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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.

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Dream Journal

Rocking the Boat (in the boat’s attic)

On a big art boat built by a community overtime. I’m on the second story in a communal attic, being shown the work still needs doing, when chicken John comes up all blustery. He’s not visibly upset to see me, reassuringly. But as he’s talking he does start exaggeratedly thumping himself against the sides of the bus-like space to emphasize some point he’s making. As this attic is well above the center of gravity, the whole thing starts rocking side-to-side rather alarmingly. Obviously it doesn’t tilt over but as this is my first time visiting that’s certainly not apparent to me. Causing me to appear startled seems to be Chicken’s modus operandi.

His bite’s still not gone.

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Dream Journal

Gazempic

There is a judgement of the adult offspring of rich parents who was abused. Perhaps, that is, abused nevertheless. I’ve not much to compare her with in my life experience, but she reminds me of Patty Hearst or Britney Spears. I’m not really participating, so maybe I’m already watching a movie.

Then I am… I am watching a sorta slow movie, some kind of arthouse populism disposable fame film. Fairly unremarkable par the course. Yet one scene that was easy to dredge back out of the night’s fading: several of the main actresses are on swings, hung from the arches of a colonnade. In vainglorious slowmo, the camera pans down the line of brand-name actresses flaunting full-frontal vagina. Shocking on a few levels.

Inspiring of questions too… How did they get away with releasing this even if it maybe was the 70s? How did the big name starlets agree to it? How come nobody ever mentioned this bit when they talk about the movie? Why do I distinctly place the word as “vagina” even when I’m well aware that “vulva” is more descriptively accurate? Well, it was a weird scene I suppose.

After the Donald Duck portion (which happens to be the best reviewed Donald Duck bit in history, fun fact), my wife is avoiding a meeting. She’s embarrassed and worried on account the meeting is to discuss and decide concerning her boyfriend R. Multiplying two large factors is part of deciding whether he will be judged to have transgressed (I’ve been doing a lot of coding lately).

”Gazempic”, as you might expect, is a strange word/name that just barely became unmoored from it’s place and meaning.

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Dream Journal

Rewatching Avonlea

Show up to get a ticket on a Russian train. I’ve been staying at a hostel nearby so I can leave when convenient. I show up as it’s pulling into the station, but the interface of the ticket machine proves fiddly and I have difficulty working with the Russian interface. I’m trying to select St Petersburg, getting the shorthand wrong, having to swap destination with current location. The train is unusually prompt and pulls away in an absurdly brief one or two minutes. Last time it was in the station for about half an hour. I’m very, very mad, finding myself awake in bed at 6 a.m. I quell my rage with a sleep mask.

In a pool (a specific corner of a pool much like my family’s in my childhood home) doing a baptism ritual for an infant — something to bless America, I think. A wedge of lime is carefully melted down on all the exposed surfaces to make it smooth as possible. The lime is delicately anointed on the baby’s forehead. Perhaps it was my own disinterest, but I wish it had been better explained.

Watching episodes of the old TV show “Avonlea” pen-pal style with my wife. There’s a scene where the plucky kids start on a gravelly Canadian beach and cross an open water channel on a dingy, following the fin of a whale cutting through the water. It’s a scene that I made and filmed myself, somehow. I remember not realizing how pretty summers are in that part of Canada.

Meanwhile I’m trying to explain something to my wife after she inquires how to do it, The solution I attempt is to send her a gray t-shirt, scrawling a message across it in pencil. Proves itself difficult to write on though; I end up making the lines too close together, and the capital letters are too blocky. While this is going on, I think I can hear her listening to Kate Bush songs.

Dream ends with me wanting to get back the three microphones I lent her. She’s never ended up using them, and I want them again to use in programming my code. My wife wakes me up to bid farewell on her way to work, and I inquire about these microphones. She jokingly confirms she won’t be giving them back.

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Dream Journal

Dragon Loot & New Logo

Setting is somewhere in the Warcraft universe. Perhaps Azeroth, maybe not. After you defeat the dragon queen Alexstraza, you collect her dropped loot from the lake. I’m staying there and “camping” the same loot over and over, but not for greedy reasons — there’s some kind of glitch that happens when high level loot gets collected by low level players. The thinking goes, I can distribute it myself if any happen to show up (none so far though).

The devs have changed the name of the Horde and now I’m inspecting the new logo, which is a paw print wrapped with a banner, with the name underneath: “Congress”. Takes me a minute to process their intended meaning as just “a gathering”. Terrible name choice. Plus the thing makes the horde look like a bunch of furries.

On waking, I have an advertising jingle from the album Music For Biscuits in my mind: Luxol by Mike & Sammes Singers. It was used on an old Radio Unpronounceable, the Olympics episode, once upon a time…

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Dream Journal

Inside the Rock, Aboard Airship, On the Holodeck

In a volcanic hot springs zone, there is a hollowed-out rock that is special access handled by the Finnish Prime Minister. I’m inside on what I realize is a very exclusive visit. It’s very orderly inside, typical high-class Scandinavian clean-line interior with many alcoves for different purposes. It’s delightfully homey, warm. Wish I could come and stay here sometime.

