Tag: video game

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Dream Journal

Doing Nothing, Variations

In a shared closet passing in-between rooms I discover a few very cute baby rats. It’s in a house that resembles my childhood home, making this my parent’s master bedroom closet.

I go to search for my buzz razor. My sister Alia is using it to cut her hair in the hallway using a mirror. I know better than to interrupt something like that. Still the same house.

Leaving a hotel, while our arms are full of travel gear, my wife decides she wants to check out the inside of a specific hotel room. She jimmies open the lock and saunters around, proceeding to lie down on a bed. We’re spending a little too long and I start to get worried that she’ll fall asleep, and begin complaining to her. I’m starting to suspect that there’s more to her motives than mere idle curiosity.

Map-based naval video game where the strategy to advance is unclear. A long featureless coast with a small inland lagoon. Beach waves endlessly repeating. Patiently, I expend a disgraceful time not doing much in the game. Not particularly minding, either. I don’t notice the blocks of cash at southeast corner until after I exit the map, immediately realizing that was probably the way to win.

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Dream Journal

Replaying

Replaying the same video game level repeatedly. It’s a military campaign, like a map from Command & Conquer. Re-learning with each failure, avoiding certain areas. The only way to win is to fail — repeatedly.

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Dream Journal

Time Travel Gift, Footrace with Borrowed Kid

Meeting my late twenties friend Jimmy near an empty triangular lot. A lone fancy metal fence is all that remains of whatever was here before. Almost like a neighborhood in my town of San Francisco I don’t go to very often, maybe North Beach. Worn in, familiar, yet strange and novel. Jimmy proceeds to explain an unusual offer — him volunteering to travel back in time to when I was in college in 2004, leaving a very specific object for me to find. It’s a set of skinny and colorful tarot cards (that I didn’t consider much at the time but that proved important over the years since). This is an exciting possibility and explains so much — I gave those cards to myself! I relive my younger experience on a back road, taking an officially closed rural roadway, livestock paddocks on both sides, unfolding a beat-up cardboard box and scavenging the stuff inside. Holding up one of the special holographic cards in the pack. This act will pass it on to my past self, forming a causal loop.

In the dream this is a real history and I feel it is prophetic… perhaps prophetic in reverse, in that it reveals the past. I bolt awake at 6 am, knowing the details are important and this is a valuable dream to remember. But I managed to get back to sleep and continue some of the narrative, the feeling, the aesthetic.

In a partially outdoor auditorium walking amidst a large audience. Talking with my wife about Star wars in a quiet way but I still get shushed by a single person. Chagrined that anyone thinks it’s inappropriate, but also angry at the single complainer, I loudly announce I’ll be quiet if whoever shushed me shows themselves. A slightly older man on the balcony (perhaps a long-ago punk in his, reminds me of a few Gen Xers I know) seems to acknowledge me by being extra grumpy. I rise up to his balcony level seat and confront his crossed arms with a challenging look. It ends in a stalemate; the rest of the auditorium seems to ignore us.

While seated in the auditorium watching whatever performance or presentation is happening, someone’s young toddler sits decides (unannounced) to sit just below my knees. There’s a feeling of being in the 1980s, though it’s difficult to pin down why, perhaps the moment reminding me inexplicably of my own childhood — as if I could have done the same thing. Though at first I’m hesitant on account of whatever the parents could think, once I make known that I don’t mind, the kid turns out to be pretty fun. The parents seem happy to have her off their hands for a bit, but none of us have an idea why she picked me to hang out with. I end up participating with her (on behalf of a parent) in a footrace/obstacle course down a mountainside. Sometimes I carry her on my shoulders but I also manage the tight rocky turns with a stroller.

