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…
