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Dream Journal

Across Hand Island

Traversing an island shaped like a hand, an island choked in dense jungle and enclosed by steep rocky cliffs and lengthy white-sand beaches, an island which feels isolated on a vast and rarely-traveled ocean. This isn’t the Caribbean or anywhere of the Pacific which I’ve known so well (I’ve never touched any ocean except the Pacific, as I discussed only yesterday — relevant because my wife recently returned from a trip to Florida). I wonder if this unfamiliar hand-shaped dot on a map is somewhere southeast Asian, or even out in the Indian Ocean, somewhere I’ve never dreamt of before. Perhaps I had this impression because my sprightly companion was a Vietnamese woman. I’m glad to have her as the terrain is dense and confusing, and I’ve unthinkingly chosen a needlessly convoluted route. We opt instead for her suggested shortcut through one of the creases between what would be the palm and the ring finger — a piece of human anatomy that I’m sure has a name, but a name which apparently I’ve never learned and so can’t use. It’s hand-shaped, down to the lines.

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Dream Journal

For Me, No Prayers for Grandma

Checking in on my wife’s grandmother, who is recovering in a Russian healthcare facility. They are keeping her directly under a whitewashed stairway, behind the admin desk. I suppose that might help with staying flat and one’s back stationary. I don’t get a chance to talk with her though.

People begin arriving to pray for her, filling up the booths made available for the public. I left my stuff in one of those booths, and go to find it. I make to leave as soon as I can. because I can actually help… instead of just pray.

My wife’s tarot has been re-created in miniature in a little metal box. Later today I’d consider making a version like this, perhaps sized for a dollhouse.

The starship Enterprise D is engaged in battle. It’s saucer section is stacked with rainbow tops, like those plastic donut toys kids are supposed to put in color order. They engage in a forward spin, a distraction from the real maneuver — which works surprisingly well

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Dream Journal

Martin is a Good Boy

Pine needles in a glass box, a terrarium actually, marinating in some kind of food juice pickling solution to make them tasty. Being cleaned, as part of job training for some 22-year-old Latino kid with a bald head (and a bad attitude). Not that I blame him when this is the only productive thing your society allows you to do.

Examining the phenomenon of the BART station spreading out into neighborhood; discussing the perspective of the wealthy (and perhaps parasitic) suburbs. I think I was talking with was my old neighbor friend Richard H. As we walked down the sidewalk on 24th. Their unquestioned attitude is treating the lower classes who take public transit like an infection which spreads. Trying to establish local lore about where the “poor part” starts, supposedly the consensus is an alley halfway through the block — “Inception” or “Industrial” alley.

Asking Perplexity.ai about an empty cage on a ceramic counter, countertops like the work surfaces in a science classroom. This rat cage is almost the same size and shape as the marinating box from before. Could be the same box, for all I know.

Something triggers me to say “Martin is a good boy”. I still miss my pet rat Martin-Martin. He *was* a good boy.

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Dream Journal

Needs a Pirate Font

So I’m only messing around here. Just now added the ability to choose fonts in my Dreamkeeper, the app I made to write my dreams in every morning.

Oh wait! Sorry. Not every morning. I was pretty good there for a bit, had a 5-day streak. It always tapers off though. This morning, despite efforts, I couldn’t remember a single one. And I never should feel bad about this, should I? Cuz they’re my silly dreams… and after all why would it matter. The feeling of “sad” is just a balancing feeling (a counterweight, a reaction, a shadow) trying to tip me to do the thing I like doing in the first place.

So the thinking in my head goes: well, maybe if you had a pirate font, you would’ve written that silly pirate dream the other day! This is a sensible and good thought. The dream was pretty nice in it’s weird way… kind of a sad memory hole way, admittedly (which is ironic given that you didn’t write it down…)

The dream was all about a group of pirate people who are pretending to forget a person — and that even when done perfectly, there’s always that strange feeling, the feeling that you’ve forgotten something. The feeling that you *know* what you’ve forgotten. That you can remember that person, in intimate detail. But you’re pretending you can’t, so you don’t. Really you’re not pretending to forget, you’re pretending that other people have forgotten. Both just playing a game of memory chicken. And in my dream, the captain who loved the captain was almost confused by this. He remembered. He knew he remembered.

