prog: (Default)
This one wasn't about McCain, so maybe this dream-theme is winding down. Again, very realistic, though my dream-self's emotional state was ramped way up.

I was seated at a table in some sort of dining hall with my parents, talking about the election. (In real life, I haven't spoken to them since October, and I've been thinking lately about how this inevitable conversation might go.) The flow of conversation led me to describe an effect that really touched me, how a lot of right-wing bloggers seemed to go through a kind of soft transformation through Obama's acceptance speech. I started to describe how even Charles Bloody Johnson made a post asking his readership of frothing, tail-chasing hyenas to chill out and soak in the moment of transcendence that their country had just passed through, electing a black president.

All this is true. In my dream, however, I couldn't actually express any of this, because I was spontaneously overcome with emotion, and began choking back tears. Other conversations around us ceased and strangers turned to look as I tried to describe this, but I was completely breaking down. I woke up on the verge of crying.
prog: (Default)
I am still having election dreams. They fit into the current timeline; early this morning I stubbornly hallucinated that I was following along with John McCain's continuing adventures, following his defeat. Unlike before, my mood about it was more merely curious than anxious.

Come to think of it, all my election dreams have been McCain-centered. I just can't let him go. Why, John. Whydja do it.

(This was maybe triggered by a pretty good 90-minute Frontline doc about Lee Atwater that I watched last night. It's being rerun about 50 times this week; check your local listings.)
prog: (Default)
Anyone else been having election dreams yet? Two nights ago I found myself at Election Day, and things were rapidly turning around for McCain...
prog: (norton)
Do you ever wake yourself up laughing? I believe this to be one of the most underappreciated activities humans can engage in, though it be involuntary. It happens to me once a year, perhaps.

Happened early this morning. In the course of my dream-self's travels, I encountered a machine which, after you urinated into a pocket in its side, dispensed ketchup. I'm sure this was meant to be some sort of unsettling psycho-sexual construct, but instead it struck me as so hilarious that the dream gave up and kicked me out. I continued laughing for several moments after waking.



Only a couple of weeks ago I had a more traditional dream, but one with an image so striking that it's stayed with me as if it were a memorable and surreal story I read long ago.

There was, you see, a certain monastic sect, who for time immemorial had run a school. The school itself wasn't very unusual, but for a single tradition: when one of the teaching monks achieved a singular level of age, wisdom, and respect, his brethren would recognize this by ceremonially decapitating him, replacing his head with that of a taxidermized stag - an animal which this sect revered as a symbol of wisdom. The monk so honored would continue to teach in this state for the rest of his life, which could sometimes involve several years, even though the procedure rendered him mute.

In my dream, I learned about all of this the same way nearly everyone else in the world had - through the Internet, because this sect happened to have performed this rare ceremony for the first time since the advent of blogging, with no anticipation of the level of surprise and lurid scrutiny that they would bring down upon themselves. As I woke, a couple of weeks had passed since the story broke, and I was only starting to wonder how it all worked, since as far as I knew they didn't transplant the brain...
prog: (Default)
I was talking with some friends out on the street. Suddenly [livejournal.com profile] leighjen started pulling away; she was balanced on the rear bumper of an MBTA bus which had been idling near us. And she kept talking, and it became clear that she wasn't talking to us but actually just loudspeakering (sans actual loudspeaker) into the air to promote some production that she was evidently involved in. I could her using her stage-level voice even after the bus rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.

It was a drizzly day, and I was worried that she might slip and fall off. But I think she had something to hold onto so it was all right.
prog: (Default)
Even though I'm not planning a trip any time soon my subconscious has been laboring to make me feel better about air travel. I don't know why this is... it's just been occurring to me lately that it might be nice to fly somewhere, and I won't freak out about it this time. Sounds like a plot device, doesn't it? Except that the VALIS wasn't programmed very well because I don't have any destination in mind so it's not like I'm actually doing anything about it.

I dreamed last night that [livejournal.com profile] classicaljunkie and I were waiting somewhere for something, and I entertained her by mimicking an airline pilot's intercom drawl about how we were in a holding pattern folks but we'd be comin' in pretty soon and here are some facts about the temperature and time down there, and it sure does look like a lovely day.
prog: (Default)
It occurs to me that, at least for me, the cinematic - or even literary - depiction of dreams is as consistently technically incorrect as the depiction of computers. Does anyone really have dreams that are picture-perfect flashbacks of things that happened earlier to them in waking life? Or that are even recognizably flashbacks at all?