I decide near the end of the race to give up. Jenn Alex, an artist friend I know, nearest the finish line of this skating/skiing race, soon wins. Reflecting on how the race has changed things, my home seems emptier now; I can imagine leaving and not minding much. I idly discuss a certain brand of hardware store and how it’s different at every location, stocked with different items at different locations for a personal touch. I like it but the person I’m talking to is frustrated they can’t just go anywhere and find what they expect. No one is around as I return back through a window in standalone wall, this part of obstacle course having been passed already and now empty of other competitors.

I’m proceeding in reverse through the course as if to undo the entire thread. It’s now treated more like a video game, with levels and challenges I’m supposed to complete. I peek from underneath a table to examine a distinct checkered cap, at this point expecting and wishing to avoid another challenge. Sure enough there are new enemies to defeat, ones I recognize as the palette-swapped game assets from an earlier class of undead enemies. Now
they are supposedly flying Hogwarts wizards, with the unique trait of being named individuals. They disappear as they’re defeated just the same. The name that sticks with me: Peter Tarn.

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Dream Journal

Too Much Waiting, Not Enough Double Dream Cartoons

While the video game WarCraft 2 used flat 2-D sprites, the years-older “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans” (WarCraft 1) used a grab-bag of early 3-D tricks. I’m finally playing it and oddly, though the game is very basic, it’s more intriguing to discern the clever workarounds they came up with long ago. Pleasingly retro, as well. (Standing in front of my fridge yesterday I randomly appreciated the deep lore they were able to produce in those games, simply by creating the series for so long.)

When my Uncle John is frustrated about having to move, I’m able to share an anecdote about how, when the show wrapped, the sets for “Seinfeld” were almost immediately converted for use on the show “Friends” (I learned this yesterday; it was actually Full House)

Waiting on my motorcycle at a left turn signal. I leave, crossing to the sidewalk when I realize how long I’ve waited. Suddenly I realize it’s essentially just abandoned in a traffic lane now. Going back, I see I even left the key in the ignition. The back compartment must be repacked now (of course it does). I rejigger the back case’s mounting plate and straps, all while standing in front of a line of unusually patient cars also still waiting to turn left.

I’ve been fiddling with nose ring intermittently for most of the dream. It finally splits near the tip, coming off in my fingers just as I realize how long I’ve been fiddling. Still, it seems like it should be able to fit again, but the gauge at the break is inconveniently flat instead of round. It won’t fit in the piercing hole, and repairing something that stays in my skin seems like a non-starter.

In a jaunty Nickelodeon-style kids cartoon, one friend has fallen asleep in the shower. As his friend, and sensing an opportunity for mischief, I hide in the shower drain. Since my friend doesn’t wake up I start saying odd things in an affected strange voice, which reverberates through the drain pipe. Zooming into his dream I appear there as a semi-distorted subway announcer — ignored, as most subway train announcements usually are. I notice other characters from our cartoon have been animated in his dream as more realistic adult humans — stylized and shapely enough to evoke sexual lust, innocently but not incidentally. Rule 34 on hot double-dreamt cartoons.

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Dream Journal

Stunts on the Moon, Bear Spoons

Residence on the moon. Recounting the time I trained my rat, Stimp, to go where I directed. That’s how he became the first animal to visit the south and north poles of the Moon. I’m recounting this to some kind of ruling council that meets in a small chamber — one that is entirely a hot tub. Stimp is there with me as I tell the story, seeking permission to do some new stunt.

Down the street, outside an old timey Hollywood theater, I have a new (video game-like) ability to deploy holo-screens. But when I press the button to activate it, nothing happens and I see my inventory of 91 film cans get stuck glitching and drop down to zero. I have to explain what happened to the council, there was some sort of malfunction and I really want to get them back.

A bear wanders into my house. Normally this could be alarming, but the bear snuggles up to our “puppy pile” of pets and humans. The bear lays on the outside, becoming the biggest spoon in our line of snuggled spoons.

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Dream Journal

Departure Prep, Rejected Arrival, Fabulous? Absolutely

Prepping for a departure to another year of an event I attended previously (which my wife organized), Reverie. My friend Reecy is there, near a craft booth like at one of the many craft fairs I’ve been to. Her pose is perhaps like in a photo from the year past.

