David Goldberg's Dream Journal

Friday, March 31, 2006

[Interestingly, I more or less had the same dream all night. I would dream it, then wake up, then go back to sleep and continue a dream with the same theme. I will try to weave as much as I remember of all the dreams together.]

I was in a field in a slave state in the pre-civil war era. Some friends and I (we were all slaves) were walking towards the house when an overseer saw us. We bowed our head, acted very contrite, and said we has been summoned to the house. This ploy worked (we were lying) and we continued on to the house.

I was in a large house, or perhaps hotel. I could feel an evil presence permeating it. At one point, in one of the rooms, I picked up an object (an everyday one, like a coaster). This was the key to the alternate demon dimension that lay in that room. I entered the demon dimension and the scenery changed to be dark, rusty, and bloody. I walked through various hallways. Every so often, I would be accosted by demons that roamed them and I had to beat them off with a very short stick that I held. After a long time of wandering I came to the source of power in this dimension and destroyed it and re-entered the real world.

I was back in the house (or hotel) and still had the stick in my hand. My friends from Brown and I had come to this house on spring break. [It is unclear whether we knew the house was haunted before we got there or we only discovered that once we came.] I went to find Ray and Evelyn who were in the room they were sleeping in. They asked me how it had gone and I told them of my success. They were very happy to hear that, but told me that they had to be getting back home and would be packing up. I went down the hall into another bedroom where some friends of mine were staying. It was late (3am, I think) and so my friend David Grunwald was in bed asleep. Hagar, on the other hand, was awake and said hello to me and then continued her phone conversation. She was talking to a friend or family member in Hebrew so I couldn't understand what she was saying. At one point, I heard my name and McDonalds in one sentence so I asked her what she had just said. [Unfortunately, I don't remember what her response was.]

I left that room and found myself in another room with a television in it. The room itself was curved such that there were three windows on the back wall all at different angles (like half a hexagon). Although I didn't find it odd in the dream, there was light coming through the windows even though it was suppposed to be 3am. On the television, the Chicago Bears were playing the Green Bay Packers and winning 10-6. I believe my father was in the room watching as well and then I turned around and saw my friend Kosta sitting in a recliner. He said, "Isn't it great to have real football on television again after so long?" I replied in the affirmative, but remember thinking that this seemed like a very short time between the Super Bowl and October. Could it really be October already?

I returned to the hallway with the bedrooms that I was in before. It is at this point I realized that the house we were in was the one that my Aunt Karin and Uncle Myron used to live in and this was the second floor hallway away from the master bedroom. I went into the bedroom that Ray and Evelyn had been in before, but now my Aunt Annalee was staying there. We exchanged some pleasant conversation and I then checked the dresser in the room for the key that would open the way to the next demon dimension. There were various things on the dresser - some newspapers, boxes with jewelry, decorative knick-knacks, and other stuff not too of the ordinary. I did discover a strange stone with a jewel inset. I immediately knew that this item helped protect you from the power of the demons and the stone showed how much power it had (black when at full power, then shifting colors from red to blue to white, like one of those things that changes color based on heat). My eyes then noticed a yo-yo and I grabbed it, realizing it would be the perfect weapon to fight demons because of its range (or, at the very least, it would be better than the stick I had been using). I was excited about this, told my Aunt, and then went to find my parents and tell them about it. [Because now I was staying in this house with my aunt and parents instead of my friends.]

My parents were staying in the room that David and Hagar had previously occupied. They were packing when I came in because they were getting ready for the next day when we would leave. I was annoyed because I didn't want to leave while there was still an evil presence in the house, but I didn't say anything. They also mentioned that it was late and I realized that I hadn't had much sleep. I told them about the yo-yo and they agreed that it would help to fight the demons. My dad was especially happy because of his memories of playing with yo-yos when he was a kid. As I left their room, I went to test out the yo-yo and found that it didn't work right. The string was tangled, and when I untangled it, I discovered the weight was imbalanced [And at one point it seemed like the yo-yo wasn't even round, but was star-shaped). I had seen another yo-yo in my aunt's room, and headed there.

It is possible that I took a nap before I got there, because I think it was 6am when I arrived. The door to her room was slightly closed, so I knocked and she told me to come in. She was also packing, but she was leaving before my parents and I. I told her I need another yo-yo and went to the dresser and found a nice green one, tested it, and happily took it. I noticed another yo-yo on the dresser and mentioned about the number of yo-yos. My mother or father was also in the room and said, "Well, with the two extra yo-yos, you could respond to that classified ad." I remembered, when I was in the room before, one of the newspapers was on the classified section and there was a strange ad by a man who wanted two yo-yos. My aunt then mentioned that when she was young, she and her father would go through the classifieds finding interesting entries. I knew this was no coincidence and looked for the paper with the ad. When doing so, I found a piece of stone that was painted or stained brown and looked like it had been chipped off some structure.

I left the room and heard my mom telling my aunt about where the food was so she could fix herself some breakfast (this was when I realized that it was 6am). I went into the room I was staying in to rest and take stock. While there, I checked on the dresser of that room. For some reason, this room belonged to one of my cousins - Annalee's sons. On the dresser were toys that he had played with, including three Voltron figures. Two of them were just the giant robot, but the third was the giant robot made out of the individual lions. Happy to make this discovery, I began taking it apart to pose the various lions. When I did so, I broke part of it, but it wasn't serious because it turns out it snaps together like Legos. So I began attempting to snap it back together. I wasn't having a lot of luck - any way I would turn it and snap it would make it not quite right. Then I heard a blood-curdling scream.

I ran out of my room and realized the scream was coming from my Aunt's room. I ran in and no one was there, but the screaming was coming from a room adjoining it. I ran into that room and my long-time family friend Hilary Gerstein was in there screaming. I ran to her and attempted to hug her and tell her things would be alright. She shrugged me off and pointed to a sign in the corner. I looked and saw that it said "Hella". I knew that wasn't right and realized the evil force must have changed the letters. I further realized that the evil force must be asserting itself and had given me the wrong yo-yo and then prevented me from re-assembling Voltron. By this point my parents had come in the room to see what the matter was. I told them and we knew that the way to overcome this was the power of positive thinking. The evil force fed on fear and so by blocking your fear and standing up to it, you could see it off. So my parents and I all held each other and started yelling at the sign. We yelled that we weren't afraid of its cheap parlour tricks and then began yelling epithets, telling it to "fuck off" and that it was just a bunch of fucking stupid stunts. This worked and the sign changed back to "Hilsy" which is what it should have been. I either had or noticed one of the stones to keep away evil in the room and saw that it was on green. I figured this was another trick and so I held the stone and concentrated and it turned black again.

My parents and I left the room. I realized that this incident meant I needed to stop dallying and find and shut down the next evil dimension. The incident also had a profound effect on my father. He had heretofore been unmotivated about the evil presence in the house, but decided it was time he did something about it. He left and I began to explore the house to find the next demon dimenson opening. I went into the kitchen and noticed the tile there seemed somewhat close to the piece of stone I had in my pocket. I followed it into an adjoining room to the kitchen which was almost like a greenhouse - there were large glass windows taking up almost the entire wall and there were plenty of plants. The sun was shining fairly brightly (considering it was supposed to be 6am).

I continued and was now outside the house on the side near the pool. It was very sunny out. The hill was up a slight hill and there was a small, maybe 2 foot wall before the hill. There were some trees and plenty of green grass around. My father was here as this is where his investigations had led him. I said hello and we walked along the side of the house. Other people were out there walking and my father and I kept close together. I suddenly had a flashback to earlier, being the slaves walking along the grass toward the house and realized it was similar to that. The flashback was a vision that left me disoriented and I felt all the people walking along were out to get us so I clutched close to my father. I was shaken out of it when two people walked up to us and I realized they were friendly and just wanted to talk to us.

It was Wilford Brimley and Pierce Brosnan. Brimley introduced them as agents that had been working on this house for awhile. They didn't have a lot of information on the location of the demon dimensions, but they knew one was close by and was outside here. While he was saying this, Brosnan had been crawling around Brimley's legs, hiding behind them, and ocasionally poking his head out. I thanked them for confirming that we were in the right spot. I looked left at the wall and then it hit me. While the wall had some sort of tile stones on it, between the stones, the cement that held them together was painted brown - the same color as the stone I had. This meant we just had to go along the wall and look for a missing piece of cement and that would be the entrance to the demon dimension.

[I wake up.]

Monday, March 06, 2006

[I am combining two dreams in one entry as I had them both on the same night and feel they are somewhat related]

I was in a position to be privy to national security information. Thus, I was in a meeting that included the president and high-ranking military officers [All of which were pretty much the ones from the new Battlestar Galactica]. We were there to watch a security tape. It showed various people walking through metal detectors and they froze on one that showed a known Cylon agent walking through the metal detector. The implications of all this dawned on us with an "Oh shit!" sense.

It wasn't just that a known Cylon agent had slipped through our security network. That was bad, of course, but at least this gave us some information on her movement and we could use that to try to track her down. What was really bad was that anyone with level 4A clearance could obtain these security videos. This basically meant that any politician or military officer of decent rank could obtain them and the implications were that our political opponent [presumably Gaius Baltar] could obtain them and use them against us in the campaign. He could say that we weren't doing enough for national security and this might cost us the election.

After the meeting adjourns, I am now outside and am now a boy of 10-14 years. Moreover, I am a boy of Asian (Chinese?) descent. I am hanging out with some friends outside the apartment complex where we all live and we are standing in a grassy area outside where a "free speech" podium has been set up. In turn, various citizens get up, stand in front of it, and start talking about an issue that concerns them. None of them are very eloquent and many sound a bit crazy in their zeal for one particular issue or another. My friends find all of this fairly amusing, but eventually it gets dark and people stop. Besides, we all want to get home to see the presidential debate that night.

I leave my friends and walk into the apartment. It is not a very nice apartment, being made mostly of concrete, and seems to be intended as low-income housing. There is open-air access to all the rooms - like a motel where you walk up a flight of steps exposed to the outside to get the second floor. The apartment I live in with my parents is on the first floor. Their business [a souvenir store or something like that] is adjacent to our apartment and as I pass it, I get an ominous feeling. It is dark and closed while I know that it should still be open.

I open the door and yell for my dad, but get no answer. I become worried and run down the outside hall of the apartment complex yelling for my father. I know that my parents have some secret and have suspected that they are terrorist sympathizers. I get to the door of our apartment and open it, still yelling for my parents [or possibly just my father]. It is also dark and their seems to be no one around. I would have expected my parents to be sitting on the couch with the television on getting ready to watch the presidential debate. I walk in and head toward the kitchen. At this point, my father comes out [not my father in real life - in this part of the dream I am a Chinese-American kid and so my father is Chinese]. I try to talk to him, but he is paying me no attention and just wanders through the living room while sobbing. With a lump in my throat, I turn on the television.

On television, it is still the pre-debate speeches. The venue for the debates is an outdoor stage that is adjacent to the river. It is near a major bridge that connects the city to another one [picture, perhaps, Penn's Landing in Philadelphia near the Ben Franklin bridge or maybe Golden Gate park in San Francisco by the bridge]. The pre-debate speeches are where people working on each campaign get a chance to go up to the podiums and give a five-minute speech on behalf of their candidate. After a few minutes of this, the announcer on television says that the president has arrived and the camera shows her limo and her and various aides getting out of it.

But now, I see what the television does not. Cars have been driving across the bridge and my mother is driving one of them. Suddenly, she swerves and her car careens across the bridge and over the side. There is then a huge explosion and pieces of the bridge go flying toward the outdoor stage, meanwhile a huge wave of water splashes across the land covering everything in a depth of of eight feet of water. As the water starts to recede and I can seem the flaming wreckages more clearly, I realize that almost everyone who was there has been killed. Both candidates are presumably dead and this will throw the election and society in chaos. What a powerful move by the terrorists [Cylons?] who happen to be my parents. One camera, which was far enough away to avoid the destruction is now showing the aftermath of the attack. There are a handful of survivors. As the camera pans, I see that one is my mother. The news reporter claims that she is a doctor and remarks, "It is complete chaos, but thhere is one doctor here who is helping the victims in the best way she can."

