Dream file.  Copyright 2000-2004, David Turner

[I've recovvered old dream logs from E2.  I can only call up
images from two of the five.  I've altered them slightly to
fix spelling errors and update references].

April 19, 2000

I was in a big, white room with walls that were somehow
climbable. The walls were higher towards the front of the
room, but there was no ceiling - the room was open to the
air, but somehow also closed in. There were many desks in
the the room, big police-style desks. There were four cops
or rent-a-cops in the room, as well as many (50? 100?)
"refugees" (for lack of a better term) like myself. We were
dressed in off-white, baggy clothing. I started tweaking the
cop-types (especially one of them who I identified with John
Wayne). I don't remember how it started - or why we were
there (I vaguely remember something about a riot?). I know
that it didn't seem that we should have been imprisoned -
but we were. At some point, the cops were threatening me,
(but I knew they couldn't actually hurt me). Then a woman
walked in through a door in the front of the room. She was
something like a schoolteacher or an administrator. I was in
the middle of a cursing streak, so I started cursing her,
too, "Bitch. Whore. All women are whores". She tried to
curse me back, but was unable to think of anything after
"fuck!" She just made a weird short whirring-spitting-vroom
sound like a broken machine. Then one of the cops came up to
me (a vaguely asian looking guy) and said, "do you see this
form? Now we have to fill in an incident report." And I
awoke.

April 29, 2000

In a car, rushing to go do violence and save the
world. There's someone else in the car. Is this a video
game? A wall comes out of no where - I have an eerie
premonition of it, but of course, it's inevitable. We hit
the wall. People try to kidnap me - I manage to disable 5
out of 7, but then I am taken.

When I regain consciousness, I am in a cell. There's one of
my friends in the cell with me, but I don't remember
who. Strong feeling that this is a video game. We plan our
escape. There are about 12 sorceressess casting a huge
fireball-like spell; we plan to escape when they are too far
in to stop. One of them defects and joins us.

The sorceresss, my cellmate, and I are running. We are
leaving the fortess where we were imprisoned and going up a
hill. The landscape is pastoral, with increasing trees as we
go up the hill. It is autumn. We must decide where to go. We
are somewhere near Reed College, but the terrain is entirely
different. The other guy (Josh?) asks if we want to go to a
restaurant to hide, but I think that's a bad idea. I suggest
going to Safeway to buy food. Josh says that he can make a
Canadian onion dish. We make it to the top of the hill, and
we are in a country where German is spoken. There are
scattered houses, and we run through back yards, trying to
escape our captors. There is a man, lying with his head
against the tree, sleeping. I wake up.

May 6, 2000

I am in the hospital for some reason. It has someting to do
with the time I hurt my foot in my senior year of high
school. People, including my family, are looking all over
for videos of the event (in real life, there were no
videos). I get out of the hostpital, and I am in Greater
Nick's car with 2 of my other friends, David and Lesser
Nick. We are talking about my cast, and driving.

For some reason, we pick up 2 pretty girls, about our age. I
work hard not to make any social mistakes. We discuss where
to get dinner. This is always a major point of contention
among my friends. One of the girls suggests Fujin. It is
vetoes because we have eaten there to often recently. We
turn a corner, and we are in Seaside, Oregon (instead of
Portland, where we go to school). There is a Chinese
restaurant; Greater Nick says it's good. We decide to go
there, and try to park. For some reason, David is driving
(in real life, he doesn't know how to drive). Every time we
go into a parking lot, there are tables set up there - the
restaurant has like 4 parking lots of seating. Eventually,
David drops us off and goes to park (but he's somehow still
at the table). A plate of sashimi is on the table. I reach
for some and

                             I awaken.

May 30, 2000

My next-door neighbor was Mao Tse Tung. I went to his house,
and knocked on his door. I wanted an interview. He told me
to come back in ten minutes.

When I came back, we started the interview. My dad was
there. We discussed Napster; the interview quickly
degenerated into a political argument (it was my dad's
fault). Then something bad (a tsunami?) happened and I woke
up.

June 12, 2000

I was in a classroom with a bunch of computers in it (looked
kinda like a smaller version of Reed College's L18). I was
in a class run by my high school English teacher, Dave
Mitchell. I wasn't paying attention, I was surfing the web,
reading about a new feature in the GIMP.

At a break in the class, I went outside. Outside was outside
of my high school (in Philadelphia, but a parking lot had
been replaced with a smaller version of the plaza outside
the school. There was a street vendor there, and I was last
in line. I ordered a hot dog, and as I was apparently quite
friendly with the three people running the cart, mentioned
that I had a cold. Immediately, they began plying me with
various cold remedies. One of them gave me a glass jar of
some thing that looked a lot like licorice - I consumed it
on the spot. Then my hot dog was ready, and the vendor gave
it to me. All of the other vendors gave me cold remedies,
but there was too much for me to carry, and it all started
to spill out of the paper bag, which had ripped. There were
multi-colored jimmies all over the cobblestone.

I returned to class (I think we were actually in Dave
Mitchell's classroom, this time). We were given photocopies
of an old newspaper article, which Dave started to read
from:

"The five men walked away from the scene of the rape. The
woman arose, bloody and filled with an inner fire. The men
kept walking, unaware of the cyberdemon they had created"

Then I woke up. Yeah, my dreams are pretty weird. In this
context, cyberdemon meant cyber + demon, not the Doom enemy.



[more recent log entries -- I started logging regularly here]

Nov 9 2001 

I was working late, and decided to go home.  I was extremely tired.
Then, I woke up (in the dream, of course) in the elevator at work,
leaning against a black woman in a business suit.  I think I was
holding some sort of large pillow, which was between us.  I
apologised, and said I didn't notice her.

I left the office to go home.  On the way home (except in real life, I
walk the other direction), I stopped at the food court at 3rd & walnut
(which doesn't exist in real life).

I bought some food, and tried (successfully) to avoid an old friend,
who I know is there.  As I ate, I overheard him resuming an old
argument with proprietor of the place where I bought my food, loudly.
I saw bear (of WF), and sat down with him.  He told me that he was
going to examine a rat that died of rabies on april 19.  Apparently,
someone thought it might be related to the anthrax thing.  Next, bear
~and I were in the subway station (but it wasn't the one nearest to 3rd
and Walnut -- it was the one at 30th street).

In the subway car, I spat or threw something wet against wall (can't
remember precisely what).  It dribbled down the wall.  Bear chastised
me, and I tried to justify my actions, arguing that it was the
cleanest way to dispose of whatever it was. I think elefth was there,
and concurred with bear but of course I don't have a face to put with
that name, so it was a notional, rather than physical presence.

Then I woke up.

Dec 3, 2001

A large crowd had gathered in a gymnasium to watch (on big
TVs) some sort of sports match.  An announcement came that
it had been cancelled or postponed.  For some reason, this
was a good thing.  So, the TVs were turned to CNN.  CNN was
showing a war.  For some reason, this reminded me that I
want to make a phone call to China.  Some tiny little
country had brought down the USSR.  The US wanted to go
there and take some of the territory for itself.  Some other
tiny countries had also sent ships to get their share of the
USSR.

And then I was not watching this on TV, but on a big world
map where different colors represented who controlled what
land.  The white country now controlled the USSR (it used to
be a tiny country on the North American continent).  The map
did not accurately reflect land masses.

The US boats arrived at the USSR.  With the boats providing
support, tanks and men were landed (about 20 in total).
Suddenly, the tanks started exploding.  Soon, the survivors
were forced to retreat.  What was blowing them up was a
yellow plastic-looking thing the size and shape of a pair of
binoculars.  We (I was with the US forces now) left a
similar device behind, but ours could move.  It started
systematially kicking the former soviet binocular-things'
asses (because it could move).

I went to see another landing party to warn them about these
binocular-things.  Artemis (my mom's cute orange cat) and
"Bear", were there.  Bear was my other cat, who looks just
like Artemis, but was male (in real life, Loki is my mom's
male cat, and looks nothing like Artemis).  I went to put
them in a boat to keep them safe from the binocular-things.
Meanwhile, an amphibious tank was being attacked by the
binocular things, which were shooting little bombs under the
tank.  I grabbed Artemis, put her in the boat, and then went
looking for Bear.  I found a cat who I thought was Bear, but
as I went to check if he had balls, his fur color changed,
and his head became disturbingly thin, and then I woke up.


Dec 8 2001 

I'm at a concert sitting with dad and paige.  We're just starting our
visit to this alien planet.

I meet a guy my age, and we talk about alien math.

I walk around, meet another guy my age.  He points me to an adult who is
"in computers."

I say, "me too."

The guy says, "I guarantee he knows more about computers than you ever
will."  I talk to that adult. He says, "I know more about computers than
you'll ever know."

Concert starts.  It is a solo violinist.  I wander around the theater.
There are aliens here, but they don't have some specific look -- I
just know they're here.  I walk in front of the front row.  Then I see
an usher's flashlight, and hide in the shadows.

After the show.

I am in the room of 2 aliens, looking over their math books.  We are
sitting on the blonde one's bed (which is a bunk bed).  She and I are
getting along great -- an intelllectual friendship.  Their room looks
like a standard college dorm.  Their math is like calculus, but easier
and more intuitive.  The aliens look like people, but I know that
they're aliens.

A third alien walks in with a short female alien (of a different
species, but still looking like a human -- just about 1 meter
tall). The blonde tells me about this alien.  Under law, the short
male aliens can't refuse when a female tall alien want to have sex
with them, and visa versa.  I ask if female tall aliens and female
short aliens (or male pairs) ever happen.  The blonde says that no,
that's not required.  I ask if there are any "gays, lesbians, or
bisexuals" here.

As I'm asking this, some part of my subconscious remembers that GLB
groups had criticized this world for gender stereotypes (In
retrospect, I bet this was inspired by reading the same thing about
_The Left Hand Of Darkness_ yesterday on Slashdot).

 She doesn't know those English words, so I explain them.  She says,
"That's great, sex with another woman sounds like it would be way
better than sex with a man."  I know that I have started something
that will change this world. Two of my (human) friends (Who, in RL, I
haven't seen in a while.  One was Erin Rickard, but I think the other
was just a composite generic FSS person) are waiting for me, so I
leave with them.  We walk through cinderblock halls to their room,
which is L-shaped.  The bottom tip of the L (where the door is) looks
like an ordinary dorm, but the rest is empty, and has dirty sheets of
something covering the ceiling, and sagging.  It seems to go a long
way back.

I start walking under the dirty sheets (ducking at times), and asking
my friends why they didn't have this taken care of.  Then I wake up.

Dec 10 2001

I was in some sort of congress (of about 20 people), and we were
deliberating on this law.  The first page was all these definitions of
greek letters which had no relevence to the law, so I suggested that
it be removed.  The other people agreed, except for one sentence at
the bottom that I hadn't noticed.  It said something like, "We, being
beetlefarps [or some other nonsense word] of Jesus Christ hereby pass
this law."  I, of course, had no intention of claiming to be an
anything of Jesus, and I said so, but I couldn't convince the other
people to remove the sentence.

Then I woke up.

Dec 11 2001

Oops, waited too long to write this one down.

Someone recommended this TV show "A_____" (forget actual name, started
with A) to me, so I started reading the book (yes, I know it doesn't
make sense).  I was suddenly in the world (This didn't seem unusual to
me).  Bkuhn and I were flying above a jungle in an ornithopter,
looking for GPL violators (except the GPL was a patent license) and
reporting back to RMS.  The jungle was on an alien world and the
natives had vulture heads.  There was more stuff, but I forget it.


Dec 12 2001

I'm exploring an apartment building in the city one afternoon with 
some of my friends who work there.

We find an apartment which isn't supposed to be inhabited,
but is.  Looking through the stuff, it belongs to (my
college friend) David Garlock.  There's a computer with
Napster running on it.  We realize that the feds are coming,
and flee.  Out of the apartment bldg we go, through somebody's
yard (in the suburbs).  Now we have ~30 people, including
Garlock, and even though there were only 3 of us exploring.
Oh, and it's night time.

We make it to some safe house.  Our whole ring of people (about 30)
has to go to France, then Venezuela.  I'm the most recognizable --
I'll never make it through security.  So, our friends use putty to
subtly distort my features, and paint my face black.  I put on a
shirt, but it still has the coat hanger in it, so I have to remove it
and put it on again.  We start off to the airport.

The next day ...

I'm at Elliott's apartment with Elliott and one other person.  My face isn't
painted anymore.  Elliott orders in chinese food, but he doesn't order
anything I like.  It gets there, and I complain to the delivery guy.
He's got a whole bag off stuff that might be used to make chinese food
there, but even though I ask him for dishes which consist only of
items he has on him, he can't help me.  At that point, Rebecca shows
up with Garlock (with his face painted like mine was), along with a
few other refugees.  I'm happy they're here, but sad that they didn't
get away.  Also, I know that Garlock doesn't get along with Elliott
(in the dream -- in RL, they've never met).  So, UncleFluffy and I (he
must be one of the refugees that came in with Garlock) go to the phone
to order some more chinese food.  I'm looking around for a menu, but I
can't find one, and UF is already calling the place, so it seems like
I won't get something I like ever again.  I finally find a menu, but
all of the items (that are available for delivery) have the same
number!  Meanwhile, UF is trying to pronounce one of the Chinese names
so that the person taking our order can understand it, and failing.

