do running through forests breaking dead branches, and wasn't collecting any of what he broke). coming out to a tiny island in a marsh, he even swung at the wooden shaft of a shovel propped up against a tree. he knocked it over, but it didn't break.
6/7
a few teenagers tossing a football around wandered onto private property, and were caught by Freddy Krueger, who emerged from some dense shrubs. he was holding a small chainsaw, and said he would take an "arm and a wrist" from each of the trespassers. they were both oddly cooperative, putting their arms in parallel across the top of a tree stump. as he began severing the second kid's hand, he said nonchalantly, "this is about as exciting as it gets."
6/17
i imagined a picture i wanted to draw of the nursing home in which my maternal grandfather died. it focused on a door off to the side of the building that was partly obscured by a tree with overgrown foliage. the leaves bloomed outward widely and encroached upon the trunk itself in a strange diagonal angle. the center of the tree was black and hairy. i drew this over the leaves as if it were feathered, wavy hair. i also drew outlines of a face over the entire picture. it was angled back and up toward the right. as i drew this, a man criticized the placement of the tree, but i insisted it was the way i wanted it.
i played an extreme bicycling game with incredible controllability. the course was a bizarre, narrow, winding structure that looped through the air and folded upon itself in almost indescribable ways. my character rode along it guided by two other bikers. they challenged me to do increasingly unbelievable tricks like riding up the inside wall of a loop and jumping my bike. at the end of the course we reached a playground where one of them taught me to use the "irish heart," which was a few whistled notes (with a small instrument?) that would save me from peril if i'd fallen off the course.
6/30
did some running around at what felt like the U of M, past a room full of people playing video games in cubicles. Jim & I were bored later, so I began to suggest we could check that out sometime, and he finished my sentence, more as if it were something he'd considered a million times than something he wanted to do.
pissed off a friend somehow, and thought about how i liked partnering with him for some kind of shady business we were in because he was my size and i could kick his ass if i needed to. imagined how i could do so with first a fake roundhouse to jumping, spinning back thrust kick, or perhaps a slightly more practical flying knee.
i was riding in an armored trailer that carried a large cannon hitched to a small car. the driver busted through the front doors of a compound, wherein we were met with fire from a soldier at a gun emplacement atop some large cargo crates of the type that trains and freight ships transport. my commander (who i pictured in a green suit with red shoulders like Raikov's uniform in Metal Gear Solid 3) told me to take out the soldier with a semi-automatic M1-style rifle rather than the cannon in the trailer, but on a second pass at him I used the cannon instead. it fired a slow-flying cannonball and blew the gunner into the sky, while also blowing the machine gun away. [all in the neat manner of a video game, without particularly damaging the cargo crates.]
7/6
i was being chased through a stone-walled corridor by some kind of good guy with a gun. i was invisible, but wearing a grey-green baseball cap identical to my pursuer's. i realized he could see it and took it off just as he shot a hole through it and i turned a corner. i switched the perforated cap with another identical one i was carrying (conveniently enough) so that he'd think he missed. i reached a locked door that led out into an alleyway between buildings with another locked door leading into the next building. i was far enough ahead to trick my pursuer into running through this door by unlocking both and leaving them ajar while hiding inside the first door. when he passed through, i locked the door behind him, and left him banging on the door while i made my escape.
next i was in something like an RPG hotel with a woman who encouraged me to make myself comfortable by resting or showering while a meal was prepared. my former pursuer was resting there, injured and unconscious.
next i was with a female friend shopping at a clothing outlet for some brand that i could normally get for much cheaper at department stores. prices for basic shirts and pants ranged between $300-600! i moved past all this into a nearby video game section. i begged my companion's patience while i checked out the game i had apparently been dreaming of playing up until this part. it was boxed like a computer game, and different boxes emphasized different secrets that could be unlocked by playing through, such as a special weapon that involved a bladed disc on a string (like a winged Arrancar's weapon from Bleach) that could be redirected in flight after beating the game, and an attached bow and arrow system that could be used independently. there was also a katana that could defeat the first boss in one hit. the box touted this with a taunting expression like "See you later, [boss name]." another box mentioned a way of messing with the story line that took an alternate direction to making the pursuer/ally character injured and incapacitated, but still resulted in his having a tooth replaced that transformed him into dracula. i recalled some castlevania-like stages occurring between.
despite my continuing interest in the game, i got up and moved on out of concern for my companion, whom i assumed i must be boring. we passed another section in a small corner of the store near the entrance that featured pornographic entertainment in boxes like the games i'd just looked at. we had checked something like keys with the hosts at the front desk, so my friend opened a drawer in the counter to retrieve these herself, slightly surprising the person who was supposed to do this for us, but was on the other side of the counter watching the interior of the store.
we exited onto the city street, and found friends we recognized sitting on a curb up ahead of us. my friend ran to meet them, and i followed behind nonchalantly. a couple of them high-fived me. they asked what was good to do in the city, and i recalled how we'd visited the sea caves, but left out the part about fighting Dracula. [maybe it wasn't a game?]
i flashed back to an orientation seminar i'd attended in a large lecture hall prior to going to the above city. i was sitting in the rightmost section with a couple male colleagues/friends of mine. Matt Della Porta volunteered to participate boisterously from the aisle on the left side of the middle section, and while holding a microphone, mispronounced the last name of the friend sitting to my left. everyone in attendance was tested for odd types of physical fitness, including one in which they were to hold some kind of awkward half-squatting position for as long as they could. it didn't look hard, but no one could do it for more than a few seconds. most people had left by the time i was to be assessed. first i was told to do some pushups. i'd done about 10 quite vigorously when the tester told me i didn't have to push myself. next he told me to get down on four points. i didn't understand, but he seemed satisfied when I kneeled. he put a small black disc-shaped tablet (the size of a nutritional supplement pill) on the ground, told me to center myself over it, and punch it. i was a bit awkward at this at first, and requested a redo after the first trial, but managed to crush the tablet on the second. the tester told me i'd passed 5 out of 7 tests, which was good enough. i was content with it too, having some rationale for dismissing the importance of the two.
7/10
rented out an entire two-story house to live in. [maybe i was thinking of renting out entire rooms in a hostel, like i'd been looking into last night.] i slept in a small bed on the second floor. when i woke up, the back wall, which had previously been ceiling-high fence, was now only as high as what one would have around one's yard. i looked out at a pathway below where people were walking, and met the glance of a blond man passing by. i stopped looking out, but he came up some stairs on the outside of the house leading up to the second level, and asked me a question over the fence. i refused to help him, and he became irate. when i became concerned he would try to come in over the fence, my landlord and one or two of his subordinates came up the interior stairs on the other side of the house. the landlord (kind of resembled mario with balding black hair and a mustache) asked me if i was living alone, and when i said i wasn't, he insisted almost threateningly that i find someone to live with. i called Prerna, and she came over, but brought her boyfriend, and said she couldn't move in. [might've been Devora that actually showed up...I don't remember seeing Prerna.]
i checked my refrigerator, which had a few essentials like a half-gallon of milk [like the one i'd bought recently], but also had a ton of plastic bottles full of (Lipton?) iced tea.