[I wake up. After a few minutes of pondering this dream that really got to me, I manage to get back to sleep.]

I am walking down the streets of a city [I believe it is Providence]. I am skipping work because I have something else important to do and am in a hurry to get somewhere. I notice my Ph.D. advisor, Matthew, walking down the street towards me. I know that if he sees me, he will give me work to do and I don't have time for that now. I duck down a side street and step into a phone booth, hoping that is enough cover. Some friends see me in the phone booth and say hello and start talking to me. I cringe at this, but have to keep up appearanaces and say hello. Unfortunately, Matthew apparently hears this conversation and comes down the street to talk to me. He asks what I'm up to and I say that I can't make it to the softball game today. He understands this, but lets me know that he needs some assignments graded and asks me to pick them up and do so. I grudgingly accept.

Apparently, the papers are in a sushi restaurant as that is where I end up. I go through the cafeteria-style line and pick the various pieces that I want. Along the way, I pick up the papers I need. I also run into two students in the class that I am friendly with. They are both a few years younger than me [either undergrads or early-year grad students], one being a white male, the other an Asian female. I am happy to run into the male [I feel like his name was George - even if not that's what I'll call him from here on out] and invite them to sit with me. We chat about various things. We talk about a book they had to read for the class. The conversation then turns to a restaurant the woman once worked at where she had to quit because they wanted her to wear a skimpy outfit. I then bring up the Paragon Grill in Providence which was known for only hiring hot women and having them wear all black outfits including relatively short black skirts [That is true, by the way]. We then adjourn, and I ask George to meet me at my downtown apartment shortly.

I can now start to put my plan into effect. You see, I am not just an ordinary graduate student. In high school, I was Batman Beyond. With the help of Bruce Wayne, I would patrol the city in a bat-suit and fight crime. But he died a couple years ago and since then, I haven't been able to wear the suit. He left me a good amount of his fortune so I was comfortable, but I couldn't bear to live in Wayne Manor and had gotten an apartment downtown. The city had been relatively stable for the past couple years, but recently it had gotten worse. Villains and terrorists had started to wreak havoc. Now that it was night time in the city, its sinister element was visible.

About a month previous, I had been forced to wear the bat-suit once more to combat a big villain. While doing so, I had the help of someone else in a big powered armor suit. At the end of the battle, this turned out to be George. His powered armor had been destroyed in the battle and I don't believe he learned my identity during it. Realizing that the city still was not safe, I knew I would once again have to be Batman Beyond. But I wanted to help. Using my financial resources and technical know-how, I rebuilt the powered armor that George had used and was going to ask him to join me.

I arrived at my downtown apartment and split my underwear just as I got there. I went into the secret basement chamber and began putting the superhero costumes back together, performing welding and wiring on the bat-suit and the powered armor. George arrived not long after, still with the woman he was with earlier. I figured she could help out as well and brought them both back down to the basement chamber with the suits. The woman was shocked that I was Batman, while George had suspected as much. He was reluctant to accept my offer to patrol the city together, but eventually realized that it was for the best. Together, the three of us discussed plans for how to combat the villains of the city, how to work together, and how to make it safe once again.

[I wake up]

Friday, June 03, 2005

I am being interviewed for a job at Microsoft. I am seated at the head of a large, wooden, dark [if I knew anything about types of wood, I would speculate on what kind] board room table - the kind stereotypically seen in movies or in The Apprentice. Even though we are at a board room table, the setting is not actually a board room - it is actually like the table is outside, on a patio perhaps as we are surrounded by what appears to be a grass lawn. There are three other people at the table with me. There is a woman - the HR person who is in charge of my interview and hiring process. Like most HR people, she is fairly attractive. There are two suits sitting at the table - older gentlmen in their 50s maybe who are stereotypical businesspeople. The final person is Chris Griffin [a friend from high school].

The two suits and Chris Griffin are throwing interview questions at me. The first question comes from Chris Griffin and he says, "I'm about to get a new motorboat for use on the ocean and am considering getting an HR-1000 [or some similar combination of letters and number] engine for it. What do you think about that?"

I pause for a second and reply, "Well, while I have been in a motorboat on the ocean, and have driven one, and have even used one to go after someone who was..." (I pause here - I am trying to think of the term used when someone is kidnapped at sea. I have a vivid memory in my head of foiling some sea crime that took place) "...Shanghaied, I actually have little experience with the equipment of the boat. So, I would have to do a bit of research to determine if that was a good engine. I would google boat engines to get an idea and consult knowledgable friends about it and then I would get back to you." [I was attempting to show the interviewers that I was knowledgable about the sea, though not this particular topic and I was not too arrogrant to think I knew everything and knew how to find information on my own when needed.]

After that answer, I tried to determine how I did but their faces were impassive. Everyone then got up from the table and walked around the corner. Confused (was my interview over?), I followed and caught up to my HR woman who smiled at me and waved me on to catch up with them. I then realized that the interview would continue in another place. She had a look that wondered why I hadn't immediately followed after them.

I ran on and caught up with Chris Griffin. He pointed me to some players running around on a field in the distance. He mentioned that, when the interview was done, I could join the softball team for their practice so that I could meet some new people and see what it had been like. I guess my HR person had mentioned that I played softball.

[I wake up]

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

I was living in an out-of-the-way cabin in the woods somewhere. The setting was reminiscent of where Johnny Depp's character lived in Secret Window (though the cabin was different). For years, I had been plagued by bad luck and people close to me dying or being hurt. I realized that it was because of the cursed book. [The dream never made clear when the cursed book came into my possession.] I knew that it was because of the book that I had to live in this remote place so that people I knew would not get hurt.

It was because of the book that I lost my wife. [I'm not sure if there were any details regarding how she was lost.] My son, now 16-18 years of age had come to live with me. He was resigned to accept the curse of the book on our family. When I told him of my latest plan to rid ourselves of the book, he tried (as he had obviously tried before) to talk me out of doing it. He said that, just like every time before, the book would only come back to us, and probably punish us when it did. I was having none of it and began describing my elaborate plan of putting the book in an airtight plastic bag, attaching it to a pully and sending it over the river (or possibly lake).

It was then that my son turned away in disappointment and told me that I would be sorry if this hurt her. By "her", she was referring to my adoptive daughter and his adoptive sister. Because of the book, something had happened to her parents and I had taken her in. She was about eight to ten years old and blonde [she resembled the actress who played Harvey Pekar's adopted daughter in American Splendor]. At then point, she came running by, happily playing in the woods. She had no idea of the curse of the book, nor was she aware of what it had done to her parents. I paused, and then continued my plan to get rid of the book.

[I wake up.]

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

I was in a room that resembled a classroom from my high school. Possibly the art room across from the chorus room on the third floor. I was with a bunch of people and we were opening packs of Star Trek CCG cards onto a wooden table. The set was some special set like a Reflections set because each pack had cards from many different sets. It also had special foiled alternate image cards randomly inserted. I opened a couple packs. Most had three cards from one set, three cards from anothers, etc. with one or two special foiled cards. However, there was the occasional "super" pack which had tons of foiled cards in it.

Along with packs of cards, there were also Micro Machines. We were opening up boxes of these as well. As we opened the boxes up, we would pose them in different configurations. Occasionally we could open the cars and there would be foiled cards inside which we would add to our collection.

We were then called to an executive meeting. [I feel like it took place in the same room, but I also have a distinct memory of getting into a car and being transported to the old Salt Lake Jewish Community Center.] It turns out that we all worked for a corporation that did everything muppet-related. However, this corporation had a secret - the muppets were real, living beings. [I'm not sure if everyone at this meeting knew this secret or just a select few). Despite having this inside knowledge, I felt completely clueless at this meeting, like maybe I had just joined the company and didn't really know what was going on [Similar to dreams where you show up for the exam never having studied or gone to class.] This was compounded when I was given the assignment to write about the previous tensions between our president and our CEO [the tensions had since been worked out] in an article that People magazine wanted. Not only did I not have a clue as to what the actual tensions were [but I did have some vague idea that there were tensions], but I was also charged with doing so without revealing that the muppets were alive [I had some sense that the tensions were related to arguments between muppets.]

I tried to protest being given this assignment, but the assembled crowd (we were all sitting or standing around a square table) was heckling me at my protestations. On the other side of the table I saw some friends [from high school, I believe] and so went over to try to talk to them and get their support. On the way over, I had a brainstorm about how to do the article - I would do it as an interview with the muppets! This way, I could interview the muppets to find out the details about the tensions and the people reading would think that it was a fictitious way of showing what really was going on inside the company. I told my friends this and they thought it was a good idea. Everyone in the meeting then got a slice of pizza.

The meeting then adjourned and I wanted to let the President [it could have been the CEO - it was one of the two high ups] know about my plan. I ran into him as everyone was leaving the building [which was supposed to be the old JCC, but in the dream was on the University of Utah campus.] I told him of my plan and he thought it was a great idea and said that it would even allow using some of the pictures taken during the time of tensions. He asked if I wanted a ride home and I declined because I was going to meet up with Kosta [my current roommate]. After he left me I talked to Kosta on the phone and he asked what I wanted to do about dinner. I told him that I had one slice of pizza and so wasn't very hungry but would be happy to go somewhere I could get a half sandwich or an appetizer.

After I finished talking to Kosta, I noticed Melissa Battis and Laura Seeley [two friends from high school] were having some sort of verbal fight with various people looking on. Laura walked away in a huff and Melissa went to sit down by the side of a building on a slightly hilly incline [which was grassy even though just a moment ago in my dream there had been slow on the ground.] I hadn't seen Melissa in awhile and wanted to see what was going on and so I sat down next to her and asked her how things were going. She gave me a hug and began to recount what had gone on in her life.

[I wake up.]

Saturday, October 11, 2003

[I can't remember the exact beginning of this dream, but I'll start at a beginning point.]

I was at Brown in one of the rooms on the third floor of Faunce. There was a male friend with me [whom I knew well in the dream, but doesn't resemble anyone I really know in real life.] as well as the fresman Sara from Hillel. We were having a meeting and discussing something but I really don't remember what. I had to use the bathroom, so I excused myself and left the room. Now, I had the difficult task of finding the bathroom. Faunce house was a maze [it is a little difficult to navigate through it in real life, but it was much more so in the dream.] I couldn't tell how long a hallway would go before it would end in a wall (and I knew there was more building beyond). I went through a doorway on the third floor and found a stairwell down to the second. I eventually made it to the main hallway (right outside the blue room). And found a men's room a little beyond that.

Once in the men's room, I noticed that one of the urinals was out of order and didn't trust the other two so I headed ovre to a stall. Above the toilet in the stall was a video monitor which was displaying a video game. The game was a modern 3-D game and was some sort of medieval fantasy game. As I started to watch it, a father took his two sons into the restroom and was talking about how great this game was and how he wanted to show it to them.

The game was in "attract" mode and was showing the different characters you could pick and their advancements. First it showed the 'Fighter' character who advanced from Grunt, to Warrior, to Knight, to Defender, etc. At each advancement, the charater's picture changed (generally it got more armor and more impressive weapons) and he could do more and more impressive things. Next I watched the advancement for the 'Cleric' character.

After this, I left the restroom. In the hallway next to the blue room, I ran into Sara and my friend. My friend asked if I had seen the game. He was very excited about it and rushed into the restroom to play with it. Sara told me that she [or perhaps both of them] were worried that I would get lost, knowing how difficult it was to navigate Faunce. I thanked her for her concern, but told her that I remembered there was a restroom near the blue room so I just worked my way toward there.

The dream shifted and I was now in the video game. It looked real, however, and didn't have the computer-generated look. My male friend was with me and we were working our way through a forest. We each had a young (maybe 10-years old) boy with us who we were trying to protect.

We reached the edge of the woods and came upon a large, cleared field, obviously used for farming. We decided our best bet was to work our way along the edge of the field and then try to cross the river. When we got to the river, there was a ferry about to cross so we tried to get on. Suddenly, there was confusion. [I can't remember if there was a storm or we were attacked or what.] I was tossed and thrown on the floor of the raft and lost track of my friend and my charge.