I wake up.

Dec 12 2001 I'm going into Showcase Comics, thinking I can pick up
huge stacks of M:tG cards on the cheap since nobody plays anymore.  I
get in, and there are four or five peoply from my old HS, and they
have huge collections of cards.  Unfortunately, they're all completely
useless -- hundreds of "Red Ward", and "Circle Of Protection: Black"
cards.

Then I woke up.

Dec 15 2001

Me and 2 friends are trying to figure out how to stop a bad guy, who
has used a freeze-ray on some underground waterways.  One of my
friends uses some long thingy on a pole to take samples of the
remaining unfrozen water.  We plan to take them to one of our friends,
who is a chemist.  Maybe she will have some idea about how to unfreeze
the waterways.

Then I woke up.

Jan 5 2002

At some sort of bday party for Dan.  Everyone was confused about what
sorts of drinking glasses to put out.  Dan brings in some bizarre
plant (giant mutant thyme?), thinking it's cilantro [in RL, Dan was
out during this dream getting cilantro for my recipe].

Then I woke up.

Jan 6 2002

I dreamed that an evil alien overlord forced me to watch LOTR (I was
secretly happy about this).  Afterwards, he sent me into a video game
where I had to rescue 3 muslim guys from the ocean, but we could only
ever save two of them.  I realized that I had forgotten all of LOTR
except the opening credits.  

Then I woke up.

<malcolm> well, you'd better watch it again tonight

Jan 14 2002

I'm panning for gold.  I end up with a small handful of gold dust,
along with some tiny rubies, saphires, and diamons.  I use them to
decorate my room (at my mother's house), putting patterns on the walls
but unfortunately, I lose some of the dust on my bed.  I try to find
it by electrifying (somehow) the room.  The patterns on the wall glow,
but I still can't find the loose dust.  Then, there's a party going on
in my room.  Somehow, there's about 30 people in there (the room is
actually about 15x15, with sloped ceilings).  It's a birthday party
for someone in my senior class from High School.  The DJ, however,
doesn't realize this, so when he chooses the prom queen, instead of
picking the bday girl, he picks EC (RL note: who is a
total moron). Through all this (including everyone singing a completely 
weird version of _happy birthday_ ("haaaaappy birthday, the
night is clear, the moon is here...")), I'm fumbling around my bed
trying to find the lost handful of gold dust.  Jack Cummings (of WF)
enters the room and suggests electrifying the bed.  I'm sad that it
will make the wall decorations go out, but I do it.  We talk about how
much we'll miss those decorations when we move.  I wake up.

Jan 17 2002

This whole dream takes place at night.

I am in a helicopter, following a monorail car through a tunnel.
We're hundreds of meters above the ground.  The monorail operators are
pissed, and try to stop the monorail, but for some reason they can't.
They also seem to be upset that I'm using the tunnel without paying
them, but the monorail itself is free (passengers have to "pay" by
hitting a button).  The monorail car starts descending, and I break
off from following it.

On the ground, I see some of my friends getting arrested, because they
had been on the monorail, talking about using it as a base for
parachuting.  They hadn't actually done anything.  This made me really
angry, and I started ranting.  Some of my other friends had to drag me
away before I started yelling at the cops.  (All these "friends" are
generic friends, not specific people) The cops see us, and start
walking in our direction, so we walk away and duck into a safehouse
type place.  It's two rooms, carpeted.  After a while, I start to
leave, and one of my female friends walks out with me.  I see my
brother a block or so away, and say to my friend, "That's my brother.
You can trust him", meaning trust him not to turn them in to the
cops. "Oh, wait, no you can't!"  At that, my dad calls from the
balcony of a nearby building, "Dave, time to go home."  Then a man
comes up, and she introduces him as her husband.  She amends this by
saying, "Well, my male husband.  This is what he's good for."  She
picks him up and carries him inside, while he says, "Hi honey, I'm
home!"

I start to head home.  I'm in a brick plaza, which (in the dream) is
in Ardmore.  I know that I could walk to Lancaster ave to get back to
my dad's house, but I would rather see how close I can get without
leaving the area between Montgomery ave and Lancaster.  So I start
walking.  Eventually, I get to this series of brick courtyards with
benches (it's dark, so I'm afraid I'm going to trip over something),
surrounded by apartment buildings.  There keep being more and more
courtyards, with no sign of a cross-street or a way out.  Eventually,
I hit a dead end in a tiny brick (well, everything here is brick) room
that seems to be completely purposeless.  I figure that there must be
another exit from it.  Looking around, I see a tiny brass toggle
switch.  Pressing it dissolves one wall, and I walk through, onto a
set of interior (still brick) steps inside one of the apartment
buildings.  I figure I can probably find a back exit if I go up a
floor.  I do.

I look up at the sky, and see a rift start to form in the clouds.
It's very pretty.  A plane (a 757, say) comes through, and the rift
closes up mostly.  Then it starts to open again, and another plane
comes through, and five more right after it, only a short distance
apart).  They're all descending very fast.  I start walking again.

Feb 10 2002

I was driving with mom and dan to Oak Lane Day School for a Mann Music
Center concert (yes, I know this makes no sense).  We get there, and
Dad and Paige are finally getting married for real (after years of
pretending to be married for political reasons). There wass a plot by
Paige's brother to poison them.  Paige's father was the chef, and he
realized what was happening, so the plot was uncovered and foiled.
The plot was something like: "Oops, I forgot an ingredient in the soup
-- let's just sprinkle in some of this powder.  Ignore the almond
smell -- that's normal."  Then I was eating dinner in a chinese
restaurant with Randy and Matthew Gabriel.

The I woke up.  (dream details missing because I waited to write them
down.  Oops)

Feb 28 2002 

I step onto a moving walkway at a theme park.  I walk
rather quickly, because I want to be through this to do something
else.  The walkway curls and swerves around, at a reasonable speed,
but in a way no real moving walkway does (AFAIK). I come across a guy,
who explains that this is a Role-Playing Game.  I realize that I'm
carrying two steak knives, so I say, "I'll attack you".  He brandishes
two much larger knives.  I put mine up.  He explains that we don't
fight in live action -- he does some thing with cutting paper, but he
cheats so that he misses me.  His weapons, if they hit me, would cut
off my leg, and he doesn't want to do that to me.

We pass a window with a small chinese guy, who asks, "Do you want some
fibbies from the year 2001?"  I know that this is some sort of food
product -- but before I can decide if I want some, we're past.  I tell
the guy about a better food place further up (I guess I had seen some
part of this before).  He asks how far it is, but I don't know.  It
turns out to be very close.  The walkway winds past a cafeteria-style
chinese food place.  It is supposed to represent cuisine from some
earlier time period.  As we approach, the dude behind the counter
steps on a huge (~10 cm) black mantis-roach-bug.  We decide to order
from this place.  In order to get off the moving walkway, the dude I'm
with goes behind the counter.  I just keep walking in place.  The dude
orders something, and what looks a dark green vegetable is put on the
place with his food.  I think I see it twitch.  I am trying to decide
what to order when I wake up.


Mar 1 2002 

I had a dream about playing some civ-like board game with Dan (but it
was actually a computer game?)

But this one was much, much scarier:

A meeting of about 10 Enron execs in a fancy restaurant.
Someone says something like, "let's see Enron's real secret!", and
lifts up two (huge) tabletops which are on top of the real tabletop.
There is a 60cm x 1m fold-out display there -- the top is blank.
Inside are photos of a little blonde girl, and a monster who used to
be her mother.  The monster is tall, missing skin (hm, I wonder if
this was inspired by Anita Blake #9), raw muscle exposed, bloody.  Its
mouth is open, dripping blood.  Holy shit, is it scary.  Apparently,
this was caused by some weird shit at Enron's power plants.  The
mother turned into a monster and killed her daughter.

I say, "We have to tell everyone."  So, the execs decide to hold an
improptu press conference in the restaurant.

There's a long staircase with a small sitting area at the top.  One
female exec stands at the top of the steps, looking down.  She starts
explaining to everyone what happened, and then goes back into the
sitting area to get the display with the pictures. She starts
screaming.  The little girl is there, eating the exec's stomach.

Later, I learn that it has killed her and entirely consumed her head,
but I didn't care, because I was being chased by the mother down a
long corridor, which I thought looked like it belonged in a mental
hospital.  The floor was linoleum, and I was wearing socks.  I
couldn't get any traction, so I kept slipping and falling down.  I had
to slide myself along the floor, pushing myself off stuff so that I
would rocket out for a few meters, then friction would slow me down,
and I would have to find something else to push off.  The mother kept
asking me, "What do you eat?  I eat you!"  I kept trying to say
weirder and weirder things to make her think I was too gross to eat.
"Bugs!"  "Rocks!"

Then I woke up.

Mar 4 2002

There is a big rectangular hole cut into the ground, as though a
swimming pool was started and left unfinished.  The dirt from this
hole has been piled back into it.  Sticking out of this dirt are human
skulls and a few long bones.  Dan and I see one particular skull with
a bag next to it.  We clamber up the pile and retrieve the bag and the
skull.  Dan thinks it belongs to Lee Sonas, but we have to go through
the bag to be sure.  There's tons of stuff in the bag, but nothing
with any identifying marks.  Finally, I turn on the palm pilot which
we found in the bag, and it reads, "This Palm Pilot belongs to Aaron
Weiss."  Since it's not Lee's stuff, we turn it into the police.

Mar 6 2002 

[This is a pretty fascinating dream, because it has all this weird
stuff from Philly.]

I was at college.  Instead of single or double rooms, we lived
communally 10 or so to a room, in rooms decorated more-or-less like
kindergartens.  I went downstairs to take a shower.  The showers were
organized in a square of 4.  In the shower next to me was Brian Howell
(RL: a friend of mine from 8th grade.  I had not seen him for years
until I randomly met him at the train station a few days before I
moved out of my apartment on 13th st.).  He was chatting with Frank 
(RL: an asshole I knew at around that time).  It was clear that once the
people left, they were going to have sex. (RL: AFAIK, both are
straight)

I got out of the shower, and Brian did too.  I had three huge duffel
bags of clothes with me, and I started getting dressed.  As I reached
for my T-shirt, I flashed back to where I had gotten it.  It was a big
marble hall, which looked something like the entry way to the Free
Library of Philadelphia.

As I dressed, I talked to a cute girl.  She talked about how hard it
was to adjust to an east-coast schedule, and I remembered that I had
seen her last at a party in Portland [In the dream -- no clue who she
was in RL].  I kept having to move my bags around to let her get to
the sink -- they were in everyone's way.

I looked around, and Brian Howell had disappeared -- so, when Frank
opened the door between their showers, there was only some middle-aged
guy there (who looked a lot like Frank, actuallly).  Frank looked
disappointed, but it seemed that he was going to go ahead and have sex
with the guy anyway.

I had to go upstairs (to my room) quickly, but carrying the three bags
was hard.  A friend helped me load up my arms.

At the room, 10 of us were going to play M:TG against a Japanese dude.
His cards were not actual M:TG cards -- they were smaller, maybe 2x5
cm.  Their pictures were in black and white, cartoon style.  There was
a sheet of rules he showed us, but nobody else wanted to read them --
they just wanted to play.  Evreryone else started throwing cards down
randomly, without even taking turns as the Japanese dude explained the
effects of his cards.  They seemed to be insanely powerful, but I
couldn't pay attention because my cards had gotten separated into two
piles, and I had to shuffle them together.  From the back, my cards
were Once Upon A Time cards.  

Then I woke up.

March 11

I was at my mom's house, running late for work (it was like 1 or 2
pm).  I had to get there soon so I could approve proofs of an article
I had written, which was going to run in a major paper.  I started
walking to the train.  I arrived at Matthew Gabriel's (in RL, he's a
friend of my brother) house (not his real house).  There was a rocky
slope leading up to a big stone wall with a gate set into it.  On the
top of the wall was a stick, which I pulled down to announce my
arrival.  A crow flew down from the wall and picked up the stick and
took it back to the top of the wall.  Eventually, someone let me in.
Matt was there, but he was leaving in a few minutes.  This was a
shame, because for some incomprehensible reason, I had brought four
pairs of my jeans that I needed him to do something with.  My plan was
to approve the article proofs while he was doing whatever he was
supposed to do.  But since he had to leave, I had to leave too.  It
had started pouring, so Matt's dad (who in RL I think I have never
met) gave me a giant plastic bag to put my jeans into.  Then I started
walking back to the train station to go home.

