Under The Rug
This was not my dream, but one related to me by a friend. I’m including it here because I was part of the dream. Both of us were still in high school at the time, and neither of us were taking drugs. I have to state this because this particular dream seems like it’s right out of an acid trip. I’m writing this in first-person, but Vince is the person having the dream.
We’re hanging out in front of Heather’s house. It’s me (Vince), Heather, and John. We’re not doing much other than sitting on some lawn furniture and joking around like we always do. It’s right after school, but somehow it’s already night time. The next thing I know a dozen cop cars with lights and sirens going tear up to the house and surround it. Somehow I know that they are after us, and that we have to hide from them. None of us have comitted a crime, but none of us want to be hassled by cops, so Heather tears up the edge of her lawn. She screams out, “Jump under here! They’ll never find us under here.”
We jump under the edge of the lawn and we find ourselves in a large cement chamber with various tunnels leading from it. We’ve found the mysterious tunnels that run under the local mall. Rumor has it that Satanists use the tunnels for their strange rituals, so we know that we have to be careful. We pick a tunnel and start walking down it. Even though the tunnels have no light source, we’re able to see just fine in the gloom without a flashlight.
We walk for what feels like hours, but it only takes a few minutes. (Don’t you just love how time works in dreams?) We end up surfacing in the mall in the service entrance that the janitors use when they show up for work. We round the corner and head into the arcade to play some video games. We’re playing Street Fighter II when cops rush into the place. They’ve found us! John looks for a place to hide and tells us to get into the Street Fighter II game. He doesn’t mean for us to physically get into the cabinet. He wants us to become cartoon characters and jump into the screen. We don’t want to mess with the cops, so all three of us jump into the screen and act out the parts of the various characters in the video game.
A good friend of ours, J. J., shows up and throws some quarters into the game. Seems that the cops have left (J. J. hates cops more than we do.) so we jump out of the game, and play the game with him. There are only two controls on the Street Fighter II game, but all four of us seem to be playing the game at the same time. J. J. tells us that he has to split to go buy some Mountain Dew, and that’s about the time I woke up.
Ice Cream Hockey
I play hockey as a hobby, and the NHL season just started a week or two ago, so I have hockey on my mind. Perhaps this is where the dream came from.
I dreamt that I was playing on an old hockey team of mine, but instead of deciding who goes on next as we usually did, we had a coach telling us who to go out next. I’ve never been coached in hockey before, so it was a strange thing. Being coached wasn’t the strangest part of the dream. Everytime we had a shot on goal, the coach would reward us with an ice cream cone. However, the refs wouldn’t stop action long enough to allow us to eat our treat, so we had to skate, play the puck, dodge checks, and try to score goals with an ice cream cone in one hand.
If we managed to score a goal (I scored 1 in my dream just before waking up) then we were rewarded with this huge ice cream sandwhich on a stick. The treat was about 2 feet long, and we had a few seconds to gulp it down before the puck was dropped for the next face-off. Every time someone was rewarded with this treat, they always managed to scarf it down before the next face-off.
During the course of the game, there were piles of ice cream, sticks, and cones scattered about the ice. I didn’t sleep long enough to see the conclusion of the game, so I never got to see how the Zamboni driver reacted to the mess that we had made.
Purple Ogres
I had this dream the first night that I was trying to quit smoking. I was wearing a nicotine patch that night. The package said that the patch may disrupt sleeping. I assumed that it would make me restless, not give me strange dreams.
I was a fighter pilot. I don’t know what plane, what military force, or how I got the training. I just knew that I was a fighter pilot. I was in the house of the man that financed the building the plane that I flew, and his son was deathly ill. We had to get the boy from his bedroom and onto the roof of the building where a helicopter was waiting for us. However, we couldn’t take the boy from his bed, or he would die. This meant maneuvering his large four-poster bed from his room, through some hallways, up some stairs and to the roof. I knew that once we got the boy (and his bed) into the helicopter, I would be required to fly him to safety. Yes, I know, fighter pilots probably don’t know how to fly helicopters, but in my dream I was able to do both.
