Apartment life in post-apocalyptia

In post-apocalyptia, I and a few friends (one male and one female, I think), had just returned to our apartment. We were arguing about what to do with our paper money (probably because it wasn't currently worth anything). The guy was trying to show how we could use the paper money to make our rides more aerodynamic.

(Our rides were little battery-powered boxes on wheels, perhaps two feet cubed, barely big enough for our butts to rest on. He unlatched the top of his, and was folding the edge of a multi-dollar bill and slipping it in and over the battery to demonstrate what he meant.)

We then did some mental exercise, imagining what to do in case of a zombie attack. In our imagination, a woman was walking down a sidewalk while fending off a not-so-clever male zombie who had been bitten in the arm.

Our apartment building was surprisingly well-maintained, and well lit by daylight, though completely empty of furniture. It looked like a building that had just barely finished being constructed before the apocalypse.

I was sitting in the hallway outside our apartment, with a young girl (maybe 10 years old) sitting next to me. Our neighbors, a young Spanish-speaking couple (and possibly a child), walked by us in the hallway on their way out somewhere.

The wife chatted a little with us in pseudo-Spanish about the zombie; I was mentioning how the zombie had been bitten in the arm but I couldn't quite work out the phrasing. She said something like "ha estado [verb]ado en el armada". The world "voller" was in there somewhere too.

The girl next to me was looking up words on a handheld digital dictionary device, but wasn't sure if she was spelling them right. I was a little suspicious of "armada" meaning "arm". We couldn't work out what "voller" was.

At some point, the girl changed (imperceptibly) into Joan D (adult), and we were eating oreos. She was mentioning how it was interesting that the words "dedo" in Spanish and "doigt" in French (both meaning "finger") looked so similar. So I said, oh, yeah, well, "digitus" -- pointing out that another word for "finger" in English was "digit", and all three words came from Latin.

Joan looked astonished, and told me what a rush she felt when she figured out stuff like that. :D And then we ate more oreos.

(But I wanted to save a few oreos for Ray, who apparently had furnished them for us.)

The science of wordless spellcasting

I'm Harry Potter. I wake up in my bed, in the bedroom of a pretty normal looking modern Muggle-style house. The opposite wall, across the room and parallel to my bed, had built-in bookshelves from the ceiling down to about 3 feet off the floor. Below each column of bookshelves were three drawers.

In the previous dream, just before I woke up, a friend of mine had used the spell "fermata" to close the front door of a house we were getting ready to go into. I decided to test the opposite spell, the spell for opening things, "abierto" (I have no idea if either of these are real spells in the Harry Potter universe). I point my wand at a drawer and speak, "abierto". I mess around with my pronunciation, at first rolling my "r", then switching to a British (RP) "r". Then I start stretching out the pronunciation slowly. That's when I notice something weird.

I decide to experiment. I point my wand at the drawer, thinking the word "abierto" in my head, while starting to say "aaaah" out loud. In anticipation, the drawer begins to open. I push it shut. Interesting. Now I point my wand, think the word "automatic", and start to say "aaaah" again. This time nothing happens. Iiiiinteresting. I test it a few more times, then rush downstairs to tell Hermione.

Downstairs in the house, there are a lot of other kids (presumably other students) milling around. I walk into the small kitchen, where Hermione is making herself breakfast alone. I excitedly tell her to guess what I found out. She says "Hmmm... could it have something to do with..." (I forget what she referred to, but it wasn't remotely related.) I shook my head, smiling. Then I explained to her what I had found out, with "aaah" and "abierto" versus "aaah" and "automatic". You didn't need to say the whole spell, you just had to be focused on the right spell and begin speaking the spell.

"Woww, cool!" said Hermione, meaning I had told her something she didn't already know. And I was happy that she was excited.

[Note: This has everything to do with me currently reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.]

"Mason mama"

I came to a facility in the wilderness where I was supposed to train in survival skills. I followed a course that had me sneaking quietly around, behind, and through small fir trees in this sparsely wooded property. Apparently a primary goal was to not alert wildlife to my presence.

I finished up and headed out. I saw a woman from another special agency just arriving to take the course as I left. My exit route took me to a long indoor bridge with glass sides for looking out. It dipped towards the middle like a rope bridge. Looking out, I saw only a vast body of water and I recalled that the facility had been on a small remote island.