7/11
lying down next to the wall in a school hallway with Michelle. there was some opportunity to rearrange ourselves, and we moved close together enough to bump shoulders together affectionately. we talked about taking a camping trip [not unlike the one she told me about at Mammoth recently]. surprised she would entertain the thought, i said it sounded like fun. she suggested we get a hotel room, and i rationalized my agreement with her by saying that we'd be too tired after travel to sleep uncomfortably the first night. Russell came by, so Michelle asked loudly that i help her study something on this trip, and i agreed as loudly and conspicuously as i could. i started to mention very loudly how i could probably get a hotel with one of my credit card deals, and Russell started to ask something about it while walking into a nearby classroom. i asked rather incredulously if he hadn't heard of that sort of deal before, and offered to tell him about it when he was done with his business inside. as the hallway crowded with people, we got up to go, and while holding a large and kind of gaudy purse, Michelle asked me if a policy we'd discussed before about bringing items into a bathroom on a different level of the building applied to this floor's bathroom as well. i felt it was an obvious question but simply told her no. we parted, and she said she looked forward to seeing the portrait i was working on (apparently).
i entered a crowded European restaurant for some educational event and sat down at a booth very near the entrance. outside on the street behind me, musicians began to perform, and as it turned out i had a pretty enviable seat for watching it.
everyone got on a bus, and we traveled down a street away from the restaurant. i looked back and saw the band playing in something like gorilla suits (with a possible mothman twist?) on a rooftop. their music was good, with a lot of indie post-rock or jazz sort of influence. Michael was in the bus as well, and i drew his attention to the music.
i was sitting next to an attractive girl, and decided to work on my self-portrait in colored pencil.
somehow i was sitting next to another attractive girl who was dressed in a shawl and otherwise very classy clothing. she bent over to pick something up, and...yeah. she was attractive.
i got up to walk toward the front of the bus, which turned out to be a very long walk. when i got close to the front, i sat down again, and looked back to notice a few other guys had followed, as if i'd appeared to have a good idea. they stood in the aisle, and began to draw the driver's ire, who told them to sit down many times. he picked up a handgun and pointed it backward over his shoulder at the people standing. the bus was so long that the space over people's heads curved upward out of view behind the roof as i looked back over all the seats. i imagined the driver's gun would compensate for this by putting a tiny thruster on the bottom of the bullet [which i thought of as a "missile" in my dream, probably due to the encroachment of BattleStations! on my pre-sleep consciousness].
i found my way back to my seat somehow, next to the first attractive girl, who handed me my backpack unprompted. mildly confused, i took it, checked for my belongings, and thanked her. she put a little makeup on my cheek, and joked about it looking off somehow. i accepted it with a smile, and later checked it in a bathroom mirror, finding it inconspicuous enough to be of no concern.
we'd arrived at a library, where i found people waiting in line to speak to receptionists behind a central desk. the lines stretched into aisles through small study desks. i went to the back of the line, and found stacked on a desk there a number of ledgers labeled with last names and the word "fund." I recognized the last name of the second attractive girl from the bus who wore the shawl, and understood the ledgers to be promises of contributions by wealthy families to some institution we were visiting. a girl with black hair and glasses who kind of reminded me of Sarah Chollar (but a bit more attractive) who was sitting at a desk stood up and joined me in the line, and suggested we find all the westerners. I replied, "Well, I'm one of them, obviously," in a clear American voice. she spoke a few basic sentences in French and another language that I felt I understood, but I couldn't figure out how to reply in French, so I said "Um...Um..." a couple times, and explained that I could only remember how to say "sorry" in Japanese. she replied in Japanese, and after a brief pause, I replied fairly well somehow myself.
7/22
had some kind of guilt-inducing relationship with my mom [whom i'd talked to on skype before bed], and she said it had to stop.
visited a married friend i'd previously had an affair with. other friends were with us, and one girl (a little short & stocky with long black hair-kinda reminded me of my former student Rachel), recalled talking to someone who suggested taking a road trip. i encouraged the idea. once we were done talking, i got out of the married friend's bed, where I'd been chilling next to her. i rearranged the sheets, but realized they weren't arranged the way her husband usually had them.
we also had some odd kind of infrared viewers that made warmer objects appear in a darker shade of yellow. (everything was in yellow for whatever reason.)
7/24
Justin Sumpter had to get surgery on his nuts. so THAT was rough...
i was in a pretty good hair metal band, and we had to travel overseas, but i had no idea how we'd afford to transport our instruments...especially the drummer, who had some really good-sounding equipment. i pictured the vocalist dude breathing fire at a fixture on the wall in an alley.
i walked down a street where a tree was growing bell peppers and other vegetables that were half-harvested and left on the vine. i noticed a few bell peppers that had gotten old or moldy, so i threw them over the fence.
i watched a movie about a group of badasses who would ambush people and kill them stylistically. one guy was dismembered and left lying in a chair in a relaxed pose holding a cocktail with the tip of his nose in it.
i visited justin in the hospital the day after his surgery with a few friends. the girl of the group (either Hillary or Dayna) had a stroller with her. we entered a little talkatively, but quieted down when we passed an ongoing surgery in a room by the entrance. when we reached justin's room, we found him grimacing while trying to move around.
i was part of a group who intended to ambush the group of killers. we hid outside a room where the boss and a few others waited. some of the others returned and passed us going inside without noticing. my group was in the middle of reviewing the plan, but we decided to make our move. we held up the group that was sitting on the floor around a low table, and confiscated their guns. i noticed the boss reaching for a second gun he was wearing, and warned everyone to watch out for that sort of thing. a firefight erupted, and one of my group was shot.
at one point, my group was fleeing, and one of the criminal group's mercenaries from Africa threw a wooden spear with a head shaped like a hand (it may have been a back-scratcher). the boss guy asked him incredulously if that was really how he intended to fight, and the mercenary said he couldn't find a gun in the confusion.
this all became a movie, and in between shooting scenes, i sat and talked with the other stars. each was sitting in his own little compartment with a colored glass sliding door, with food waiting outside on a tray. someone asked another about the prospect of shooting someone or being killed. he replied that he'd have every one of us in every day of his lives if he could. it was a tender Hollywood moment. Chevy Chase was there, and i said, "Come here, Chevy Chase," while I reached for his food.
7/30
some kinda hostage situation in a building with a high balcony. police busted in and fought. a guy on the balcony was firing down at them, but a guy with glasses and curly black hair who kinda looked like the portrait artist from Rome went all hardcore and fired back at him with a shotgun. he stood out in the open in the middle of the room and fired the shotgun singlehandedly, pumping the cartridge ejection mechanism by dropping the butt of the gun against his opposite foot and kicking it.
the guy he was shooting at got injured and escaped to his car. a civilian (hostage?) hid in his car with the intention of following him. the criminal dude seemed to lose the police, and after driving a while further, got out and tried to go through a large building. the civilian decided to follow him further, and told someone else so (don't remember if he was with someone else or just used a phone). he came to a series of stairs and carefully watched from hiding as the criminal ascended them. he was afraid to follow further, so he turned away and walked back into the ambient crowd. he noticed a group of four unobtrusive people dressed in ordinary clothes watching him as they passed and making hand gestures resembling what one would do with a walkie talkie. he turned and watched as the criminal descended the stairs again, evidently blocked from continuing past a locked door atop the stairs. as he walked toward the group of undercover police, the little girl of the group called out for him to freeze as the others apprehended him.
8/3
i was dating Maysa (whose FB profile I'd looked at sometime yesterday), but away from her on some trip with my mom. my mom and i were splitting up but still talking to one another from across a long hallway. she called out one last comment as she turned a corner and i ascended a staircase.
in the hotel room, i tried to figure out how to use the remainder of a half-used set of coupons someone left behind for soup that i'd already bought at a grocery store. it seemed i was supposed to match the coupon to the type of soup, then bring the coupon into the store with some proof of purchase from the soup. (i briefly imagined the store workers testing a customer's breath to prove he'd eaten the soup, but ruled that out as too ridiculous even for dream-world.) an old blonde woman working at a separate aisle with a conveyor belt at the back of the store said just to set the soup can down by the wall.
next i was with Maysa and Prerna, arriving at an intersection with a huge glass-walled building looming ahead. one of the girls announced it was the metro station. we waited at a long traffic light, and Maysa said something about waiting until my feelings for her returned. i remembered thinking of her while away, and told her my feelings never really left as i held her hand. i visualized a small console with three reddish orange lights that shone through strange kanji-like characters (having written in kanji to Sarah Klein yesterday), and one lit up to represent my love for Maysa, but not three as I'd seen at some point before in the dream. She smiled as I held her hand, but said nothing. It felt slightly awkward, so I broke the silence by turning abruptly to the traffic light and telling it to change, which it did immediately. I made a light joke about it having worked, and our levity returned. We three admired a towering building with a huge lion head sculpted out of the top. Maysa remarked at how it made her want to return to pottery, and I agreed that it made me want to get started. someone mentioned basilicas, and Prerna asked what that was. I replied jokingly that it was what you grow in your garden, and she thought i was serious.