The problem wasn’t getting the large bed through the normal-sized doors. We were able to handle that with a little delicate maneuvering. The main problem was that purple ogres were breaking into the house to stop us. For some reason, they wanted the boy dead. I don’t know why, but all I knew was that it was my job to put a stop to their nefarious plans.
Between bouts of dealing with the bed, I would stop and battle the next wave of purple ogres that would attack us in the house. I had a small knife with me, but it was razor sharp. With a single swipe of this small blade, I would cut an ogre in half. As he died, he vanished into thick black smoke. Before the smoke even had a chance to dissapate, another ogre would be stepping up to me. I fought like a man posessed. The battle was hard, and I received a few harsh lumps from the ogres. Regardless of my injuries, I kep the boy safe.
We finally go the bed (and the boy within) to the roof and loaded into the helicopter. Another wave of purple ogres burst onto the roof, but they were too far away to threaten us. As I flew away to safety, I slowly came to…
My wife told me that I had been kicking and thrashing all night. I told her about my dream that morning, and I’m sure that she doubts my sanity.
King of Queens
I watch “King of Queens” on rare occasions, so I’m not quite sure where this dream came from.
I was traveling with Doug Heffernan (the IPS delivery guy in “King of Queens”) in a mid-sized sedan around town. There was a road that circled the entire city, and it was that road that we were on. As we moved around, this floating map in front of the car tracked our movements as a little red dot on a city map. It wasn’t quite the same as having a GPS mounted on the dashboard because this map seemed to be a holographic projection that hovered just above the hood of the car.
The reason that we were traveling around town was that his friend, and co-worker, Deacon was looking for his son that was kidnapped. It was our job to search the city for the kidnapper and the child. We seemed to aimlessly wander the city in the blue sedan without much luck until Doug’s cell phone rang. Actually, it was the annoying chirp-CHIRP of the Nextel walkie-talkie service. It was Deacon on the other end. They had found the kidnapper, and the kidnapper wanted peaches in exchange for the child’s safe release.
Doug and I had passed a farmer’s market that was selling peaches out of the cube-shaped milk jug holders. (You know the ones. You made book shelves out of them during college.) We didn’t know how many peaches to get, so we bought every single one of them and started loading them up in the sedan. The farmer was nice enough to help us out with the loading. There was a huge pile of the peaches, and we weren’t sure we could fit them all in the car, but as we loaded up the car, there always seemed to be enough room for more.
Damn. The alarm went off before I could find out what happened with Deacon’s child, the peaches, or why I was hanging out with a TV show character that annoys me. Oh well. Maybe I’ll get to finish a dream tonight.
Negative Penguins
I am a huge Linux advocate, and, as such, my favorite animal is a penguin. Someday (if my wife ever lets me) I’m going to get a tattoo of “Tux” (the Linux mascot) somewhere on my body. I also watched a documentary about penguins last night just before going to bed. Looks like the penguins invaded my dreams.
I was standing in an open plain with corn growing in one direction, and wheat in the other direction. The tall plants were far enough away that I still had a good view of my surroundings. Suddenly, the wheat and corn began to move against the blowing wind, so I knew that something was coming through it. After a few moments of expectation, thousands of penguins burst from the fields. These penguins were small enough to walk between the stalks of the corn/wheat, so I’m not sure how they were making the plants move. I kept expecting giant penguins to come out, but they never did.
Back to the penguins… They were not quite knee-high on me, and they waddled like penguins are want to do. This is about where their normalcy ended. They were negative images of what normal penguins look like. They were black where they should be white, and white where they should be black. The yellow parts of their bodies were a bluish shade that shimmered in the sunlight. They also moved really fast. Their walking motion was very normal, but they seemed to whiz across the ground at a high rate of speed.
I normally don’t feel threatened by penguins, but in this case, I knew that they were out to get me. I ran from the penguins, but it was to no avail. They had me surrounded. I managed to jump over several of them, but this just put me in the middle of their ranks. As they closed in on me, they would leap against my body. Their touch burned me, and left behind marks. As I screamed in pain, I ran as hard as I could, but the little waddling flightless birds managed to keep up with me. As each one threw its body against me, they would flash brightly and vanish. I knew that eventually they would run out of members of the group to accost me. I ran and ran. I’m horribly out of shape and can’t run very far without stopping for a break, but this night I ran like the wind and never had to stop.