The next morning, someone showed me an advertisement from the Wall
Street Journal for two extremely bizarre flavors of cereal (I don't
remember what) in orange boxes which looked suspiciously like dish
detergent (or maybe laundry detergent) boxes.  The ad was from the WSJ
building maintenance dept.  Then I was in the WSJ employee cafeteria.
They were advertising the weird cereal too, so I ordered a bowl of
each flavor.  They didn't ask if I wanted coffee -- they asked, "What
size decaf would you like?"  I ordered a small.

While I was ordering, Angela (one of the librarians when I worked at
Ludington Library) came up behind me.  She asked me what I took in my
coffee.

I was confused for a second (I don't know why), but eventually, I
said, "cream and sugar."

"Oh, like hot chocolate!" said Angela.

I went back to my table (the cafeteria was mostly empty).  I was
sitting next to a beautiful girl with dark hair who I had a major
crush on (not a real person -- just a generic beautiful girl).  I ate
my cereal and slowly started moving towards the girl.  Angela came up
to the table then, and said, "Maybe I better sit between you two
before Dave gets any closer."

"He would never touch me," said the girl

"Who, me?"  I asked mock-innocently.

"Oh, sorry," she replied.

With Angela sitting between us, we listened to Randy, Matthew, and my
mother talking about a possible trip to Ireland.  Randy insisted that
it was too dangerous for Matt to go alone, because of the protests.
She suggested that Dan and I could go with Matt.  I thought this was a
great idea, because I wanted to be involved in the protests there.

Then I woke up.

Mar 12 2002
To understand this dream, you will need to know about this:
http://www.fandw.org/Camps/Flyingcloud/flyingcloud.html

I'm in some woods, looking for something.  I realize that I'm running
late to get to Flying Cloud.  I come to a house in the forest.
Evening Ferret Smiles is there.  We decide to fly the house to FC.
So, I sit down and start thinking about flying.  A few hours later, we
land in the woods not too far from the central clearing (ack, I know
this has a name) at Flying Cloud.  I walk over to the computer to try
to check something on the 'net, and I realize that none of the
electricity is on (of course! There's no electicity at FC).

So, I leave the house and walk to the flat central clearing.  Arctic
Arrow (the director while I was there) is twenty or so meters away,
holding a clipboard.  I know I have to get to him to sign in, but
walking is really hard, as though it is a long distance uphill.  He
asks how my journey was, and I blush, embarrased.  He asks, "How did
you get here?"
	"I, um, flew.  In a, um, house."
	"We will have to give you flying lessons -- that's really
dangerous."

Then I wake up.

Mar 15 2002

I was hanging out with some (generic) friends, and someone mentions a
movie.  I ask what it's about, and someone says that it's about this
girl who thinks that her college must be the craziest college
anyhwere.  She tests it out by visiting other colleges, and learning
about all the crazy stuff they do there.  Then the person who told me
these things is that girl.  We decide to do something crazy.  We shop
for junk food, then take it home, and put it away in all the cabinets
of an otherwise empty kitchen.  


The next morning, I go back to the house where the kitchen
is with some other friends.  We don't own it, but the door
is unlocked, so we go in.  The kitchen is a space at the end
of a long stone hall (see ascii art -- but the hall should
actually be about twice that long)

-------------------------------------.
                                  kkk|  ('k's are counters and
             TOP VIEW               k|   cabinets and sink,
     sssssssssssssssssssssss      kkk|   's's are snow, 'w' 
-door------------------------www-----'   is window.)

The right wall of the hall is packed with snow, and there
are many yellow stains in it, as though people had urinated
in it.  I realized that one day, this frozen urine would be
the source of all lemon flavoring in the world.  My friends
and I start picking through the food in the cabinets (all of
which I had bought with the other friends last night).  We
take handfuls of stuff down to our white Ford Bronco, which
is parked outside.  Eventually, we notice out the window
that there are some road construction crews who are
associated somehow with police.  We are afraid that they
will realize that we are stealing this food.


Jackie Mendel-Reyes is standing at the Bronco, reading a
newspaper.  I start walking back to the house to get
everyone else, and I see my aunt Ann, and my cousin Lisa
(they are from opposite sides of the family).  I know that
I'm in trouble.  Ann asks, "Are you returning the dog?"  I
say, "yeah, something like that."  I know that I can fool
Ann, but that I can't fool Lisa.  Lisa asks, casually, "So,
who's Lisa?" I know she is talking about the girl we
abducted.  I say, "Lisa who?  Oh, you mean Lizzie, like in
the newspaper.  I point at an article in the paper that
Jackie is reading.  Lisa says, "Come with me," and goes
inside the house.  I know that she has caught onto the plot,
and that she will force us to confess.

Then I wake up.

Mar 16 2002

I mostly forgot the beginning part of this dream, which was
about Magic: The Gathering.  It was my Angel deck against
two other people who were not supposed to be colluding, but
were.  One was also playing an Angel deck, and one was
playing black.

Here's the part I do remember:

I'm in a classroom with my 6th grade class.  We've been
divided into three teams: Red, Green, and White.  Everyone
is wearing clothing entirely in the color of their team.  We
get into a fight, and there is a big pile-up.  Someone on
the red team is on the bottom.  Brandon Gay, on the green
team (like me) realizes that the pile-up must be broken up,
so he takes out a knife and starts attacking someone on the
top of the pile.  Pretty soon, the balance of power is
shifted because of the incapacitated guy, and the person on
the bottom escapes.  After a while, another pile-up forms,
and I jump in with my knife and start slicing up Andy
Greenblatt.  When Andy goes down, Brandon drags me off of
him and suggests that we go to the infirmary.

At the infirmary, a nurse look sat the bruise from where
Andy hit me.  She rubs some cream on it.  I go over to some
chairs where some teachers are sitting with Brandon and
Alaina Borden (Who was *not* in my 6th grade class).
Someone asks if I've ever used some program, and I say that
I don't use proprietary software.  Someone else says, "good
for you!", seriously.

 Someone says that they wouldn't want children using
 anything but Windows, and I ask, "haven't you ever used a
 Mac?"

She says, "Too much clicking and dragging", and I see an
image of her clicking and dragging stuff on an old
black-and-white Mac.

Alaina Borden says, "No way!  I used my Mac to organize my
ten cds of Anime." I see an image of Alaina using System 8
or 9 to move files around.  "It's all organized by the
number of letters in the name.  I keep meaning to switch to
some more normal system, like genre.  You know, Battle Mecha
here, giant Space Monsters there, etc."

Then I wake up.

Mar 18 2002

Note: This isn't the first elevator dream I've had --
remembering this one made me remember snippets of another
few.  I seem to recall that one may have been the beginning
of Dec 12's dream.  I also recall one at Friends Select
School involving a long tower, stairs, elevators, and the
theater.  Anyway, here's Mar 18's dream:

I was in an elevator with a woman about my age.  The
elevator stoped at the third floor (it doesn't go any
higher), and we got out.  We were trying to reach a higher
floor, so we had to find a different set of elevators that
went up.  To the left was a door marked something like
"Maintainence Officials only", except that it seemed to
imply that it was a place where janitors went to be
maintained.  The woman was initially concerned about going
through the door, but I decided to try it.  There were two
elevators there.  One was perfectly ordinary, and the other
was of the old-school type with a manually operated iron
grate instead of doors.  It was filled with janitorial
supplies -- buckets, mops, etc.

We got into the ordinary elevator, and it took us down, into
a huge marble room.  When we came through the ceiling, our
elevator was revealed as merely a platform enclosed by
waist-high black iron fencing.  It was attached somehow to
an ordinary string about a millimeter in diameter, which was
all that was holding it up.  This string took a circuitous
path around and over the scaffolding which filled up one
entire side of this huge room.  The elevator reached to the
floor, and I got off.  I had to reposition the elevator
somehow to get it back the way we found it.  For some
reason, the woman I was with had to be on the elevator for
this operation.  There were manual controls for the elevator
by the ground in the midst of the scaffolding.  I pressed
the control to start the elevator along the path.  While it
was going, I pressed another button, which screwed up the
whole process. I started the elevator up again, but it had
to complete the circuit before it could be reset.  I did
this a few times (I don't remember each time individually, I
just remember that I did it).  Each time I screwed up, I got
more and more frustrated.

Then I noticed that the string along which the elevator ran
was looped twice around the protruding edge of a step.  I
unlooped it, causing the elevator to jump.  One time, when
the elevator stopped at the bottom, another young woman
joined the first on the elevator.

The elevator was about half way across the room, swinging
over a wide open space, when it fell to the floor.  The two
women were clearly hurt very badly.  A little girl with
brightly colored plastic toy gun ran towards me.  The
elevator string was attached to the end of the gun.  I
yelled at her for bringing down the elevator, took her gun,
and broke it.  Then I sat there, looking at the broken
pieces of plastic on the floor.  I was trying to figure out
where there was a hospital I could take the women to, but
the hospital had to be able to do injection molding to fix
the plastic -- somehow in my mind, the broken pieces of the
gun had become the womens' bodies.

Then I woke up.

Mar 19 2002

Note: I don't know if I ever read _The Swiss Family
Robinson_.  I have no idea if my dream commentary on it
bears any relation to reality.  I kinda doubt it, tho.

I was in my bedroom at my mother's house with Dan and Laura
Simpson, disassembling one of Len Wexelblatt's machine guns
(Len is one of my mom's ex-boyfriends.  In RL, he does not,
AFAIK, own any guns, machine or otherwise).  I longed to
test it out, to shoot something, but I didn't have anywhere
I could safely do that.

Then, I was in a locker room with Laura and some other people.  I was
packing a small gym bag for a trip to a desert island.  I think I was
going there for something like _Survivor_.  Laura and I discussed _The
Swiss Family Robinson_.  I suggested that the Robinsons were stupid,
because they could see the lights of St. Croix from their island, but
they never thought to build a raft to get there until the end of the
book.  Laura pointed out that some of them died when they finally did
pilot their raft there.  While we were discussing this, I had visions
of their trip -- they were on a tiny island with black sand, and
St. Croix was a similar island, but with a city of black stone on it.
The ocean currents between the Robinsons' island and St. Croix were
treacherous -- the water looked more like a river than an ocean.
Their raft trip to St. Croix took place at night.  I told Laura that I
had not read the book in ten years.  She said she hadn't read it in
fifteen, which struck me as somewhat unrealistic -- she is around my
ag, so she would have been five or six when she read it.

I packed lots of foam rubber balls.  They were ammo for my nerf gun,
but I had to make up an excuse to bring them, so I said that they were
for cultural preservation -- I explained that I planned to use them to
make atoms on the beach, drawing atomic bonds on the sand.  I
remembered a past time when I ran out of ammunition (the image that
came with this was from a past dream which I have mostly forgotten: I
was hiking with two other people through a stream a few centimeters
deep and around 30 meters wide. Red rock canyon walls rose tens of
meters above us on either side of the stream.  The stream bed was
mostly small rocks).  After filling the bag with these balls, I got
hot and took off my jacket and sweater.  I went to put them in my bag,
and found that there was no space for them, so I had to take out some
of the nerf balls.

I considered taking one of Len's machine guns with me, but I really
only wanted it for the extra ammo capacity.  I decided instead to take
my normal gun, which was a heavy grey metal handgun which fired large
bullets -- maybe .44 or .50.  I wondered if the people in charge of
this trip would allow me to take extra clips.

Mar 22 2002

Three dreams:

1. My mom insisted that I replace the carpet in my apartment
(the apartment at 13th st.).  I called up some carpet people
to consult with them about it, but they weren't there, so I
left a message.  When I got home from work the next day,
they had torn up my old carpet and some of my walls, turning
my apartment into a construction site.

2. I was in a small room with my mom.  It was painted blue.
We had some device to let us control the water level in the
room.  After bringing it up and down a few times, my mom
decided she is too hot, so I opened the door and went out
into the hall to adjust the thermostat.  When I returned,
she was gone, so I looked through the second doorway into
Dan's room (at my dad's house).  There was a bookcase
blocking the doorway, but only up to about 1.5 meters.  I
wondered how we were able to flood the room with water with
the open doorway to Dan's room.

3. Long and confusing.  On the way when I get time... notes:
clothing contest/cat food/dock/marissa miller/5 yrs old at dock/eating/gpl/rocks and paper stacked /miller playing violin/cats (eyes) and october and past sins/ 

I really will do this one of these days.

April 4, 2002

X-Inspired-by: http://stalkedbyseth.com
vs.
http://www.sethf.com/freespeech/censorware/essays/censorwareorg.php

I was in an electronics store with my mom.  I had picked out a bunch
of stuff, and stacked the boxes on a table.  I decided that I needed
to do more research before buying stereo components.  I was looking at
a shelf of stereo components, from A-M, and I needed to find N-Z.
Eventually, I discovered that it was around the back of the shelves I
was looking at.

But when I got there, it was a library.  I was in the
children's room, looking at books.  I walked to the door and
saw Michael Klein (RL: a dude about Dan's age, an old family
friend.  Never actually hit by a car AFAIK) on crutches.  We
started talking, and I learned that he had been hit by a car
and actually run over.  He told me that fewer than twenty
people a year were actually run over by cars.