I'm a little more willing to believe stories about recurring dreams, but I don't think they're really all that common. When I hear someone on the screen saying "I still see her face in my dreams every night" I'm like "No you don't, you liar. Last night you dreamt of a penguin wearing a bikini that was trying to give you a green lollipop but you wanted a purple one and suddenly you were making out with it, and maybe in retrospect you figure that the penguin was supposed to be her, but it's rather an oversimplification to abstract the whole deal as 'her face'. But, whatever."

oh noes

Apr. 13th, 2007 11:00 am
prog: (Default)
Had two dreams that seemed to be different faceplates on the same core anxiety:

1. I spent all my money on a beautiful new Intel Mac - but I forgot that it was a laptop that I wanted, and ended up with a perfectly redundant desktop machne!

2. I rented a Zipcar and had a jolly and rewarding drive - and realized, back home and 15 minutes after my time was up, that I had returned it to the wrong spot!
prog: (Default)
I overslept by three hours today, and had very coherent dreams. One had me surprised to read a feature about Volity (or at least mentioning Volity) in a popular magazine, and another saw invited to speak to the Zipcar board about how much their new interface stinks. At one point I said something like "I had my flow, and it was perfect, and you took that flow away from me. You suck."

Skunk

Nov. 26th, 2006 10:03 am
prog: (King of All Cosmos)
I had a couple of clear dreams earlier this week.

A: Several friends were hanging out in my kitchen. [livejournal.com profile] tahnan, in the voice he uses for such bon mots, responded to someone else by saying "You know, if Peter Jackson were here, he'd be lord of himself." This was hilariously funny in whatever the context was.

I think this is the second time I've blogged about dreams where [livejournal.com profile] tahnan says things that are (to me alone) parodies of how he talks in real life.

People were helping themselves to milk from my refrigerator, and I was surprised that it wasn't spoiled. You can interpret this in all sorts of scandalous ways but I think it's actually me being sad about how my fridge needs a good cleaning.

B: I had a paper bag full of little snacky goodies, and was trudging through the wilderness, trying to make it home with them. But a skunk was following me; it wanted the goodies. I couldn't shake it off, and I was afraid it would attack me. At least twice I tried sacrificing one of the goodies, tossing it to the ground, and the skunk would go after it and start pawing at it... but when I got moving again it would abandon it and follow me again.

It was quite disturbing.
prog: (Default)
I had two dreams this morning.

First was a good dream. I was simply a passenger on a big jet, and enjoyed a few flights. All were smooth and relaxing, despite my nervousness about such things. Towards the end of the dream the pilot got fancy and performed backwards and even sideways take-offs and in all cases the experience was like riding a vast, flawless glass ramp into the sky.

Then I dreamed that I was home and Dick Cheney (who, for some reason, had a syrupy Southern accent) called me on the phone to gloat about how I had failed to detect his scheme and he was now free to carry on. I had no idea what he was talking about, but felt terrible about it, sure that if he was taking the trouble to call me then I must have been tasked with the mission to stop Dick Cheney and simply missed the memo. I asked him what he would do now, and he chuckled and said that I didn't need to know.

Apparently what tipped him off was that he had, from afar, noticed me reading some false Wikipedia pages that he had planted to entrap and confuse his pursuers. These were two pages on webcomics that my dreaming self had, in fact looked up prior to the phone call. The pages were bizarre: one looked as if someone had simply moved the discussion page onto the content page, and the other featured only a bland publicity photograph of a senatorial-looking black woman and some text about her, as well as a simple map of U.S. with the larger states labeled in blue MS Comic Sans. Through traffic analysis Cheney saw me spend time wondering at those pages, and then move on to something else; from this, he concluded that I was on his trail, but then got thrown off, just as he had intended.
prog: (Default)
I had a very detailed dream this morning. It actually came on the heels of what felt like an unsettling nightmare; I was on a bus or tram, and fidgeting that I had forgotten something important. But then the vehicle stopped and I found a good friend of mine waiting to greet me, and the whole tone shifted.

