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I have an avatar who races Nascar. I control him from a desktop pc.
During halftime (I know this doesn’t exist in Nascar) I go down the lobby to get snacks. I’m cornered by a white adolescent male and female and an older black man. The boy whispers, “Give us your money or we’ll stab you deep” and pulls out a knife.
In order to make them uncomfortable to gain the upper hand I repeat this loudly so that everyone in the lobby can hear, “YOU WANT ME TO GIVE YOU MY MONEY OR YOU’LL STAB ME? DID I HEAR YOU RIGHT?”
It didn’t work. Nobody came to my aid and the girl whispers, “If you do that again we’ll just stab you here and now.”
I concede to give them the money, but I laugh and say they caught me at a bad time as I only have $2.
I start heading back up to the racing center when the older black man knocks me over and pins me down. He pulls out a knife and holds it to my throat. Then he tells me a story about how at the previous years race, he bet everything he had on my racing avatar and on the last lap I dropped 10 places so he lost it all.
Not my fault. I maintain eye contact with him the whole time, empathizing with him yet not backing down or letting him pin it on me.
He lets me up and explains that he had planned on killing me after I forked over everything I own as revenge, but now he feels that it will bring bad luck to his knife so he lets me go.
After the rest of the race (which the commentators thought I did really well in with it only being my 2nd year) I go home… except everything is moved out. My mom-in-law is there and she tells me that she had my wife and I moved to a different apartment that is much more ‘cute’.
I follow her across town to a dumpy apartment complex. Our new apartment has 3 bedrooms, but they’re all connected with no walls to separate them. Also there is no kitchen and the bathroom is down he hall and shared by other tenets. The carpet is peeled up off the floor in several spots and the color scheme is an ugly brown one might see from the 1960’s.
Two more spots of bad news: 1) Mom-in-law is not only sharing the apartment with us but will be sleeping in the top bunk above us. and 2) The monthly cost is now $900 whereas our previous rent was $485. Don’t get me wrong, I like my mom-in-law, but not this new arrangement.
One day as I’m leaving our new apartment the adolescent boy who tried robbing me earlier, jumps me and stabs me in the stomach. I knew this was coming at some point so I’ve been wearing a metal serving tray under my shirt. I pretend like it’s a fatal wound and as I’m dying he leans in to gloat.
I spring up and snatch the knife away and then thrust the blade into his throat twice!
(After this the structure of the dream begins to crumble: I’m sucked into a video-game-like world. I meet a gypsy caravan. I end up in a fire station that has blue camouflage fire-trucks. I try to steal one but it ends up being part of a large carousal that I hadn’t noticed before)
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I am not a violent person. My views on violence, war, defense etc are most accurately typified by how I dealt with the initial mugging and when the man tackled me: choose a 3rd way which is neither fight nor flight.
I do not condone slashing people in the throat with knives. (^_^)
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I am watching a documentary about a secluded island which houses the most diverse bird population on earth. The bird being focused on in this documentary looks like a Kiwi bird
But it is able to spit poison from its beak!
A Husband/Wife research team is camped out on this island. The wife gets poison spat onto her shoulder, but she ends up being ok.
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What is most interesting about this dream is not the dream itself but the experience I had upon waking.
First let’s back up a bit.
Before going to bed my wife and I played a game called Scattergories where you have to write words starting with the same letter for different categories. (ie- Letter W. Boys name = Wilson. Travel location = Warsaw. Music Group = Weezer. etc.)
During one of the rounds the letter was in fact W, and one of the categories was “Bird”. For the life of me I could NOT think of a fricken bird that started with W. My wife got the point for Waxwing. I got no points.
Back to the dream.
Back to waking from the dream rather.
The wife researcher got poison spat on her but she ended up being okay. Then I wake up.
I had that weird sleep grogginess upon waking (where you’re not sure where you are or what time it is) but I had a single simple thought cross my mind with crystal clarity: “Woodpecker” At first I didn’t know why I thought of this word, but then in a eureka moment I realized “Bird starting with W!”
Almost immediately after this revelation another thought came to me with the same clarity: “Warbler”
Then I went back to sleep after taking a brief moment to make sure I committed this experience to long term memory
!!!
How is it that in a state of grogginess immediately following a dream am I able to come up with not one but TWO birds starting with W? The night before I was convinced there were NO bird names staring with W.
I’ve always been skeptical when researchers say dreaming is a type of subconscious problem solving because my dreams have never helped me work through any problem. They’re just weird movies that play in my sleep about poison spitting kiwi birds or 5-headed wolves.
Until now.
Okay researchers… maybe you know what you’re talking about after all.
Still skeptical, though much less so.
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I dreamed of a new SSB Melee. All the characters are either random objects: A glove, birdcage, chair, graham cracker… or animals like a mantis or squirrel.
Another feature of this Melee is that team play is more dynamic. Players can combine their moves into sweet tag-team effects.
When my friend and I team up as the mantis and glove we are untouchable.
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I had ANOTHER Pine River dream last night…
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I’m going to kayak the Pine with my parents, but at our appointed launch time I realize there is no sunscreen lotion. In order to get some I’d have to launch at a later time which would make most of the trip at night. To be clear my choice is to get mega sun burned or Kayak the Pine in darkness.
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This is the THIRD Pine River dream I’ve seen and all 3 have involved the trip being at night and me being very aware of how dangerous this could be.
Also, My friends and I will be kayaking the Pine for the 2nd time coming up this July which means more dreams will probably appear to me about it.