A different setting, though I didn’t leave. I’m flying on a Victorian-era airship, same elegant styling as the Titanic (but nothing to do with sinking). There are many spindly metal catwalks providing grand outdoor views, though I concentrate on getting where I want to go without dallying in the more tourist parts of the craft. There was a special metal sauna-type place that was important — that I had to get back to, or go to an event in, or work at perhaps. But it recurred. Maybe it was the transposed location of the Finnish rock cavity from before.

On the ship, at some point my friend and I are parting. I consciously give him a very long hug, trying to imbue it with meaning by summoning my feelings and putting them in to the hug. While the hug lasts a long time it’s weird difficult to bring forth the imagery of how I feel, making the duration seem somehow awkward — almost a feeling of “am I doing it? how about now? now?” Upon reflection, I’d guess this eyes-closed dream was a lull in my sleep cycle.

Attending a solo musical performance in an oddly-shaped locker room. Still on the airship, though you wouldn’t really know it except for the persistent sensation of eye-level clouds stretching in the distance, whenever you look beyond the edge of a walkway. Someone I knew a long time ago as a kid is here, Dayle Zimmer. I don’t know why I might be remembering her.

Testing out a Mohawk in the mirror using just my already fully-grown hair (patting it down into a shape). Looks surprisingly good! The amount leftover on the sides makes it tempting to do more, but then it wouldn’t be a Mohawk. When my hair comes loose, I’m already teetering on the edge of wild madman hair.

Pulling out into a different context, breaking the narrative, I watch as it’s revealed that Captain Kirk is fixing a holodeck panel. It’s quite dissembled and he’s been at it awhile, you can tell. The holodeck is memorably red, white, and chroma-key green, and the reflections off many surfaces give it a confusing surreal perception.

Can’t help myself breaking out giggling because someone said this holodeck would be too big in this new movie… and it totally is.

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Dream Journal

Peering at Yard Prettiness

At the edge of a very wide artificial pond serving a fish market, I pull out a special creature. A frilly fish that I know belongs in an aquarium. I have to take it somewhere across a barrier, perhaps up to another pool.

Helping at friends P + S house while they take care of their baby. While I’m there I idly volunteer to take care of the backyard. I have a moment where I’m distracted by the lovely light teal color of the painted fence, the perfect color contrast it makes with the stubby plants growing along it. It’s strange thinking that a landlord painted it such a nice color, but then again it looks like it was painted in the 50s or 60s. Walking through the backyard, I shake a tight bundle of tree branches which is laid on the grass and set it upright. It’s like getting a witch’s broom to stand up straight.

Peeking out of window of my childhood bedroom, I observe the nicely-built brickwork in the front yard. There’s a half-barrel for a fountain, and behind that the neighbor kids play next door. Reflecting on how I’ve been privileged by never having had to move away from this house for my whole adult life, but that’s it’s also constricting to have to still fit into the same space.

The window has a warped shelf in front of it, and I set down a wide milk-glass bowl on it. It predictably tumbles to the floor, landing oddly on its edge, and leaving a distinctive symmetrical chip.

There’s a shiny holographic plaid sticker which I examine, turning it side to side. (This marks the transition to wakefulness.) Moreover, train authorities can swap your luggage out on the train car if they need room at any time — which makes the service useless. Connected with the sticker somehow.

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Dream Journal

Dreamt of Databases

The file tables have been altered. I got rid of all the quotation marks, the [prepends], I cut all the fat. So interesting to see how it works differently now.

I wouldn’t think this counts as a dream. But I was dreaming. But I’m also sick.

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Dream Journal

The Volcano Still Erupts

Supposed to be fleeing a volcano which is about to erupt in a tiny community. But a bunch of us just stay there, to see if it’s really going to happen. Seems like it works out? But the volcano still erupts?

“Opens 6:00 am” changed to 6:08 on the sign of The 500 club, a neighborhood bar I’ve never been to.

We have a Wolfram brand GPS unit that came in flat plastic bag that’s the wrong size, that’s supposed to serve as the case. It looks like it’s in sideways. It’s usable, but I don’t feel like I never want to show it to anyone.

In a strange unfamiliar bedroom of San Francisco, that nevertheless has been my small corner bedroom for several years. Easy to tell how awkward and small it is — it’s so close to neighbors I can see three of them working on their gutter just outside my window. Maybe 5 ft away. It’s strange to notice as I look down they’re all standing on individual ladders.

Picking up a bag, set on top of a full trash can, and seeking to find the true owner — the inventor — of this, the embossed aluminum hummingbird bag. More of the pinch opening like of a coin purse. I fill this hummingbird pouch with discarded finches, of which there are many. Like the Styrofoam ones I got from New York a year ago.