8/15
at a low-key party with Michelle and her friends. as i stood by, one of her female friends asked her how things were going with David in a tone expectant of good news, and she hesitated to answer very awkwardly. her friend sensed her unhappiness, and asked in alarm what was wrong. Michelle answered in a way indicating a deep loss of confidence in David's integrity, suggesting he ought to have known better than to behave as he had, and alluding to the raping of a woman belonging to an ethnic minority.
8/18
shared some mixed vibes with Prerna, including a pleasant walk in a park that turned to persecutory delusion, a conversation over the phone in my lab...she was in the bathroom in my parents' house and sneezed, and i briefly reacted warily, so she said resentfully that she'd better get out before she got sick. then i was walking up West Meadow Lake Rd. toward the house, saw Josh Meadors sit down next to some guy on the sidewalk and another pair of guys sitting on the sidewalk of Aquila Ave. I passed Josh & friend with a nod, went inside, and saw Prerna through the kitchen window talking to my mom. I walked into the living room and sat down in the yellow chair while giving an affectionate gaze to Prerna, which she picked up on. she sat on my lap and leaned against me.
Michelle was in all of this somewhere too. oy.
8/23
visited a church. went to the basement where i found a big strange sculpture that reminded me of a large nose. read an inscription on the back that was half joke. said to go check out something on the other side of the building for myself rather than reading about it on the back of a gigantic sculpture. also gave 1924 as one significant time (when the building was built / discovered?), and another time in the 40s. as i walked away, i noticed a man playing a piano and singing on a higher level of the basement floor separated by a small staircase. i turned and went back down to a lower level where there were shiny asian relics on display in glass cases.
written over a placard on the wall outside the church was a sentence saying the church was "also" dedicated by Travis Stearns. the placard itself was faint, but read that this had formerly been a bar, and the Stone Temple Pilots had played there. I realized it was in New Hope.
9/22
ran a raid with an assault rifle on an underground security checkpoint in the basement of a parking garage-like complex. missed the targets and had to circle around to flank them when they started firing back.
wolverine was acting as Hank Hill at a hotel. someone complimented his performance, but it wasn't much of a stretch. a girl tried pairs of buttons in a grid, and when two lit up in magenta together, she got excited about talking to a guy she hadn't seen in a while. she was supposed to press other buttons, but she pleaded to talk to the guy-friend instead.
a church contained six wings, including a school, a place where faeries roamed, a diablo-like maze of catacombs, a gate to heaven, a gate to hell, and a main entry/exit wing to the outside world. the faeries were prohibited from wandering into the school, where the children would misunderstand them and hurt them.
in the central area, two kids conspired to sneak into one of the prohibited wings. one kid similar to Huey Freeman distracted someone with conversation, while the other similar to Riley got ready to rush the door.
on a news show, a kid tried to expose the secrets of the church, explaining how it had other wings with secrets in them. a supervisor discredited him by asking a leading question, "where do you go to school?" when he wasn't immediately focused in on the part of the city map with the church.
a man who had aided someone's escape from the demons' area was given praise for surviving it. someone was to be brought to heaven. inside a pitch-black area, a man with something like a wire around his neck charged a tree and fell over repeatedly, somehow trying to kill himself. the person going to heaven asked if there was another way, saying "this is getting kind of tedious." the supervisor realized at that moment that he'd forgotten the layout of the church's wings and led him to the entrance to hell.
i woke before i could decide if the door would remain open long enough for them to exit.
10/20
two extraterrestrial supermen who had gained a lot of popularity suddenly lost it. they were scheduled to play a baseball game. the first came out to bat and didn't swing because the pitcher was throwing very high balls, but the umpire called them strikes. the second came out and hit a grounder extremely high and almost straight up. it went out of sight for about 15 seconds, but a man in a black pinstripe suit and fedora managed to casually catch it. the first was coming up to bat again, and was zoning out in his zen-like no-mind preparation, ignoring the coach calling his name, when a civilian in the stadium fired a sniper rifle at him. the dugout area behind the home plate cleared out, and the woman in a blue dress fired again into the darkness while the man hid behind the large aquariums. the woman came down into the crowd and someone took the sniper rifle from her as if to hide her from the police, but others congratulated her and a couple took a picture with her as if she were a popular celebrity. after she exited the stadium, a large group of police officers walked in a choreographed fashion into the middle of the arena and made an operatic show of incompetence and corruption by doing a play-like synchronized dance mimicking a search for the shooter.
the supermen and their friends absconded the stadium in a car, passing only a white car on the side of the road as they left. looking back, the white car drove slowly into a lake, but floated and drove across the lake as a spy's car-boat would. the getaway driver claimed her car could do the same. as they drove out along the road, the white car followed off to the right at a distance in the lake. it continued to drive alongside at a distance through a marshy area, and was lost behind trees. the fugitives were then on bicycles, the humans thinking they'd lost the white car, but the first superman anticipated the white car waiting at the roadside ahead of them. the car took chase, and the superman broke away from the other cyclists to divert the pursuer.
the fugitives were then boarding a plane, and the little boy suggested the superman escape trackers by traveling hidden in his liquid form. i saw him being loaded into a compartment in thin, sealed bottles like the blue ice bottles used as heat sinks in my cooler. he said he couldn't survive in that form for very long.
[i suspect this was an allegory for my feelings of exceptional capability and failure to achieve my ideals because of unfair circumstances.]
12/10
accidentally traveled back in time while driving...back to a time when i was almost the same age as my mom! (impossible, i'm still not as old as she was when i was born) had to explain everything a couple times...joe & justin had oldschool USB cables that needed programming...it was still dangerous to wear my red RATM shirt in museums in downtown LA because it was a gang thing...i still hadn't had sex at that age...totally had the upper hand knowledge-wise. it was awesome! started wondering about the 2012 apocalypse and whether i'd avoided it somehow or had to prevent it...
12/13
was running around in Alaska for some reason [cuz i was watching The Fourth Kind a couple days ago?], and large meteors hit the earth. I was hiding out in a house with a girl when one of them hit. thought about going downstairs to be safer from the flying debris. left and came back with new dishes, finding that another meteor had struck while i was gone. got undue flak from the woman about having gone to get dishes when a meteor had struck. looked out the back window (like the one at my parents') at a large plain where a meteor had hit, and saw a large fire with a haze of smoke rising from it.
12/22
My parents and I had moved into a new house, and I had some kinda retarded brother. he'd pissed off a neighbor dude with an anger problem, who took a potato peeler to my brother's wrists and shaved some major skin off in front of me while my brother cried. i got super-pissed, took the peeler from him, and took my brother home. my parents didn't pay attention.
had to go somewhere (class?) with my dad, and while we were gone, someone had been coming through the house and scaring my mom. a door swung open while we were talking about it, and i locked it, saying that was part of the problem. i looked into a small guest bedroom next to the front door with a wall-to-wall closet. inside the closet was a staircase to the basement. someone was checking it out with me, and my mom warned him to be cautious about going down there. I reassured her that the basement appeared better-finished than our last place (not sure which I was comparing it to, but the walls were all smooth unfinished plywood, and no beams were visible, so i guess that's what I meant), but she was concerned that I might run into "critics" that were traveling through the tunnel. (a surreal analogue of the connectedness of people's backyards in Minnesota?) I went down and found a ladder leading down from the basement into a large rectangular shaft. soon we were all descending it, and as I was about to go down, a fat man with a couple dogs appeared. he seemed nice enough and non-threatening, but was wearing a black-&-white striped shirt reminiscent of old-timey prisoner clothes. as he was beginning to go down ahead of me, i heard screams from below. i asked him what it was, and he let me ahead of him, because i thought it was my mom. I dropped down the ladder into a subterranean river/sewer, where everyone was swimming through. i saw what must've been the aqua-undead swimming up to grab someone else who was beneath the surface of the strangely semi-clear tan-colored water a ways away from me.