When I got my bearings again, I was still back on the original side of the river. There were men on horses charging around and I knew I should do my best to avoid them. [I don't remember if they captured me or if I walked/ran there of my own volition.] I ended up at a house near where we had originally exited the woods. There were several men milling about. They were all slaves of the owner of the farm and were getting ready for their duties. The slave supervisor was explaining to the newcomers (which included me) that we would be required to pull these giant plows (like we were oxen). If we fell behind or stumbled, we would likely be crushed.

Everyone was given a cloak to put on which would help them attach to the plow. I was thankful for this, because I still had my backpack with several tools and devices and this would help me to hide it. We then quickly had to get in to the bus which would take us out to the field. I hadn't quite hidden my backpack at this point and so hunched against the corner of a seat and a wall of the bus while trying to adjust my cloak. While doing this, I was reunited with my friend. He hadn't been lucky enough to hang onto his backpack and, while he had gotten a new backpack, there wasn't much of use he had managed to put into it. He told me that the best chance to escape was right after they let us off the bus and so we planned just that. I took a thunderstone out of my backpack in case I needed to deter any pursuers.

Once the bus stopped and everyone got off, we ran away. We went past the large collection of building that made up the town and came back to the area we had originally left the woods. It was at this point that one of the guards caught up to us. I threw my thunderstone at him (trying to make sure my friend wasn't in range to get hit) but it didn't seem to phase him. I fished another thunderstone out of my backpack. By this time, the guard had got his whip out so I quickly threw it at him, but again, it had no noticable effect. I finally decided, I would have to do more than distract him and went to fish my only weapon (a dagger) out of the side pocket of my backpack. While doing this, the guard was whipping at me, and occasionally would hit him a painful sting. Once I got the dagger out, I waited once for him to whip me and then ran in and stabbed the guard in the chest. He staggered and slumped to the ground. My friend and I started to walk away, but the guard stirred so I had to make sure he stayed there.

Our two young charges came running out of the woods. We were relieved to see them. They were playing with some sort of fishing wire. The hook got stuck on the lip of one (I believe he was my charge). Feeling disaster in the air, we yelled at them to stop moving. My heart was in my throat as I could just imagine the young boy's lip getting ripped off. Though they didn't both stop in time for no injury, all that happened was a scratch in the lip.

My friend and I then headed past the house near the entrance (where we had gotten ready to go on the bus). I noticed that there were some people on the porch. One of them was an attractive lady who looked like Julia Roberts sitting in a rocking chair. We continued on past that house to the buildings of the town where there were several more people milling about. My friend ran on ahead to meet someone he had met - and fell in love with. He was white and she was black. I looked back toward Julia Roberts, wondering if she might become my lover. Meanwhile, the townspeople were very wary of my friend's relationship, because if they were found out, they would get in huge trouble. This angered me and so I started giving a speech about how we shouldn't care what the powers that be think. While saying this, a diagram of various people appeared and I would highlight various pairs and say how any relationship between them should be fine. I used this opportunity to encourage the townspeople to rebel against the wealthy landowner that was enforcing this lifestyle upon them.

[I wake up.]

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

[To anyone who thinks that I have too much television on the brain, this dream will confirm it.]

The Gargoyles and the elite group of humans that fought with them had been caputred. Their captors were The Pack along with a few other allies, one of whom looks like Upchuck from Daria. The only Gargoyle allies who have not been captured are one of the elite group of humans [possibly the leader - I don't remember], Bronx, and Elisa. The captors do not know where the Gargoyles were resting during the day, but they know where they used to rest and are planning to storm and destroy that place in case the rest of the group might be there.

Some muppet-like creatures that live underground where the captors are keeping the Gargoyles have observed all this. They are all inanimate objects (a ball, a washcloth, etc.) that are somehow imbued with life and move in a muppet-like fashion. They do not like what The Pack and their cohorts have done. Especially because they know that the group has some plan to give themselves incredible magical power. They decide that they have to do something about this and the white washcloth volunteers to go and try to find the remaining, uncaptured Gargoyles allies. They also don't know where the Gargoyles rest during the day. But, they do know where they used to rest because before the Gargoyles were there, the muppets used to hang out there.

The white washcloth climbed up a sewer pipe and emerged into what looked like a first or second grade classroom. The evil Upchuck was there, except he was the age of the kids in the class. He was telling them that soon he would be incredibly powerful and they would be sorry they ever made fun of him. He then left and a the class [which I was now with] watched some cartoon commercial on the television. I decided that I might as well try to fast forward through it. So I took the remote and did so. I suddenly realized that I had thought that we were watching live television so I didn't understand how the remote could work and then rewound a little bit. Finally, I came to the realization it must be a video and fast-forwarded through the commercials.

The white washcloth continued on its journey and finally made it into the house where it knew the Gargoyles used to say. It slowly moved toward the door of the house when it saw someone coming. It was Rob Lowe [who I believe had Bronx with him] who was the free member of the elite human team [although earlier in the dream when it showed the free member of the elite human team, it didn't look like Rob Lowe]. He was wearing a white terry-cloth robe and muttering about "where could the Gargoyles be? I've got to find them."

To get his attention, the white washcloth then made the only sound it could - a noise like what Cousin It made on The Adaams Family. [It was at this point that I was playing the role of the white washcloth.] Rob Lowe noticed this and walked over to the washcloth. It could tell it was trying to communicate with him and sensed it knew something about the Gargoyles. However, the white washcloth could only make amoeba-like movements and had limited control over a pseudopod. Rob Lowe picked it up, brought it over to a dressing table (like the table that is in the back of dressing rooms with a mirror where people put on their make-up), and began sketching out some symbols so that they would have some way of communicating better (since he knew the white washcloth could understand everything he was saying, but couldn't necessarily communicate to him).

Rob Lowe made a square and said it meant something [I can't remember what - building, possibly], and then a triangle and said it meant something else, and one more symbol. Neither was very helpful to me when trying to communicate, so I somehow got a bunch of triangles pointing down, stacked on top of each other and pointed to it (moving downwards) with my pseudopod to express the sentiment that they were underground. However, Rob Lowe could not understand what I was trying to say. We tried a few more things, but nothing seemed to work. Then, I saw a whiteboard in the mirror and thought that, by pointing to that, I could maybe get across the idea of the classroom that the Pack was hiding under. I tried pointing to it in the mirror, but Rob Lowe kept thinking I was pointing to something else. I then realized that the whiteboard was on the dressing table and pointed to that directly. Rob Lowe realized that something had to do with the whiteboard and found a red marker for it. I tried to pick it up with my pseudopod and draw on it, but it was very hard for me to control. Meanwhile, I looked out the door because I knew at some point, The Pack would come to destroy this place.

[I wake up.]

Friday, May 02, 2003

I was in an airport. Or perhaps I was just planning a trip. Regardless, I was looking over an itinerary I had planned. It was somewhat complicated, because it was a multi-city trip where I needed to do something in each city. It was something like that I was flying one-way Salt Lake to Denver, then Denver to another city, that city to Philadelphia, and then back to Denver. I could see this itinerary on a giant map of the US and suddenly I realized that I had a flaw in my itinerary. I ended in Denver and still needed to get back to Salt Lake!

I considered my options. Probably it would be cheapest to try to buy a ticket on Southwest from Denver to Salt Lake. Unfortunately, the current day in the dream was the day that I returned to Denver, so I had to buy the plane ticket the day I wanted to fly. I figured it would probably be around $300 and was afraid that I might not have that kind of money left in my bank account. I considered calling up my parents and telling them what happened because I knew that they could get me the money I needed. I end up talking to them and telling them what is going on, but I don't actually ask them for money.

Since I have some time to kill before my flight takes off, I walk through the airport to check out some of the shops in it. The airport looks a lot like the "T" terminal of the Atlanta airport. I eventually find a bookstore and enter. It seems that I am looking for a specific book which I want to give to someone as a gift. Patty is in the store and is looking for books with me. She points to one of the shelves at the back of the room and says, "Look, it's the new Principia Mathematica. The one with Church of Brad people in it."

I look to where she is pointing and see this large (a foot tall maybe), voluminous book with an off-white, textured cover (like many older books) and black script on it. I take it off the shelf and figure I'll buy it to show off to people and then return it.

I look at the front cover and see the author list. There are four and they are all pseudonyms. [I forget who the first author was.] The second author is "The Meme". The names of the third and fourth authors are similar. One is "R. L. Esteban" or something like that and the other is "The Right Honorable Esteban" or something like that. I realize that someone from Church of Brad must be one of these anonymous authors. I start to flip through Principia Mathematica and see that it is in a dictionary format. Most of the entries are Latin words which I do not understand, but the definitions tend to be in English.

Eventually, I turn to the entry on Neil. It is a positive description of him and ends by paraphrasing a phrase he is known to say [In the dream he is known to say it - in real life I have never known him to say something like this], "And if I ever meet him, I'd be happy to share a bottle of old (35 or 89) whiskey of 92." I remember him saying this and either go to the chat room and see him say it or just remember being in the chat room and seeing him say it.

Principia Mathematica came with some post-it note bookmarks, so I put one on the Neil entry so that I can show it to others. I flip through the book and find another Church of Brad person (Patty, I think). I then realize that I am in my bedroom in Salt Lake, sitting on my bed while reading the book. However, my bedroom is somehow connected to my parents' house because I can hear them making weekend breakfast. I decide to try looking up one more person (Dr. Bob, I believe), but it becomes very difficult to turn the pages and handle the book. I accidentally shut it closed and have to use the bookmark to open it again.

The scene then shifts and I am sitting around a table with my father and a girl who looks like Tamar Gur [a girl in my high school who was a year older than me.] She is discussing this big fight she got into with some other girl in the lunch room during her senior year over her boyfriend. [While she is describing this, I am watching it happen.] Because of the fight, a nutri-grain bar was dropped on the lunch room floor. When the girl that Tamar was arguing with leaves, she steps on it. Tamar then describes wanting to go over to the freezer in the lunch room where all the ice cream bars and popsicles are kept and carefully crawl in. While in there, she would eat them and look for a special green glowing switch. Some first or second grade class then entered the lunch room and Tamar was really embarrassed by this, so she picked up the smooshed nutri-grain bar and ate it.

I mention that I think I saw this fight. Then I realize that I'm probably talking about the catfight that I saw in 9th grade. All I really remember of the fight she is describing is being at the top of the stairs that lead down to the lunch room and hearing someone yell "bitch".

There is another shift in the dream and I am sitting with my family (at least father and Karen and Dara) in the living room of what I know to be a summer rental house that we were living in [Perhaps it was at the New Jersey shore?]. There was a couch and an easy chair. On the back wall was a television with winodws behind it and the sun was shining through a bit. I believe the walls of the room were an unpainted, dark wood. The television is on and we are all watching it until two people decide to go for a walk. I want to join them, because I think what they are talking about is interesting, but I know they want to exclude another person in the room and so probably won't invite me along.

I head into the kitchen and someone [I think she looks like Anya from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer] is doing dishes. The dream shifts so that it is the point in a Buffy, The Vampire Slayer season where it is a few episodes away from the end and everyone knows that the confrontation with the "big bad" is coming soon. Then, I become Dawn [or maybe the Anya-like woman is Dawn because I have a memory of seeing Dawn - then again, I think the woman washing dishes begins to look more like Tara. I know I'm not Willow, but I believe I'm female.] Some music starts playing and I sing along because it is about how I would never let anything happen to her and have to protect her, etc. When there is a break in the lyrics (i.e. the song has a portion of just music), I am incredulous that I was able to sing along since I've never heard the song before. I say to the woman I was singing to, "I must have written this song or something because I know what every lyric is going to be!" However, when the singing starts up again, I am no longer able to sing along.

Another shift and I am myself again and my dad and sisters Karen and Dara are in the kitchen. Karen is drying dishes. Dara and my father have agreed to go on a walk together and I would like to join them, but I realize that they kind of wanted the time to themselves and they especially don't want Karen along so I don't say anything because I know I won't be accepted.