At the same time, I started thinking of the song "Take Me Home, Country Roads", and thought of Jenny Lewis singing it. I started to sing it like her. It seemed that the song was being dedicated to my wife, who lived on another, more populated island, yet had never really gone to the sea or left the island (thus, "stranger to blue water"). The line "mountain mama" was changed to "Mason mama" (Mason being pronounced "mass-un"), Mason being the name of her hometown.

(In my mental map, the facility island was in the southwest corner, the island/group of islands with Mason was towards south-center, and halfway up the map to the north started a landmass that covered most of the north half of the map, and may have been "West Virginia".)

Hugging at Hogwarts

At a school/academy with a bunch of classmates. We are almost to our classroom, in a semi-covered courtyard reminiscent of a place in Hogwarts (a small open central grassy area with covered corridors surrounding it). A couple classmates are teasing me about this girl that I like (also present) who likes me too. She was cute (in a wholesome sort of way), somewhat short, shy, and golden blonde. I couldn't decide who she reminds me of in real life, but she seemed very familiar to my waking mind.

Because of my classmates' prodding, rather than being ashamed for no reason, and despite no official relationship between us, I walked over to her and gave her a hug from behind and started talking to her. Worked out pretty well.

Finding a film location at the wild west hotel

Ray and I were at some hotel with a vaguely wild-west theme to it. Ray's erstwhile girlfriend Britt was there for a little while too, with us at the hotel's swimming pool, but headed out after a bit.

A woman working for some movie production company was with us then, and we were apparently at the hotel to help with preparation for filming. She had been asked to find three adjacent unoccupied rooms and break the side walls between them to make it easier to film there. Ray and I went searching through every room at the hotel (there were about three floors with maybe eight rooms per floor). While we did find empty rooms here and there, we also ended up barging into many occupied rooms. One room I recall opening the door and seeing someone asleep in bed and closed the door before they woke up.

In any case, there was nowhere in the hotel that had three adjacent unoccupied rooms. The woman from the film company decided to settle on reserving three separate rooms.

Ray and I went back down to the bottom level and out to some small tables by the street. As it turned out, Ray had two girlfriends at this time, Britt (seen previously), and a girl who showed up now to sit with us. She was a petite, thin redhead named Katey. She mentioned to me casually, but quite earnestly, that nothing could ever happen to make her dislike Ray.

Teddy bear in the parking lot, philosophizing with Mos Def

I (female) and another young woman are hanging out in a parking lot in the midday sun, with a dark brown teddy bear, about a foot tall. Apparently the teddy bear harbors the consciousness of a friend of ours, and we are treating it affectionately. It is sitting on the ground, and some dust/cobwebs had been blown onto it by the wind, and we sweetly brush it clean.

Also with us in the parking lot, sitting at the wheel of a delivery-style truck, though not currently driving, is another friend of ours who resembles Mos Def. We're having a philosophical conversation, in which he is giving us general relationship advice and trying to open our minds. He notes that you can never be sure what is going to really do it for you, knock you for a loop, or some such, until just after you have done the deed, or some such.

He proceeds to bring up rap as another example, saying that, although I might only rarely listen to rap, there could be that one perfect rap number out there that would prove to be irresistible, unforgettable, perfect, as long as you're receptive to it when the occasion arises. That's paraphrasing, unfortunately, because the way he delivered his thoughts on the matter was supremely eloquent, and I was hanging onto every word as he spoke.

Bringing 90210 to Texas to win the girl... I guess...

So, I lived in Beverly Hills (90210, as we refer to it), and I think I go to college there. I was hanging out with my friend, and we were messing around with our hazardous gas evacuation procedure (something probably triggered by watching NCIS when Abby's lab had cyanide gas in it...). He tells me to stay behind the closed door where you can still see through the little window in the door, press myself up against it, and hold out my ID badge. So I did, then when I came out, I was like, "Did it look like Stargate?" At least I thought that's what we were going for.

We went back to do it again, but this time, the door had become the (wrought iron) gate of my friend's mansion, and his fiancee came up, asking if I was somehow implying that their marriage was doomed to failure. I wasn't exactly sure how she reached that conclusion, but it looked like they wanted me to leave. Behind my friend and his fiancee, on the other side of the gate, I briefly saw this girl with long black hair and (face? still working on who she reminded me of), who I must have known at least somewhat. My recollection was that she was sort of a bitch, in the broad sense of the term, but that I liked her for some reason.

