For reasons transparent only to my subconscious mind, my college had a dorm room on top of a train. The poor students assigned there had to live in drywall and plywood boxes that constantly circled the city on the subway lines. Not surprisingly, these flimsy structures were frequently damaged. My dream began while the college was in the process of reconstructing them, as well as the subway tracks.
Some friends and I decided to ride a still roofless dorm room over to our apartment building. Since the subways were not running due to construction, the dorm room had to toddle along on a remote controlled train base. Eventually, the tracks led up to the surface, where we ran into a slight problem. When the college said "reconstructing tracks" they apparently meant creating a 100ft deep gulf where the rails used to be and bridging them with precariously placed stones. A worker laying the stones greeted us as we slowed to a halt.
"Hey, worker man," I yelled, "how can we get across?"
"Well, you could rent one of these $300 per hour lifters and lay some stones." He gestured to a hand powered fork-lift.
"Not going to happen. You're already working. How long til it's done?" He did not seem to appreciate my tone, and I did not seem to care. We bickered for a while, and I may have made insulted the dorm-train system a few times, but eventually, we came to understand one another. Through cooperation, he, my friends and I managed to construct a temporary ramp and drive our impractical vehicle across. Once safely on the ground, I leaped out of the room and grabbed the worker.
"Oh my gosh, do you know what this is like?"
"Um." He tried to pry me off of him to no avail.
"It's like...the first episode...of My Little Ponies."
"Okay, you seriously need to let go of me."
"No, listen! We had a problem, and the only way to overcome it...was through friendship." I had started to slur my words and lose my balance, so apparently friendship is a type of alcohol in this dream. My cohorts dragged me away and I forgot about the whole affair until a week or two later.
"Hey," my academic adviser greeted me as I passed her on the way to class, "Did you ever finish the application for an iPad?"
"What?"
"Don't you read your emails? Every month, we reward people exhibiting a different character trait. They have to be nominated to apply, and you got a nomination for your dorm-train affair."
"Really? But I was the most obnoxious person in the group. How did you even hear about it?"
"The worker didn't find you obnoxious. He went out of his way to tell us about you."
I blushed but then promised to check my email. This entailed, for reasons I cannot fathom, going to a minivan in the middle of an empty parking lot. Inside the van, I found a bed. This did not surprise me. What did surprise me was that the bed had been made with a fuzzy blue blanket and silver sheets.
"Ah, this is an elaborate email," I thought to myself as I opened the "email" by pulling down the covers. Tucked between the sheets, I found a pamphlet with all the relevant information on how to apply for the chance to win an iPad. The name of the contest was The Brave and the Bros: Courage and Friendship in Troubling Times. The main part of the application was an essay explaining the experience for which one had been nominated.
All I could think about this was "Crap, more work."
Friday, November 30, 2012
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Dream Log 50: Can you believe this is the short version?
Some high school friends and I got together just to hang out and have fun. As we were changing to get ready for bed, one of us noticed that the most modest girl of the bunch was wearing rather peculiar underwear. Instead of normal fabric, it had the padded, silky look of a bra. The girl tried to defend her choice in undergarments, saying "Well, underwear is just a bra for your butt, isn't it?" We contemplated this concept for a moment. Without a word, my high school roommate bent down until she was on level with the braderwear...and poked it.
"It's squishy!"
"Hey, that's my butt!"
"Yes, and it's extra squishy!"
Underwear exchanges may or may not have ensued. The next thing I knew, I was sprawled out on the ground in a tangle of friendly limbs, and someone was offering me an orange. Unfortunately, I had to run off to work a shift as tech-support for the CAD program SolidWorks. The point of view shifted at this point to a woman at a payphone, twisting and worrying the phone's cord as she waited for someone to answer her.
"Good afternon" my voice came through.
"Are you a SolidWorks assistant?"
"Ma'am, you're speaking to the founder." I knew the moment I said it that it was true.
"I need some counseling. My wife is pregnant, and I need help choosing elementary school teachers for when the baby's old enough."
Apparently CAD in this dream stood for Counseling for Adolescents and Descendants or something because this request fell perfectly into the range of questions I was qualified to answer.
"Who are you currently considering?" I asked.
"There's this one teacher, Bicham. Do you know anything about her?"
I shift in my seat in the sports car to face the woman more directly. How I transported from my office to a sports car, I have no idea.
"Oh, she's wonderful. You don't have to worry about unappreciated talent with her. If you show brilliance, she recognizes it."
"Speaking from experience, oh brilliant one?" she derides.
"Well, yes, I mean...not that I think I'm...there's a difference between...just drive!"