My dad and Dara get on their coats and I glance at the clock and notice that it is 4:30. I ask my dad what time the Sixers game starts. He says it starts at 3:00pm Eastern so there is still a half hour. I correct him, saying that 3:00pm Eastern means that it has already been going on for a half hour. He realizes that what I'm saying is correct so we go back into the living room where the television is still on and I fumble with the remote, trying to find NBC. The television has been muted (because someone was listening to music - probably the music I was just singing) and, as I flip through channels, I find an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 on. The episode appears to have Cal Hudson in it [However he was on the station which he never was in the show.]

[I wake up.]

Sunday, April 06, 2003

[I don't quite remember how this dream began, but this is the what I remember of it.]

Some friends and I had gotten tickets to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and were on our way to the studio. There was a shopping mall connected to the studio and I dallied to look at something. When I looked up, all my friends had gone on and I realized that I was going to be late for the taping so I hurried in.

There was a lady there who was in charge of seating people and she gave me a sort of look for being late, but then seated me next to my friends. The studio was arranged so that there were audience seats behind where Jon Stewart would be standing as well as the regular ones that faced him. I was surprised that we had been seated in the seats that faced Jon Stewart insted of the ones behind him because the last time I was on the show, I had been in the behind seats. [Only in the dream - the real show only has facing seats.] Then I realized that more famous people got to be in the behind seats as I saw Michael Moore come into the studio and sit in them.

I then noticed that there were some really disruptive "kids" (probably 18-25) in the behind seats. They were yelling and throwing paper airplanes and taunting the other audience memebers. The woman who had been seating people went to deal with them and it was all I could do to stay in my seat and not help her. As she went off to deal with them, Jon Stewart walked in to do his audience warmup. He started talking to some audience member about some small-talk (the weather, maybe). Then he saw me and recognized me from the last time I was on the show.

"Hey David! [he may have said my last name, too] Man, we almost got in some big trouble over that Ben Affleck thing."

[The dream then underwent a rapid shift.] I was now in a slightly futuristic building (maybe about 50 years into the future). The walls and floor were slightly red-orange in color. There were windows that let in quite a bit of light. There were also columns holding up the building. In addition there were various computer terminals and electronic gadgets scattered around.

There was a group of about 20 of us, many of whom were my friends from college. We were a group of people that were more stupid than the ruling race (perhaps we had been gentically engineered to be that way or perhaps we were just a separate race/species) and were therefore used mostly for menial labor. [Throughout this section of the dream, I was of two minds - one was the less intelligent mind of myself in the dream who was actually doing something while the other was my mind in real life that was more like an observer to the situation.] Some disease had hit the smarter, ruling race and had killed them off. There was only one surviving member (that we knew of) left, and he was sick and not doing well.

An alarm went off, signifying that one of the generators was failing (or something like that). I had learned that this was something that needed to be fixed, but I had no clue of the severity of the situation (if it wasn't fixed in a certain amount of time, the station would explode and we would all die). To me, it was just another job that needed to be done. I briefly consulted with the one person of the "smart" race that was left and then took a woman with me to help repair it. It was obvious that the "smart" person didn't have the confidence in my mental faculties to be able to fix it without him.

The woman and I headed down to the generator room where I removed the broken component. She handed be a chip that I needed to replace in the generator circuit board. There was a digital clock above the generator, signifying how much time we had left before the generator exploded. I still had no concept of the danger of the situation - to me it was like a game to replace the chip before the timer hit zero. I started trying to replace the chip, but I saw that some of the contacts had been bent. I spent about two minutes bending contacts and trying to put the chip in before I finally got it. I replaced the circuit board into the generator, closed the hatch, and heard a satisfying whoosh of air when the generator restarted. The timer showed that I had done it with 32 seconds to spare.

I looked at the woman and decided that I was in the mood for sex. I proposed this to her and she agreed so we headed off to one of the rooms specifically designed for us "lesser race" to have sex in. We walked outside to get to this room. The outside looked like some sort of resort area. Very beautifully manicured lawns, with well-kept walkways and a fountain in the middle, surrounded by what looked like hotel-room buildings [Basically self-contained suites with a large bedroom, small kitchen/living room area, and bathroom.] These were the "sex" rooms and so we tried a few until we found one that looked clean (with the disease hitting the people, we didn't have time to make up the rooms). The inside also looked like a hotel suite.

We started to kiss and hold each other when we were paged by the other "stupid" people. They wanted us to attend a meeting about something. My obserer-mind realized that we, the "stupid" race, were inheriting the world from the smarter race.

[I wake up.]

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

I was on the playground at Miquon above the library (with the Kindergarten nearby). Many of us were eating lunch. Then we all had to prepare for the battle. It turns out the it was a civil war re-enactment. I was an advanced scout and went to take my position on top of a wooden structure (somewhat like the playbarn - it was where the jungle gym equipment would have been). I waiting, hearing the approach of a coming confederate force.

Instead of wearing blue the grey, the union side was wearing a bright, perhaps cerulean blue and the confederate side was wearing red. When the first couple of confederate soldiers appeared, I began firing with my rifle. There were a few other union soldiers on the structure with me, but they were quickly taken out by the confederate soldiers shooting their rifles.

Fortunately, an attachment of union forces then arrived to distract the confederate soldiers that had been firing at the wooden structure. I continued to fire my rifle and avoid being hit. However, the confederate soldier had then advanced to the structure, so instead of fight hand to hand, I retreated and let them take it. I joined up with the union soldiers.

Another group of union soldiers arrived and the union won. All the people then gathered in the center of the field and held each others' shoulders to show that, no matter what side we were on, we were all brothers. At this point I noticed that we had an audience watching us and a lunch buffet was placed in the center of the field and a big announcer voice came over a loudspeaker saying that, for those who hadn't eaten at 11:30, lunch was now available. It was 1pm.

[I wake up.]

Thursday, March 06, 2003

I had invited John [a friend I only know online] over to my house to play. "My house" was actually my parents' house, but we were playing in my room (on the old rug that used to be in there). We were playing the first edition Star Trek CCG, but with new rules that retrofit it to be more like second edition. We had a big stack of cards from which we would make decks (all in clear plastic sleeves). I had just put down a big stack of cards and was playing a card in my hand when we decided it was time for lunch.

It was 8pm, but John had gottem up at 1pm, so this was an appropriate lunch time for him. The dream kind of skipped over us actually eating dinner and now we were sitting at my desk (or standing by it, perhaps). My old computer (Performa 450) was on the desk and we were surfing the web on it and then continued to play the game.

At 1am, GI Joe comes on the television. This television is mounted on the ceiling in the corner of the room by the desk [I never had a television there.] We stop playing to watch GI Joe. While watching, we decide that it is time for dinner. We walk around the back of my desk [there should be a wall there] through a movie studio to the refrigerator. When we get to the refrigerator, I ask him what he would like for dinner, open it up, and begin naming the things in it.

My mom then comes in and says that there are some pre-made sandwiches [which I would guess to be leftover from one of her student lunches she often had at our house]. She shows them off to John. There are three of them on top of a board - two roast beef sandwiches and one turkey. John decides he wants the turkey and opens up the sandwich to look inside. He pulls out some of the stuff in it (it looks like a mixture of shredded lettuce and some condiment), holds it up and says, "I like this but I want more turkey, mustard, lettuce and [one other thing I can't remember]." I open up the meat drawer of the refrigerator and pull out some sliced turkey and then reach for the mustard on the door.

[I wake up.]

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

I was living in a turn-of-the-century house or building. The floors were hard-wood for the most part and had nice rugs on them. Apparently it was some sort of boarding house or youth hostel or something like that because many other people were living there in rooms with several bunk-beds. My friend Tyrone, from high school, is also living there, along with several attractive young women.

I walk out into a main hallway which leads to a door to the outside. There is a sun porch or something similar off of the hallway. I see quite a few people hanging out in there and walk in to join them. Tyrone is there and is having fun, as well as several of the attractive young women. One is dressed in a sexy, goth manner and I consider having sex with her until I realize that something is not quite right about her and perhaps some of the other girls. Then it hits me that some of them are vampires and are turning others into vampires.

[I forget quite a bit of the dream at this point. I know it involved going to different rooms in the house, seeing the attractive women in various states of undress, seeing one (the goth one, I believe) as a vampire with fangs and deciding she was still hot so I should make out for her (I just made sure not to let her sink her fangs into my neck).I believe there was also a section of driving around in a car with them.]

I go up to the attic of the house because I feel that the key to what is going wrong can be found up there. Opening a chest, I find some old books. I can feel power and magic emanating from them and know that one of them is what summoned the vampires, demons, or whatever malevolent beings are going through this house. The books are all fairly old and their pages yellowing. Finally I get to one book where the text is glowing (in rainbow colors, if I remember correctly). This, I know, must be the book that summoned the demons. I fear that they will find me up here, so I quickly grab all the books, close the chest, and go back down to the bedroom (with at least 10 bunk beds in it).

I have hidden the books in my trunk near my bunk bed. I want to pull out the demon-summoning one and read it so that I can figure out how to stop these vampires. However, I have to try to be very discreet about it because people come in and out of the bedroom area all the time. Tyrone comes in and I think I can trust him, but it's possible he may have become a vampire so I am very careful around him. I pretend to be looking through my trunk for some clothes or something. Or maybe I am putting things away in my trunk, trying to slowly work the demon-summoning book to the top.

[Various other things happen in the bedroom which involve be climbing up to the top bunk or looking through the covers, but I can't quite recall them.]

The dream shifts so that I am now outdoors in fairly bright sunlight (the inside of the house was fairly dark). I am with Jack Bauer [main character from the television series 24]. We are on the trail of the bad guys [it is unclear what exact bad stuff they are doing besides trying to kill Jack and me]. We are driving down the street when we come to some rather non-descript cement buildings with an alleyway between them. Jack has good intelligence that the bad guys have a hideout inside the building so he jumps out.

It is now revealed that we were driving in a school bus. Though Jack has jumped out, the driver and I continue down the road. I look out the window and see that the bad guys are snaking a live electrical line along and under the bus to try to electrocute us (they obviously think that Jack is still aboard). Thinking quickly, I got into my winter jacket to insulate me from the electricity. I manage to do this just as the line is wrapped around the bus and starts pumping electricity into it. The driver is quickly electrocuted. I can feel the volts charging around me, but am alright. However, I am still in my seat-belt and need to get out of it. Since it is metal and I can't touch it, I scrunch my hands into the sleeves of my jacket and undo it with just my sleeves. This does cause quite a shock in me and I roll out of my seat and onto the floor somewhat dazed.

I'm facing the back of the bus and see Nina Myers [a bad guy in the show 24] walking towards it. She thinks that I am dead, but I surprise her by pulling sitting up, pulling out my gun, and shooting her four times. I then open the emergency door at the rear of the bus and get out to inspect the body. Police cars are pulling up, along with a small car with Jack Bauer and 3 attractive young women wearing 2-piece bathing suits [They may have been vampires earlier in my dream.] I'm still not convinced that one of them isn't in on the conspiracy, so I decide to feel her up while we decide which cars we will sit in for the drive back to headquarters.

[I wake up.]

Tuesday, March 04, 2003

I was in a fantasy-Medieval setting. It was a desolate country-side. There was almost no greenery to be seen, just dirt and dead trees, which the sun hot and beating down over-head. I was with several friends from Brown and we were looking over a map, trying to figure out which way to go next. We were either looking for the chosen one who would save the land or one of us was the chosen one and we were looking for the object which would unleash his or her true power. Other people then approached us or something and, not knowing if they were hostile, we all leaped into our wagon and prepared to do battle.

I was then in my parents' house in the guest room. My friends from Brown were still there [Well Dave, Melissa, and Ray were, anyway]. We were standing in the corner of the room by the bed and the dresser for some reason. For some reason, we got into a discussion about buying plane tickets online and Melissa started raving about how Orbitz rocked. The rest of us shot her down saying Expedia was pretty much as good. Then I tried to make the point about while both were good for searching for fares, once you found them you should go to the airlines' site and look for the same flights because you can usually save $5 that way. Melissa got very excited at the prospect of saving money.