Later, I had taken my posse from college and we had all gone to Texas to catch up with that girl. We walked into a local food establishment, and went into a back room where not many people were actually eating, and many people weren't even sitting at tables. Several were simply standing up against the side wall near a back door. It was winter, so everyone was wearing boots. Sure enough, the girl from earlier was there (for convenience, let's call her Monica), except that she had dyed her black hair to a dirty blonde. She was one of the ones leaning against the side wall, hanging out. One of the girls next to her was the sister of another friend of mine (we were trying to recall what his name was later... Dave? Wayne?). His sister lived (or went to school?) in New Zealand but was going to school (or visiting? or studying abroad?) here in Texas. She also lived in eastern Colorado? The details were getting kind of confusing. There was another girl leaning against the wall too, near Monica. I didn't know her name but thought she was exceptionally cute.

So, the posse (of however many people) has all come into the room, some of them standing on the stairs that turn up to the second floor. People ask where we all came from, and someone in the posse says, very deliberately, as if he has to try to remember each number as he's saying it, we're from "9.. 0.. 2.. 1.. 0." Monica asks what we're all doing here. I hesitate, and one of the guys from the posse gives me a look of encouragement. I tell Monica, "I came here..." I hesitate some more, already regretting what I'm going to say next, because Wayne's sister and the other girl both seem like such great opportunities -- I look them over again, and continue: "... for you." Monica looks surprised, but soon turns out to be impressed, and agrees to go out with me. My feelings are muddled. She mumbles something about breaking it off with someone else, but I figure that's a minor detail.

She asks me if I want to go with her to another place, or, on second thought, what about bowling? I agree that bowling would be cool. She heads out into the front room and I go with her, but as we reach another side exit, I realize that I am no longer wearing my boots. I must have taken them off while we were talking. I go back to the back room and find them, and start putting them on. I'm really annoyed by how long it takes to put the first boot on, having to retighten the laces before I can tie them. Plus it's a little cold and the laces are a little wet, so that's tricky for my fingers too. Then I go to put the right boot on. I stick my foot in, and realize that it feels too soft, and then notice that it's totally not my right boot at all. My boots are mostly leather brown, while this boot has some blue nylon cushioning near the ankle. So, I walk around the back area, looking for someone who has the other boot with blue cushioning, figuring they probably have my right boot. I do find someone who has the wrong boot, and they hand me what they think is my boot, but it's a little bigger than mine, and has a different logo on it.

I get more annoyed, and walk back towards the front area, and as I'm passing into the front, I look back down and see that my correct right boot is on my foot now, which is a relief. I chat a little bit with a couple closer friends from the posse. One of them mentions that if we want, we can take some items of Wayne's sister's from Wayne's mansion, because she doesn't want to move all that stuff back to New Zealand. That's about the end of that dream.

Hotel room with the band

Dave, Vanessa, Jordyn, and I are traveling for a music tour. We got a hotel room with two queen beds. Dave and Vanessa opted to sleep together in one bed. I was not shy about expressing my enthusiasm for sharing the other bed with Jordyn. She was already lying there, face down, on the right side, and I dove onto the bed right next to her, patting her chummily on the lower back/side.

Some cash for my (very good) friend in jail

Someone I know was in some kind of courtroom trial for something that either she didn't do or wasn't normally a punishable offense. The courtroom seemed more like a church with pews. Long story short, she was put in jail, but the sentence was more lenient than the plaintiffs had wanted.

The jail had a strange system going on... Somehow it was okay for my friend to come out to my car (at night, even) and talk to me, but inmates were not allowed to obtain cash for some reason - however, it was apparently normal for inmates to circumvent that rule. As for us, I transferred some bills to her via french kiss before heading home.

Not visiting the royal family of Japan

Earlier, I went to visit the royal family of Japan. Their hall was a big, fairly square setup, with normal house height ceilings. Aesthetic seemed kind of Greek. Lots of marble. There was a name on one of the walls, I think it was the royal princess's name. One of the words was Inouye, the other was something like ??kibuki. I recalled having visited the princess before a while ago and we seemed to get along okay, but I was shy about running into anyone this time, since they probably wouldn't know who I am anyway. I just kind of walked around the perimeter of the hall.

-

In an elevator, trying to get to the fifth floor, with a sort of familiar Asian dude there with me, like we'd met before but didn't really know each other. He was headed to a different floor, apparently above 5. The button light turned off as we passed 5, but the elevator didn't stop. We both thought it was weird. I pressed the button again, to catch it on the way back down. Again, it skipped 5 and went down to the first floor. I decided to get off and take the stairs. But, getting off, I was in an eating area, sort of open, food courtish, with a TGIFish atmosphere. I saw Dave K and Ben and a third guy standing leaning over a high table and they saw me and I decided to go over for a bit. (I was under the impression that this building & floor were the same general area where the royal hall was, not too far off from it.)