1/5
moved into a new house with a very cramped walk-in closet in my bedroom. felt the whole place was less comfortable than the previous in general, and made my parents promise not to both leave at the same time without me for a while.
2/15
a wooly mammoth had a long pseudo-alligatory mouth and nasty teeth instead of a trunk and tusks, and terrorized prehistoric man. i imagined hiding in hollows from aggressive mammoths and thought of how we would've evolved to be sensitive to their earth-shaking footsteps.
May was kind of desperate for a date, and had offered to pay someone to date her. she'd "even paid for dinner!" (a pizza.) a dude came over while i was there, and i met him. he seemed kinda d-baggy. i think this was on a boat (like a yacht) for some reason. [i had recently seen I'm On a Boat and talked to Heather #2 about her difficulties w/ OkC.] I wrote on a post-it note something like "final decision?" and put it on Esther's arm where dbag-dude couldn't see it. she understood it as my asking whether she wouldn't date me instead, and gave me an uncomfortable "no" look. i left the boat and planned to ask her about it later.
someone had taken her backpack and hidden it for ransom. i went searching for people with my green dot equipped blops assault rifle. saw a red dot (denoting an enemy in this context) aimed at a door from behind a piece of furniture. i knew someone was camping there, and fired point-blank at him. it was denton using a stolen gun, and i put the muzzle so close to his ear that it hurt his hearing (because he was wearing headphones).
later someone dropped the backpack, and then placed it in a more obvious location that probably even appeared on my mini map. i found it hanging from a structure kind of like a highway sign, and managed to grab it by jumping. i ran some ways with it, and thought i was being pursued, so i hid behind closed doors near an unusual dead end all-metal vault room. i peeked through the door, and shut it quickly as someone came near.
Jason and May talked about some things troubling him while i was there. he cursed an acronym i knew to stand for a crazy ex that had traumatized him somehow. i wasn't supposed to know, but May had told me.
at some odd cultural event, G. W. Bush made some transparent show of camaraderie with a black muslim group, and I, sitting nearby, said, "Yeah right."
at another odd ceremony, I sat in bleachers watching a procession. the whole front row of people in the bleachers got up and marched out onto the floor to receive an honor. the row i was sitting in moved down simultaneously. then they all got up and marched out, and i kept pace with them. i then noticed when standing in the middle of the floor that they were all dressed in suits and i was wearing my yellow primus shirt and tan cargo pants. i suddenly suspected i'd misunderstood something...i walked off to the side and sat in my dad's gray chair making some funny face while everyone laughed. ozer was present, and commented sympathetically, "i don't know how anyone could've known!" he might've danced with Angela then. two people came my way after the dance, and the guy asked me something about the chair, making me wonder if i'd stolen their designated seat.
3-11 day
moved into a house with a bunch of other people
watching family guy on NBC with everyone in a den
josh said he missed the channel
there was a pause, and i asked what there was to miss...other than family guy
he asked when i last watched it
i admitted i hadn't very much
he said he couldn't get premium channels on his tv
i remembered having a spare tv
went on a quest for a second unoccupied room we could use as a second den
the property had a second stand-alone house with an attached garage
i asked the new grad student who had moved in there about it
she had a weird name starting with a U...
she had switched it around with her middle name on facebook temporarily, then changed it back
i then recalled our separate garage, and we checked it out
there were a number of terra cotta-potted plants around in the driveway
the garage had a lot of various things in the main portion of it
we remarked at how much stuff was there on the property already
i remembered there being a separate entertainment studio in the back of the garage
i had some concerns about temperature control inside, but couldn't believe i'd forgotten it
there was a game table, either pool or foosball.
there was a near-opaque smoky glass window on one wall facing out behind the garage
i cupped my hands over my eyes and peered through but couldn't see what was behind the window
i saw a display of black wooden weapons arrayed in a fan shape on a wall inside the room
a small knife-edged rod caught my eye, and then a larger halberd.
the girl who came in with me had grabbed a weapon and threatened me with it playfully.
3/27
middle-aged volunteers were posting notices on people's cars if they hadn't renewed their registration as of march 15. a lot of people received these, but i didn't; i had renewed on time!
i rode with some older people (parents?) to a house down the street. someone in the car with me was talking about someone else who should've been keeping his car in his garage for some reason...and we parked our car in the garage. [coincidence??] we went inside to visit the owner's cat, who was sitting near a christmas tree when someone spotted him. other cats were present, and one came over to the cat and gave him a hard time, practically climbing on his face while batting at him. he stoically ignored it and licked the cat's belly as it was climbing all over him.
a series of workshops were hosted at a school on a weekend. late in the day, i attended one with Sun Moon. she didn't take it seriously at all, and blew it off because no one had any enthusiasm left and it was to fulfill an obligation as we all saw it. i realized i had a competition coming up immediately after though, so i started warming up to avoid pulling muscles. i went into the gym where the audience waited, and did some moves to warm up. when i returned to Sun's room, i heard Kate Sweeny talking to Ryan Rush about me outside. I went out to see what she was saying, and she told me i should be warned that there was no fluidity to my movements and i seemed really out of shape. after a moment, i started to wonder if she'd been put up to it or was trying to motivate me, because i knew there was nothing wrong with what i'd been doing, or at least no way for her to judge my conditioning.
a scientist dude was experimenting on himself in a dark room with a hypodermic needle that contained a drug to make him sweat. then did something to cause himself pain, including allowing a bee to sting him on the forehead. seems like one was about to go in his mouth when i woke up. freaky.
4/27
"nemesis" earth existing hidden further away from the sun behind another eclipsing planet
"can we make the ultimate sacrifice"
giant wedge-shaped asteroids 8 times the size of NYC
leader dude laughs: even that is only 2/3 big enough to destroy the planets
second-in-command chick with crazy blue & silver headdress: "we always manage to exceed model specifications"
5/26
had some pretty amazing dreams. one was about being very high in mountains, where birds had to flap their wings unusually hard to get around. i shared my observations with my parents, who were there with me. i imagined that if i could reach out precariously far enough, i could see my house. i did at least see many large buildings, including those on campus.
next, i was flying through the air with my parents, possibly in a jet, but feeling as though i was much more open to the air than i would be in a cockpit. we were at least flying next to a jet, which fired off a couple small missiles and one very large one, all into the sky in odd directions. we tried to follow them, but the big missile went off in a different direction. my mom said we should be wearing wind jackets. i noticed my parents looking older than they ever had before, but my initial concern was followed quickly by comfort and satisfaction with the lives they lived.
in a pro-wrestling arena with lots of flashy lights, Hulk went up against a much bigger guy who resembled the undertaker. he grabbed the hulk by odd parts such as his shoulder and ankle, and tossed him around
5/27
my advisor was testing some idiotic undergrads [whose papers i probably had to grade last night] on their ability to recall a certain saying. they didn't know, and asked all sorts of dumb questions aimed at trying to understand the question in non-literal ways. i couldn't help chiming in a few times to tell them they were way off. it seems they were in the bathroom of the house, because when i had to go, i realized they were there, and went to what i understood as Mac's room instead, which was on the bottom floor of the house with a window facing out into a backyard shared by neighbors. through the open window i heard what seemed like a familiar tune, and saw Brian playing guitar in the neighbor's back yard. he saw me and said "hey, what are you up to?" i told him something like he'd find out in a second, or "does that answer your question?" when i started takin' a leak. [i woke up with the tune in mind. thus "Brian in the Back Yard" was composed, for whatever it's worth.]