I said my last point very loudly and it prompted Ben or Michael [more Brown friends] to open up the door of the guest room and complain. They said we were being very loud and they were trying to sleep. We promised to be quieter and decided to go to sleep ourselves. We all got into the guest room bed [which was significantly larger in the dreams than in real life]. While we were getting under the covers and such, Ray found this green slime like substance and he and Melissa and I started playing with it and trying to put it on each others' skin and such.

[At this point, I can't remember much else of the dream. I know I ended up wondering if Melissa was flirting with me, and at some point I got out of bed, and at some point I ended up naked, but it's all very fuzzy.]

Saturday, March 01, 2003

I was in the world of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. The "scooby gang" and I were in Buffy's house preparing for some massive attack by demons and vampires. We all had weapons out and at the ready. Willow was preparing a spell that would prevent anyone that entered a building from leaving. This was so that any vampire or demon that entered a house would not be able to get out and could only hurt the denizens of that house. There was some discussion as to why to perform a spell like this instead of one to keep them all out. I believe the reasoning was that this spell was easier to maintain.

Buffy, meanwhile, was worried about Dawn. She was not in the house with the rest of us, but had rather decided to undertake a dangerous mission. The dream then cut to show us her perspective. She was in an underground tunnel, it looked like a mine shaft or something. The walls were caked with dirt and there were woodens beams holding it up. She was being chased by a super-vampire - one that was very old and thus very un-human-looking and was also very hard to kill. Every so often, the earth would rumble slightly and dirt would fall onto the her and the vampire chasing her.

Her mission was to lure the vampire into a trap that could kill it. Finally, she reached the appropriate turn in the tunnels and began running through the specially prepared tunnel. The tunnel started off with some traps of tripwires and blades that shot out of the wall. Then there were near-invisible blades from wall to wall that were meant to decapitate or otherwise sever a body part. At this point in the dream, it switched to first person perspective and I became her. Having an ability to just-barely see the blades I had to nimbly duck over and jump under them as I ran away from the vampire. At one point I heard a satisfying "thump" and assumed the vampire had succumbed to a trap, but I didn't stop to check.

I kept running and eventually made it out of the tunnel, back above ground. [At this point the dream kept switching between the main character being me and the main character being Dawn.] Dawn/I remembered the words of Buffy - that as long as I was outdoors, I would not be safe. Dawn/I looked around and saw that there were several cabins around us [It looked a bit like Camp Darkwaters - a camp I attended when younger]. Dawn/I picked what looked like the safest cabin and ran in. Knowing it could have already been infiltrated by vampires, Dawn/I started a conversation with the guy by the door to try and judge his vampire-ness. It quickly became clear that he was, indeed, a vampire. Fortunately, Dawn/I had snuck a stake in and quickly dusted him. There was one more vampire in there which, after a brief struggle, Dawn/I managed to dust him [or maybe it was her] as well. Now Dawn/I and the other civilians in the cabin were safe.

The dream cuts back to Buffy's house [although it still kind of looked like it was in Camp Darkwaters]. The vampires had started to break into the house and now we had to fight them. [I took the role of Buffy at this point, but unlike earlier, it was always me - there was no ambiguity like the earlier Dawn situation.] I fought fiercely and quickly took out a few of the easier vampires. Spike was also there, fighting alongside me. I went to fight another vampire and staked him in the heart, but he didn't turn to dust. I stabbed him several more times in the same area just in case I had missed the heart the first time, but he still stayed standing. At this point, with all the damage that had been done to the house and sheer exhaustion, Spike and this attractive, female, Asian-looking vampire he was fighting bumped into me and we all collapsed into a pile on the floor.

I looked at Spike and suddenly got a little scared. I felt like he was no longer so clearly fighting on the side of good. He seemed to have bloodlust in his eyes and certainly had blood on his face, teeth, and mouth. I thought that it may come to me killing him. I noticed that the unkillable vampire and the Asian one were the only two bad vampires left. The Asian vampire was very wounded and I was about to finish her off, when something held me back. She then pleaded with me and told me how to kill the other bad vampire. I decided Spike could probably keep her in line for now. Plus she was hot.

[I wake up.]

Monday, February 17, 2003

I was outisde a house that was vaguely reminiscent of the back door entrance on the house I lived in while in Cincinnati (except that the house did not continue past where the kitchen/pantry would be). I was on my way to go swimming in the pool they head out back [Come to think of it, the house and pool could have been the ones where I took swimming lessons when at when I lived in Cincinnati]. On the way, I ran into Kosta [a friend from Grad school]. He asked what I was up to and if I wanted to do something later in the day. I told him that I was going swimming now, but would be willing to do so afterwards.

The pool was pretty much surrounded by grass (it only had a thin border of concrete. There were two other guys in the pool. One was Dave Walter [another friend from Grad school] [I don't think I knew who the other guy was]. I proceeded to take off my shirt and the shorts I had on over my bathing suit and placed them at one of the long ends of the pool with other peoples' clothing. The clothing ended up sliding onto the retracted pool cover at that end of the pool. I jumped into the pool and ended up playing this game with the other two guys which involved celbrity gossip.

After playing this for a little bit (or perhaps we were just practicing for actual competition), I got out to take a break. I walked down a sidewalk leading away from the pool and suddenly found myself in a car. I decided, I'd just head around the block. I drove down to the corner of a fairly major intersection [it might have been a 5 way intersection - the road looked kind of like th Roosevelt Boulevard in Philaelphia.] There was a divider in the road between the langes of incoming and outgoing traffic and on the corner to the left of me was some gas station. I tried to make a U-turn, the turning radius of my car wasn't sharp enough and I ended up in the gas station's lot. Swerving to avoid the other cars (and the gas pumps) in the lot, I peeled a quick U-turn and left the lot

On my way out of the lot and back toward the house, I noticed Kosta walking down the sidewalk. He and two other people had stopped to look at something interesting next to the sidewalk. I realized that he must have been out for a walk because he was bored and had nothing better to do. Also, I figured Dave Walter and Jason Waltman [the two guys he usually hangs out with] were out of town for the weekend. My car had turned into a bike by this time and I decided to pedal past Kosta without saying hello so that I could finish the swimming I needed to do and then do something with him. While pedaling, a bee landed on the back of my neck. I was worried that it would sting me, but I flicked it off with my finger and it went away.

I got back to the house and put the bike away. Kosta had walked back by this time and asked if I were free now to do something. I said that I thought I still had some more swimming to do but I would ask the other guys. I yelled at them at the pool and they said "just 5 more minutes." I relayed this to Kosta and he went back into the house. Though I couldn't see into the house, I could hear Kosta talking to two other people in there who I identified as my sister Dara and Jason Waltman [yet another friend from Grad school]. Kosta mentioned something about wanting to get some Chinese food. Jason replied, "Yeah, that's probably the only place around here that you'll find a dog."

My sister reacted very negatively to this comment.

I returned to the pool which had quite a few more people in it by this time. As I'm heading toward it, I notice how wet and muddy the grass around it is and, in fact, I slip on the mud and fall down. After doing this and seeing the poor condition of the grass, I say "I can't believe they rent this place out for corporate occasions." The other two guys I was originally with in the pool have come to help me get up and they agree with me. I jump in the pool to wash the mud off.

In the pool, a dark-haired, very attractive woman makes a provacative pose at me. I smile at her, but then she leaves. Another attracive woman, this one blonde [resembling the high school friend of my friend whose wedding a just attended - but significantly more attractive] then walks up to me. Her hair had sligh curls and she was wearing a black halter-top. She smiles at me, and then starts a conversation. I talk to her and she suddenly whips out a piece of paper and places it in front of her stomach and chest. I says something like that she wants to be involved with me and I immediately realize it's part of the the celebrity gossip game. I am now "it" and must protect any crazed fans from getting to my shirt.

Thinking quickly, I jump out of the pool and am immediately chased by about a dozen other people. I run around to the side of the pool where my shirt is and recover it just before someone's hand makes a grab and where it just was. I throw it to the other end of the pool and jump over the fans hanging at the edge of the pool. I quickly swim to the other end of the pool, being closely pursued by this small, grey-haired lady. I make it to my shirt before she does, but my shirt has started to soak up some water, so it's a bit heavier now. This means, I can't quite pull it out of the pool before the old lady grabs a piece of it. I manage to wrest it from her and somehow get it safe. Then, the second half of the game begins. The magazines with the rumors of what I've been doing, start to be appear (by two woman who are at a corner of the pool). To prevent them from reaching the public, as soon as a new one appears, I grab it before the old lady can and soak it in the pool, making it virtually worthless. There is also an occasional flyer that the woman right at the corner gets and quickly grab them and soak them as well. The people playing the fans that wer chasing me realize that I can stalemate indefinitely at this point and concede my victory.

Relieved, I start to walk toward the other end of the pool. Then I notice the blonde who started this whole thing standing by the side of the pool nearest the house. I realize that she wants to talk to me, but I am not sure how to react to her, given that she just subjected me to this whole ordeal. But I head over and she says, "I can't believe you took that note so seriously. Don't you know when a woman is flirting with you?" I then feel very dumb for having believed that she was was setting me up in the game. I then lean over to her ans say, "Let me make it up to you by taking you out to dinner on..." I pause to think of when my schedule is clear and then continue, "...Saturday night." She smiles and accepts. So feeling good about myself, I head toward the end of the pool with the shirts and shorts.

I get out of the pool and begin looking through the shirts to see if I have another shirt out there. After lifting up a shirt on the end of the pool cover, I see two "Mathcounts" [a junior high school math competition] t-shirts under it which I immediately recognize as mine. Matt Zipin [a math/computer teacher in my junior high/high school who coached the Mathcounts team] is then there and comments about how he needs to start recruiting people for the team. I mention it must be hard to recruit people here in Utah for the team in Philadelphia. I then realize that he could, more easily, form a local team here for Utah and try to think of local high schools. Kosta then shows up so I say to him, "Come on, let's go get something to eat"

[I wake up.]

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

I was in a rather large house that was supposedly in Philadelphia [I don't remember ever having been in any house like that before - wait - come to think of it, it's similar to the house I lived in when in Cincinnati]. I had just gotten back from heading around the city doing errands. When I got into the house, I went into what I guess was the kitchen area. It had several wooden chairs in it and, I believe, a wooden table and a hardwood floor. There was a door to the outside in it and also a blanket on the floor.

Ben London and Nick Klein [friends from elementary school] were inside. I asked them to guess who I had run into while in the city. They couldn't, and I said "Will Ruthrauff" [a friend from high school]. They gave each other knowing glances and Nick began to laugh.

I asked him what was so funny and he said, "Yeah, I talked to Will after he ran into you. He said he was really debating whether or not to give you a call now that he knew you were in town." (The obvious insinuation was that Will was debating whether he would actually like to hang out with me.)

I, in turn, smiled at this because *I* had been debating whether or not to tell Will that I was going to be in town for a few days because I didn't know if I wanted to get together with him. I declined to say this to Nick and Ben.

There was a slight shift and my father was in the dream, but he was also Tony Soprano [I'll use Tony when the dream makes him out to be more like Tony and my father when my dream make him more that way]. I was a soldier for him. There was some guy who had just walked in who was giving Tony some lip and he wasn't appreciating it. Then he really said something to insult Tony. At this point, the guy left, but he had clearly crossed the line. Tony wanted him dead so he arranged a meeting with his crew.

My father then took me aside and told me that we would have to be very delicate in this matter. The rest of the crew couldn't know I was his son, so instead of calling me David, he would call me Mosta [I think this name comes from Safta which is what a recent Jewish grandmother wanted to be called]. We then enter a sun porch at the back of the house. There is lots of glass and natural light being let in. There was a circular, white metal table in the middle of the room and the room had yellow and wood coloring. All the members of the crew had gathered around the table.

The discussion started about whether or not to whack the guy that had insulted Tony. There was large argument on both sides of the issue. My father was not sitting on the table, but rather on a window sill in back of the table. He said "David, what do you think?" and I froze for a second because he had called me David instead of Mosta. I don't remember whether I actually voiced my opinion, but if I did, it wasn't heard by any except those I was sitting next to because they rest of the crew had resumed their arguing.