We arrived at last at some sort of community center to meet her wife. During the ride, I had transformed into an aging Jewish man with a crippled arm. This is completely normal in every way. After weaving our way through the labyrinthine building a few minutes, we came to a nursery where her wife had holed herself up. I introduced myself, shaking hands leftie style because I could not properly lift my right. We got down to business, but I received the impression that she had a few screws that wanted tightening. Whereas her partner considered my advice soberly and contributed thoughts and concerns of her own to the conversation, the pregnant woman twitched at every word and spoke only in curt burst when directly asked. When I suggested "Solomon" as a boy's name, she snapped.
"You don't get to decide that!" she exclaimed, leaping out of her seat. She snatched up a box of baby clothes and clutched it to her chest as though it were a baby itself.
"It was just a sug-"
"NO! You can't tell me how to treat my child! It's my child! I'll have it how I want it. Get out!"
"Love," her wife began.
"Take him out of here!"
"It's all right, I should leave" I sighed to the wild woman's doubtful wife, "I do need your help getting out of this building though."
She led me back the way we came. Somewhere along the way, I turned back into myself. She prattled apologies, and I waved them off. At a doorway, we passed two teenagers entering the building. The boy had silvery-blond hair and sunglasses. The girl's hair was a black tangle, and she had candy-corn colored ram-horns on her head. Both wore red costumes with a gear on the front. We kept walking, they kept walking. My brain decided that Dave and Aradia from the comic Homestuck were far more interesting than me and followed them.
"I've gotta be honest here. I feel kind of weird," Dave muttered.
"Of course you do! You're dead!" Aradia sparkled.
"Wait, when? I usually remember this sort of thing"
"I drowned. Someone knocked me out and threw me into a lake on accident."
"Yeah, totally accidental right there. Like, 'hey man. I'm just going to put your unconscious body on this nice grass. Oh wait, it's a lake. My bad.'"
"Not like that! They punched me so hard I went unconscious and got knocked into the water."
"How do you even know that if you were unconscious?"
"Same way I know that you dove in after me and drowned because you forgot you never learned to swim. Our voices told me ahead of time! hehe!"
"Really? I'm that stupid."
"It was adorable."
"'Kay, so why aren't we in a dream bubble?"
"I don't know! But we probably won't be here long. Take your shades off and look at your arm." Dave glanced down, lifting his shades out of the way. Through his limb, he had a disturbingly clear view of the flood.
"Well crap. I'm disappearing. You too, come to think of it."
"Yup! But we aren't ghosts. Trust me, I know ghosts. I think there's some sort of trick to this."
"Well, if anyone can figure it out, I'm betting it's two God Tier time players. We're basically the best there is, hands down, no questions. You even try to put a hand up, we've already gone and stopped you from ever doing it because the alpha timeline ain't got no patience for questioning our coolness."
"Yes! Let's go trick death!"
They proceeded to have fantastic and awe-inspiring adventures. I, however, did not get to dream of them. Instead, I switched over to the rest of the trolls chilling in normal dream bubbles. Eridan tried to hit on Tavros, but ran off when Gamzee loped over towards them and had quite a tender conversation with Tavros in which they marveled at the miracle of each others' existence. Karkat, Rose, Equius and Jade all sat together on a patch of grass. The former two comforted the latter over the inexplicable absence of their loved ones in the afterlife.
Then, two forms passed, one sauntering and one skipping. They wore unbearably cheerful pastels plastered in hearts and candy decorations. "Dave?" Jade gasped.
"Sorry girl, can't stop. These digs make me invisible, says so on the label. I can't stop and mess with that. We trickster Tiers gotta go make some mischief transpire."
The trickster Dave and Aradia continued on. The remaining trolls sat in stupefied silence for a few moments.
"Rose, do drowned people come back as cutesy pastel God Tiers?"
"...Even I cannot shed any light on that question."
"Karkat, did you see Dave and Aradia walk past looking all--"
"NOPE!"
"Me neither."
"It's squishy!"
"Hey, that's my butt!"
"Yes, and it's extra squishy!"
Underwear exchanges may or may not have ensued. The next thing I knew, I was sprawled out on the ground in a tangle of friendly limbs, and someone was offering me an orange. Unfortunately, I had to run off to work a shift as tech-support for the CAD program SolidWorks. The point of view shifted at this point to a woman at a payphone, twisting and worrying the phone's cord as she waited for someone to answer her.
"Good afternon" my voice came through.
"Are you a SolidWorks assistant?"
"Ma'am, you're speaking to the founder." I knew the moment I said it that it was true.
"I need some counseling. My wife is pregnant, and I need help choosing elementary school teachers for when the baby's old enough."
Apparently CAD in this dream stood for Counseling for Adolescents and Descendants or something because this request fell perfectly into the range of questions I was qualified to answer.