5/28
climbed a mountain that featured steps fashioned out of clay by wolves. once at the top looking down the other side, i sat and took pictures. my camera quickly filled up, so i switched to my phone, and that filled up too. i regretted not taking pictures of the clay steps. an undisciplined boy came up the mountain next to me with his frustrated father trailing behind. i showed him some of the pictures.
i woke up intending to quiz my students on fireflash bombs. [too much battlestations.]
5/29
I visited a big wooden fort in the forest, and climbed up a wall to talk to a young boy sitting on the second level of the wall. He had blueberry pop tarts, and I was hungry, so i indicated a request to have one and he obliged. I put my hands together and made a little bow to him, and wished I could repay him. he suggested I could collect firewood, and i happily agreed. when i asked, he said i could leave it on the rock at the base of the wall below me.
Jon Stewart visited this fort and talked with one of the community's leaders. the inhabitants customarily walked around half-naked in the woods, so Jon followed suit as he walked with the leader. (i'm not entirely sure this was supposed to be funny.)
the fort prepared for a defensive battle [a la battlestations]. their true leader appeared in the center. his name was Froedrich, and he was surrounded by other strong guys with names derivative of his, such as Froedrich Froedrich and Not Froedrich.
I wondered how the people in this fort lived so simply. they said they kept warm with fires. I climbed a little higher and saw people resting in a narrow space below the roof with plenty of wool blankets.
A very strong man with glasses patrolled the forest with two large wooden sledgehammers. he swung them easily with one arm each, and broke branches for firewood this way (though he seemed to be having fun like I do running through forests breaking dead branches, and wasn't collecting any of what he broke). coming out to a tiny island in a marsh, he even swung at the wooden shaft of a shovel propped up against a tree. he knocked it over, but it didn't break.
6/7
a few teenagers tossing a football around wandered onto private property, and were caught by Freddy Krueger, who emerged from some dense shrubs. he was holding a small chainsaw, and said he would take an "arm and a wrist" from each of the trespassers. they were both oddly cooperative, putting their arms in parallel across the top of a tree stump. as he began severing the second kid's hand, he said nonchalantly, "this is about as exciting as it gets."
6/17
i imagined a picture i wanted to draw of the nursing home in which my maternal grandfather died. it focused on a door off to the side of the building that was partly obscured by a tree with overgrown foliage. the leaves bloomed outward widely and encroached upon the trunk itself in a strange diagonal angle. the center of the tree was black and hairy. i drew this over the leaves as if it were feathered, wavy hair. i also drew outlines of a face over the entire picture. it was angled back and up toward the right. as i drew this, a man criticized the placement of the tree, but i insisted it was the way i wanted it.
i played an extreme bicycling game with incredible controllability. the course was a bizarre, narrow, winding structure that looped through the air and folded upon itself in almost indescribable ways. my character rode along it guided by two other bikers. they challenged me to do increasingly unbelievable tricks like riding up the inside wall of a loop and jumping my bike. at the end of the course we reached a playground where one of them taught me to use the "irish heart," which was a few whistled notes (with a small instrument?) that would save me from peril if i'd fallen off the course.
6/30
did some running around at what felt like the U of M, past a room full of people playing video games in cubicles. Jim & I were bored later, so I began to suggest we could check that out sometime, and he finished my sentence, more as if it were something he'd considered a million times than something he wanted to do.
pissed off a friend somehow, and thought about how i liked partnering with him for some kind of shady business we were in because he was my size and i could kick his ass if i needed to. imagined how i could do so with first a fake roundhouse to jumping, spinning back thrust kick, or perhaps a slightly more practical flying knee.
i was riding in an armored trailer that carried a large cannon hitched to a small car. the driver busted through the front doors of a compound, wherein we were met with fire from a soldier at a gun emplacement atop some large cargo crates of the type that trains and freight ships transport. my commander (who i pictured in a green suit with red shoulders like Raikov's uniform in Metal Gear Solid 3) told me to take out the soldier with a semi-automatic M1-style rifle rather than the cannon in the trailer, but on a second pass at him I used the cannon instead. it fired a slow-flying cannonball and blew the gunner into the sky, while also blowing the machine gun away. [all in the neat manner of a video game, without particularly damaging the cargo crates.]
7/6
i was being chased through a stone-walled corridor by some kind of good guy with a gun. i was invisible, but wearing a grey-green baseball cap identical to my pursuer's. i realized he could see it and took it off just as he shot a hole through it and i turned a corner. i switched the perforated cap with another identical one i was carrying (conveniently enough) so that he'd think he missed. i reached a locked door that led out into an alleyway between buildings with another locked door leading into the next building. i was far enough ahead to trick my pursuer into running through this door by unlocking both and leaving them ajar while hiding inside the first door. when he passed through, i locked the door behind him, and left him banging on the door while i made my escape.
next i was in something like an RPG hotel with a woman who encouraged me to make myself comfortable by resting or showering while a meal was prepared. my former pursuer was resting there, injured and unconscious.
next i was with a female friend shopping at a clothing outlet for some brand that i could normally get for much cheaper at department stores. prices for basic shirts and pants ranged between $300-600! i moved past all this into a nearby video game section. i begged my companion's patience while i checked out the game i had apparently been dreaming of playing up until this part. it was boxed like a computer game, and different boxes emphasized different secrets that could be unlocked by playing through, such as a special weapon that involved a bladed disc on a string (like a winged Arrancar's weapon from Bleach) that could be redirected in flight after beating the game, and an attached bow and arrow system that could be used independently. there was also a katana that could defeat the first boss in one hit. the box touted this with a taunting expression like "See you later, [boss name]." another box mentioned a way of messing with the story line that took an alternate direction to making the pursuer/ally character injured and incapacitated, but still resulted in his having a tooth replaced that transformed him into dracula. i recalled some castlevania-like stages occurring between.
despite my continuing interest in the game, i got up and moved on out of concern for my companion, whom i assumed i must be boring. we passed another section in a small corner of the store near the entrance that featured pornographic entertainment in boxes like the games i'd just looked at. we had checked something like keys with the hosts at the front desk, so my friend opened a drawer in the counter to retrieve these herself, slightly surprising the person who was supposed to do this for us, but was on the other side of the counter watching the interior of the store.
we exited onto the city street, and found friends we recognized sitting on a curb up ahead of us. my friend ran to meet them, and i followed behind nonchalantly. a couple of them high-fived me. they asked what was good to do in the city, and i recalled how we'd visited the sea caves, but left out the part about fighting Dracula. [maybe it wasn't a game?]
i flashed back to an orientation seminar i'd attended in a large lecture hall prior to going to the above city. i was sitting in the rightmost section with a couple male colleagues/friends of mine. Matt Della Porta volunteered to participate boisterously from the aisle on the left side of the middle section, and while holding a microphone, mispronounced the last name of the friend sitting to my left. everyone in attendance was tested for odd types of physical fitness, including one in which they were to hold some kind of awkward half-squatting position for as long as they could. it didn't look hard, but no one could do it for more than a few seconds. most people had left by the time i was to be assessed. first i was told to do some pushups. i'd done about 10 quite vigorously when the tester told me i didn't have to push myself. next he told me to get down on four points. i didn't understand, but he seemed satisfied when I kneeled. he put a small black disc-shaped tablet (the size of a nutritional supplement pill) on the ground, told me to center myself over it, and punch it. i was a bit awkward at this at first, and requested a redo after the first trial, but managed to crush the tablet on the second. the tester told me i'd passed 5 out of 7 tests, which was good enough. i was content with it too, having some rationale for dismissing the importance of the two.