As I ran, I managed to put some distance between me and the penguins. Eventually, the penguins stopped chasing me, and I had a chance to survey my wounds from the flight. The burns that I had suffered were images of the penguins as they touched me. I was marked — tattooed if you will — with dozens of penguins on my body.
Perhaps my psyche is trying to tell me something about my plans to get a tattoo, but I think I still want one. Now if I can only talk my wife into letting me do it.
Rat Maze
I used to have two rats as pets. I’ve always loved rodents. They are such facinating creatures. The names of my rats were Cthulhu and Hastur, and they were wonderful to have around for the few short years that they lived with us. I just wished that rodents lived longer lives.
I’m in a maze. The top is open to harsh flourescent lighting, and the walls are a muted beige color. I wander the maze looking for a way out, and after a while, it becomes obvious that I won’t make it out. I come across a waist high pedestal that contains a square, flat cardboard box. It looks likes a pizza box to me, so I decide to open it up and see what kind of toppings are on the pizza. When I touch the box, I feel a strange surge of energy. I ignore it, and proceed to open the box. When I lift the lid just a slight bit, I get a strong surge of electricity through my body. I think I can hear something laughing at me, but I can’t be sure. I’m getting pretty hungry, so I try to open the box from a different angle with the same results.
The pizza box bewilders me, so I decide to leave it alone for now. I can try to open it later. I decide that there is a way out of this maze, so I start looking for it. I’m pretty good at mazes on paper, and I try to execute the same plans that I use for top-down mazes. You pick either the “Law of Left” or the “Rule of Right”. Basically, you pick a side, and keep your hand on that wall until you find the exit. It may not be the fastest way, or the most logical way, but it does the trick. There are a few types of mazes where this methodology does not work, and I’m hoping that this is not one of them. I just wish that I had a way to mark the corridors, so that I could tell where I had already been. The walls are just too non-descript to make out any details.
I choose the “Rule of Right”, and place my right hand on the wall. I start to move forward, and make all right hand turns. I think I hear some chittering sounds coming from above me, but it’s too hard to tell. I walk the maze for what feels like hours, but I’m unable to find a way out. Either this is a huge maze, or the “Rule of Right” is failing me. I decide to turn around and go back the way I came. Since I’m going in the opposite direction, I have to use the “Law of Left” to retrace my steps.
Eventually, I end up back at the pizza box, and by this time I’m very hungry. I decide to give the shock-box another go. Instead of holding on to the lid as I open it, I’m going to try to fling the box open. With a quick flick of my wrist I throw the box open. I get a small shock, but I’m rewarded with the box now being open. It contains a large, thick-crust, Hawaiian pizza. Not my favorite, but it doesn’t break my rule of “no bait” on pizza, so I start to dig in.
As I reach for the pizza, I’m suddenly grabbed from above, and lifted in the air. I struggle in the grasp of whatever has me, and I twist around. I come face-to-face with a gigantic rat. I immediately recognize the color patterns on the face of the rat. It’s Hastur! My pet rat has grown to immense proportions, and is now performing strange experiments on me. Hastur carries me to a glass enclosure, drops me in, and closes the lid. He then picks up a clipboard and starts to make some sort of notes on it.
I realize that I’m now part of some strange experiment, and all I have to look forward to in my days are my treadmill, my food, my maze tests, and sleeping. What a horrible way to live.
Fortunately, I don’t have to live that way for long. My alarm went off slightly after making the sad realization that I was trapped in a test lab.
Dreams / Strange Reading
I used to have a blog on one of those commercial blog sites, but I’ve long since lost the password, and I don’t remember my username or the email address that I used to register with the site. I’ve tried several combinations of username/password/email, but nothing has worked. That’s when I decided to drop that site, and start posting here where I have more control over things. I remember the URL of the blog site, so I was able to copy/paste the blog entries into a text file for later usage. I’ve decided that now is the time to re-post the stuff from my old blog to this one. All of them are about dreams that I’ve had in the past. There is some pretty strange stuff in there. If you feel like psychoanalysing me over my dreams, go ahead.