"Who are you currently considering?" I asked.
"There's this one teacher, Bicham. Do you know anything about her?"
I shift in my seat in the sports car to face the woman more directly. How I transported from my office to a sports car, I have no idea.
"Oh, she's wonderful. You don't have to worry about unappreciated talent with her. If you show brilliance, she recognizes it."
"Speaking from experience, oh brilliant one?" she derides.
"Well, yes, I mean...not that I think I'm...there's a difference between...just drive!"
We arrived at last at some sort of community center to meet her wife. During the ride, I had transformed into an aging Jewish man with a crippled arm. This is completely normal in every way. After weaving our way through the labyrinthine building a few minutes, we came to a nursery where her wife had holed herself up. I introduced myself, shaking hands leftie style because I could not properly lift my right. We got down to business, but I received the impression that she had a few screws that wanted tightening. Whereas her partner considered my advice soberly and contributed thoughts and concerns of her own to the conversation, the pregnant woman twitched at every word and spoke only in curt burst when directly asked. When I suggested "Solomon" as a boy's name, she snapped.
"You don't get to decide that!" she exclaimed, leaping out of her seat. She snatched up a box of baby clothes and clutched it to her chest as though it were a baby itself.
"It was just a sug-"
"NO! You can't tell me how to treat my child! It's my child! I'll have it how I want it. Get out!"
"Love," her wife began.
"Take him out of here!"
"It's all right, I should leave" I sighed to the wild woman's doubtful wife, "I do need your help getting out of this building though."
She led me back the way we came. Somewhere along the way, I turned back into myself. She prattled apologies, and I waved them off. At a doorway, we passed two teenagers entering the building. The boy had silvery-blond hair and sunglasses. The girl's hair was a black tangle, and she had candy-corn colored ram-horns on her head. Both wore red costumes with a gear on the front. We kept walking, they kept walking. My brain decided that Dave and Aradia from the comic Homestuck were far more interesting than me and followed them.
"I've gotta be honest here. I feel kind of weird," Dave muttered.
"Of course you do! You're dead!" Aradia sparkled.
"Wait, when? I usually remember this sort of thing"
"I drowned. Someone knocked me out and threw me into a lake on accident."
"Yeah, totally accidental right there. Like, 'hey man. I'm just going to put your unconscious body on this nice grass. Oh wait, it's a lake. My bad.'"
"Not like that! They punched me so hard I went unconscious and got knocked into the water."
"How do you even know that if you were unconscious?"
"Same way I know that you dove in after me and drowned because you forgot you never learned to swim. Our voices told me ahead of time! hehe!"
"Really? I'm that stupid."
"It was adorable."
"'Kay, so why aren't we in a dream bubble?"
"I don't know! But we probably won't be here long. Take your shades off and look at your arm." Dave glanced down, lifting his shades out of the way. Through his limb, he had a disturbingly clear view of the flood.
"Well crap. I'm disappearing. You too, come to think of it."
"Yup! But we aren't ghosts. Trust me, I know ghosts. I think there's some sort of trick to this."
"Well, if anyone can figure it out, I'm betting it's two God Tier time players. We're basically the best there is, hands down, no questions. You even try to put a hand up, we've already gone and stopped you from ever doing it because the alpha timeline ain't got no patience for questioning our coolness."
"Yes! Let's go trick death!"
They proceeded to have fantastic and awe-inspiring adventures. I, however, did not get to dream of them. Instead, I switched over to the rest of the trolls chilling in normal dream bubbles. Eridan tried to hit on Tavros, but ran off when Gamzee loped over towards them and had quite a tender conversation with Tavros in which they marveled at the miracle of each others' existence. Karkat, Rose, Equius and Jade all sat together on a patch of grass. The former two comforted the latter over the inexplicable absence of their loved ones in the afterlife.
Then, two forms passed, one sauntering and one skipping. They wore unbearably cheerful pastels plastered in hearts and candy decorations. "Dave?" Jade gasped.
"Sorry girl, can't stop. These digs make me invisible, says so on the label. I can't stop and mess with that. We trickster Tiers gotta go make some mischief transpire."
The trickster Dave and Aradia continued on. The remaining trolls sat in stupefied silence for a few moments.
"Rose, do drowned people come back as cutesy pastel God Tiers?"
"...Even I cannot shed any light on that question."
"Karkat, did you see Dave and Aradia walk past looking all--"
"NOPE!"
"Me neither."
Friday, November 9, 2012
To Germany
Remember, remember the 9th of November,
the republic, the hate crimes, the fall;
Who here would say that this bittersweet day
should be forgotten at all?
the republic, the hate crimes, the fall;
Who here would say that this bittersweet day
should be forgotten at all?
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