Eventually, two of the Captains decided that they couldn't abide by any decision to whack the kid. They each had one soldier that worked for them, so they and their soldiers got up to live. I also felt strongly that the kid shouldn't get whacked and we joined them and left the house. [Which was somewhat reminiscent of the way to leave Kristi's house by the back door]

[I wake up.]

Wednesday, January 01, 2003

I was with Melissa and Ray Prisament in Melissa's parents Kitchen. Melissa prints off a picture from the internet and says, "I guess according to you, I just violated the copyright law."

I respond, "That's because you did just violate the copyright law. You made a copy of a copyrighted work!"

Melissa and Ray then proceed to argue with me about what copyright law is and what it covers. Having just taken a course in copyright and patent law [I did this in real life and it translated into the dream], I am pretty well equipped to refute their points. Eventually, Ray says something about how the picture Melissa printed out didn't have any copyright information.

I respond, "You don't need to include any copyright protection information on a document for it to receive copyright protection everywhere in the world!"

I am feeling pretty smug with this answer, but then I stop to think about it. I then see that Ray seems about to make a counterpoint and correct myself saying, "Well, actually only in the 236 countries that have signed the Berne Convention."

After saying this, Ray seems satisfied and I have won my argument against him. However, Melissa still thinks that I am incorrect and brings up something to do with patents. I respond by telling her the difference between copyrights and patents.

"You get a copyight on an expression of an idea. You get a patent on a novel idea. For example, let's say that I had just invented Dijkstra's algorithm and it hadn't been invented before. I could then apply for a patent on that."

Melissa replies, "Well by that logic, I could get a patent on a red Mazda Miata!"

[I wake up.]

Wednesday, January 01, 2003

It was night time and I was sharing the guest bed of Melissa's house with my friend Ben. [Note that this was actually occurring in real life - Ben and I were sleeping over at Melissa's and were sharing that bed.] We were playing the game Fluxx, except somehow we were doing it without the cards. The various rules and goals would be played and then we would try to play the necessary keepers to win. Instead of playing cards for our keepers, our keepers were represented by our position on the bed. So, for example, if I were to shape my body into an L-shape, that might represent have Peace and Chocolate as keepers. As the goals kept changing, we continuously tried to change our positions to achieve winning keepers, but never managed to do so.

Friday, December 20, 2002

[This prologue may or may not have been a part of the same dream, but I through it was cool so I'm including it. If it was part of the same dream, then after leaving my parents room, I ended up in the college dorm building.]

I was in my parents' bedroom with a few other people (one was a girl I was attracted to). Two Abobos (the big, muscular giant guys from Double Dragon) were terrorizing the place. I decided that someone needed to stand up to them so I ran over to them (they were on the left side of the room, between my parents' bed and my dad's dresser and the entrance to the sitting room) and tried to fight. One of them kicked me and I watched as my health meter went from 3 hearts to just one. Knowing that I couldn't take another hit from them, I crawled along the floor of the room until I found a heart, which I grabbed and it refilled my health meter back to three hearts. I figured I would have to find another way to defeat them, so I found a potion that would turn me into an Abobo. I drank it and suddenly appeared like they did. I then challenged them to come fight me and when they came near, I kept using the reverse elbow smash maneuver on them, being careful no to let them get too close to me. I managed to finish them off and then left the room.

[End prologue]

It began in some building, possible a college dorm, where I was living. Melissa and I had been living together, but now that we were broken up, I was moving my stuff out. I ran into Chris McDonnell [a friend from elementary school whom I also knew in high school] and told this to him. He invited me to a party that he was going to.

The party was at Camp Darkwaters [the sleepaway camp I attended from 10 to 14]. Ben London, Nick Klein, and Chris McDonnell were my friends who were present, along with various cute girls (some of whom were with my friends, but there was always at least one unattached one).

I gradually wandered over to the house where the party was being held. It was actually a cabin, but much nicer than any of the Darkwaters cabins. In one section were about 4 bunk beds and then there was a separate living room area. Apparently it was the cabin I was staying in, because I beleive my bed was in there and I went and got some stuff from it or something. One of the girls I had met entered and we started flirting for awhile. Gradually, as people filed in, we decided we should put on some music, which we did. We then decided to start playing a game - twister.

Quite a few people got eliminated quickly and soon it was down to me, some girl, and Nick Klein. At some point it was discovered that I played by different rules than everyone else, so I had to change my playing style. The girl was the next eliminated (after a right hand red, I believe). Then it was just me and Nick. The other players then started spinning the board, so I had to clutch on or fall over. I managed to stay on for one or two more calls, but eventually fell over and Nick was the winner. I felt a little dizzy afterwards.

I got up and noticed that a new girl had entered. I walked over to her and began talking with her, getting to know her, and generally flirting with her. I decided that I would like it if we ended up together that night. I looked around and noticed that the party was breaking up, so I decided I needed to begin another game. I ran to the bunk bed area, looking for games, and found Chris McDonnell's scrabble board (which looked like the Scrabble Deluxe edition, except that the board was a fold out mat, like the twister mat.) I brought it over to him and asked if we could start up a game. He said he would like to, but didn't know how we would decide who went first because most people didn't have any points to wager. I said we should just use the tile-picking method. He agreed and then commented how many people have been getting into Scrabble recently. I responded, "I know. Melissa is totally addicted to it now."

Before we could get into the game, someone ran in and said that the followers were on the move. "The followeres" were people who had chosen this recently released book as their gospel and there had been various skirmishes with them in the recent past. The title of the book was similar to one of those "Men who fear intimacy. And the women who love them." books - that is, it had one title and then a subtitle that started with 'And'. For months, we had been trying to figure out what the book actually meant, but with little sucess.

I then left the cabin to check out what was going on. [When I was outside, I realized that the cabin we were in was actually Don and Lore's house from Cape Breton.] I headed up the hill that was behind the house - I believe I had grabbed a bicycle along the way and was biking up it. I was passing various "townspeople" as I headed up the hill (which was mostly gravel with a few alder bushes). I got to an area where people were congregating, but found nothing interesting. However, I heard something was happening in the cave, so I headed back down the hill to the cave.

As I got to the cave [which was where David and Tamara's house should have been], a bunch of followers were being routed out of it. However, I noticed that not all the followers that were in there were accounted for. I went in and talked to the guard that was staying behind to make sure the followers didn't come back. I heard a noise above me and looked up to see that one of the followers' horses was clinging onto the ceiling and was slipping down. It fell down onto the floor and, seeing as how he had been discovered anyway, the follower who was also hiding on the ceiling dropped down onto the horse.

The guard and I questioned him and he seemed to be very cooperative. He had a copy of the book with him which I confiscated. I could tell there was something special about this particular copy of the book and that the follower was hiding something. I felt we were playing into his hands by standing there and talking to him, so I hit him upside his head with the book and knocked him out. I was a little suspicious of the guard too, so for good measure I whacked him upside the head with the book and knocked him out as well.

I then jumped on the horse, reasoning that it would be easier to ride a horse up the hill than a bike. I knew I wanted to get to the cabin/Don and Lore's house to analyze the book. I began riding up the hill, but strangely the horse had pedals and wheels just like a bike - it was still easier to ride than a normal bike. At some point I made the decision to head up the hill past the house in case there was anything going on up there. There wasn't, so I headed back to the house when I ran into a young, African-American boy of about 13 or 14. He said to me, "I have an idea about what the book means." I asked him what and he replied. [Unfortunately I can' remember his answer - I thinking it was something like love or sex or dating.] "That's it!", I said. For this boy had hit upon the answer to what the book truly meant. I held up the book triumphantly, showing its title and knowing what it real meaning.

[I wake up.]

[Or at least I thought I did...]

I get out of bed and immediately head towards my desk because I want to write this dream down. I'm so pumped because the dream ended very positiviely and I really like the connection between the book's title and what it really means. When I get to the desk, there are two computers there [both laptops, if I remember correctly]. I stand there puzzled as to which one to use. One is gray/beige and the other is black and looks like the laptop I brought home from Utah. I decide the black one is the right one to use and so I turn it on and wait for it to boot up.

[The dream ends and I continue sleeping until a phone call wakes me up.]

Sunday, December 08, 2002

I was in the world of the television show 24, specifically in the second season. I was trying to help Jack Bauer catch some specific bad guy - the one who his daughter Kim had babysit for, and who had abused his young daugther. I discovered that Kim and this guy were in a certain house in Salt Lake City [even though the house was in Salt Lake, it looked more like a house in Providence]. It was night time.

I called for backup and then headed into the house. I was in the entrance hallway and said hello to the four guys who lived in the house (they were approximately my age). I saw the bad guy heading down to the basement, so I followed him. In the basement [which somewhat resembled my parents' basement in Philadelphia], there were a few other bad guys down there and had just finished the next portion of their plan, which unfortunately I missed.

The bad guy figured that he had to move quickly, so he moved aside what looked like a hot water heater, revealing a small square tunnel in the wall, about 2 feet by 2 feet. It was also apparently named "The Mountain West Tunnel." He climbed up into it and then told his daughter to follow him. She complained at first, but he raised his voice and, fearing retribution, she decided to follow him. After they had gone a little ways, I considered following them, but even thinking about it gave me a huge attack of claustrophobia [I'm not claustrophobic at all in real life].

I decided that I had done as much as I could and went back upstairs. I had a short conversation with the four guys who lived in the house [it seemed like we were acquaintances]. I believe the conversation was about getting ready for the holidays. I then took Kim (Jack's daughter, for those of you unfamiliar with 24) and we went to leave the house. To leave, we had to go on some elaborate stairwell. It was black, metal, and a square spiral and it felt much more like a stairwell in some old, fancy apartment building. Eventually, we got to the floor with the door to the outside. I flipped the lock, opened the door, and left but she remained behind.

Outside, the houses looked a lot like the ones on the East Side of Providence (especially those just North of where the stores end on Thayer). The street was pretty narrow, with cars parked on both side (it might have even been one way). I left the house and crossed the street to the other side. I looked down the street and saw a police car blocking off the way, so I figured they had arrived. I walked down the street and waved to them. Unfortunately, there were two taxis there and one of the taxis thought that I was waving it to get a ride. I tried to ignore the taxi, but it stopped and the driver got out. I then tried to explain to him that I didn't want a ride, but was relatively unsuccessful in this. He didn't leave me alone until Jack Bauer got there and started talking to me [although I believe at that point, Jack Bauer may have looked like my father].

I filled him in on what I knew and we went back into the house. There, he encountered Kim and began to yell at her, asking her what she was doing there. I stuck up for her and told him she was afraid of being hurt by the bad guy. Jack then started complaining about how the guy escaped through the tunnel. I responded that he couldn't have gotten far, having to crawl all the way, and I'm sure we could get maps that would show where the tunnel came out. Jack agreed, saying that tunnels were marked as red lines on the maps.

[I wake up.]

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

My father had brought home the DVD for Star Trek: Nemesis and he and I sat in the family room in my parents' house, getting ready to watch it. He inserted it in the player and the movie began.

The first scene was the "How would you like a trip to Romulus?" scene. Janeway was saying something to Picard. Except that, instead of asking him to go to Romulus, she was advising him against it. There was a shift so that instead of talking to him through the computer screen, she was in the room with him. They continued the discussion as they walked outside. The outside setting was somewhat reminiscent of Miquon.

They walked over to a creek and a random crewman had joined them. Everyone waded into the creek, and they continued the discussion about whether the Enterprise should go to Romulus. Picard got an idea for how to get his point across and whispered something to the crewman. The crewman then waded along, seemed to trip, and then pretended to be unconscious, about to drown. Picard and Janeway looked at him and then Picard quickly swam after the crewman. After taking him back to the shore, Picard presented this as an example to Janeway as if to say, "How can we not help someone who is in such desperate need?" This convinced her and she acquiesced to the Enterprise heading to Romulus.

The dream shifted so that Picard was now aboard the Enterprise in space. It was heading toward where it believed the planet Remus to be. When it got close, it found that Remus was nowhere in sight. I then got a view of outside the ship at the situation and saw that a huge black screen had been placed between the Enterprise and the planet. The Enterprise then flew around to screen to the planet.