I wish they hadn’t canceled the gay pirate show…

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Blog

anon is fucking pissed at Git immutability

> be me
> coding masterpiece
> decide to use Git for version control
> “Git is cool,” they said
> make tiiiiny typo in the latest commit
> gotta fix
> Git: “Lol, haha… wut?”
> try to force-push like a madman
> files disappear into the void
> “Where the hell are my files, Git?”
> Git drawing trees, drooling
> anon.exe has encountered a critical error
> cursing intensifies
> realizes Git’s power comes at a cost
> mourns the loss of files and sanity
> swears off Git immutability forever

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Dream Journal

The White Stoat

Sylvester Stallone has been working with my wife at a gallery show. I’m sitting across the way, splayed on the floor looking not unlike a hobo. Sly, out of the goodness of his heart, brings me chocolate chips. I’m genuinely thankful and tell him how he’s my favorite, 1984 was the best year, etc. (If I’m perfectly honest, I’d bet this is referencing a story about when someone was a kid and they met Joe Pesci in an airport. He goes “Who’s your favorite actor?” Kid says, “You of course!” Pesci say’s “That’s the right answer, kid”, and hands him a crisp $100 bill.)

After Satllone is outside I walk over to my wife and chat. Somehow the topic comes up: I share my opinion that the MidJourney prompt she used for the show is problematically basic. She might not have realized it, but the source prompts have been collected on the gallery’s server are public. So hers something being something like “blue Elmo Sunday morning” next to the many elaborate and tricky prompts used by the other artists in the show gives a bad impression. I know she worked harder than that. To make my point I give her the analogy: “An expert can do what a novice can do. But the novice can’t do what the expert can”.

An acquaintance, Andi, is working nearby also, wearing a mechanic’s suit onesie. I chat with her too and express how I feel like her outfit is great, but if the name tag said “Becky” that’d be perfect. Still working, she reveals her large back tattoo that says “Cantram Parts”, a family business that’s been around 100 years. Guess she’ll have some job security — probably not gonna fire her walking around with one of those on her. Maybe it’ll even put her in charge one day.

There’s a website we look at as a group, described as “a kind of Akira.com website”. There’s a clever columnar interface, you simply slide a full column over and there’s an entirely different dating selection to explore. I note that the men are blue-themed and the women red-themed. Yellow… I didn’t get to yellow.

There’s ruckus outside. The quality of light indicates either a quiet evening or (unusually for me) an early morning. Leaning out a window I observe what seems like the local army base having a local defense drill. As I gawk from above, a gangly, almost gigantic recruit performs a side-stomping maneuver — straight through the trunk of a young tree in the green sidewalk margin adjacent the residence I’m in. Must have been trained on it. Or… oh, this IS the training. Only last night I walked by that very tree with a group, playfully jumping and swatting a dangling branch. There ought to be a different policy for base defense drills, I think, at least when it’s civilian property. I’m not grumpy about it though, just resigned. I say not a word to the recruits; nothing I could say. Military people are extra “just doing their job”, which feels like an understatement when it’s actually even “following direct orders”. But soon, I am able to holler out and warn them about the elephant that’s appeared from around a nearby corner, and is approaching them from behind. They take it in good humor. There is really an elephant though — a little pink baby with goofy eyes and ears that looks like it can’t even see anyone.

I can overhear the spirited conversation of a couple from where I sit in the backseat of a car. The woman has a pronounced English accent. I lean my head out, inserting myself into their conversation, and make an opportunistic joke related to what the boyfriend just said. Something about never trusting them? The English I mean. Because we’re Americans, you see. It’s a cheap joke and a few hundred years out of date but I knew it’d get a laugh. Later, driving along in the car, the conversation picks up on my joke. I realize that since it’s 2024 now, 1776 to 2024 would mean it’s 300 years of America! Wait, that’s not right… 250! That’s even worse from a cultural perspective. The media will most certainly be deluging us with the phrase “a quarter millennium of America” as often as they can. (I know the math is wrong here — this is a dream in case you’d forgotten.)