Two girls at the malt shop

At a restaurant or cafeteria or malt shop, with a high ceiling, whitish tile floor, booths along two sides (seat backs were black cushioned plastic or leather, medium-high). I am thinking about going and talking to a girl* across the room, but I guess I am a little unsure. I sit down at a booth, and at the next booth behind me, a girl† is sitting with her back to mine. She is a brunette, with fairly wavy hair that reaches a little past her shoulders. She is probably under 5'6", and thin but not lanky. I don't know if I really see her face until later, but she is quite attractive.

As soon as I sit down with my back to her, she begins talking to me. I can't really remember what we talked about, but we talked for a while. The conversation flowed naturally, and I detected a vague sarcasm/cynicism in her personality. By the end of the conversation, it seemed like we had made some kind of connection.

The next dream, I am back in basically the same place, and someone resembling Lynn S-B is walking around, and she mentions something about being glad her daughter† (the girl I had been talking to) had taken an interest in someone. I meet her again.

In a later dream, I am walking around outside in sort of an open grassy area, approaching a colonial brick building on the edge of a Williamsburg-esque campus. I small talk a little with a middle-aged foreign couple who are also walking up to the building (Asian? can't remember), and then I step inside.

It's sort of a welcome center. It's pretty poorly lit. I seem to be just cutting through. I go from the front area into a smaller room with a smallish reception desk. I am heading towards a side door, which leads outside again. Sitting behind the desk is (somehow) four or five girls (students) in schoolish uniforms. One of them recognizes me and says hi and waves. It was the original girl* from the restaurant that I hadn't gone and talked to. I guess we know each other. I say hi. This room is very poorly lit, and by the light coming in the outside door, just as I am stepping out, I notice that one of the girls sitting next to her is the girl† I have been talking to.

I see her at least once more, at what could be best described as the freezer/bakery section of a grocery store, at which some kind of school/community activity is going on (but that stuff is mostly happening back towards the registers).

Lovesick at the beachside condo

Before that, a dream, which turned out to be a novel that I was reading (as commented on by Roy as the dream was wrapping up). The setting was probably a beachside city on the west coast, in the 70's or 80's. The exact background story is lost to me now, but basically, a lovesick blonde woman, probably in her thirties, had gone down to her balcony (the lower floor on a two-story flat, many floors above ground level) to contemplate jumping off.

Meanwhile, the guy she loves (seemed like some identification with my father) is coming to look for her. For whatever reason, he visits the next door neighbor first. As he's finally headed down to her, I fall out to Roy commenting on the novel that I'm reading. I catch a glimpse of the text and remember one of the syllables was "sou", and I'm pretty sure the whole thing was written in a toneless pinyin.

Bus ride to the Indian restaurant

Riding a bus to some kind of Indian restaurant with several people that I know. At some point it turns out I'm sitting next to Laurel, who is listening to music on her headphones. Oddly, I can hear the music pretty distinctly -- it's "The Good That Won't Come Out" by Rilo Kiley. I'm tapping my fingers to the beat, and mouthing the lyrics as they come up. (I think my dream state was confounding Laurel with Jordyn, since I was thinking about Jordyn more the night before... There are some points in common between the two...)

She starts to notice this, and for some reason now I'm wearing headphones myself, although I'm still hearing her music. I'm getting ready to ask her how she's been, because I haven't seen her in a long time (and I'm surprised that she's listening to this music), but then we get off the bus to go into the restaurant, which is the bottom floor of a city row-building -- it’s dusk out.

Inside, some guy who is acting as server/host begins showing dishes at a small table. Some of it is rice, one is sliced bread with gravy on the top side, a couple other things... Bay (left-ahead), Jess (opposite) and I have gathered around the demonstration table to watch, and I've had to kneel down so people behind me can see.

Because we were already there, the three of us and the host (bald African type, to front-right) sit down there to eat. Technically, though, Jess is backed away from the table opposite me, with her food set on a dresser or similar piece of furniture. Probably wanting to keep her distance from Bay. I look and see that Laurel has sat at a table behind and to the left of me, making conversation disappointingly difficult.