I think I was visiting her, and had not seen her in a long time. We were close enough pals that I wasn't shy about touching her (my way of greeting her was to muss up her short dark hair), and yet we had somehow fallen completely out of touch. While taking me to her home, she started to talk about her young child, and I was caught off guard, not realizing that she even had one. For some reason, I chose to fake it and act as if it were no surprise. When we arrived at her house I got to meet the child, whose name was Robin: a healthy, precocious toddler wearing overalls and short blond hair.

The thing has has me remember the dream was that my friend, as a single parent, had decided to raise the kid as androgynously as she could. Besides the ambiguous name and way that she dressed the child, she had taught Robin to answer the question "Are you a boy or a girl?" by saying "Relax!" In other words: it's not really important that you to know, so don't worry about it. Invariably the questioner, confused, would ask again, and the kid would repeat, emphatically: "Re... lax!" Smiling the whole time.

I was really bothered by this last detail, thinking my friend was taking a legitimate philosophy and applying it with very poor judgment by using her pre-sentient kiddo as a mouthpiece, but couldn't work up the gumption to say anything to her face about it. Instead I resolved to write about it in my LJ once I got back home. I remember thinking that I might want to refer to Robin as "he", and when my friend would object to this, I'd counter that Robin must be a boy "because boys have short hair," knowing that my friend (a through-and-through female who identified as such) had a boyish haircut. This may sound kind of acid but we were actually close enough friends that she'd take it the way I'd intend it. However that may have been; I'm not really sure, writing this now. I don't think I was quite myself in this dream. I found it very interesting anyway.
prog: (Default)
I dreamt about dental work. Turns out I needed those fillings after all, and the dentist, a woman I didn't recognize from waking life, injected Novocain into my chest or abdomen. We were both under the impression that this would render me unconscious. When all that occurred was a vague tingle in my mouth, we both became very agitated and confused.

After I woke up I realized that she should have called my real-life dentist, who knew that I only respond to very strong painkillers (and I guess only when orally injected as well), and continued to feel upset. Then I realized that it was just a dream, and then I was so, so happy. The end.



I may be going to Origins this year. Some nonzero fraction of the three of us definitely is, at least.
prog: (Default)
Had a subtly nasty nightmare last night. Were I one to write horror stories I would spin the basic premise into a story most terrible. As it is I feel the dream is wasted on me, so I'll just write about it.

Zzzz )
prog: (coffee)
I had a strange sort of sex dream last night, in that it had no sex in it, but rather focused on navigating the emotional aftermath many days after I had a fling with someone. Basically, I was just having a conversation with the person at some neutral location. We were ironing things out. It was so convincing that when I woke up my first thought was "Ah, so I just dreamed about this conversation that I will inevitably need to have in real life soon." Awake, I felt bad that I was putting things off, and worried about what I'd actually do. As full-on waking context finally asserted itself, I experienced both relief and disappointment. The end.

(As I reread this I can name things in my life that I'm putting off and which may be causing trouble to others, though they have nothing to do with sex. (Or Volity.) It'd be vaguely hilarious if those were the anxieties that got recast into that context, by my subconscious.)
prog: (tiles)
For two nights in a row I have had dreams about the Celebrated Micturating Automata of Prague. I think in both cases someone had chosen to send me a message through them, and I was frustrated because I couldn't understand it.
prog: (coffee)
I slept past noon today, paying a heavy sleep debt, so it was all right.

Had a nice dream where I had a business meeting with a lovely French lady. There was more cross-cultural fumbling than one would expect; the French who inhabit my dream-world are more exotic than the waking variety, I guess. She gently reprimanded me when I greeted her by clasping palms; the French, you see, shake hands by curling their fingers into hooks and then interlocking these, like how Ed Sullivan held his hands, except with two people.

More people arrived and it was time for lunch. She had ordered what she thought would be a self-catering platter from a nearby Au Bon Pain, but when we opened the bag we saw that it was actually a sort of PBJ-sandwich-fixins kit. And someone had already scooped out most of the peanut butter. I was really hungry and took what was left.

Gotta get to work now.