I’m taken around with a special kid, someone folks seem to think I have an unexplained connection with. Maybe I just have a similar vibe. Maybe my personality at that age was similar to whatever unusual thing this kid’s got going on. I attend his visit to a therapist’s office. It’s ringed halfway round with stone benches and has a peaceful zen garden feel, and they keep the office lights off. I spot a stuffed white stoat. It seems obviously symbolic, a canny and subdued symbolism — as if I’m not expected to know it. I carry over an indented tray, like a cupcake pan, randomly loaded with a personal rock collection in its rows of concavities. I perform the offering gesture to the special kid with exaggerated kindness and good humor. I don’t know why I’m being put together with this kid, but at least we’re enjoying each other.

Rats are easy to lose. For instance, apparently I just lost Bertie when I set down a tray a moment ago… fuck!

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Dream Journal

Code Elimination & Tattoo Protest

Working on a section of my code where my Dreamkeeper does a check for various IDs on a page to query and keep the IDs. But a few are redundant? And it doesn’t keep them by name, but some in between specified identifier? My wife points out that she doesn’t understand if it’s working. I don’t bother explaining how it’s supposed to work, as I’m concentrating on trying to eliminate unnecessary code, trying to understand how it’s supposed to work.

I hear about a former friend, Emily W., getting a new tattoo. I ponder how fun it would be to show up outside their tattoo parlor dressed like Frank Chu and protest it, not even acknowledge it was me or I was dressed as Frank Chu.

Meanwhile, it’s the yearly release of a list of neighborhood businesses that have either recently renovated, or turned over ownership — something that’s not quite bad exactly, but that long-time residents ought to be trepidatious about. I walk up a steep asphalt shared driveway to one of them, peering into other commercial back doors along the way. This place is a bit too fancy for me, with its siding styled to look like riveted airplane fuselage. Yet from below, the steep angle makes it appear as though it’s drifting through the sky. Looks very cool actually.

Cellspace is on the list and I’d like to check them out, too. They would be someplace to the right. But they’re not there anymore to the best of my knowledge.

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Dream Journal

Crinkle Crinkle Crinkle

Watching movie in theater on date where it abruptly ends. Teams of raptor attack forces controlled remotely via VR, but the enemy team which seems like it had the upper hand, has never trained their raptors to see a jet. So in the transmission when a jet shows up on the battlefield it just looks like a giant raptor head floating.

People in the movie theater clap when my wife is finally able to unsnap the seatbelt above my seat, where I’m lying down sideways across several seats as the row we have is perpendicular to the screen. Through the whole movie, that seat belt has been causing the plastic bag sitting on my belly to crinkle. CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE. It wasn’t even mine! I was just holding it for her. Kind of embarrassing either way. Wish I hadn’t waited till the end of the film (yes, we waited until after the damn thing was over).

Seeing the mouse cursor belonging to the projectionist is always weird, though. There I am sitting in a giant room watching what’s actually just someone else’s computer. It’s even the same basic boring white-with-black outline mouse cursor I have! This distinct human presence up on the screen, where you don’t even think of pixels. You can see another person’s actual hand movements and that’s part of being entertained I suppose.

The floating purple plant in my bathroom looks healthy, water maybe a little low. I can see their roots have grown out with puffy bubble sacks to keep them slightly buoyant. Something interesting to note, since in nature they’d never be soaking that long..

Fridge was moved from out of my bedroom while I wasn’t awake. Big chunky thing, reminds me of the fridge that lives in our dollhouse (bigger, obviously). I like to keep a jar of water in there for feeding that purple plant, because the fridge isn’t terribly cold inside and the air can escape easy enough. Sometimes things that are cheaper are safer. Huh.

While I was gone, a mutual friend (Fekaylius) left his charger here at my place. I slowly realize while sitting next to her struggling that my wife has been wasting her time trying to mail it back to him, going back and forth, and it’s just a dinky little charger. I tell her to blow him off — something I usually never do.

