Tag: story

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Dream Journal

Prepping to Present an Upside-Down Australia Story

I’m preparing to give a talk presenting a story of mine from when I visited Australia. Adding a surprise twist even the organizers aren’t expecting by giving it standing on my hands. The story itself dates from 2006 — a period of heightened right-wing bullshit during the Iraq war, the Abu Graib prison scandal (I was, incidentally, in Australia at this time). The story is basically that I’m in a cafe and ask for eggs upside-down. This plays off a familiar meme with a highway warning sign, “WARNING: Australia”, which is humorously upside down… land down under, and all that. Or at least this is the story I make up to tell. The actual events involve me fussing with my website and asking the cafe runner about a location on the web design she made. Later on I’ll reflect that the whole thing reminds me of the Odd Salon matter last summer.

As it’s getting late in the afternoon today, I wander across a near empty school playground. I reflexively think that it’s too hot out, but upon reflection I realize it’s actually perfect outside. Under a tall metal play structure I begin collecting a pile of my stuff left there, but under that I uncover a pile of stolen Australian props — street signs and peeled-off tarmac crosswalks — which would clearly be useful for my upcoming performance. I don’t remember putting them there, and it does feel as though I’m being framed. Perhaps instead I’ve actually gaslit myself by simply not remembering. Very, very difficult to say…

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Dream Journal

Story in Both Forward and Reverse

Someone designed a movie or video game that plays a story in both forward and reverse. Inspired, likely, by the game The Stanley Parable which I just learned about. Even the dialogue is somehow transposed. It’s a series of vignettes, and fascinating in how the story lines up different in either direction.

One I remember was a person in a room full of tortilla chip bags. They’re very quiet and anxious until they establish they have enough money to pay a water bill. Probably worried about how thirsty they’d get eating that many tortilla chips!

Another is a hosted retrospective of a little handheld pixel art game from the mid-2000s, something like Habbo Hotel (which I never played), being a pregnant teenager is an option. One window shows the close-up view in an anime style. The clip I saw was a series of teens stealing vegetables off a grill cooked by the rapper Drake. That video was presented by two people I know, people I did a favor for at some point — a hairy, pregnant, bearded trans-man and his husband.

One is in a plain, hilly little area by the sea where you fly around in a body, but like a spaceship. It’s artful and immersive but quite boring, feels unfinished as there’s not much to do except grind on the few animal units there are. Sort of like the game Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, which I just watched a preview of.

My mom has been inconveniently revived after several years of death. But she is just as old as she would be, and has a different set of problems now. My dad has a different house and a different girlfriend. She’s also having health problems, and relates her visits to a female prostate doctor. She’s altogether sad and not particularly happy to be back.

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Dream Journal

Ogliamelanschmertz

Ogliamelanschmertz — a word that sticks out from this dream, no remembrance of its meaning.

I’m reading a story I wrote, through car speakers, about a letter addressed to African American survivors living in the Great Dismal Swamp. The US Postal Service sends in a young Russian guy and there’s a documentary about his incredibly difficult efforts, during which I see first-person through his eyes. The expedition finds a glossy, smooth, rusted iron cookpot. It’s a splendid find, but it’s as far into the story as I got. I ask [dream] Lynae and she says honestly she doesn’t think the story has much merit.

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Dream Journal

An Inferior God

Story interpreted from a dream in three parts. Recovered/copied from where I originally wrote it, a wiki maintained for my own creative writing.

Suppose a technologically advanced alien civilization does somehow accidentally interferes in the development of another culture. They are forced by circumstance to rescue it from annihilation — a rogue individual sets himself up as a world dictator, or some such disaster, a disaster which could in fact be their fault. The damage is done and the worst happens: the aliens (or their agents) begin to be worshipped as gods. The culture’s development shifts focus to them instead of keeping any semblance of forward momentum. The mentality of a cargo cult sets in.

Then the only moral thing for those aliens to do would be breaking the culture of its dependency; the only way to do that is to further interfere. Very methodically they must instill the idea that god has limited resources, that [a] god isn’t omnipotent. To do so such that seems it’s been this way all along. Offerings to the gods might come in the form of donated energy. CCTV cameras are the way to watch over worshippers and guard holy places. The central idea is for the “contaminated” culture to indulge its obsession and work through it, to raise its collective self-esteem by doing as much for the gods as the gods have shown they can do for themselves. Outwardly it may appear as an oppressive and subjugated society, but the ultimate goal internally is to subvert the entire artificial structure.

The deals with a few things: how oppressive societies contain the seeds of their own destruction, but also how [human] nature inherently desires order, explanation, even its own subjugation. It also deals with the pace of enlightenment, in that the artificial boundaries are only crossed when an individual chooses to cross them. It contains the hope that, even with senseless repression, some good may come of it.