It was time for me to go, because I had to give a speech.  I walked
into a room with some long benches around a central clear area.  I sat
down next to my dad.  We were each going to give a talk about a part
of our organization, which was some FSF-ish group.  My dad somehow
leaned the bench way back, and whispered to me, "Do you want to talk
about my part, and I'll talk about yours?"

"No, I don't even know what you do."

"I work on cou le fou", he replied. (I think that's what it
was -- some french-sounding gibberish, anyway).

"I don't know anything about that," I said.  He let the bench back
upright.  The lights dimmed, and came back up on a play by one of the
other organizations.  Two people (Brad and Lisa, in RL of the FSF, but
in the dream of some EFF-ish organization) were sleep in a house.
They woke up and realized that they were hungry, so they went out
looking for food.  They came upon an unusual tree.  It had yellow,
grapefruit-like fruits on the lower limbs, similar orange fruits on
the higher limbs, similar red fruits still higher, and at the top,
cherry-like purple fruits.  I knew that they were forbidden to eat of
it, because it had mixed fruits on one tree.

Lisa ate a yellow fruit, and offered it to Brad.  He ate some too.
They started talking about how maybe "filtering software" (NB:
censorware) maybe wasn't such a bad idea after all.  It was clear that
this was a slippery slope -- as they ate fruits from higher on the
tree, their disapproval of various forms of censorship would drop.
Suddenly, a largish man charged in and decked Brad (this was clearly
in the context of the play).

Then there was an intermission.  A friend introduced me to the largish
man -- evidently, he was quite famous, and it was good that he was
working with Brad and Lisa's organization.

Then I woke up.

April 17 2002

I dreamed that I was at somebody's beach house with a girl I
really liked.  I woke up, in a sleeping bag on the beige
carpet, and remembered my dream.  I started to tell it to
the girl, but she kept getting distracted by other things.
This was extremely frustrating -- I kept asking "Do you want
to hear this?"  I didn't want to force it on her, but I
wanted her to care about my dreams.  I was also somewhat
distracted, because I was trying to find the fourth CD that
I had burned of the XXXX (I forget what) of Catan, where
XXXX was *not* any of the expected Settlers, Cities &
Knights, etc.  [Pop back out to RL for a minute -- these CDs
were clearly the Hellsing CDs I burned for Tony.  And I
first played Settlers of Catan a few nights ago].

The dream within a dream was about the Last [American]
Indian.  Stylistically it was a lot like a movie, maybe a
documentary with lots of re-enactments and no intervews. He
had built a theme park, and it had been very popular, but
now the Last Indian was tired of it, and it was being
flooded.  Somewhat like _The Sparrow_, my metadream skipped back
to the beginning of the story -- the Last Indian was at his
house in the middle of a like [think _Waterworld_].  Some
rather unsavory relatives (I think an uncle and two cousins)
showed up in a canoe, the Last Indian got on, and they paddled 
away.  They picked up some tourists -- I think they were going 
to cheat them somehow, but at this point in explaining the
metadream to the girl, I woke up from the real dream.

Commentary:

Did that make any sense?  If not, please tell me and I'll
fix it.  I think it's my first dream within a dream since I
was five, and the Scary Green Caterpillar dream, from which
I woke up only to find the SGC RIGHT THERE!  Then I woke up
again.  Wow, that was some creepy shit.  Oh, and the
caterpillar wasn't actually green, so I have no clue why it
was called the Scary Green Caterpillar.  It was actually
based on a blanket I had, which was purple and red squares.

April 27 2002

I was riding around with someone in a car.  We were trying
to find a place to park for this recreational center.
Eventually, I got inside.  There was an announcement over
the intercom, looking for Clue players.  I saw a room with
rows of tables.  There were people sitting behind the
tables, with papers.  I went in, and discovered that they
were Scientologists.  There were other people there talking
to the Scientologists too.  I started out playing it
straight, but after a while, the dude next to me asked, "So,
what about Xenu?", and I stared a chant, "Xenu!  Xenu!
Xenu!".  Everyone but the Scientologists joined in.  After
the chanting died down, I asked the Scientologist I was
talking to about Xenu, but he played dumb.  Then I woke up.

April 30 2002

Rebecca Neville and I were standing across the Ben Franklin Parkway
from Friends Select School.  There was a statue, which was similar to
the statue of a man with an umbrella which in real life is at 17th &
Locust, but the dream statue didn't have an umbrella.  For some
reason, Rebecca and I wanted to buy it.  We didn't know who owned it,
so we asked in the restaurant which it was in front of, and in the
office building across the street.  Nobody knew who owned it, but the
secretary at the office suggested that if they owned it, they would be
willing to sell it for a song.  She recommended that we ask at the Art
Museum or the Free Library to see who owned it, but she thought they
would be closed.  We walked outside, and I pointed out both to Rebecca
(who, in RL, knows exactly where they are).  For some reason I pointed
to the Franklin Institute as the library.

We decided that the art museum was more likely to know who
owns the statue.  We walked there, through the blazing heat.
The lobby wasn't the real lobby of the art museum, but a
large marble room (similar to May 18's dream), with four
escalators filled with people running up and down.  In the
lobby, there was a stand selling "New York Style Ice Cream",
which was basically frozen lemonade.  I bought one, and it
cost ten bucks (it had only cost the person before me $9).
I looked at the clock as we walked towards the escalators
and it was 4:30.

Suddenly, two guards ran past us and used some kind of floating blue
glowing ribbons to levitate the ice cream stand.  The guards were
kicking them out because they were too expensive.  Rebecca and I were
pretty pissed about the cost too, so we went along with the guards.
There were a bunch of other angry people too, some of whom were caught
up with the table by the blue ribbons.  We dragged the table to the
elevator.  I was inside with one guard, trying to hold the door open,
but we couldn't hold it, and it closes.  We pushed the button for the
next floor down, so we could turn the elevator around.  When the door
opened, the table and people were already there.  Somehow, Rebecca had
drilled through the floor with her magic powers, and brought the table
with her.

When we got done with the ice cream stand, we went back up
to the lobby, but it was 5:00 (closing time), and everyone
was leaving; the museum was closed.  But we asked a departing
curator, who stayed and looked up the statue -- it turned
out to be owned by the German government.  So, we gave up
trying to buy it, because we knew it would be too expensive.
Then I woke up.


May 4, 2002
Two dreams:

1.  I was in a building around where Borders is in Philadelphia (17th
and Walnut).  There was an escalator going up, but it wasn't an
ordinary escalator.  The steps were three times as high as an ordinary
step, and somehow, they became benches sitting at tables as the
escalator rose.  I could never figure out the trick of how to be
sitting on those benches, so I always had to hang from them, dropping
off at the top as the benches went around a curve (like a ski lift).

There was a woman with me at the top (she looked and seemed a bit like
Marna Elliott, but was nobody specific).  She wanted me to buy her a
coffee at the cafe which was there.  Specifically, she wanted "an
espresso, black and strong and slimy".  There were huge lines for the
cafe, but eventually, I got to the front, and ordered the espresso.
When it arrived, I realized I had lost my headphones, so I looked
around for them.  Under the counter was a backpack with some
headphones sticking out.  Since I figured mine must be close by, I
took the headphones from the bag.  I gave the woman her coffee, left
the cafe, and walked downstairs (normal stairs, this time).

2.
Inspired by: Hellsing, a bit of Anita Blake
The characters in this were only related to me in the dream -- I don't
have a nephew, and the brother in this story was not Dan.  My mom in
the dream was close to (and maybe the same as) the woman from the
dream 1.  Anyway, here it is:

I was a child, locked in a wooden box underground, in stocks.  My mom
lifted up the top of the box, and started pouring in salad, shoveling
it into my mouth.  I didn't like it, but I had to eat or be drowned.
She closed the box back up and went away.  

My point of view shifted.  I was a tall, strong man with dark hair.
There was a tall metal tower, like the kind used to hold electrical
lines.  It was sunset.  I was swinging through the tower, when I
noticed the top of the box under it.  I went down and investigated,
and found the child.  It was my nephew.  I realized that I had to get
away from the boy before my brother (the boy's father) returned, so
that he wouldn't know that I had learned of his secret.  So, I started
walking towards my brother's house, where I was staying.  

It was night time now, so his guard zombies were out.  Fortunately,
they were programmed stupidly, so they only moved towards me when they
could see me; once I hid behind something, they stopped.  I did shoot
a few, but then I reallized that I didn't want to be noticed.  When I
shot them, they exploded like in Hellsing. I got to the house, and my
nephew was there.  There was also a zombie, but shooting it didn't
kill it.  I put five holes in its chest, in a pentagon, but it still
came towards me.  I tried to shoot it in the head, but my gun wouldn't
fire.  It reached me, and I somehow wrestled it down.  I held it on
the ground, cradled its head, and it relaxed.  

I brought my gun around and tried to shoot it again, but it was still
jammed.  I opened up the gun (it was pretty much Alucard's 'Jackal
13mm' from Hellsing, but I didn't notice "Jesus Christ Is In Heaven"
written on the side).  There were two or three bullets lined up
tip-to-end (I think this would make no sense in a real gun).  I took
them out and put them back in.  After a few tries, I managed to get it
to work, and the zombie's head exploded.  Yuck.

May 10, 2002

I was in a Red Line train.  I knew I was late for work, but not how
late.  I had my big green duffle bag with me.  There was a little boy
(who looked something like Jake Lloyd in SW Ep1) sitting across from
me.  There were only a few other seats filled on the train.  He was
practicing his French with me, but I don't speak any French, so I
could only listen.  I figured that I might as well practice my
Spanish, so I looked pointedly at my wrist and asked, "Que hora es?"
("What time is it?", I think).  The boy answered, "Two twenty".  I
suddenly realized how late I was, and said, "Oh shit!"  Then I
realized I was supposed to be practicing my Spanish, so I said,
"Merde! Er, no, mierda!  Ay Caramba!"  Then I woke up and was only
about 1/2 hour late for work.

May 29. 2002

I walked down a long meeting hall, following Elliott.  At
the end of the hall was a fireplace, and I followed Elliott
through a secret passage in the fireplace to a secret
meeting of the Free Software Foundation.  Everyone was
dressed in black and Goth stuff.  After the meeting, I
walked out onto the Ben Franklin Parkway, and talked to a
street vendor (of the sort which is only there on the 4th of
July) near the Free Library.  He told me that the FSF had
been betrayed, and that I had to flee.  So, I ran down the
Parkway, with my father beside me, in the direction of the
Art Museum.  Someone saw us and shouted, so we turned onto a
cross-street (on the other side of the street from the Free
Library and the vendor), around 22nd.  

Then, I was still fleeing, but I was in a garden at Harvard
(but not some real place, I just knew that I was at
Harvard).  Jono (anti-DMCA activist for the FSF) was beside
me, and we were still fleeing.  We made it through the hedge
maze to a brick building.  I wondered how we were going to
get in without a keycard, but we just ran up the steps that
ran up the side of the building, and the door opened wihtout
a card.  We took a glass elevator up to Tony's room, but
somehow, we got separated in the elevator, and Jono left
behind a bunch of candy wrappers.  I got to Tony's room
(which, in the dream, he shared with 6 HRSFAn), and waited
for him to return.

June 2, 2002

This whole dream took place at night.

I was with some of my friends from Reed.  Across the street,
a man carrying an umbrella and a rifle stepped into a puddle
of ink.  I decided to go visit Tony.  I walked for a
while,but then I realized I was going the wrong way.  The
places in the dream were, as far as I know, not real places.
I went to turn around (actually, to make a ~160 degree turn
onto a side-street), and I saw Neil (a HRSFAn now living in
Texas) in a car in the parking lot I was passing.  There
were a few other people in the car with him.  I said hi to
him and continued walking to Tony's.

I reached the gun store on Mass. Ave (which doesn't exist in
RL).  The store was about ten meters high with big glass
windows.  There was a man dressed as Alucard from Hellsing.
He was clearly an actor -- this was some sort of promotion
for the gun store.  He let me hold his guns.  They were
very, very heavy, so I fell backwards.  Everyone in the
crowd laughed at me.  I got up and gave the guns back to
Alucard.  He asked me if I wanted to fire them, and I said,
"no".  Some other person from the crowd took them.  He aimed
them at the gun store, and asked the owner, "OK?".  The
owner nodded, so the guy fired them through the window of
the gun store.  

This looked like fun to me, so I asked to have the gun back
to fire it.  I tried to cock it, but this was a very complex
process, and required lots of strength (unlike in Hellsing).
I finally got it cocked and aimed it at random into the
store window, but it didn't fire.  I checked, and the safety
was still on.  I took the safety off, and then saw a cop in
the gun store window, aiming at me.  Then I realized that it
was just a larger-than-life poster of a cop, so I shot it.
It fell.  I returned the gun to the Alucard actor, and told
him about my dream that the gun was in (see May 4, 2002).
The gun store owner opened the store, then, and people
started walking in.  There were some golden retrievers in
the store, nosing around a model of a keyboard with big
foam-rubber keys.  I asked the gun store owner if I could
borrow a rifle, so I could stage a photo of the first scene
in this dream.