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Dream Journal

Anagram Code of Chili Peppers

I’m being sent to Europe for work, possibly Berlin. I have quite limited time to prepare though. My wife is naturally urging me not to mess it up.

One night while walking back with someone to our accommodation, I glance over a wooden fence into a well-known local eatery serving foreign cuisine (perhaps Chinese or Indian). I take my companion on a shortcut through the restaurant’s courtyard, past the darkened dining room of a counter-service place, before entering through an open archway into a different restaurant with whitewashed walls. I comment that it feels strange not only to have two separate restaurants open to each other, but that they keep the gate open like that for people to pass. A local institution indeed.

My companion and I choose to sneak past a brightly-lit kitchen of our hostel, filled with typical twentysomething Asian hostel folk.

I’m digging a furrow using graph paper as a guide. Typical luck, it’s neither perfectly straight nor exactly grid-like. But it’d only matter if you were doing a long section — and I am doing a long section. I have some kind of a square tool, possibly a brick, and I’m digging the last row between the completed rows of 1, 2, and 4. However, the paper is stuck together with plastic tape, distasteful to put in the ground. I request paper washi tape to replace it myself despite the laboriousness. I have an odd sensation that burying plastic might one of the most enduring things I could do.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers (yes, the band from the 90s) left behind some code for me that was designed to make the program fail if provided the name of a pet rat that has already died. This was discovered when the code failed due to a rat named ANAGRAM — very odd.

To explain: my wife and I were recently trying to name our new rats with an anagram maker I made. We abandoned the idea as too frustrating (never enough R’s or U’s or L’s or T’s). Turns out it’s actually simpler to find more letters for a message board.

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Dream Journal

There Went the Neighborhood (lot of cooking in this one)

It’s the first day in prison for a “The Joker” type character. He’s older, finally skidding to a stop after years of getting away with it. Resigned to finally giving up public mayhem, and fading from public fame. Escorted across a tall prison courtyard structured around catwalks by single elderly guard played by Jim Carrey. And then hosted in his home like a guest, surprisingly.

Proceed to cooking dinner of eggs and ham in a single pot. It’s styled after the show Kitchen Nightmares, which I’ve never seen actually. The cooking takes a long time, and the timing isn’t easy to get right. All the while there’s the gloomy vibe of being inside a big reinforced concrete block.

Driving a borrowed SUV near my hometown of Palm Springs. Veering off along the way into a little cul-de-sac of dumpy houses, I attempt to drive up a steep berm and take a shortcut across a boring rocky plain. Instead I’m immediately flying a small airplane, demonstrating for my wife that they aren’t hard to fly — or maybe that even though they’re not hard, they’re still practically useless.

I discover a phone in my pocket, rubbery and square-cornered and slightly smaller than mine. Only then do I remember how happy I am to have this spare so I don’t have to put as much wear and tear on my normal “good phone”

I don’t know how we got together, but I’m driving Eileen H. back to her secondary home in Santa Rosa. We used to be friends a decade ago — I babysat her kid many times. Now we sit parked in her driveway finally catching up. In front of us there’s kids playing and crawling on the façade of the house, which is decorated with graffiti. In the course of getting out of the car I find two similar-looking USB sticks in her middle car divider, noticing that they have the wrong cap on each. Helping her by swapping the caps back correctly gives me great satisfaction somehow. Across the street, there’s a house on the lot next door to where my parents’ old place would’ve been. The house is smoking profusely. I happen to know this is normal, for this house at least (just some problematic cooking habits of the residents)… and yet it’s a bit unsettling isn’t it? It’s very obviously reminiscent of a wildfire that swept through the neighborhood 7 years ago. I ask Eileen what happened to her home here back then, and she answers that it was just fine, actually; the fire didn’t get that far. But my parents’ house, which burned down, it was… Right. Across. The street.

I’m programming. Trying to place correctly a code block dealing with Chinese police. Am I dealing with the Chinese police, or does the code block have something to do with them? Then I wake up imagining my wife has cooked with a wok, and I’m eager to scrape it out with a spatula. It reminds me of a dream… but none of these. Ironically, I forgot that one. Whatever it was.