There’s a moody infotainment style-ride in this complex where we’re prepping; feels like something from the video game “Control” set in a blue atmosphere. I do a run in the water feature circling a dark rocky island, spotting three out-of-place witticisms inscribed on the tank floor — which I realize must be Easter Eggs I can now post on the game/ride’s subreddit. During some seasons I know this watercourse is drained so I wonder why they haven’t been posted before, as they’re specific and easily searchable. Still floating around the ride circuit I try to remember the other things I want to take to the Reverie event this year, particularly my phone’s waterproof case. How can I use my Bluetooth earbuds in the water though? (note: lately I’ve been using my Bluetooth earbuds more often.)

Later a friend’s non-binary kid, Charlie, appears at the edge of a tiled area behind where we’ve been prepping to depart, dimly-lit in preparation for leaving. They ask me timidly to use one of the two bathrooms. I respond “sure!” then offer them a chocolate from a tin I’m carrying, which they awkwardly accept. A nosy woman soon attempts to chastise me for this, saying “it’s hard enough for a kid working on their gender identity to ask for anything related to public bathroom use… they certainly shouldn’t also be offered candy by strange men”. In fact I’ve known Charlie since they were a baby, but I try to good-naturedly engage her opinion without seeming outright skeptical or dismissive. But the few listeners nearby make it known they find this woman’s remark ludicrous.

I read of  an account of an Australian Aboriginal reservation turning away a shipload of refugee Americans. The ship’s crew goes to the trouble of digging out a blockage in the channel leading to the reservation called Rhode Island Sandbank. The aboriginal leadership announces they’ve changed their minds at the last minute, a loss to all sides — the refugees needing a new home, the country of Australia which would benefit from their presence, the mother countries America and Britain which suffer brain drain too. Though after learning of it, I can’t be entirely sure if it’s true to the history or if it’s a biased, racially-motivated screed.

“Fabulous? Absolutely” is an American TV movie recut from the British show Absolutely Fabulous. This version has an older pair of main characters Eddy and Pats. Typical of National Geographic vs. BBC Attenborough documentary. Predictably disappointing but still novel in that strange way that foreign perspectives are.

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Dream Journal

Brachiosaur Pal and Palace

A girl and her Brachiosaur friend explore a rough, wild beach together (reminiscent of Tuba and Hazel from Infinity Train.) She climbs down a steep, near-vertical sand wall. When he tries to follow, the wall collapses with a grainy crush, followed by child-like laughter.

In line waiting for the elevator in a big palace of entertainment, somewhere you might find in Reno, Nevada. At the top of its tower, I get the chance to sleep in a Brachiosaur skull. But when I’m in the hallway outside, on my way to the lone bed, I look out the window and realize it’s probably far too large to be a real skull — or am I small?

Waiting in line again, standing ankle-deep in tiny candy, like Nerds or Indian candied fennel seeds (mukhwas). Towards the end of the line, some bigger candy has seeped under the wall and into the walking path. The rules say we can take any of the smaller candy for free, but I sneak a few larger lozenge-shaped nuggets in my bag before the door checker of the room we’ve been waiting in line for.

I’m told to draw a ticket, which is a chance to win a prize. In the basket on the desk, I clearly glimpse a gold-rimmed one in the shuffle. Skeptical that it could be this easy, I reach in and grab it, to which the staff feign delight. I’m a little put off, to be honest, and the prize isn’t actually something I want. Now I’m quite happy I stole the bigger candies.

My wife uses my prize to take a free ride on one of the uncommon amusements, a motion-simulator mini-plane set in window frame in a wall that plays a black-and-white video game. I realize watching her play that this whole place is World War 2 themed, which I’d oddly missed until just now.