June 8, 2002

There was no extraneous noise in this dream, and the noise there was
was not overly loud or shocking.

I was in a dimly-lit bar owned by Elvis.  He was arguing with a Mafia
Don.  It was something like http://www.demian5.com/036.html.  Soon,
someone started shooting, and all of a sudden, there was a major fight
between Elvis supporters and Mafia types.  Elvis won the fight, but
was injured.  

A few days later, Elvis was practicing his target shooting.  He held a
rifle of old-fashioned design, with a long wooden stock and a total
length of about a meter and a half.  He was pointing it at a screen
about the size of a big-screen TV, which he was sitting very close to.
The screen was embedded in the wall and was framed by black curtains.
It showed various targets, which Elvis shot at.  Of course, even
though his rifle appeared to be a real rifle, it only had an effect on
the world inside the screen.  He was not a very good shot.  I was
lounging in a bathtub next to him, and I got out to give it a try.  I
picked up a pistol.

The screen was showing a fighter plane, rolling down a short runway
and leaping into the air with a shudder of tensed wings.  Elvis was
shooting at it, and put some holes into it, but it didn't crash.  It
approached the roof of an apartment building that was still under
construction, and fired what looked like Photon Torpedoes.  One went
into the side of the building, and a piece of the wall fell.  The
camera followed it down.  "That's not fair," I thought, "I didn't fall
off the roof then."  But the camera returned to the roof, and the
fighter fired some more Photon Torpedoes.  Elvis and I stood on the
roof firing at it (somewhere in the sequence, we were no longer bound
by the screen, and were there).  The sequence seemed to repeat a few
times, and each time the camera followed the piece of the wall down, I
was surprised anew at the unfairness of it all.

Then I was on the roof of the building with Dan and his ex-girlfriend
Lauren.  I knew that my dad owned the building.  I warned Dan and
Lauren about the fighter plane.  We argued for a while about the
danger (Dan argued that the building had insurance, so we were safe; I
argued that an unfinished building wouldn't have insurance), but
eventually, I convinced them to come downstairs.  We didn't know where
the stairs down were, so we started walking along the perimeter of the
building.

We got to a giant machine used for chopping huge logs into smaller
pieces.  Logs two meters in diameter and seven or eight meters long
were on a conveyor belt, entering the machine.  At the other end,
sections one or two meters long came out.  Daniel and Lauren stopped
to put stuff on the conveyor belt (including my old keychain, with
freedom rings and my keycard).  I walked to the other end of the
machine, and searched through the logs and sawdust.  I found my keys,
unharmed.  We kept walking.  Lauren said, "Your Dad must have a lot of
money."  "Yeah," I replied.  We reached an elegant marble bar, shaped
like an eye.  I was very hungry, so I started rummaging through its
drawers for food.  I found some Twizzlers and other junk food, and
started munching on them.  An arc of tall cabinets formed an eyebrow
to the bar's eye.  One after another, two uniformed construction
workers opened the rightmost door in the cabinets, and stepped inside.
We realized that these were the stairs down.  After I finished my
Twizzlers, we started down.  We were on the 92nd floor, so we thought
it would be a long way down.

The staircase spiraled around a concrete column, ten meters in
diameter.  The floor numbering was very weird -- after one revolution
around the column, we were at floor 64, then 32, then 16.  I realized
that it was going down by powers of two.  When we got to floor 4, I
thought we needed to somehow skip it, because we didn't want to end up
in the basement (yes, I know the math makes no sense here).  So, I
walked through a doorway into a very pretty apartment.  It had the
same opulence as the bar, all marble, fine furniture, and a deck
looking out over some treetops.  Dan and Laura pulled me back from the
apartment, saying, "This isn't the first floor."  I pointed at the
tops of the tress, saying, "No, but we're close."  We continued down
the staircase, and reached the lobby.

The lobby was a huge marble room, with pools, fountains and plants
everywhere under a high ceiling.  A well-dressed man with the air of a
waiter in a fancy restaurant pointed to the first pool, which had
raised sides and appeared to be about a meter deep.  On the surface of
the pool floated a profusion of flowers, white and yellow and pink.  A
man lounged in the pool, his arms draped over the sides, his eyes
closed.  The "waiter" said, "This is a privacy pool.  Whatever you do
here will have no affect on the other people here. You could even pee
in here."  I nodded. "Although I don't know why you would want to," he
added with a little sniff.

Dan ran off to the next pool, jumped in, and said, "I win!"  Lauren
asked me why he had said that, and I replied, "Everything is a
competition with him."  I walked over to the pool he was in, and dived
in.  I did the breast-stroke across, and woke up when I reached the
other side.

June 19, 2002

I was at YAPC, listening to the keynote.  While I was
listening, I got all sorts of ideas for new talks to give (I
don't remember what they were).  When the talk was over, I
realized I had only a half hour before I was to present on
TRIZ, but my slides weren't done.  I walked out into the
lobby to use the computer there to finish them.  It had a
giant (5 m) screen, which was showing a screensaver in the
style of an old-school demo.  The words in the screensaver
were lyrics to some poetic and melancholy song (I don't know
if it's real or imagined, but I know I liked it).  The
computer was very hard to use, but I managed to do some work
on the slides.

I realized that I was late for my talk, so I ran to the
room.  There were four people there, looking around
nervously.  I introduced myself, and asked, "So, do you want
to hear about TRIZ?"  They did.  So, I went to begin my
talk, but there was no projection monitor.  I told the
people to wait while I went to get one.  I searched through
the halls of the university where YAPC was being held (In
RL, I have never been to WUSTL, so this was all imagined).
I went into classroom after classroom, and no one had one.
Finally, someone came to get me, and said that they had
found one.  I started walking back to the room where I was
to speak, but the room numbering wsa very confusing, so I
got a little lost.

Finally, I made it back to room 670 (which was right next to
room 220).  It wasn't the room I had left -- it was large
and well-lit, and perhaps twenty people were waiting for me
to talk.  A woman told me that I was ten minutes and
twenty-six seconds late.  My laptop (the IBM which the FSF
has lent me) sat on a podium, with the projection screen
behind me.  I couldn't use my laptop's screen and the
projection screen at the same time, and to see the
projection screen, I had to crane my head at an
uncomfortable angle.  Also, my slides were formatted all
funny, and I couldn't seem to get to slide 0.

Then I woke up.

June 25, 2002, on a plane to YAPC

I dreamed that I was on the plane, listening to music on my laptop, but
for some reason plugging the headphones in didn't kill the
speakers.  So everyone was just looking at me funny, while I
was grooving to A3 and hacking.

July 17, 2002

I was in health class at my old high school (but it didn't
look like my high school actually looked.  It was much
bigger and fancier.  It looked something like various MIT
buildings.  The class was boring.  The next day, we were
going to have a party in health class, so I brought in a
bunch of food (plastic shopping bags containing bags of
chips, bottles of soda, etc.  I was walking with a few of my
friends from high school, including Jackie Mendel-Reyes.  We
walked in, and I realized that I didn't know where the
classroom for health class was.  I knew the number, but not
the location.  

Someone walked up to me and grabbed my bags and put them in
the trash.  So I punched him in the nose.  I realized that
this was a bad idea, as my high school was a Quaker school,
and did not tolerate violence.  A teacher asked what had
happened.

"He hit me."

"No I didn't.  Wait, yes I did.  He put my food in the
trash, so I hit him."

"OK, you can go about your business"

So, I got my packages out of the trash.  My friends thought
this was a bad idea, but I pointed out that (a) they were in
plastic bags and (b) even inside the bags, the food was in
sealed containers.  We went to the third floor, looking for
the room (which had some number like MIT: 33-134 or
something (I'm going to be spending basically all my time at
MIT for the next few days, so that's probably where it came
from)).  We got split up, and I realized that the room was
on the fourth floor.  So, I went up the steps, and suddenly
remembered exactly where the room was.  But in the way was a
bizarre carnival-ish ride.  Apparently, it was the spring
fair.  

The ride had two teachers (I think one was Deb Kost),
hanging in harnesses, balancing some sort of bar which
stretched between them.  This had something to do with a
swing, which arced out over the fourth floor balcony, to
about where the teachers were hanging.  I asked Deb Kost why
a longer swing was not used, since it would give a better
freefall.  She claimed that it would have larger "static
tension" (or some such physics-sounding garbage), and
wouldn't give a better freefall.  I told her that, based on
my experience, she was wrong (I have been on a giant swing.
It rocked).  Then I woke up.

July 24, 2002

I was at the top of a ski slope.  I had been here in
previous dreams.  I started down one of the trails (a green
circle), but realized that I had forgotten my skis and was
just walking on my ski boots.  I think my dad was there too.

Later, I was in a Japanese restaurant with my dad.  We were
kneeling on opposite sides of a marble table.  The
restaurant was in a plane, flying above Boston.  One of the
waiters (a young asian man) really liked my LinuxWorld shirt
(in RL, I don't own a LinuxWorld shirt).  He wanted me to
give it to him.  My dad told him to bug off and go get his
own, so he did.  The plane was flying over Cambridge,
nearing the Charles, and I thought for some reason that
Logan was on the banks of the Charles, so we had to turn
here.  Somehow, I was flying the plane, and turning us,
trying to avoid the random wires which stuck up from the
skyscrapers (yes, I know Cambridge doesn't have an
skyscrapers).  Below us was an Internet Plane.  I wondered
if it was wired or wireless.  My dad thought it was probably
wired.  I finally landed.

On the banks of the Charles, near Laura's flat, was a
flatbed truck with twenty or so grey rugs laying in it.  The
truck was next to a set of narrow concrete canals that
flowed into the Charles.  The rugs were waving a bit in the
breeze.  Wait, no, they were alive.  I picked one up, and
wore it around.  I also gave one to my dad.  Eventually, the
ones we had picked up floated into the canal and became
ducklings.  More were lifting anxiously from the truckbed,
wanting to be free as ducklings too.  I put some in, but
they kept wandering away.  I didn't want to have more
ducklings than I could control, so I left about ten in the
truckbed.  Two of the ducks started towards the Charles.  I
walked (the canals were shallow enough that the water only
came up to my chest) after them.  Just as they were about to
be swept away by the river, I brought them back.  As we
walked and floated back towards safety, I realized that they
had violated the GPL, section 2(e) (Of course, this section
doesn't exist).  I therefore had the right to scrape them
against the concrete wall.  But I didn't.

July 27, 2002

I was going on some sort of field trip from college to Boston.  About
five of my friends (I don't know who at this point --just generic
friends) and I didn't have a place to stay, until one of them offered
to let us use her uncle's house.  We got there, and stayed the night.
I think the uncle was kind of crazy (he looked a lot like an older
version of my Uncle Ed).

The next morning, we went to the Red Line station at Alewife (but it
looked like some of the NJT stations on the way from Trenton to New
York).  We tried to get on an outbound (in RL, Alewife is the last
outbound stop) train to get to the "hidden" station, which was called
something like FreeLand.  It was packed, so we had to take the next
one.

When we got there, we split up. UncleFluffy, Alriddoch (both of
Worldforge -- I haven't met either in person) and I went to the
savannah area to hunt.  It was a bright, sunny day.  We all had
weapons (not firearms -- mine was a spear).  Alriddoch split away from
UF and I.  UF told me about how the National Park Service hunts
poachers.  Apparently, they're expert assassins, and can even kill CIA
people when they try to hunt in national parks.  He suggested that we
hunt Alriddoch.  I agreed, and we split off, ducking through the high
yellow grasses.

After a while of stalking, Alriddoch came out of a cluster of grass in
front of me.  I stabbed him in the stomach.  On the edge of the
savannah (which was, apparently a room or courtyard, rather than being
truly outdoors) was a tall set of shelves, empty.  I stuffed
Alriddoch's body under the lowest shelf.  

I retrieved UF, and we decided to leave before the cops came.  So, we
went through the doorway next to the shelves.  There was a wide
staircase descending into a huge room.  There were doors on the
opposite and left sides of the room (also at the tops of staircases).
I told UF that I knew the area outside fairly well, so either door
should be fine.  We crossed the room, and went up the stairs.  The
door opened into a stone room about ten meters wide by five meters
deep.  On the far side were columns.  It looked like they opened to
the outside, because we could see the countryside through them, but
the sky was dark blue, as it is in the early evening, so we realized
that it was just a painting.  The room had no doors other than the one
by which we entered, so we had to turn around and go out the left door. 

Then I woke up.


(I bear no malice at all towards Alriddoch.  He's a wonderful guy, and
the Free Software community needs more people like him.  So, I have no
idea what's up with this dream)

<-- I haven't submitted any dreams below here to Slow Wave yet -->

August 2, 2002

I came home one day to find two women in my bedroom.  They
were packing all of my belongings into boxes.  I asked them
why, and they said that I was being kicked out.  They told
me two major things I had done wrong, and a bunch of minor
ones.  My dad was there, in his fedora and leather jacket,
sitting on the stairs to the third floor.