Book update

Jan. 4th, 2003 01:26 pm
prog: (coffee)
C&M@ORA worked all day yesterday putting the QC2 edits to bed. There are no further edits after this, friends. I had all of four changes to make, two of them to my acknowledgments. I hope all the name-spelling corrections take.

I should be able to hold an actual copy in my hands before this month is over. We're just barely missing MacWorld, but attendees are getting a discount flier, and there are... many backorders, already.

I am starting to have nervous dreams about how the book will be received. But I am not nervous in my waking life, as I was when P&X was emerging.



I've already started to take notes for the second edition. Things sure do move quickly, don't they. I would imagine that updating a book is a hell of a lot easier than creating it from scratch, but I should probably talk to someone who's worked on updating one of their own books. Hmm: I know just the person.



I have been following my nose with the "wiki-for-one" idea, and have an idea for a Cocoa application that will likely preempt Duck (the DocBook editor) as my first public Mac OS X app. The idea is far simpler, and should teach me a lot about text-hacking with Cocoa, which I can then confidently apply to the more sophisticated tasks that Duck will require.

Vapor, vapor.
prog: (Default)
Happy new year, friends. I hope that things go well for all of us.




My NYE event this year was a Freak House thing. I seemed to give at least one person the impression that I was not having any fun, because I was very quiet and still for most of it. This was, in fact, not the case. Very rarely am I not having some sort of fun, even when it's not obvious, which is probably most of the time.

I tend to shut down all social processes outside of interested observation when people around me are talking about things I don't know much about. During these times I am afraid that I confuse real life with a TV program. A good TV program, mind. Something interesting on the Discovery channel, OK? Yes.



I look good in black, but will from now on make a conscious decision not to dress in nothing but. I think that makes me stand out too much.

I need to find more green or green-like articles of clothing.




I had a funny dream the night before last that involved [livejournal.com profile] tahnan finally conceding that the word omnivore didn't have the same primary meaning that he had been insisting on for quite a while. He wouldn't budge in his convictions until a sufficient number of people came forward with references to the word's primary meaning of "one that has the ability to consume both animal meat and vegetation" versus the meaning that he was defending, "one that does consume both animal meat and vegetation".

(This does not reflect reality, as far as I can tell.)



Picked up he Jan-Feb Brattle schedule from the Diesel today. This lineup looks really good! (I was sub-impressed with the Nov-Dec one.) Lots of 1950s American film noir, to which I feel I have been underexposed. I'll pick out the movies I am planning on seeing and list them here, in the near future.



Relatedly, I have installed Wiki software on my TiBook, and find that I really like it. Even though I am the sole user, thus obviating the world-writable aspect that counts for 51 percent of Wiki's point, the ability to very quickly create densely hyperlinked Web pages, with far less effort than it would take me to create an maintain a collection of static text or HTML files, lets me perform brain-dumps in a joyous fashion. These dumps are then actually navigable and extensible later on, which is something that on-paper notebook-scribbling can't offer. I think I will use Wiki as a true brain-extension for a long time to come.

The only feature it's missing, in my opinion, is a way to add artwork easily. You can drop in URL-fetchable images easily enough, but I mean that I want to doodle a doodle onto a Wiki page as easily as I can in a notebook. And here, of course, is yet another project idea. Hold on a sec while I make a page about it.

The Wiki software is Use Mod, by the way, the same program that the Freedom Tracker uses.

WRT Freedom Tracker: I read a couple of chapters of "The Wiki Way" last night and got some good ideas for meta-information I should add to the website, in order to encourage participation and exorcise newbie-fear against Wiki's unusual philosophies. (For example: note that all information is backed up, and there's an on-line, easy-to-use diff and version-control system, so you shouldn't be paranoid about people maliciously erasing your edits.) I shall do this shortly, and then proceed with the soft-launch, with wider announcements a week or so later. yep Very exciting.



Over the last week I have been developing what might be my first dot-com idea. Which is to say, I have an idea for a web application that sounds great on paper and that nobody else has done yet and would take more capital to launch than I am comfortable spending on a hobby project.

That said, it might be really cool, and I could spend the money if I can really convince myself of the project's worthiness. Mmh. For the time being I'll just cram my ideas as they are now into the Wiki, because I can.

Wiki wiki wiki.

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