I’ll post one dream a day until they are all online again. Here’s the first dream that I posted:
I opened my eyes to a large book on my lap in front of me. I crack open the book where the bookmark is at, and I start reading. It’s strange. One sentence is written in Arabic, then the next sentence is written in Hebrew. This pattern is broken up by the odd sentence written in Russian. (I don’t read/speak any of the three of those languages.) Despite the odd languages, I can understand the reading just fine.
When I reach climatic points in the tale, the pages glow with a strange green glow that illuminates the room around me. I pause in my reading to peruse the room, and I find that I’m in a huge room with walls covered in bookshelves. These bookshelves are packed to the gills with dusty leather tomes of obscure knowledge. I consider getting up to find a different book, but the weight of the large book in my lap keeps me pinned in place. I decide that I won’t be able to get up until I finish my reading.
Despite the fact that I have many pages to go, I start speed reading through the strange tome. I manage to finish the reading in a quick amount of time. Once the book is closed, I find that I can get back up, and go in search of something else to read. I wander the room looking at the tomes. Some of the large books have lettering in a language that I don’t recognize, and I can tell that these are books of mystical power. I decide to avoid those books.
Before I can find another book to read, my alarm goes off, and I’m getting up for another day…
Gods and Devils
I’m working on a new world for my role-playing games called Lauremor. In the past, I’ve gone way overboard in creating gods. There was one world that I created that had 131 gods! Yes, 131. I know. It’s insane. This time I limited myself to 20, but I had one oversight. I failed to create a god that was lawful evil. I decided to fill the LE void by making devil worship fairly common, and I even have a good reason why this is true in Lauremor.
Now that I’ve detailed the 20 gods to the point where I’m happy with them as they stand, I’ve got to go through the 9 levels of Hell, and detail out some devils for some people to worship. Fortunately, most of this work has already been done for me in books like the Manual of Planes, and on a few web sites. Some quick searches online have revealed a plethora of knowledge. Now it’s a matter of distilling that information into something that I can use for Lauremor.
Mortgage Spam
My wife and I are looking into moving to a bigger house that is closer to our jobs. We started thinking about it early last week, did some poking around over the weekend, and decided Sunday to make the leap. We called our realtor Sunday, and she was back in touch with us Monday. We got the pre-approval mostly done, and the market analysis done on our house. Things aren’t as great as we were hoping for, but we still should be able to afford a bigger house with a little more land. We’re going in next Wednesday to do some searches through our realtor’s database of houses to see if we find anything that fits the bill.
Now to the point… The spammers seem to know that we’re in the market for a new house. I normally get 5-8 mortgage related spams every day. Not a big deal. tcpserver, qmail, SpamAssassin, and procmail do a great job of filtering out most of the crap. Well, in the past two days, I’ve received about 20 mortgage offers in my spam box each day. It’s very odd timing. The emails promise so much more than what we can really afford. I’m not sure how they come up with their numbers for the spammy mortgages, but it can’t be all that scientific. Regardless, I rarely open up any of the emails, and the ones with tempting headines (e.g.: could be legit mail caught as spam) are opened just long enough to determine if they are spam or not. I’m using pine as my mail reader, so it doesn’t fetch any images from the spammers service. This all means that their nasty little web bugs don’t track my behavior without me knowing about it. Great, huh?
Music I’m listening to while posting this: Guns ‘N’ Roses.
Writer’s Block
I’m working on creating a D&D world from scratch, and I’m in the middle of detailing the gods of the world. I’m trying to detail Laurawin, and the ideas are not flowing as well as I’m used to. I’m getting it done, but it’s taking some effort. I’m sure that by the time you click the link above, I’ll have the details done… I hope.
I have 20 gods to detail, and I sometimes feel like I’m repeating myself over and over and over. I hope that a third party can come along after me and tell me if my ideas and writing are good enough to actually use in a D&D world. I have plenty of experience creating D&D worlds, but I seem to have higher expectations of myself this time around.