7/10
rented out an entire two-story house to live in. [maybe i was thinking of renting out entire rooms in a hostel, like i'd been looking into last night.] i slept in a small bed on the second floor. when i woke up, the back wall, which had previously been ceiling-high fence, was now only as high as what one would have around one's yard. i looked out at a pathway below where people were walking, and met the glance of a blond man passing by. i stopped looking out, but he came up some stairs on the outside of the house leading up to the second level, and asked me a question over the fence. i refused to help him, and he became irate. when i became concerned he would try to come in over the fence, my landlord and one or two of his subordinates came up the interior stairs on the other side of the house. the landlord (kind of resembled mario with balding black hair and a mustache) asked me if i was living alone, and when i said i wasn't, he insisted almost threateningly that i find someone to live with. i called Prerna, and she came over, but brought her boyfriend, and said she couldn't move in. [might've been Devora that actually showed up...I don't remember seeing Prerna.]
i checked my refrigerator, which had a few essentials like a half-gallon of milk [like the one i'd bought recently], but also had a ton of plastic bottles full of (Lipton?) iced tea.
7/11
lying down next to the wall in a school hallway with Michelle. there was some opportunity to rearrange ourselves, and we moved close together enough to bump shoulders together affectionately. we talked about taking a camping trip [not unlike the one she told me about at Mammoth recently]. surprised she would entertain the thought, i said it sounded like fun. she suggested we get a hotel room, and i rationalized my agreement with her by saying that we'd be too tired after travel to sleep uncomfortably the first night. Russell came by, so Michelle asked loudly that i help her study something on this trip, and i agreed as loudly and conspicuously as i could. i started to mention very loudly how i could probably get a hotel with one of my credit card deals, and Russell started to ask something about it while walking into a nearby classroom. i asked rather incredulously if he hadn't heard of that sort of deal before, and offered to tell him about it when he was done with his business inside. as the hallway crowded with people, we got up to go, and while holding a large and kind of gaudy purse, Michelle asked me if a policy we'd discussed before about bringing items into a bathroom on a different level of the building applied to this floor's bathroom as well. i felt it was an obvious question but simply told her no. we parted, and she said she looked forward to seeing the portrait i was working on (apparently).
i entered a crowded European restaurant for some educational event and sat down at a booth very near the entrance. outside on the street behind me, musicians began to perform, and as it turned out i had a pretty enviable seat for watching it.
everyone got on a bus, and we traveled down a street away from the restaurant. i looked back and saw the band playing in something like gorilla suits (with a possible mothman twist?) on a rooftop. their music was good, with a lot of indie post-rock or jazz sort of influence. Michael was in the bus as well, and i drew his attention to the music.
i was sitting next to an attractive girl, and decided to work on my self-portrait in colored pencil.
somehow i was sitting next to another attractive girl who was dressed in a shawl and otherwise very classy clothing. she bent over to pick something up, and...yeah. she was attractive.
i got up to walk toward the front of the bus, which turned out to be a very long walk. when i got close to the front, i sat down again, and looked back to notice a few other guys had followed, as if i'd appeared to have a good idea. they stood in the aisle, and began to draw the driver's ire, who told them to sit down many times. he picked up a handgun and pointed it backward over his shoulder at the people standing. the bus was so long that the space over people's heads curved upward out of view behind the roof as i looked back over all the seats. i imagined the driver's gun would compensate for this by putting a tiny thruster on the bottom of the bullet [which i thought of as a "missile" in my dream, probably due to the encroachment of BattleStations! on my pre-sleep consciousness].
i found my way back to my seat somehow, next to the first attractive girl, who handed me my backpack unprompted. mildly confused, i took it, checked for my belongings, and thanked her. she put a little makeup on my cheek, and joked about it looking off somehow. i accepted it with a smile, and later checked it in a bathroom mirror, finding it inconspicuous enough to be of no concern.
we'd arrived at a library, where i found people waiting in line to speak to receptionists behind a central desk. the lines stretched into aisles through small study desks. i went to the back of the line, and found stacked on a desk there a number of ledgers labeled with last names and the word "fund." I recognized the last name of the second attractive girl from the bus who wore the shawl, and understood the ledgers to be promises of contributions by wealthy families to some institution we were visiting. a girl with black hair and glasses who kind of reminded me of Sarah Chollar (but a bit more attractive) who was sitting at a desk stood up and joined me in the line, and suggested we find all the westerners. I replied, "Well, I'm one of them, obviously," in a clear American voice. she spoke a few basic sentences in French and another language that I felt I understood, but I couldn't figure out how to reply in French, so I said "Um...Um..." a couple times, and explained that I could only remember how to say "sorry" in Japanese. she replied in Japanese, and after a brief pause, I replied fairly well somehow myself.
7/22
had some kind of guilt-inducing relationship with my mom [whom i'd talked to on skype before bed], and she said it had to stop.
visited a married friend i'd previously had an affair with. other friends were with us, and one girl (a little short & stocky with long black hair-kinda reminded me of my former student Rachel), recalled talking to someone who suggested taking a road trip. i encouraged the idea. once we were done talking, i got out of the married friend's bed, where I'd been chilling next to her. i rearranged the sheets, but realized they weren't arranged the way her husband usually had them.
we also had some odd kind of infrared viewers that made warmer objects appear in a darker shade of yellow. (everything was in yellow for whatever reason.)
7/24
Justin Sumpter had to get surgery on his nuts. so THAT was rough...
i was in a pretty good hair metal band, and we had to travel overseas, but i had no idea how we'd afford to transport our instruments...especially the drummer, who had some really good-sounding equipment. i pictured the vocalist dude breathing fire at a fixture on the wall in an alley.
i walked down a street where a tree was growing bell peppers and other vegetables that were half-harvested and left on the vine. i noticed a few bell peppers that had gotten old or moldy, so i threw them over the fence.
i watched a movie about a group of badasses who would ambush people and kill them stylistically. one guy was dismembered and left lying in a chair in a relaxed pose holding a cocktail with the tip of his nose in it.
i visited justin in the hospital the day after his surgery with a few friends. the girl of the group (either Hillary or Dayna) had a stroller with her. we entered a little talkatively, but quieted down when we passed an ongoing surgery in a room by the entrance. when we reached justin's room, we found him grimacing while trying to move around.
i was part of a group who intended to ambush the group of killers. we hid outside a room where the boss and a few others waited. some of the others returned and passed us going inside without noticing. my group was in the middle of reviewing the plan, but we decided to make our move. we held up the group that was sitting on the floor around a low table, and confiscated their guns. i noticed the boss reaching for a second gun he was wearing, and warned everyone to watch out for that sort of thing. a firefight erupted, and one of my group was shot.
at one point, my group was fleeing, and one of the criminal group's mercenaries from Africa threw a wooden spear with a head shaped like a hand (it may have been a back-scratcher). the boss guy asked him incredulously if that was really how he intended to fight, and the mercenary said he couldn't find a gun in the confusion.
this all became a movie, and in between shooting scenes, i sat and talked with the other stars. each was sitting in his own little compartment with a colored glass sliding door, with food waiting outside on a tray. someone asked another about the prospect of shooting someone or being killed. he replied that he'd have every one of us in every day of his lives if he could. it was a tender Hollywood moment. Chevy Chase was there, and i said, "Come here, Chevy Chase," while I reached for his food.
7/30
some kinda hostage situation in a building with a high balcony. police busted in and fought. a guy on the balcony was firing down at them, but a guy with glasses and curly black hair who kinda looked like the portrait artist from Rome went all hardcore and fired back at him with a shotgun. he stood out in the open in the middle of the room and fired the shotgun singlehandedly, pumping the cartridge ejection mechanism by dropping the butt of the gun against his opposite foot and kicking it.
the guy he was shooting at got injured and escaped to his car. a civilian (hostage?) hid in his car with the intention of following him. the criminal dude seemed to lose the police, and after driving a while further, got out and tried to go through a large building. the civilian decided to follow him further, and told someone else so (don't remember if he was with someone else or just used a phone). he came to a series of stairs and carefully watched from hiding as the criminal ascended them. he was afraid to follow further, so he turned away and walked back into the ambient crowd. he noticed a group of four unobtrusive people dressed in ordinary clothes watching him as they passed and making hand gestures resembling what one would do with a walkie talkie. he turned and watched as the criminal descended the stairs again, evidently blocked from continuing past a locked door atop the stairs. as he walked toward the group of undercover police, the little girl of the group called out for him to freeze as the others apprehended him.