[My memory isn't perfect about this dream. It's possible the next 3 paragraphs occurred before the movie scenes described above.]

The movie paused and my father then had a decision of which way to advance the movie next. That is, you could choose two different ways in which the movie could unfold. He polled me for what I wanted, and then turned toward the piano bench. My Aunt Karin was sitting on it and she gave her opinion. We all agreed on which was the best choice possible [I forget what the actual plot choices were]. It apparently involved the Enterprise getting the help of the Cardassians My dad was about to choose it when the phone rang. [Or maybe he did choose it and then paused when the phone rang.]

I headed into the kitchen to get the phone. I picked it up and found it was for my Aunt. I headed back into the family room to give it to her and found that I was suddenly in the possession of several packs of 2nd Edition Star Trek CCG cards. Plus a pack or two of other gaming cards. There were now 3 kids (well people a few years younger than me) also in the living room. They also had cards and were looking to trade them. Matthew Burton [a friend from Cape Breton] was there and I offered him my pack of foil cards [of some WotC product I believe - Magic or Pokemon or something] for some cards I needed.

A discussion then started about how it was a mistake to bring in the Cardassians this early. We weren't able to use our alliance with them to its fullest extent, and now they were leaving. I had to find someone to replace them and I figured the Bajorans would probably be the best bet.

[I wake up]

Monday, November 25, 2002

I had a job [my old job] working at GFS Basketball, Reading Computer Clinic. More than that, it was some special program do do something. I went home [to my parents' place] and then got up early the next day (I had to be ready by 5:45am or so). I was being picked up by Eugene Kim [a friend from high school]. He came and picked me and I got in the car.

I got in the back seat (passenger side) because someone else was in the passenger seat [I can't quite remember who - could have been my friend John from high school or my friend Ben from college]. We started to head to Northern Jersey [which was the right destination - for some reason GFS was not in Philadelphia]. We get on the New Jersey turnpike and head up it for a bit.

At one point, we stopped along the turnpike [which looked a little more like Roosevelt Boulevard by this point] and policeman got in the car and sat next to me. Apparently, Eugene knew him. When Eugene started driving again, he started going real fast. I looked up front at the speedometer (which was a green digital readout) and saw that we were approaching 80 miles per hour. When we reached 80, the speedometer numbers turned red because 80 was the maximum speed of the car. I realized that Eugene was going so fast because with a policeman in the car, he knew he wouldn't get into any trouble.

When we got to whatever city it was in Northern Jersey that we were headed to, I suddenly got a nice overhead view of the city. The policeman mentioned that there was trouble in London. At that point, I realized we were in Wales. Despite being in Wales, someone said something about having to cross the channel to get there. At first I accepted this, but then in the back of my head, I realized that something was wrong with it [I guess I assumed they meant the English Channel]. I volunteered to go with the policeman to find out what the trouble was.

I was in some house with lots of dark wood [I can't remember if the policeman was still with me - now that I think about it, it somewhat resembled my high school friend Max's house]. I walked into the dining room and saw that dinner was on the table. Gwynneth Paltrow and Jadzia Dax were there and they mentioned that something weird was happening with the holosuite.

Captain Sisko, a Jem'hadar, another crew member (maybe Dax), some extra, and I entered the holosuite. We walked toward to the far wall and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. When we turned around, there was a midget Jem'hadar hologram there. The no name guy said something mocking to it and it went berserk and killed him, then disappeared.

We then headed toward another end of the holosuite where there was a fold-out couch there, made of metal. We folded it down and then discovered it was electrified or trapped or something. We were all on top of the couch mattress, when we turned around and saw a Ferengi female. It was meant to be a Ferengi mother as this holosuite program had to do with mothers. We knew that, like the midget Jem'hadar, she could be dangerous. So none of us did anything and just listened to her talk.

She gave a speech about respecting your mother and then started to take off her clothes. We were all kind of disgusted by this prospect [the Ferengi are not particularly attractive], but we knew that we couldn't show any disrespect to her. At some point, I realized that there was something up with the program and this was more than just the holosuite program. I began to ask the woman where she came from eventually, we all seemed to understand that this was some being that had come through the wormhole and had taken up residence in the holosuite program. She continued to remove her clothes and when naked, looked vaguely humanoid but had multiple nipples, like a female dog or something.

At that point, she started to fade away and I tried to get across the message that we would do anything we could to help her and get her back to her home. She seemed not to understand me as she responded with something nonsensical, so I held her head and repeated it before she finally faded away. I felt that I had successful transmitted the message to her.

We then got off the couch/bed, being very careful about where we stepped and left the holosuite. We were all hungry by now, so we headed back to the dining room only to find it empty. Since some of the dishes had been touched we figured that Gwynneth and [some other woman] had already eaten. Ben Affleck became one of the people with me [I think he took Sisko's place] and he wondered if that were really the case. There were a lot of artichokes on the table, and there were also these things that looked like artichokes except that they were white and had a colored middle, almost like a white flower. There was also a black bean salad, which Ben Affleck and I pretty much finished off by shoveling it onto our plates. At that point, Gwynneth entered the room in a nightgown. Ben said he was sorry for taking all the food, that he thought she had eaten. She replied that she had, turned out not to be that hungry, and had gotten really sleepy so she went to bed. Now knowing I wasn't taking her food, I then shoveled the rest of the black bean salad onto my plate.

[I wake up]

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

[There was something of a prologue to this dream before I actually entered the gym. It was pretty short, but alas I can't remember it.]

I entered what appears to be a typical high-school gymnasium. It has the typical shiny wood floors although it was otherwise sparsely decorated. I believe it did have the lines for basketball on the floor, but it didn't have any of the typical mats, nor do I remember any basketball hoops or anything else on the walls/ceiling. [I'm not sure if I realized where the gym was now, or later in the dream, but I'll describe it now.] Geographically, the gym was actually located off Thayer street, right by the entrance to Patriot's Court near Harkness. But all this was somehow located in Salt Lake City.

People are setting up to play a volleyball game on the other side of the gym. I head over to the court and join the side that seems to have significantly fewer players (at least 4 fewer). I'm allowed to join that side, but everyone else coming to the court has to join the other side. I discover that the side I'm on is the side that Saddam Hussein will be playing on, and since he's the leader of this group of people, they are going to let him win.

I then discover that the gym is in a low-gravity environment. So I do a brief jump into the air and then just lay on my side in the middle of the air, slowly falling back toward the ground. I then decide to do some flips and turns in mid-air, impressing the other players. One of them suggests that I should sign up to join them.

I find this to be a good idea, so I head over to a corner of the gym, where a few people have set up tables and are sitting at them, handing out literature. Katie Fleming [a girl from my high school class] is at the table I approach. I mention I would like to join [at this point, it may be clear that I am joining the elite guard or something like that] and she tells me that I have to pass the physical and mental tests.

She then takes her clipboard, stands up and walks over toward me. The first test I need to pass is to jump 2 feet up into the air. I know this will be hard, but I think that maybe with the low-gravity environment it will be possible. I crouch down, and then jump as high as I can into the air. On the way back down, I do several flips. I feel fairly confident that I made it, so I ask her and she says that she wasn't looking and I'll need to do it again. So I try again and can feel that I'm not getting the height I had last time. I kick up my legs to try to increase my height and do a flip before landing. I look at her and she says that I barely passed the test.

[I don't remember the next test, but I remember that I fairly easily passed it.]

The next test requires me to hold my breath for a long period of time. I don't believe that she told me how long I had to hold it for, but [in the dream] I think it is between the neighborhood of a minute and a half to two minutes. I take a deep breath and begin to hold my breath. As I am holding it, I cheat a little by subtlely letting out a little bit of air as the time goes on. When I finally can't hold my breath any more, I breath and say that I'm done. She asks how long I held it for. I am surprised, not realizing that I was supposed to be timing myself. I take a look at my watch wrist and find that I'm wearing two watches. However, I don't know the time I started holding my breath, so I can't say. She then asks me to do it again, but I claim that it won't be an accurate result because the amount of breath you can hold is different if you've just been holding your breath. She concedes this point and we decide to come back to this test.

At the beginning of the next test, Katie and I stand back to back, link arms, and I kick off the ground so we begin floating around the gym. After we've floating about halfway around the gym (and have landed), she asks me to point toward where 4475 East is. [This is in reference to the streets of Salt Lake, the ones the go North/South are generally 200 East, 300 West, 700 East, etc. while sometimes if there is a street between the major hundred-labeled streets it will be known as 1910 South or something like that.] Even though she originally said 4475 East, as I repeat the question, it becomes 3375 East and then 2275 East (beacuse it is meant to be roughly halfway between 0 and 4500).

I agonize for awhile about which way is North, because I will use that to get my bearings and then rotate 22.5 degrees. I keep pointing to angles I know are wrong. I try picture what it looks like outside the gym. I have narrowed North down to one of two ends of the gym and am fairly sure which one it is. Then, I see Liam Baranauskas [a friend from elementary school] floating by. He is taking place in whatever sporting activity is going on. I ask him which way is North and he confirms my idea.

Katie and I then float toward the north end of the gym, I rotate 22.5 degrees and announce my answer. She claims I am incorrect and that the correct direction was actually about 22.5 degrees counterclockwise from North. After spending all this time to figure it out, I really want to know why I am wrong. A crowd has joined us and Ben London [another friend from elementary school who also attended my high school] agrees that the angle I have pointed to is not toward 2275 E. He's not sure why, but he remembers learning his answer to this question during his time in the corps. Katie tries to explain why I am wrong, but she is not very good at it and I am very frustrated. Eventually, I figure it out for myself based vaguely on what she's saying and largely on another realization. I recognize that I would have been right if I were standing at Temple Square, because then angle and street coincide. [This is because in Salt Lake, all the numbered streets radiate out from Temple Square, so it is the center of town as far as the numbered streets are concerned.] But since I'm several blocks away from Temple Square, the angle will be different.

At this point, everyone decides to relax or take a nap. We all head to the south side of the gym and everyone sits on the floor or lies down. Hugh Hefner now appears to be the leader of everyone in the gym (as opposed to Saddam Hussein as earlier). Clearly, he is the one everyone looks to. I relax for a short time down there [other things may have happened that I am forgetting] and when I get up, almost everyone has left the gym and headed for the local park.

I leave the gym and hop into a car and start driving down the street [Charlesfield, I guess it would be initially, though it quickly turns into a street in a different city - perhaps somewhere in Germantown, Philadelphia?]. As I drive, I realize that I've taken the wrong street to go to the park. The park is to my left and therefore I will need to make a sharp left at the next intersection. (Note that even though I am in a car, I cannot actually see any of the car - it is like it is invisible.) I arrive at a red light and stop behind another car that is waiting there. I edge over to the left side to prepare for my left turn, but then hear an ambulance. As the ambulance comes toward me from behind, I realize I'm blocking it, so I move over to the right. I then notice that there are many ambulances and fire engines (and perhaps even police cars) converging in the relative area. The ambulance that passed me turns into a fire station [It's the fire station in Chestnut Hill on Summit, right near where my sister Karen lives]. The light finally changes, I wait for the oncoming traffic to pass, and then I make a sharp (more than 90 degree) left.

I get to the park [Thinking back, it seems a little like the fields at Germantown Friends School.] and realize that something is up (this is why all the ambulances and fire engines were out). People are running around somewhat panicked. I head over to the booth where I see Hugh Hefner's entourage and ask someone what happened. Apparently they were attacked [I get the feeling that the attack may be supernatural in nature - like by Vampires] but Hef is okay and is giving some speech to calm people. Everyone is supposed to meet back at the gym.

We get back to the gym and everyone is sitting at the south end. Hugh Hefner's security chief takes charge [it may be Liam] and tries to catalog everyone, naming the names of everyone there and noting who among the entourage is most suspicious. As he names off people, I walk past them. Eventually, he gets to a raven-haired woman who only has a first name [Sandra, I think but I also feel like her name was 3 or 4 syllables]. I immediately take an interest in Sandra, both romantically and as a suspect so I search her background. It turns out that I have some sorts of Heads-Up Display (HUD) visor on or something and a computer that bascially reads my thougts. I search for any information on her, but the HUD shows that there is nothing interesting on her. The security chief has now gotten to the electricians and other crew (like it is a movie). I am also suspicious of them, so I keep sorting their names by different categories in my HUD [It looks rather like closing credits of a movie].