I tried to talk to one of the deans, an older man (um, deans
of what?  I don't know), who I was friendly with, but he
brushed me off, and told me to write a letter to the two
main deans (two older women, who could have been teachers at
my high school, but were not).  So, I sat down in the tiny
cramped space outside my bedroom door and started writing.


August 9, 2002 
I had just gotten off of an airplane, and was waiting for my
dad to pick me up.  I reached for my book, which looked
something like a trade paperback version of
_Cryptonomicon_.  When I opened it, I discovered that
some words had been cut out, perhaps with a razor blade.  In
some sections, it was only a few words, but in others, there
were only a few words left.  My dad came up at this point,
but I ignored him, because I was furious about my book!  I
went up to the attendant (who was in a glass booth like at a
movie theater or T station), and started screaming at her.
I chased her around the airport, demanding to know why this
had happened.  She said that it was for security reasons,
and had been announced on the plane.  I said that I must
have been asleep, but it was still unacceptable.  While I
followed her around, yelling, she was hitting on this guy,
who totally didn't care about her (the characters looked
like Shiunji and Tomoe from the Sexy Losers comic).

The attendant said, "What if you had been a terrorist?  What then?"  

I shouted, "Then I would have blown up the fucking plane!
Why would fucking up my book stop me? " I opened it up to
show her.  "What did you do, cut out everything but the
fucking prepositions?!"

She said, "Prepositions and conjunctions."

The attendant was still following the guy around, and we
went into a closed restaurant.  She was paying no attention
to me.  The guy was trying to get away.  I felt sorry for
him.  There were table all around us, with chairs stacked on
them.  In the corner, I saw a little girl laying on the
floor, with a man nibbling on her toes.  I pointed to them
(to distact the attendant from her pursuit of the man) and
said, "Look over there!"  I threw a chair across the room to
illustrate my point.


August 15, 2002

Warning, this dream may make no sense to people who don't know how the
FSF does license violations. I really do have a new Henkels chef's
knife.  It really is an awesome knife, but not as awesome as in the
dream.  A filk is a (usually humorous, usually SF-oriented) song
created by replacing the lyrics of a real song).  I know the automated
bus bit came from reading _The Free Lunch_ until the wee hours last
night).

I was staking out a modern office building, investigating a GPL
violation by Real Networks (in real life, as far as I know, Real
Networks is not and has never been in violation).  I think there was
some famous computer scientist involved.  But I couldn't gather enough
evidence (after days of waiting outside), so I went to visit the
person who reported it at his office.  While I had been investigating,
he had posted about it to Slashdot.  Even though the post was by an
Anonymous Coward, I knew it was him, because the text (down to the
bold bits) was identical to what he had sent us.  The reporter was
some weird amalgamation of two recent reporters.  He was pretending to
be very busy, because he knew I would be angry at him for posting to
Slashdot.  But his co-worker winked at me, and I knew I could
interrupt him.

Then, I was on an autonomous bus, speeding through the night, with the
reporter and some other guy.  The bus had no seats, and in some
places, the sides were open.  The other guy was explaining how the
approval process for this bus had one major requirement: That it be
able to carry passengers.  "The reason for this requirement," he said,
" is so that you can hold a guy with a gold card down and get through
security checkpoints."  A gold card, in the weird futuristic dream
world, was the mark of an extremely high security clearance (but, of
course, it must not have had any identification requirements).  He
demonstrated by pushing my face against the floor of the bus, near one
of the edges.

The reporter said, "If somebody did that to me, I'd pull out this."
He pulled out a glowing golden sword.  "That would be fair, right?" '

I replied, "I wouldn't exactly call a Force Sword a fair weapon."  (I
don't recall the exact name of the weapon, but it was something Final
Fantasy-esqe like that).  I knew that it was an insanely powerful
sword.

"Want to find out?", he said, and brandished it at me.  I dived across
the floor of the bus at him, grappling with his hands, and bending him
back over the edge of the bus until he dropped the Force Sword off the
side.  Then I let him up a bit.  While all this fighting was going on,
I was singing a song describing what was happening, a sort of filk of
Nine Inch Nails' "Reptile".  The other guy, who sat in a corner
watching us, was quite impressed by this.

He reached down to his waist again, and pulled out an ordinary katana.
"Well, maybe this would be a bit more fair.  We grappled some more,
and I pulled out my new Henkels chef's knife.  Then, his katana was
bent over the blade of my chef's knife, ruined.  I realized again (as,
in RL, I have been realizing) how awesome my new chef's knife really
was.  I put my knee on his chest, and prepared to chop of his head
with the knife, which I was pretty sure I could do in one stroke.  

As I raised the knife, I realized it was my katana that was bent.  So,
this must be his chef's knife... and my head that was about to roll!

Then I woke up.

Aug 25, 2002

My dad was driving my brother and I to a party being held by
the army.  I was invited because of some GPL compliance work
I had done for the army (no, I haven't done any in RL).
This was in Portland.  We entered a somewhat industrial
district, and I was sure we had taken a wrong turn.  But
then we saw a big billboard for "Powell's Channel 4", which
was some network TV station run by the book store.

We arrived just as the party was starting.  The party was at
a mansion, with a large porch with white columns and
high-ceilinged rooms.  Random army brass with medals on
their dress uniform were milling around.  There were drinks,
soda and lemonade, but no iced tea.  I suggested to my dad
that he go out and get some.  He was afraid that some of the
people there would drink it, not realizing it had caffiene,
and get sick.  So, I told him I would make a sign for it.

He left to go pick up the tea, and I went outside to the
porch.  On a chair by the door were sheets of construction
paper, rolled up into little rolls.  I was trying to figure
out how I could cut letters out of construction paper to
warn people that iced tea contains caffiene, and worrying
about how terrible I've always been at arts and crafts, when
I woke up.


Aug 27, 2002 (during a daytime nap)

Neat, my very own WTC dream. And only a year late.

I was in the basement of a church in New York City with a man who was
something like Aragorn.  There was a black out, because a bombing raid
was coming.  The good guys scrambled the fighters, but still, the
World Trade Center was hit.  "Aragorn" and I emerged from the basement
into the church full of weeping people.  But then, another raid was
launched, and we had to go back down.  A bomb landed near the church,
but it was a dud.  We emerged again, and had to retreat again.  

This time was the last.  The city was destroyed.  I gingerly opened
the door, and thrust out with my stick, hitting a skinny figure
skulking in the doorway.  The church's roof was blown off, and nobody
was there.  It was dusk.  We walked into the city to kill the people
responsible for this.

"Aragorn" and I were walking through a snowy garden with a few other
people.  We turned a corner, and saw, from the back, my brother Dan.
Ahead of him, also walking away from us, were an older man and an
older woman.  The three of them were all wearing red robes.  They were
priests of the enemy.  My stick, which I had hit the skulking figure,
was now something like a cross between a baseball bat and a morning
star.  It was all wood, but the top was connected by a short chain to
the body of the weapon.  I walked up behind Dan, and hit him on the
head, hard, three times.  It didn't seem to hurt him at all, and the
other two priests didn't notice.  He turned towards me

I had forgotten that he was impossible to hurt!  I started running
away, and told my friends to split up; that I would divert him.  I
ducked behind a hedge, and grabbed him as he ran by.  I wrestled him
to the ground.  He was clearly allowing me to do this (as in RL he was
much stronger than me).  He was secretly on our side.  "Aragorn" and
the other people returned to us, then.  We decided to tie Dan up, and
leave him in the snow for his friends to find.

Another dream:

I was on a island, shaped something like Spain.  We were traveling
from the south-west to the north-east.  I had thought that we would
just drive, but we ended up driving to the coast, and then taking a
boat.  I saw all this on a map that looked like
http://www.novalis.org/images/drawings/dream-island.png (the little
upside-down v shapes are mountains).  The map in the dream looked much
nicer -- something like an old Chinese watercolor.

Sep 6, 2002

Note: In RL, I lost my key earlier in the night I had this
dream, and was forced to crash on the FSF's floor.

I was in a Chinese Restaurant with Cassia and Michael Klein
(in RL, a family friend, about Dan's age, but in the dream,
Cassia's younger brother).  Cassia mentioned Kenzaburo Oe. I
asked what American author she (yes, I know Oe is male, but
I said "she" in the deram) was like, kind of like how <a
href="http://books.slashdot.org/books/02/07/09/1438256.shtml?tid=99">
Haruki Murakami is like Philip Dick</a> (I meant to put a
link to <a href="http://www.gnod.net">Gnod</a> here, but it
seems Gnod no longer associates the Murakami and Dick).
Cassia and Michael agreed that Oe is like no other author,
and I really should read him (yes, we couldn't agree on Oe's
sex).  We paid our bill.

As we were walking home, Dev was there.  He said that he had
for years been forgetting to give me something.  He handed
me a frozen tupperware container, which I knew contained a
delicious soup, but with turds added.  In the soup was my
key.


Sep 11, 2002

I left my room, which was at the top of a tall tree.  I
walked down the fire escape (an ordinary black metal
construction).  A few levels down, a woman handed me a
monkey, but it had cancer.  I was also carrying some metal
bowls, and re-arranging them as I walked.  At the bottom was
a kid playing an Italian version of Bubble-Bobble.  For some
reason, I needed to have tubes put into my nose so I could
eat.  But, while drinking through a straw didn't bother me,
for some reason, I just couldn't handle having the straws
put up my nose.  I was perplexed.  All my friends were doing
it to show me how easy it was.

(hm, maybe this dream would have made more sense if I'd
written it down when I woke up).

And another:

I was at a 7-11 or some similar store with my aunt Ann,
picking up some food for a party.  It was a tiny store, with
only two parking spaces.  As we walked back to the car, two
teens yelled at us for using one.  We got a call on the cell
phone, telling us that the party had been moved to
Watertown.  This was apparently much further away, which was
a shame.  We drove along a highway which looked a lot like
the highway along the Oregon coast near Arch Cape (where
some family has a beach hose).  There were massive waves,
and I thought about how difficult it would be to surf on
them.  The sky began to darken.  On the small screen in the
car, more and more extreme warnings were being broadcast.
The graphics all showed flames and wind and darkness.

Then, we were on a mountain road, driving very slowly in a huge line
of cars.  On one side of the road was a sheer abyss; on the other side
were very small rowhouses, close enough to touch.  We looked in the
windows, and saw people milling about.  Finally, the storm became too
extreme to continue.  We stopped the car, and entered one of the
houses.  We began to take the "ghost path" down the mountain.  We
walked down the stairs of the house.  Somewhere, I had aquired armfuls
of laundry.  In the basement, there was a door, which the owners of
the house opened for us.  Past the door was another set of steps,
which we walked down into another person's house.  We went through
many stacked houses in this fashion.  

We reached one house, where a woman told us how her mother, who lived
in the basement, hated dinosaurs.  Her son had all sorts of dinosaur
toys, but when the woman would see one, she would destroy it.  Her son
tugged at her skirts and asked, "even the Little Death?"  The Little
Death, apparenly, was a carnivorous dinosaur smaller than a housecat.

Then I woke up.

September 12, 2002

I was watching a movie that was something like Contact, but with Neil
Armstrong.  But the whole thing was from the perspective of Armstrong.
The camera showed a rope, attached to stairs like those in swimming
pools.  The stairs lead from an island into the ocean, and the rope
had been cut.  This had, for some reason, put Armstrong in danger.  

The scene flashed back to Armstrong before his historic journey.  He
was drawing cartoons of himself, falling into space.  This was to try
to figure out all of the problems he might have.  His wife was
watching this.  

Everyone filed into the Senate chambers for a hearing on Armstrong's
journey.  I remembered wondering that there were so many Black
senators, since this was supposed to be the 1950's [yes, I know Apollo
11 wasn't 'till '69].  I wondered if the actors were supposed to
represent specific senators, or just general senators.  Most of the
seats in the hall were empty. Behind the senators, on a high stage,
was Senator Edwin H. Bukare (surname pronounced as though it were a
Japanese word).  He was conducting an orchestra.  When the orchestra
finished, Bukare fell backwards off the stage.  But he wasn't hurt --
he was just doing it to be dramatic.  

He walked down the aisle, and hugged a large black woman, who was
actually some sort of queen of Hawaii.  Neil Armstrong was scandalized
by this.  The black woman sat down, and Bukare sat down some seats
away.  He was holding a boy of about six, with piercing green eyes, as
though the child were a baby.  Actually, the child was a monkey, but
you couldn't tell that unless you looked really closely.  He did look
remarkably human.

September 18, 2002

Someone was making stuffed rabbits.  I was a reporter,
interviewing him about them.  They made you feel happy.
Why?  Because they contained cocaine and the like.  But I
had to say they merely contained caffiene, for legal
reasons.  Also, they were being distributed in violation of
the GPL.