2 of my friends have written plays and tonight is the performance.
Annie’s play is about dreams and false awakenings. Several times the curtain drops as though it’s over, but then raises again to reveal a different scene. Other times the cast changes the scenery during the middle of an act (Unfortunately I don’t remember specifics beyond this).
Afterwards I congratulate her because of her astute understanding of the nature of dreams.
Anna’s play is about a hideous yellow slug monster that plans to consume every single tree on Earth. It has tentacles that look like giant worms protruding from its face (which is similar to a fish head). Its lower jaw is twice as long as its upper one resulting in a massive under-bite that reveals rows of shark teeth. The monster’s body seems to meld into the land, which leaves me to wonder if it is actually part of the Earth itself and is trying to self-destruct.
The play ends just as the monster is preparing to eat Earth’s last tree. What a cliff hanger!
I am in a Goodwill store with my wife. While looking at vintage shirts I see a friend from High School. She is dressed more like she was back in those days: Punk Rock.
“Shelly! What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Just dropping in. Surprise!”
A familiar song comes on over the speakers (though I can’t remember what it is). I say, “Hey, we should dance to this! Put on a show for the other customers.” Shelly agrees that this is a good idea.
I first check with Sara, “Sara. If Shelly and I dance in front of everyone, will that embarrass you?”
“I’m not sure. It all depends on how the crowd reacts.” She says.
I come up with a plan, “Okay. If you start feeling embarrassed at any point, show me an upside-down rock fist.”
As Shelly and I start dancing, the rest of the shoppers are transfixed on us. They pump their fists in the air and start chanting subversive things about the oppression around us. I look over at Sara and she’s showing me a normal rock fist, which I assume to mean that she approves.
The Goodwill employees cut the music and announce that we’d better stop, or else! Everyone keeps chanting. Goodwill calls in the S.W.A.T. team and everyone scatters. But Shelly and I know that we’ve started something that cannot be stopped: A Cultural Revolution.
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~Lisa Simpson is a ghost. She spends her time eating electrons. She explains to me that the more she eats, the more abstract/geometric she becomes.
~I’m working at a summer camp again. I lose all my campers except for one. I also forget the schedule so the one camper I still have misses all his activities.
~Walking downtown with an ethnically diverse group. The majority of the guys are black, and the minority are white. We’re all having fun and joking around about dancing. I show them the one dance I know: Skanking (ska dancing). One of the black guys laughs, saying he’s never seen that before and then proceeds to show me a break dance he calls ‘cross-steppin’. It is very impressive. One of the white dudes says, “I bet I could do that, but I have to do something else first.”
He jumps into a mud puddle and rolls around so that he’s covered in a thick black mud. We realize that he’s trying to ‘look black’ and everyone shakes their heads saying, “Not cool man. Not cool.”
~I am a hunter/assassin from another planet. I look like the alien from ‘Predator’ movies, but with human skin. The government is chasing me and I have to keep killing their agents to avoid capture. I feel guilty about every one I slay. When I’m finally safe, a father of one of the fallen agents asks how I could do such a thing. A friend of mine explains to him that I’m not from around here.
~In a matter of minutes I lose all of the hair from the top of my head.
~I ride a skate board to campus, but I lay on my belly and propel it with my arms.
~I’m working as a janitor in a fancy office building. I work in my boxers but nobody seems to care. Towards the end of my shift a girl appears who seems enamored with me. She hands me a bottle of orange shampoo, “It’s a rare formula from Australia… to remember me by.” Then she runs off.
~After an intense space battle with cyborg insect aliens my miniature R2-D2 has been damaged beyond repair. It’s still ‘alive’ but is suffering. One of my enemies comes over and takes pity on it. He injects some silvery sludge-like formula into R2 and explains that it will shut all of his systems down permanently.
(These were all separate dreams from today. My subconscious was in overdrive apparently)
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I have purchased a white, down comforter for my mom. I decide that it needs a personal touch, so I take it to the printmaking shop to print on it.
I take a large sheet of plexiglass and roll bright yellow ink onto it. Then I use the press to transfer the ink from the plexi to the blanket. The ink applies thick but unevenly and is tacky to the touch.
I think that after it dries it will be a lovely blanket.
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I do not remember my mother’s specific reaction, but I know it was not entirely negative like my previous gift of Lady Socks: http://rapideyebroadcast.tumblr.com/post/19500702703/no-lady-socks-ever
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I am a contestant on The Wheel of Fortune and it is my turn to solve the puzzle.
The word revealed so far is: _ R _ _ _ _ O O_ .
A female contestant to my right taunts me saying that she knows for certain what the answer is, and that if I don’t guess right, she’ll get it for sure.
Only one word could possibly fit, but I’m skeptical that it’s a real word. I have no other ideas, so I guess: C R A N C L O O N.
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A coworker friend just pointed out that it very well could have been…
D R I F T W O O D
or
P R E S C H O O L
Seen during a nap. Probably about 30 seconds, but very vivid. 1st person POV.
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I’m in a bathroom stall, waiting for something. I look in the toilet and there is a medium sized frog swimming in the bowl. I lean in to investigate and notice a second frog clinging to the edge.
I decide the toilet might be a bad place for them, so I quickly scoop them onto the floor and they hop into the next stall.
A few seconds later a massive gush of water blasts my feet. A coworker yells from the next stall, “Sorry about your shoes. But we’ve got frogs up in here!“
I guess he had some sort of water cannon?
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