8/3
i was dating Maysa (whose FB profile I'd looked at sometime yesterday), but away from her on some trip with my mom. my mom and i were splitting up but still talking to one another from across a long hallway. she called out one last comment as she turned a corner and i ascended a staircase.
in the hotel room, i tried to figure out how to use the remainder of a half-used set of coupons someone left behind for soup that i'd already bought at a grocery store. it seemed i was supposed to match the coupon to the type of soup, then bring the coupon into the store with some proof of purchase from the soup. (i briefly imagined the store workers testing a customer's breath to prove he'd eaten the soup, but ruled that out as too ridiculous even for dream-world.) an old blonde woman working at a separate aisle with a conveyor belt at the back of the store said just to set the soup can down by the wall.
next i was with Maysa and Prerna, arriving at an intersection with a huge glass-walled building looming ahead. one of the girls announced it was the metro station. we waited at a long traffic light, and Maysa said something about waiting until my feelings for her returned. i remembered thinking of her while away, and told her my feelings never really left as i held her hand. i visualized a small console with three reddish orange lights that shone through strange kanji-like characters (having written in kanji to Sarah Klein yesterday), and one lit up to represent my love for Maysa, but not three as I'd seen at some point before in the dream. She smiled as I held her hand, but said nothing. It felt slightly awkward, so I broke the silence by turning abruptly to the traffic light and telling it to change, which it did immediately. I made a light joke about it having worked, and our levity returned. We three admired a towering building with a huge lion head sculpted out of the top. Maysa remarked at how it made her want to return to pottery, and I agreed that it made me want to get started. someone mentioned basilicas, and Prerna asked what that was. I replied jokingly that it was what you grow in your garden, and she thought i was serious.
8/15
at a low-key party with Michelle and her friends. as i stood by, one of her female friends asked her how things were going with David in a tone expectant of good news, and she hesitated to answer very awkwardly. her friend sensed her unhappiness, and asked in alarm what was wrong. Michelle answered in a way indicating a deep loss of confidence in David's integrity, suggesting he ought to have known better than to behave as he had, and alluding to the raping of a woman belonging to an ethnic minority.
8/18
shared some mixed vibes with Prerna, including a pleasant walk in a park that turned to persecutory delusion, a conversation over the phone in my lab...she was in the bathroom in my parents' house and sneezed, and i briefly reacted warily, so she said resentfully that she'd better get out before she got sick. then i was walking up West Meadow Lake Rd. toward the house, saw Josh Meadors sit down next to some guy on the sidewalk and another pair of guys sitting on the sidewalk of Aquila Ave. I passed Josh & friend with a nod, went inside, and saw Prerna through the kitchen window talking to my mom. I walked into the living room and sat down in the yellow chair while giving an affectionate gaze to Prerna, which she picked up on. she sat on my lap and leaned against me.
Michelle was in all of this somewhere too. oy.
8/23
visited a church. went to the basement where i found a big strange sculpture that reminded me of a large nose. read an inscription on the back that was half joke. said to go check out something on the other side of the building for myself rather than reading about it on the back of a gigantic sculpture. also gave 1924 as one significant time (when the building was built / discovered?), and another time in the 40s. as i walked away, i noticed a man playing a piano and singing on a higher level of the basement floor separated by a small staircase. i turned and went back down to a lower level where there were shiny asian relics on display in glass cases.
written over a placard on the wall outside the church was a sentence saying the church was "also" dedicated by Travis Stearns. the placard itself was faint, but read that this had formerly been a bar, and the Stone Temple Pilots had played there. I realized it was in New Hope.
9/22
ran a raid with an assault rifle on an underground security checkpoint in the basement of a parking garage-like complex. missed the targets and had to circle around to flank them when they started firing back.
wolverine was acting as Hank Hill at a hotel. someone complimented his performance, but it wasn't much of a stretch. a girl tried pairs of buttons in a grid, and when two lit up in magenta together, she got excited about talking to a guy she hadn't seen in a while. she was supposed to press other buttons, but she pleaded to talk to the guy-friend instead.
a church contained six wings, including a school, a place where faeries roamed, a diablo-like maze of catacombs, a gate to heaven, a gate to hell, and a main entry/exit wing to the outside world. the faeries were prohibited from wandering into the school, where the children would misunderstand them and hurt them.
in the central area, two kids conspired to sneak into one of the prohibited wings. one kid similar to Huey Freeman distracted someone with conversation, while the other similar to Riley got ready to rush the door.
on a news show, a kid tried to expose the secrets of the church, explaining how it had other wings with secrets in them. a supervisor discredited him by asking a leading question, "where do you go to school?" when he wasn't immediately focused in on the part of the city map with the church.
a man who had aided someone's escape from the demons' area was given praise for surviving it. someone was to be brought to heaven. inside a pitch-black area, a man with something like a wire around his neck charged a tree and fell over repeatedly, somehow trying to kill himself. the person going to heaven asked if there was another way, saying "this is getting kind of tedious." the supervisor realized at that moment that he'd forgotten the layout of the church's wings and led him to the entrance to hell.
i woke before i could decide if the door would remain open long enough for them to exit.
10/20
two extraterrestrial supermen who had gained a lot of popularity suddenly lost it. they were scheduled to play a baseball game. the first came out to bat and didn't swing because the pitcher was throwing very high balls, but the umpire called them strikes. the second came out and hit a grounder extremely high and almost straight up. it went out of sight for about 15 seconds, but a man in a black pinstripe suit and fedora managed to casually catch it. the first was coming up to bat again, and was zoning out in his zen-like no-mind preparation, ignoring the coach calling his name, when a civilian in the stadium fired a sniper rifle at him. the dugout area behind the home plate cleared out, and the woman in a blue dress fired again into the darkness while the man hid behind the large aquariums. the woman came down into the crowd and someone took the sniper rifle from her as if to hide her from the police, but others congratulated her and a couple took a picture with her as if she were a popular celebrity. after she exited the stadium, a large group of police officers walked in a choreographed fashion into the middle of the arena and made an operatic show of incompetence and corruption by doing a play-like synchronized dance mimicking a search for the shooter.
the supermen and their friends absconded the stadium in a car, passing only a white car on the side of the road as they left. looking back, the white car drove slowly into a lake, but floated and drove across the lake as a spy's car-boat would. the getaway driver claimed her car could do the same. as they drove out along the road, the white car followed off to the right at a distance in the lake. it continued to drive alongside at a distance through a marshy area, and was lost behind trees. the fugitives were then on bicycles, the humans thinking they'd lost the white car, but the first superman anticipated the white car waiting at the roadside ahead of them. the car took chase, and the superman broke away from the other cyclists to divert the pursuer.
the fugitives were then boarding a plane, and the little boy suggested the superman escape trackers by traveling hidden in his liquid form. i saw him being loaded into a compartment in thin, sealed bottles like the blue ice bottles used as heat sinks in my cooler. he said he couldn't survive in that form for very long.
[i suspect this was an allegory for my feelings of exceptional capability and failure to achieve my ideals because of unfair circumstances.]
12/10
accidentally traveled back in time while driving...back to a time when i was almost the same age as my mom! (impossible, i'm still not as old as she was when i was born) had to explain everything a couple times...joe & justin had oldschool USB cables that needed programming...it was still dangerous to wear my red RATM shirt in museums in downtown LA because it was a gang thing...i still hadn't had sex at that age...totally had the upper hand knowledge-wise. it was awesome! started wondering about the 2012 apocalypse and whether i'd avoided it somehow or had to prevent it...