September 23, 2002

Rebecca and I were in my apartment (which looked a lot like
Dan's apartment, except more cyberpunk -- dimly lit, black
metal and wires).  We were discussing why she slept with
Kean (no, she didn't do this in RL, AFAIK).  It was some
kind of rebellion, apparently.  Her mom came, and took her
away, and I sat down to surf the net.  I discovered that
there was a pornographic amusement park opening, so I
decided to go the next day.

When I entered the park, there were rows of bleachers in a
90 degree arc.  I joined the rows of men sitting in them.  A
park employee came out to address us all through a
megaphone.  He asked, "any gay people here?"  Everyone
yelled, "No!", or "I'm not a faggot!"  The park employee
said, "well, if anyone is interested in looking at naked
guys, come back tomorrow -- it's guy day!"  He then sent us
off down a wide concrete corridor, with boxes piled high on
shelves.  It looked something like the part of Ikea where
you pick up your DRITTSEKK wall unit.  I realized I was
starving.  I passed a hot dog stand, but I didn't want my
mouth to taste like hot dog all day, so I went on.

In an alcove surrounded by shelves with cardboard boxes was
a small shop.  There were some cylinders of chocolate ice
cream.  That was what I really wanted for breakfast, but
they were melted.  Along the back wall of the shop were
plastic bins.  One of them had <a
href="http://www.ferrarapan.com/html/rh_history.html">Red
Hots</a>, so I filled a small plastic container and took it
up to the counter.  Then I went back and saw another
container, with uncooked shrimp.  I asked the shop owner if
I could use his range (which was right across from the
check-out counter) to cook the shrimp.  I asked David
Garlock (who had appeared some time during this) if he
wanted some.  When I got back to the shrimp bin, an old man
had already taken out a shrimp and chopped it finely.  He
asked me how many I wanted chopped.

Then I woke up.

September 25, 2002

In the early evening, I knocked on the door of a small house
in the suburbs. The hosts invited me in. I was here for a
sex party. I had never been to a sex party before, so I
didn't know what to expect. Also, I was very nervous because
I had forgotten to brush my teeth and I was afraid my breath
stank. There were people milling about, conversing. The rule
was that everyone got to ask me two questions. The first
person asked me some simple question, and then, "describe
the last day of the world."

I said something like, "um, hm, huh. Oh! Have you read _The
Book Of The New Sun_? It's like that. The sun is huge and
blood red, filling half the sky. The last man on earth
stands by a river, looking at the sky. Around him, ruins
slowly crumble."

A tall man walked over from another room. He leans on the
back of a chair, and introduces himself as s_miler or
something from Worldforge (it wasn't some specific, real
person, but it was supposed to be). He handed me some backup
tapes. The host asked me if I wanted to put my stuff (the
backup tapes and some other stuff I was carrying) into the
closet. I did.

I knelt at the bank of a rivulet running through a
desert. On the other bank, a nude woman knelt with her back
to me. Her auburn hair flowed across her back like a
cape. The afternoon sun baked the hills around us. I knew
that the woman was meditating, and that I wasn't to distrurb
her.

Then some of the other people from the sex party showed up
behind me, and the woman stood up. She had about twenty of
silver emblems spread in front of her. She turned to face
us, then turned back and walked away from the rivulet. We
were each supposed to take one of the emblems. I crossed the
rivulet and tried to choose. one There were some crosses,
which I knew didn't represent my beliefs. The swasticas
didn't either. Aha, an ordinary fork! I took that.

As the group followed the woman into the ghost town, I tried
to bend the tines of the fork, but it was already bent and I
didn't have a pair of pliers.

Oct 2, 2002

Dan was floating down the Missouri river, right where it
joined the Mississippi.  I was watching him on a news
camera.  I knew that he was thinking the same things I had
thought when I had floated down that part of the river.

And then I, too, was being carried by the running water.
Dan wasn't there.  I was holding the laptop I'm borrowing
from the FSF above the water, but it was heavy, and my arms
were getting tired, and I wished for something to rest it
on.  Along the sides of the river were (east) Indian men on
platforms, selling things.  The platforms hung out over the
river a bit.  One of the platforms as empty, so I took it to
rest the laptop on.

Then it was time to land, at Harvard (well, in theory,
although it wasn't an actual place at Harvard).  Someone who
had been floating was with me got out first, and started
running down the steps -- we were on the fourth floor of a
house.  I started running down too, and went out the door at
the bottom.  There were two people I didn't know, looking at
me funny, so I assumed I had gone the wrong way.  I went
back into the house, which was now my father's house, and in
the kitchen were Tony, Kartik, Cassia, and two other people.

One of them really did look a lot like a woman, but was in
fact a man.  He was going to have that fixed soon, tho.  But
in the mean time, he just had to start humping his
girlfriend.  So, the girlfriend was kneeling in the corner
between the table and the cabinet next to the oven, and he
was behind her.  They were both fully clothed, but it looked
just like they were having sex.  After about seven or eight
hard thrusts, I had to tell them to knock it off, because
people's parents were coming for parents' visiting week.

Oct 5, 2002

I had written an article about Scientology which had been
published in a major newspaper.  I was on a cell phone with
my brother -- except, my brother looked like Jason from
HRSFA.  He was leading a group of Scientologists to dinner.
I was walking ahead to the restaurant to make reservations.
I asked Jason how many people to make a reservation for, and
he told me ten thousand.

I walked down a corrider lined with restaurants.  I was
looking for number 2429.  I passed 2423, 2426, and then 992,
991, 990.  The corridor ended.  I walked upstairs in 2426,
to try to find 2429.  A female vampire confronted me, and I
backed away, throwing stuff at her.  I walked through a few
doors into an infirmary.

I was laying on the table in the infirmary, and a woman was
stirring paprika into milk.  I drank it.  Something negative
was gone, but I still needed to get rid of the positive
effects of the vampire.  I kept filtering out the paprika,
which was making it hard to get rid of the positive effects.
Then the brother-Jason person walked in.

3:32p
Oct 6, 2002

I was taking a helicopter from Washington to Boston (or to New York,
or something like that). It cost $1.50. Dan from HRSFA was there
with me. We landed, and I went into the dorm at Harvard. This was
through a hidden burled panel in the back of a large, empty room.
Cassia, Tony, Kartik, and Nate were there, and we were arguing about
what game to play. Nate, Tony, and Kartik wanted to play Catan, and I
wanted to play Zendo.

This next part may have been another dream the same night:

I was outside, during the day at Harvard yard, and there were bugs all
over the ground. They had wings like bees, but they were crawling; it
was their yearly migration. I kept stepping on them, but they got
between my sock and sandal. My dad was there, and he was stuffing
them into his mouth. The bugs in his mouth had wings like moths, but
very fragile. Pieces of wing came out of his mouth, and fluttered to
the ground.  The bugs were called "Sex."

Oct 11, 2002

I was in Showcase comics.  But it looked like one of the
comic stores I had visited in Victoria.  On top of one of
the glass cases was a trade paperback book wrapped in
plastic.  It was supposed to be a book of black magic
spells.  I opened the plastic.  The entire second half of
the book was "yellow pages" of advertisements!  Apparently,
the author didn't mind.  The other half wasn't any good
either -- instead of actual spells, it had descriptions of
spells.

Then I had to go to the bathroom. It was upstairs, and it
was somewhat under construction.  It was very, very
familiar.

Oct 14, 2002


A man who looked like Clark's father in Smallville came into the FSF's
offices.  He sat down where Gary sits, across from me.  He showed me a
web page, which gave evidence that various people in the Free Software
community were gay.  Ben Galliart, who has reported several GPL
violations, was among them (I don't know anything about Ben's sexual
preferences in RL).  It hadn't been publicized widely yet.  He told me
that he could surpress Ben's name in all this, if I just agreed to
sign an NDA.  I looked at the document, and it was in connection with
some GPL compliance work I was doing.  I didn't want to sign the NDA,
but I knew that Ben would stop reporting GPL violations if he was
outed.

Oct 19, 2002

I was in a sewer, pursued by a monster.  I came up through a
man-hole cover (from its design, I could tell I was near
MIT).  I locked it behind me, trapping the monster.  I went
into a restaurant, where I met RMS, Eben, and my father.
The restaurant was also a train.

I was at Montgomery Ave near Lower Merion High school.  I
started to walk home with Dan, his girlfriend (that is, a
random woman playing that role, not some specific
girlfriend) and some random friends of his.  I wanted to
walk faster, but Dan's friends were slowing me down.  The
sky overhead darkened.  I realized that I was going the
wrong way, and it was starting to rain.  I turned back, but
the way back was different from the way I had come.  Where I
had gone up one flight of stairs outdoors, I had to go down
three in a warehouse.  The road was slick with water, and I
skied along it, going extremely fast.  But I kept having to
wait for Dan and his friends.


Nov 3, 2002

Dad was driving me to Flying Cloud.  We were at the last
turn, and I thought we were lost, because it didn't look
familiar.  It turned out that we were going the right way,
but Flying Cloud had changed.  For one, you could drive
right up to the central clearing on a perfectly fine dirt
road.  I told my dad that I was going to look around.

Behind a shelter stood Arctic Arrow (at the time I was at FC, he was
the head honcho).  I said hi to him.  He had grown older, so I wasn't
sure it was him, but he remembered me after a few minutes.  I asked
him what tipi I was in, but he told me that tipis had been
discontinued.  Instead, they were using [some word I don't recall].  I
knew that these were big red puffy things, in which four people slept
with their feet together and their heads radiating out, so that the
whole thing was like a circle of blanket circumscribing a plus sign of
people.  In my vision of these things, they weren't in any way
covered.  I was told that I had bunk 204 (or was it 504?).

When I got to the actual place where people slept, it was much larger
than just a four-person structure.  It was a raised wooden platform,
covered with a tent.  In the center was a cone, with places to sleep
all around the cone.  I couodln't remember if my number was 204 or
504.  As I walked around the structure, I saw about thirty young men
and women (in RL, FC is only for boys).

Then I was nearly done cooking some curry and some barbequed beans
over a small fire.  I poured the food into plastic bags.  I realized
that I could actually cook here, which made me happy.  Then I went
outside, and dinner was being served.  

Daniel, a friend from Harvard, was waiting in line for food.  He asked
me what I had meant by a comment I had posted on the web about him a
few weeks ago (in the dream, of course).  I explained that I meant
that he was dedicated to some project, but not gung-ho about it, not
enthusiastic.  He didn't understand, but I couldn't explain it any
better.

Nov 18, 2002

I was late for an appointment.  Dan and I left my apt, in
Cambridge but the street was all curved, and I couldn't
remember which way it was to the bus stop.  It was bright
and sunny, and a bit more suburban-looking than my street is
in RL.  We started walking towards Kendall (which is the
correct direction in RL), but nothing looked right, and
anyway, we had probably missed the bus, so we turned around
and started walking the other way.

Along the side of the road was a CD, but it was scratched,
so I put it back.  There were more CDs, and eventually a
whole yard sale.  My brother bought about ten CDs,
minidisks, and nintendo cartridges for a buck.

We walked up St. George's Road (in Ardmore, PA, where I
lived from when I was 2 until my parents divorced when I was
7), into Suburban Square.  I was still baffled about where I
was.  I knew that below me was the Ardmore train station (in
RL, it's elevated, and not real near Suburban Square), but I
didn't know how to get there, and I also didn't know that it
was there.  I tried to explain this to Dan, but couldn't
seem to get it across.  I could even look off the edge of
the bridge onto the tracks, but I didn't know how to get
down there.

Then I was down, and I watched a train leave, so full that
people were left clinging to the back of it.  I was sad that
I'd missed the train, because I was late to my doctor's
appointment.  I got on the next train, and made it to the
doctor.  The doctor was a bit like Lisa (of the FSF), but
blonde.  She was a pediatrician.  She took some fat out of
me with a syringe and wanted to inject it into my butt.  And
she wouldn't tell me why.  I whined and asked why she was
treating me like a child, and she pointed out that she was a
pediatrician.

Dan and Matt Gabriel knocked on the door and came in.  I
told them to leave, and when they didn't, I shouted at them
to get the fuck out.  Outside the window, people were
playing football.  Though the sky was dark, I could see
everything.  Snow started to fall, and the football players
looked up in wonder.

The Lisa-doctor finally told me that I the shot was to keep
the tarantulas and black widows away.  I asked if that was a
big problem, and she gave some fuzzy answer. I wasn't afraid,
but then I visualized all those spiders.  I was about to let
her do it, when I woke up.

Nov 24, 2002

Nearby, there was a long dry riverbed, but it was quite quick to
travel from one end to the other, under an ancient carved arch, and
immediately down a waterfall.  The waters tumbled into a fountain in a
courtyard, and in the fountain stood two giant statures, something
like a back-to-back Argonath crossed with the Dave McKean's art from
the 9-11 tribute comic.  Everything was rock -- there was no
vegetation, but it didn't look barren.  The water was coruscating
blue, playfully dancing from the tops of the statutes.  Nearby was
another fountain with a smaller but similar set of statutes.  