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Dream Journal

Dream of Ramona Flowers

Having just re-watched “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”, it should come as no surprise that I just dreamt of Ramona Flowers. I almost forgot that’s basically her whole thing for awhile there; skating through people’s dreams on subspace highways running though their heads. What’s maybe a bit unexpected is was my errant though that I would see her in my dreams tonight, and then actually seeing her. I can’t remember much else.

A huge flat wall of an image, a drawing of yellow red and purple swirls. I used an image like this recently in a project to illustrate stage 3 of Salvia divinorum ingestion.

Distinct imagery with eyes closed: fractal patterns, geometric or vine-like motifs, stable impressions of objects and designs, mostly all 2-dimensional. If visual effects are seen with eyes open, these are often vague and fleeting. Comparable to hypnagogic phenomena sometimes experienced at sleep onset. Open or closed eyes, visions are perceived as “eye candy”, not confused with reality.

Sitting round a table. My Homepie friend Mickey is there, and though I call him Mickey it’s been just so long since I’ve seen him. I obliquely mention cocaine in terms of it being “someone’s favorite”, and he brings out some (or at least what appears to be) on a beautiful hand-carved driftwood table.

Searching the garage in my childhood home, cleaning up my dad’s workbench with my mom — but it’s against the adjacent wall, where the books were. A tiny CFL bulbs roll off the table as we work. I’m exhausted and lay down on a couch on my stomach. A classmate of mine from elementary and middle school, Emily McIntosh, uses a tele-robotically-controlled rat to explore while I then rest peacefully on my back.

While hanging and swinging from a bar out the door to the backyard, I have a creative idea for my website: using vector outlines of patterns to fill with dynamic colors customized to the individual posts.

Fragments of dreams:

  • A table on a stage
  • Saving some friends for a demonstration
  • An object rising though the air and into the realm of gods
  • On the far wall, an inscribed poster
  • A StarCraft video game level of criss-crossing lines, where you start out as a character on the edge, and your objective is to lure the enemy into the lines away from safety
  • A broken lamp
  • Ramona Flowers

 

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Dream Journal

Cheap but Familiar Dreams

Kid is happy to eat replicated (irradiated) mammoth meat. There’s a feather in a shotgun, the kid mistakes it to mean it’s for him to control and change things. It’s just a gift! Next stage in this game is little stars or circles in a form that get bubbled in.

In an unfinished wood building, I live with four other adults in a 20 x 20 room split four ways lengthwise. Aislinn is there. We mostly pretend we have our own spaces, but one day I blurt out how absurd and frustrating it is that the landlord has split it like this. Outside in the hall there’s a poster framed in plastic mounted to the floor. I’m usually complaining about it because I think it’s dumb since it routinely gets slippery when it rains.

A hotel / food counter up a winding hill. Strangely Victorian and Modern. Go there with friends (Ais, Reecy) but I remember it from long in my past. I order a big plate of various fried food served in styrofoam to-go container. Before I leave I return a distinctive flat clock I took from a stairway when I was very small — back then I didn’t understand it probably broke off from something. But I immediately recognize things when I came up the grand entry stairway which, Victorian/Modern again, had an odd ’70s green shag carpet paired with Golden Age woodwork. This is an odd reason, but I think this dream happened because I smelled a bizarrely familiar apple body cleanser at a Korean beauty store — like something I played with when I was very small.

(Messy remembrance, I got woken up a few times.)

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Dream Journal

Grams Remarriage, Galactic Spinner Game

Grams plays drums on stage during play-reenactment of her wedding, Pa is there. student reps passing close between chair rows.

Patrick’s bedroom is my old bedroom, the one by the cactus garden. One side opens into a kitchen. He plays video games sitting on his bed with a friend. The bed is positioned where our old bunk beds were when we first moved into the Cat City house.

In the game you control the directional thrust of a spaceship spinning at great speed around the center of the galaxy, with the goal of covering as much space as possible. Patrick seems pretty skilled at this and the level ends with him skidding out into intergalactic space.

Dad operates an orange juice machine and tells me mom is still alive… or is alive again? Hm.