12/13
was running around in Alaska for some reason [cuz i was watching The Fourth Kind a couple days ago?], and large meteors hit the earth. I was hiding out in a house with a girl when one of them hit. thought about going downstairs to be safer from the flying debris. left and came back with new dishes, finding that another meteor had struck while i was gone. got undue flak from the woman about having gone to get dishes when a meteor had struck. looked out the back window (like the one at my parents') at a large plain where a meteor had hit, and saw a large fire with a haze of smoke rising from it.
12/22
My parents and I had moved into a new house, and I had some kinda retarded brother. he'd pissed off a neighbor dude with an anger problem, who took a potato peeler to my brother's wrists and shaved some major skin off in front of me while my brother cried. i got super-pissed, took the peeler from him, and took my brother home. my parents didn't pay attention.
had to go somewhere (class?) with my dad, and while we were gone, someone had been coming through the house and scaring my mom. a door swung open while we were talking about it, and i locked it, saying that was part of the problem. i looked into a small guest bedroom next to the front door with a wall-to-wall closet. inside the closet was a staircase to the basement. someone was checking it out with me, and my mom warned him to be cautious about going down there. I reassured her that the basement appeared better-finished than our last place (not sure which I was comparing it to, but the walls were all smooth unfinished plywood, and no beams were visible, so i guess that's what I meant), but she was concerned that I might run into "critics" that were traveling through the tunnel. (a surreal analogue of the connectedness of people's backyards in Minnesota?) I went down and found a ladder leading down from the basement into a large rectangular shaft. soon we were all descending it, and as I was about to go down, a fat man with a couple dogs appeared. he seemed nice enough and non-threatening, but was wearing a black-&-white striped shirt reminiscent of old-timey prisoner clothes. as he was beginning to go down ahead of me, i heard screams from below. i asked him what it was, and he let me ahead of him, because i thought it was my mom. I dropped down the ladder into a subterranean river/sewer, where everyone was swimming through. i saw what must've been the aqua-undead swimming up to grab someone else who was beneath the surface of the strangely semi-clear tan-colored water a ways away from me.
1/5
moved into a new house with a very cramped walk-in closet in my bedroom. felt the whole place was less comfortable than the previous in general, and made my parents promise not to both leave at the same time without me for a while.
2/15
a wooly mammoth had a long pseudo-alligatory mouth and nasty teeth instead of a trunk and tusks, and terrorized prehistoric man. i imagined hiding in hollows from aggressive mammoths and thought of how we would've evolved to be sensitive to their earth-shaking footsteps.
May was kind of desperate for a date, and had offered to pay someone to date her. she'd "even paid for dinner!" (a pizza.) a dude came over while i was there, and i met him. he seemed kinda d-baggy. i think this was on a boat (like a yacht) for some reason. [i had recently seen I'm On a Boat and talked to Heather #2 about her difficulties w/ OkC.] I wrote on a post-it note something like "final decision?" and put it on Esther's arm where dbag-dude couldn't see it. she understood it as my asking whether she wouldn't date me instead, and gave me an uncomfortable "no" look. i left the boat and planned to ask her about it later.
someone had taken her backpack and hidden it for ransom. i went searching for people with my green dot equipped blops assault rifle. saw a red dot (denoting an enemy in this context) aimed at a door from behind a piece of furniture. i knew someone was camping there, and fired point-blank at him. it was denton using a stolen gun, and i put the muzzle so close to his ear that it hurt his hearing (because he was wearing headphones).
later someone dropped the backpack, and then placed it in a more obvious location that probably even appeared on my mini map. i found it hanging from a structure kind of like a highway sign, and managed to grab it by jumping. i ran some ways with it, and thought i was being pursued, so i hid behind closed doors near an unusual dead end all-metal vault room. i peeked through the door, and shut it quickly as someone came near.
Jason and May talked about some things troubling him while i was there. he cursed an acronym i knew to stand for a crazy ex that had traumatized him somehow. i wasn't supposed to know, but May had told me.
at some odd cultural event, G. W. Bush made some transparent show of camaraderie with a black muslim group, and I, sitting nearby, said, "Yeah right."
at another odd ceremony, I sat in bleachers watching a procession. the whole front row of people in the bleachers got up and marched out onto the floor to receive an honor. the row i was sitting in moved down simultaneously. then they all got up and marched out, and i kept pace with them. i then noticed when standing in the middle of the floor that they were all dressed in suits and i was wearing my yellow primus shirt and tan cargo pants. i suddenly suspected i'd misunderstood something...i walked off to the side and sat in my dad's gray chair making some funny face while everyone laughed. ozer was present, and commented sympathetically, "i don't know how anyone could've known!" he might've danced with Angela then. two people came my way after the dance, and the guy asked me something about the chair, making me wonder if i'd stolen their designated seat.
3-11 day
moved into a house with a bunch of other people
watching family guy on NBC with everyone in a den
josh said he missed the channel
there was a pause, and i asked what there was to miss...other than family guy
he asked when i last watched it
i admitted i hadn't very much
he said he couldn't get premium channels on his tv
i remembered having a spare tv
went on a quest for a second unoccupied room we could use as a second den
the property had a second stand-alone house with an attached garage
i asked the new grad student who had moved in there about it
she had a weird name starting with a U...
she had switched it around with her middle name on facebook temporarily, then changed it back
i then recalled our separate garage, and we checked it out
there were a number of terra cotta-potted plants around in the driveway
the garage had a lot of various things in the main portion of it
we remarked at how much stuff was there on the property already
i remembered there being a separate entertainment studio in the back of the garage
i had some concerns about temperature control inside, but couldn't believe i'd forgotten it
there was a game table, either pool or foosball.
there was a near-opaque smoky glass window on one wall facing out behind the garage
i cupped my hands over my eyes and peered through but couldn't see what was behind the window
i saw a display of black wooden weapons arrayed in a fan shape on a wall inside the room
a small knife-edged rod caught my eye, and then a larger halberd.
the girl who came in with me had grabbed a weapon and threatened me with it playfully.
3/27
middle-aged volunteers were posting notices on people's cars if they hadn't renewed their registration as of march 15. a lot of people received these, but i didn't; i had renewed on time!
i rode with some older people (parents?) to a house down the street. someone in the car with me was talking about someone else who should've been keeping his car in his garage for some reason...and we parked our car in the garage. [coincidence??] we went inside to visit the owner's cat, who was sitting near a christmas tree when someone spotted him. other cats were present, and one came over to the cat and gave him a hard time, practically climbing on his face while batting at him. he stoically ignored it and licked the cat's belly as it was climbing all over him.
a series of workshops were hosted at a school on a weekend. late in the day, i attended one with Sun Moon. she didn't take it seriously at all, and blew it off because no one had any enthusiasm left and it was to fulfill an obligation as we all saw it. i realized i had a competition coming up immediately after though, so i started warming up to avoid pulling muscles. i went into the gym where the audience waited, and did some moves to warm up. when i returned to Sun's room, i heard Kate Sweeny talking to Ryan Rush about me outside. I went out to see what she was saying, and she told me i should be warned that there was no fluidity to my movements and i seemed really out of shape. after a moment, i started to wonder if she'd been put up to it or was trying to motivate me, because i knew there was nothing wrong with what i'd been doing, or at least no way for her to judge my conditioning.
a scientist dude was experimenting on himself in a dark room with a hypodermic needle that contained a drug to make him sweat. then did something to cause himself pain, including allowing a bee to sting him on the forehead. seems like one was about to go in his mouth when i woke up. freaky.
4/27
"nemesis" earth existing hidden further away from the sun behind another eclipsing planet
"can we make the ultimate sacrifice"
giant wedge-shaped asteroids 8 times the size of NYC
leader dude laughs: even that is only 2/3 big enough to destroy the planets
second-in-command chick with crazy blue & silver headdress: "we always manage to exceed model specifications"