Tony was there too.  Back in the day, I told Tony, the first fountain
somehow powered the second, but now it was all electric.  The dry
riverbed and arch was actually further on, not behind me as it had
been. But to get to it, we had to climb some rocks.  I wanted to show
Tony, but after getting about five feet up, I realized how tired we
both were.  I wanted to go on, but Tony decided to save it for another
day.  

There was an Indian religious belief that the dead were digging a
tunnel to somewhere like paradise, and they had just now finished.
They had been digging for around 5,800 years.  I was despondent,
because Dev had decided to die to join them.  At dinner, I couldn't
eat anything, because I was so sad, even though the food that Dev's
family was preparing looked delicious.  Dev's determination to die was
like Cassie's from the Buffy episode "Help" (7.04).

Jan 31, 2003

My company, which did some sort of wireless, was in court for
something called "wire thronging".  We hadn't done it, but the
opposing side (another wireless company) wasn't very smart.  For
instance, their engineers kept saying "control-a" and "control-b" when
they meany alpha and beta.  I thought that they were idiots for not
knowing the fundamental somethingorothers of physics.

We lost the court case, and to show that they didn't hold a grudge,
the other company invited me to go hiking at their expense in the
Himalayas. They owned a mountain there.

Their mountain loomed in the distance -- the only mountain for miles.
It was grey, haystack-shaped, and snow-covered.  I walked down a hill,
towards the mountain, into a sparse forest.  There were a few leaves
on the ground, on top of the snow, but there was a track clear of
leaves (but not of snow) through the trees.

Then I was on the third leg of my journey.  The first was up the
mountain and down again, the second was somewhere else, and the third
was back up the mountain by a different route.  I was following a
trail of footprints in the hard-packed snow.  Whoever left the prints
was very hardcore -- the prints were clearly bare feet.  He or she had
also shown me many of the wrong turns -- often the footprints would go
up a hill, and then right back down the same side, which would let me
skip ahead.  

I walked around a small hill with a few trees on top, and then tripped
and lay back against the hillside.  I decided I was dehydrated and
picked up some snow to eat.  It had a few ants in it, but that was OK,
everyone eats a few ants now and again.  I munched on the snow, and
picked up another handful, which had more ants.  I looked down, and
there were ants everywhere.  I decided to go fill my canteen
elsewhere.  I walked away from the hill, and put my canteen down.  

On the tip of my little toe was what looked like a blood blister.  I
squeezed it.  A bug came out, about the diameter of a ballpoint pen.
It looked like this:

<img src="http://novalis.org/images/drawings/dream-bug.png" alt="a
brown circular bug">

I squeezed more, and a few more came out.  Then I went to pick up my
canteen, and found that hundreds of the same sort of bugs had made
their way in.  I shook them out, and the looked down, and discovered
that one had crawled back into my toe.  I went to squeeze it out, and
it was a big one, the size of a quarter. I have no idea how something
the size of a quarter was inside my little toe:

<img src="http://novalis.org/images/photo/toe-quarter.jpg" alt="a photo of
my toe next to a quarter.  The quarter is thrice as big as my little
toe">

I got it out, and it disgorged about twenty of the smaller ones.  Then
there was another big one in there.  I had it about three quarters of
the way out, and my grip weakened, so it started crawling back.  I
squeezed harder, and all seventeen of its eyes exploded (note: they
didn't have eyes before this).  It was gross.

March 26, 2003

In RL, none of this is in any way geographically accurate.
It was about ten o'clock in the morning, and we were going
to have breakfast at the Catholic church near Ann and
Catherine's house.  It was through a maze of twisty passages
between five-to-seven story gray apartment blocks.  The
streets were steeply sloped.  At the church, most of
Catherine's family sat around a table with paper plates in
front of them.  There were other tables and people too.  Our
table was full, but we were still waiting for Margaret's
branch of the family.  I especially missed Andi and Emily.
I offered to go and get them.

I'm a bit confused about the chronology here, but at some
point, it was night, and we were leaving the church.  Jack
Valenti was there with his assistant (who was someone sort
of like Hillary Rosen, but old and ugly).  I asked if he
knew how to get back to his car, and he said no, so I
offered to lead him.  The whole way there, we argued (him,
bombastically and ineffectually, I sarcastically and
ineffectually).  When we got to the lot, his car was gone.
He guessed it had been towed.

Also at night, I went over to "Quincy" (a house at Harvard)
which was layed out something like the real-life Mather
house.  It's a place I had been to, and been lost in,
before, perhaps in previous dreams.  There's an anime club
there, which David Garlock told me was better than the other
clubs.  I joined, and we went into a big theater with
steep-sloping seat banks.  At some point during the showing,
a cylindrical space capsule flies above the screen, coming
down (the theater, I guess, doesn't have a roof).  It's
very, very sad. Rockets come up to meet it, because I guess
we did have some space defense system all along.  It's
beautiful, the blue missile contrails and red explosions,
against the clouds, on the big screen inside the theater
that's not at all open to the sky and I have to tell all my
friends to see this movie when it comes out, because the
preview looks really cool.

May 23, 2003

There was a very deep swimming pool under the school, covered in some
sort of film.  The teacher sent an older man down to investigate.  I
had his viewpoint as he climbed down the ladder into the water.  The
ladder kept going down, into the murky blue water.  The man had a rope
around his waist to haul him up in case of emergency.  About thirty
feet down, he (we) saw a red tick the size of a basketball on the
ladder below him, and started climbing quickly up.  He made it out in
time.

I was about eight years old.  Somehow, a worm-like thing, the size of
a spindle of 100 CDs, had taken control of my father (not my actual
father -- just some guy I knew was my father).  It was the parent of
the giant tick.  We were sitting at home, a small house by the
boardwalk.  It started snowing, very large flakes under a grey sky.
People were bundled up, fleeing along the boardwalk.  The teacher
stopped at our window (which was level with the boardwalk) to suggest
that we leave.  But the worm-thing thought that we should wait it out.
As we watched more people fleeing, it changed its mind.  My father and
I had a hard time rousing the fat kid on the couch.  He wasn't just
fat, he was clearly diseased in some way -- perhaps he was incubating
more of the worm things.  He said he would catch up.

Later, as we took a side bridge over the Charles, we found the fat
kid's teddy bear.  I guess he tried, and died.  Because the side
bridge wasn't crowded, we actually made it back to the school at the
same time as the teacher.  The school's lobby was all stone, with
columns, like the Franlin Institute.  We went down to the pool.  It
had been frozen, and thousands of pennies were piled on the ice (which
was about thirty feet below the top of the pool).  I tossed a capsule
containing the worm and the tick into the pool, but the ice was
suddenly thin, and they escaped under the water.  From that distance,
the worm could no longer control my father.

March 23, 2004

I think I was Gimli, in the beginning of the dream. Gandalf,
Frodo, and I were deep underground, in some kind of
Limbo. It was like the scene in the Odyssey where Odyseus
visits Tireseus in Hades. We were visting Gollum and
Bilbo. But Gollum wasn't quite the same cute Gollum as in
the movies. He was more human, more like an old man, and
more evil-looking. Gandalf and Frodo were off talking to
Bilbo. Gollum was sitting in a chair. I was myself at this
point. Then, somehow, I was sprawled across Gollum's lap. My
shirt was off, and Gollum reached one finger down to my
chest and traced around my nipple. It was incredibly erotic,
and my body was trembling. My body wanted this, but my mind
was scared and repulsed, and I wanted to be anywhere but
there. I tried to call out for Gandalf, but I couldn't move,
couldn't scream.

Then I woke up.

June 1, 2004

My brother crouched at the end of a long sycamore branch,
then flipped acrobatically down from it.  I asked him how he
got up there in the first place, and he pointed to a black
iron fence near the tree trunk.  [some stuff I forget --
something to do with an educational company accidentally
selling a Warcraft II soundtrack] Sun was releasing a new
license, and I had to look over it very quickly.  For some
reason, this was terrifying to me.  I got to about point 3
(on the first of 5 or so pages).  I went over to the fence,
and climbed it.  It looked like this:

<img src="http://novalis.org/images/drawings/dream-fence.png">

I crouched between the spikes (which were apparently
approved by some humane society), but I couldn't stand up.
In real life, I could have easily stood up (although the
branch was too big to easily get my arms around and climb up
on), but in the dream, I was too scared.  Then I woke up.

July 15, 2004

 I had signed up for a community college to get my CS
degree.  I looked at the course catalog, a tiny brochure,
trying to find some course I was even a little bit
interested in.  Finally, I found one.  I was dragging around
my wheeled duffel bag.  I went to the first course, and was
assigned a task that had something to do with arranging
three or four words so that they crossed at certain points,
but I couldn't understand the words or the task, because the
instructor's accent was so thick.

The next class, we had to write haikus.  There were no other
constraints -- just write a haiku.  But I couldn't do it --
I kept trying to use words like Philadelphia, which made the
rest of my text not fit.  I even tried hyphenating.

July 17, 2004

While visiting China, I was standing in one of seven or so
lines in a grassy field.  Each line led to a desk.  At the
desk, I was asked to pick any five items from a list.
Apparently, these items were from Costco.  On one side of
the list were normal every day items.  On the back were
Catan replacement pieces in small lots ("three knights and a
road"). I realized that my Catan set was missing some
pieces, so I got replacements.  I quickly used up my five
items, before realizing that I had wanted some of the useful
items, like food.

I had to run, because I wanted to sleep with both Mark
Spencer and Emily Morgan, sequentially, without either
finding out about the other.  And I was due to leave the
next morning.  I planned to sleep with Mark first, then
shower, ditch Mark, and find Emily.  As I was working out
the scheduling in my mind, I walked back up to the hotel,
which on the exterior was like the former refugee camp I
stayed at in Croatia, and on the interior was like the dorms
in France. 

Then I woke up, before I had a chance to sleep with anyone.

Aug 3, 2004

I was waiting at the back of the Quest Diagnostics parking
lot, across from the church.  It was late evening.  A large
man stepped out of the darkness.  He pulled out a knife and
stabbed me.  I woke up with a small scream, and realized
that I had slept for less than five minutes.

September 15, 2004 

I was visiting Greater Nick (in Hawaii?).  We were going to
meet Roger Dingledine.  Greater said that he hoped that I
didn't expect him to pay for Roger's hotel room.  I said
that I didn't.  Greater and I walked across a lawn, towards
some brick buildings.  It looked like a university.  We met
someone who I initially thought was Roger with dyed hair,
but turned out to be someone else.  This happened a few
times, and I actually knew some of the other people: Jesse
Vincent and Natan. Soon, we had collected a whole group of
black-clad, black- or -purple-haired people, and we went off
to a covered walkway.

There was another team there, and I learned that we were in
a "hacking" contest.  The goal was to retrieve as much data
as possible from specific computers, either by physically
accessing the drives, or by finding them on the network and
breaking in.  This was the third round -- in the first, our
team had won, the second, the other team had (gigabyte
totals were displayed).  I took a photo, but my flash was
on, and this triggered both sides to begin "shooting" each
other (I assume this was some sort of in-game weapon which
scored points, rather than hurting people).  The referee
stopped the combat, and told me not to take any more photos.
Then, he pointed to a slightly raised circular platform, and
said, "the servers you are looking for are under that.  Go."

I considered trying to navigate around the university to
find which room was underneath, but decided to leave that to
locals (I'm not sure there were any locals).  The other team
had already started pulling up bricks from one side of the
platform, so I started on another side.  Soon, I found some
wires, which led me to a big IDE hard drive.  There was no
IDE cable attached to the hard drive, but there was a power
cable.  I discussed with teammates whether to try to hook it
up from here, using this power hook-up, or to unplug it and
carry it back to our lab. Either could destroy the data.  We
decided to remove it and take it back.

Then I woke up.

Nov 12, 2004 

David Garlock, Nick Nussbaum, and I decided to go hiking at
a place I had heard of near Davis Square.  We looked up the
address in Mapquest, and started walking.  It was down a
highway, past a bar.  There were stairs going down, perhaps
six flights, under a bridge.  At the bottom was a river
going through a canyon, which looked somewhere between
Arizona and China.  I kept trying to take a photo of the
river, which was somewhow both placid and whitewater, but it
didn't work.  There were tons of people in the canyon,
milling about.  Also, wolves and bears, and other wild
animals kept coming by, and I kept trying to take photos of
them, but they were just too wild.  David and I walked on,
leaving Nick behind.  The people thinned out, and there were
caves.

I saw the girl who had been taunting all the animals and
leading them through the crowds.  I told her that she
shouldn't do that, because it was dangerous.  She defended
her right to do it, and her parents backed her up.  Finally,
I walked away in disgust.

David and I walked along and found some narrow, cave-like
canyons containing power-ups (plastic pouches of liquid).
David seemed to be finding a lot more than I was.  We were
soon separated, and then I heard Gimli (who was Nick)
calling for help.  I found him and showed him the way out.
David found a power-up which combined his sword and armor.
When I saw a crystal-clear lake, sparkling in the sun, I
though that we ought to hold the Wyld Hunt here, if only it
weren't so crowded.