When the naming is over, I see people are looking at three different cartoons (the one-panel comic-strip-like kinds, not the animated kind). I look at the first two and they are okay, but the art isn't quite up to the usual standards [of Hugh Hefner? Of Playboy? I'm not sure]. Each comic seems to be related to the person it's in front of. The far right one relates to Hef and his significant other. The middle one relates to me (and possibly Sandra). I then look at the third one which is by the electricians and I know that something is up. I decide to call Hef on it and ask him what is up with the cartoons. He pleads ignorance. I respond that the first two I could kind of understand (I hold up the one related to me - a weirdly colored dinosaur is on it) but the third one is clearly of poor quality and does not belong.

[I wake up ]

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

I was on the set for a "Who Wants to be a Millionaire"-type game show. I was back stage with the announcer, contestants, and the people who were making up the questions. The panel that created the questions was a diverse bunch - people from all walks of life. After they thought of a question, they would try it out on me to gauge its difficulty.

At some point, my high school friend Tyrone appeared. [He was always a big trivia buff.] I'm not sure if he was to be a contestant on the show or a member of the panel, or what. Regardless, I was done with the show and he led me out of the set. We headed to the high school we attended because we were going to meet up with John [another high school friend of ours]. Apparently, they were both involved in some play and wanted my help.

We were walking in the main parking lot of our high school, just to the left of the main building, toward the entrance to the lower school building. [The school I attended for high school was Kindergarten through 12th grade.] Apparently, that's where John was living. We get a brief glimpse of his apartment there which looks like a typical bachelor's pad - kind of a mess, a beanbag for a couch, etc. John then leaves the lower school building and we begin reminiscing and talking about old friends. He relays the disturbing news to me that most of our high school class has gotten into heavy drugs. He recounts the story of how Sam Kim [a great artist in our high school class] was caught doing cocaine with another girl in our class [I can't remember her name, but she was in our class. She was very thin and looked a little like Kes in early Star Trek Voyager except that her hair was brown.] at the end of senior year. Apparently, after that he was expelled and most of the rest of the class went downhill, falling to cocaine or heroin or something like that. [Note that none of this actually happened during my senior year of high school.]

We crossed through the main building to the other side, by the graveyard. A bunch of people were standing there who were apparently actors/actresses in the play. John introduced me to one of the female leads, a heavyset Polynesian-looking woman. She was apparently very friendly and took an immediate liking to me, hugging me, latching on to me, and babbling on to me. [By this time, Tyrone was no longer with me.] The woman, John, and I proceeded to head to the assembly building where the stage for the play was. Once we arrived, they both left me in the entrance hallway. The building was very busy with everyone getting ready for the play. People were running from the West room with costumes and such and in the auditorium, people were putting up the set. I believe that I even saw Lisa Burns [The head of drama at my high school] barking out some orders to people.

Not having anything to do, I left the building. I then checked my class schedule and saw that the class I was just in [drama, presumably] was finished at 2pm and that I didn't have my next class until 4pm (I had history, and then maybe math class after that). So my mom came by to pick me up so I could do something useful with the two hours that I had. We drove along Greene Street [the logical way back to my house]. For some reason I was in the back seat of the car. Apparently my mother took a long time driving or something, because they next thing I knew it was 3:30 and I told my mom that I should be heading back to school. She made a quick right, almost spinning out the car. [I'm forgetting the name of the street she turned onto, but it's an actual right off of Greene - the one to turn on to go to my friend Max's house.] She then asked if she should go up Germantown Avenue, but I told her that would take too long because there's always so much traffic on Germantown. She then asked what to do and I told her to go back to Greene Street. She made a wide U-turn and then turned back onto Greene. Apparently, the car had very poor traction as the back of the car continued to slide after the turn and almost hit a lamppost.

We made it back to my high school just as class was starting. We walked into the front hall. There were two people in it. One was a student, just kind of walking around [Maybe he was at the senior table.] The other was sitting at kind of a make-shift table in front of where the school bookstore was [There was usually only a table there when someone was selling something like yearbooks or prom tickets.] I was going to say goodbye to my mother and head to the alumni building where the history classes were when the person at the table mentioned that I needed to prepare for class. Apparently, the preparation involved putting on big hiking boots filled with chili. The history class was taught by my cousin's wife [whose funeral I just attended four days ago]. I went to try to put on the chili-filled boots, but was having some trouble so my mom helped me. I eventually got the left one on, though by this time a lot of class time had gone by and I was quite late. I had trouble with the right one, so finally my mom had to unlace it so that I could easily get into it. I then retied it.

At this point, so much class had gone by that I felt it wasn't worth my going. [My mother had also disappeared by this point.] I began to walk up the three short stairs from the front hall to the rest of the main building [come to think of it, I'm not sure if such stairs actually exist]. Even though I was missing my history class, I rationalized that I had already gotten my history credit out of the way in 8th grade so I didn't really need that class. Though I would have to go to the registrar to make that class count. My next class was a math class or something, but it would also involve discussing dreams and philosophy. Melissa [friend from college and ex-girlfriend] was there. We talked about how we were tired and would like to take a nap. Fortuitously there was a bed right there, so we agreed to share it.

Melissa went right to sleep, but I didn't, so I decided to do some of the reading for my next class. I opened up the first page of the book, which was filled with pictures. The page I was looking at was a map of the United States, though without state boundaries. At about half a dozen places in the country, there was an arrow and a text box which represented a person at that place in the country and talked about how far back they had traced their lineage. Most of the people listed could trace their ancestors back several hundred years, and a few much longer than that (one person traced back to his ancestors that had come across the Bering Strait).

Melissa was apparently having dreams or something, as she kept twitching and making noises in her sleep. As I turned the pages, the book became more of a comic book in form. It was about a group of people that were trying to find something or prevent some evildoer from doing something. The leader of the group was a rather tall, blonde man. As I followed their story, I eventually got to see it play out and became a part of it. They asked if I wanted to join them and I agreed.

[I wake up.]

Monday, November 11, 2002

I woke up on a mattress in a room with very ugly yellow walls. The house I was in looked like one that college students would rent. After I got up, I folded up my mattress and began to pack some other stuff. I ran into my other housemates who were also packing up their stuff. [I can't recall clearly, but I think they may have been my friends from college.] I believe I had two housemates and one or both of them was moving out. This meant that I would have to pay more rent and I wasn't very happy about this.

I left the front door of the house and decided to cross the street. [I believe the street looked like one in Providence near Brown - it had green grass and a metal fence. It could have been by the entrance to Wriston Quad. However, it also had a familiar feeling like it could have been in Germantown.] After, I crossed the street, I entered a busy building which could have been someone's house or could have been some school building. There were quite a few students milling around. I ran into Rita Andrea [an acquaintance from Brown] and we began talking. We exchanged small-talk about what the other was doing. I then asked if she knew of anyone who was looking for a roommate. She pointed me to some older, somewhat bedraggled man who didn't appear to have all his faculties. I was a little taken aback by this, but then realized that it was a misunderstanding. He was in the same situation as me, already having a house, but looking for another person to live in it.

[I'm not quite sure what happened next. I had another dream this night where I was alternately running from and trying to capture some bad guys dressed in black who were running through a building somewhat similar to the one I was in. So it is possible that the dream segued into that portion, but it is also possible that was a completely separate dream.]

Monday, November 11, 2002

I was sleeping in the guest room in my parents' house. There was significant noise going on elsewhere in the house and I was having trouble sleeping. I had wanted to sleep in until at least 11am, but I kept waking up. I looked around at the various clocks in the room to try to find out what time it was and if I really wanted to get up. There were three clocks in the room and they were all showing different times. One showed approximately 9am, one showed 10:30, and another showed a little after noon.

I finally decided that I wasn't going to get back to sleep and so I sat up to see what was going on. I turned around and looked on the shelf of the headboard to the bed and saw two cans - one of dog food and one of cat food. Just then, I look at the door to the guest room, which is open, and notice my father walking toward me. He says that the cat needs to be fed and asked if I could do it. The cat [I never had a cat] then leaps into the room and begins walking around. [It looked like Sylvie, that cat of my friends, Michael and Hagar].

I then took the can (it was actually more of a tin) of cat food, put it on the bed and began to open it. As I lifted the tab and pulled back the top, I began to see what looked like tuna. I continued to open it and now it looked like some sort of yummy marinara sauce. It was definitely a red sauce and had green bits which I assume were some sort of veggies or herbs. By this point, the cat food was looking very appetizing, and I decided to to try to eat it for myself and not give any to the cat.

[I wake up]

Sunday, October 27, 2002

[sadly I did not write down this dream after waking up, so much is fuzzy]

I was in the world of the NES game Dragon Warrior (or perhaps, more appropriately, one of the sequels). The dream world looked just like a standard 8-bit video game. I was a member of an adventuring party which had all your standard characters (mage, fighter, thief, cleric). I'm not exactly sure what my role was. I seemed to be the one to speak for the party, so I guess I was the "hero."

We were travelling from village to village, looking for some particular item. [I don't remember now what it was.] Eventually we left one small village and headed for a nearby cave. Once entering the cave, the dream perspective shifted from the 2-D overhead view to a 3-D view (though it still looked like computer-generated graphics). We explored a few rooms in the cave. [I don't remember us encountering any monsters.] Eventually, we found we could not go any further and returned to the small village.

Once there, I began talking to the villagers, asking them about the cave. [Or perhaps it was more like in Dragon Warrior when the villagers just have one set thing to tell you.] One villager asked where I was from and it took all my energy to remember that our party originated in Soretto. We got information that to pass through the cave, we would have to get an item located in a previous village. We then headed off for that village.

When we headed to the previous village, the dream changed so now it was life-like. The village was actually a halloween party. All our fantasy-medieval outfits became the costumes we were wearing. The party took place largely outside in a driveway and there was a barbecue. [I realize now that the party took place at a house in Providence, though I'm not sure which one - it's might have been the one I lived at in the summer of 99.] I mingled with the various guests, saying hello to people I hadn't seen in awhile.

[I don't quite remember all the events that happened next. Here are a two that I remember, though I'm not sure of the order:] I was in the middle of a crowd of people and began to trip and fall and struggled to get back up. The party was over [or just beginning?] and I walked out of the driveway and saw a little kid on one of those plastic big-wheel tricycles.

[More things happened, but I don't recall them.]

Thursday, October 24, 2002

I was at Camp Darkwaters (the overnight camp I attended when I was younger). I was walking in the main area and then past the girls' cabins to where the young boys' cabins were.

When I got there, I noticed there was some big to-do going on. Somehow I realized that someone was taking control of the minds of the people in the camp. Fortunately, two or three friends of mine had shown up and he were going to stop this person. Unfortunately, my friends ended up holding hands with the person who was controlling minds and this was the secret to their mind-control powers, so I gradually lost my friends.

The mind controller had gathered up various people and was leading them somewhere. I decided to follow along with this group to see what they were up to. Gradually, we were all led to a log cabin [we were no longer in any part of the camp that I recognized]. We entered, and all began to sit down on blankets on the floor in front of a big projector screen. It was obvious we were about to see a movie.

The movie, it turns, was for time-share condos in the wilderness in this area. The movie showed the various activities that were available to people who owned these condos (which were log cabins). This included hiking, canoeing, and other fun nature activities. The woman who was narrating the movie and appeared ocassionally was a black woman who was unfamiliar to me, but one of my friends mentioned that it was the same lady who was operating the water roller-coaster and my dream then flashbacks to when my friends and I were standing outside the young boys' cabins at Darkwaters and waiting in lines for a roller-coaster and she was taking tickets.

Once the movie ends, the people watching it break up and gradually start talking about whether they will invest. I end up talking to a family and head to the back of the cabin with them, where there are toys for their children to play with. I sit down around a kid-sized table and being playing with the children. Someone asks if I would like something to drink and I accept.

[More happened in the dream, but that is all I remember.]

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