Racheem's love

Later dream involved AOL Instant Messenger. I had apparently logged on for the first time in a very long time. A few people started bombarding me with messages, including one whose screen name was "Alyssa" and whose icon was the face of a magenta-haired female night elf from WoW. Apparently we were online friends from when I used to play TFC, and, although it hadn't been obvious to me, she was obsessed with me. She reminded me that her first name was "Racheem" (an image of her popped into my mind -- thin, hispanic or middle eastern, dark medium length hair -- above shoulder --, medium-short height, late teens). Interesting that I could now read all this text when I had seen none during my earlier lucid dream. She went on and on about this and that -- there was one point where she said she "sent my arm to her friend" -- accompanied by an image of me and ?Neil sitting on a couch (in Cantilever Ct. basement?) with a gag-arm hanging next to us. After answering other people's IMs, I had trouble figuring out how to go back to hers (the interface was atypical -- large window with tabs at the top -- new IMs had light blue tab text). When I finally clicked back, she had written four or five paragraph-long messages -- a few glimpses indicated that she was making some kind of emotionally charged confession. However, I saw that she had signed off while I had been clicked away. Then for some reason, her entire tab disappeared and I was annoyed that I couldn't read it. Wondered to myself whether it had been logged somewhere, but couldn't find it.

Placidly sympathizing

"When I know I should be at home,
placidly sympathizing with the one I love..."

- Me

Love, love, love

"Love, love, love
so many times"

- Anonymous

Wrongly accused, but hey, she gets a sitcom out of the deal

A junior deputy or some such thinks he has found the culprit in a recent crime, a woman (who happens to be cute, in a wholesome sort of way) with brown hair in her twenties. She is found guilty and put in jail. However, soon after, someone else is also found guilty of the same instance of the same crime. The deputy then goes about trying to prove the original girl's innocence, but her fingerprints all over the original crime scene (dusty shelves at a library) are enough to keep her in jail. So, the deputy's mission (along with his hilarious, believable backing cast) throughout the rest of the sitcom is to keep his convict entertained and make sure she enjoys her stay at the jail. Comedy gold, I bet. I'm sure they fall in love, too, because it's TV.

Let's not get the notion wrong...

"Let's not get the notion wrong,
But I belong for you ....."

- to the tune of Take Take Take by The White Stripes

Theme park: Wizard of Oz, sports store, glass overlook

A theme park of some kind, reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz in some places, simple terminals in others, a sports store in another, all kinds of different stuff. Greg (or his character) wants to demonstrate how easy it is to snatch cards off the guards, so he walks up, snatches one and runs off with the guard none the wiser. Unfortunately, he then pushes the card onto another guard and they start pursuit.

I make my way to the sports store section where someone was asking me about the hemp football that seemed tainted with something white. He thinks I work there and that I have any idea what he's talking about. What does it matter? Meh.

Onward to a small field where another main character, a guy with hollow (or holes for) eyes who's doing some kind of Wizard of Oz dancing for his main-character girlfriend. At some point, he opens his face and reveals two guys in his head with similar faces making committee decisions; only one of them would speak out loud for uniformity of character.

Later I pass out onto a deck with lots of glass walls looking out onto whatever (creeks, pools, aviaries? no idea) and I keep walking past people who should look really familiar but when I crane over to try and see their faces they've turned away. How irritating.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or something)

Some kind of weird alternate plot for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I play a black guy with medium-high roundish hair -- I know this because I finally found a mirror in an elevator later on. Anyway, I guess I just got back from college for summer and I'm visiting with friends and stuff. A little earlier, I'm on an airplane (with stadium theatre seating?) and an old lady with some relation to me is causing a little ruckus for whatever reason. Eventually she becomes unpopular and people start clapping in rhythm as this one guy pushes her out of the room. I was still at that time pondering whether to clap along but wasn't sure who it would have encouraged.

And then I'm walking down the street, and I'm having some outer inner monologue talking about how attractive this certain woman I know is while I'm walking by. She, acting a little offended, tries to give me a soft round-house kick to the rear but I catch her leg and put it back down, and continue on. She's apparently a little impressed. We're clearly destined to be together. Onward to a laid-back restaurant where I talk with some of my friends. They're a little less impressed about something or other but I order up a round of marijuana cigarettes and this cheers them up.

Next day I'm walking down the street again and I see a random door open on a brick building and go in. I don't know what I'm looking for but I wander around. I cut through an elevator with a mirror in it, see myself, smirk, and walk out the side of the elevator into another room. I continue to wander around for a bit, find something (gosh, I don't remember what), and I go back outside. The sky is getting darker but not the same way it gets dark when night falls or an eclipse starts. A wise man next to me mentions that the darkness will start resolving into squarish shapes eventually. Perhaps these are the Vogons, come to clear a path for a hyperspace lane.