The dream thread

[dunomapuka]

I was in the lobby of an arthouse movie theater. I went up to the concession stand/espresso bar, but the baristas were in the middle of changing shifts. When the afternoon guy came in he was really friendly and shook my hand. I told him I was a little under the weather, so he drew me a series of really awesome caricatures of Star Wars characters and major figures from WWI/WWII, but some of the individuals were combined into one, like Vader with a Hitler-stache and a Bismarck helmet.

[Izambri]

My sex dreams have increased signifcantly this month. And visibly.

[Shm Jay]

I'm not sure I want to know what you mean by that...

[Torco]

I'm not sure I want to know what you mean by that...

because you're a bit... well... creepy, bro. that's why

Also, probably jizz

[Izambri]

I'm not sure I want to know what you mean by that...

Don't worry, nothing creepy or disgusting.

I don't remember in all my life such a sudden increase in the number of sex dreams per week.

Also, probably jizz

Nah, jizz not involved.

[Torco]

see this is culture for you... on second thought, I don't think I've ever had a 'nocturnal pollution', to use an absurd and antiquate term. however, it was the first thing I thought. hell, socialization, y u have to be so overriding of personal experience.

[Ghostfishe]

A few nights ago: I was house-sitting for some friends who had a big pond in their back yard. There were all these little goldfish-like fish in it and it was really cute because they'd all follow me as I walked around the edge of the pond, and if I put my hand in the water they'd nibble on my fingers. Then I climbed up on this platform--I think it was some kind of kid's fort--and was looking around, and happened to look at the pond, and saw these fishy-looking faces with pale eyes staring back at me. Because there were things in there other than just the fish, like the house owners' extended family or something. Yeesh. And then to top it off I realized that where the fish had been nibbling on me, there was something like green algae, which had started creeping up my arm like some kind of infection.

They also had a Star Wars marathon on TV last week and it's infected my dreams. For some reason Sonic the Hedgehog has gotten involved too. Two nights ago I had a dream that Doctor Robotnik had made a new base on this abandoned warship which also doubled as a petting zoo. Everyone thought it was lame because this base was clearly visible from town. Sonic chased him off immediately, but it was important that someone make sure no small animals had been left behind (he'd re-populated the petting zoo part of it), so I was helping Princess Leia and some rebels walk through it to make sure none had been missed accidentally. We found some kitten-sized pigs and bears in this back stall and I was going to go get a kitty carrier when Darth Vader showed up and started nagging me. Finger-wagging included. I don't even remember what it was about now but he really told me off, then hauled me off by the wrist in front of all the rebels. Strange and vaguely embarrassing.

Last night: it was Christmas and I was back home and visiting my grandma/aunts/uncles/cousins. There were little kids running around too which I guess were supposed to be my nieces and nephews or something. We were all going to this sort of Christmas Eve concert where people were going to sing Christmas carols, and everyone had to bring a present to open while they were there. Except that when we arrived we realized some of the presents had been forgotten and left home by mistake... including one or two for the little kids. So I quickly drove back, but while I was at my grandmother's house I remembered there was another present I had accidentally left behind at my house, so I went to retrieve it too. In the dream, my house was a four-story cube with floor-to-ceiling windows on all four sides. I guess we had been away for a while because it was dark and full of rats, iguanas, cobwebs, and big rusted pipes that looked like they belonged in a sewer. I managed to find the present and headed outside, only to stop and start yelling at Darth Maul because he had decided that scaling the side of the house, sliding back down, then scaling it again was a good "training exercise".

[Soap]

Awesome dreams, Ghostfishe. Is Eggman the primary name now? I still think of him as Robotnik since I havent played any Sonic games since the 90's.

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I had a dream last night that I should have written down because I cant remember much of it now. Basically I was selling an elderly grandmother a new cellphone, and had really worked hard to get the sale, because not doing so would have meant dealing with another annoying customer who never bought anything and was ugly and difficult to deal with. (A real person.) It was 9pm, the mall was dark and the grandmother was getting sleepy, but she was awake enough to cooperate with the sale. I learned that she had a newborn grand-kid (dont remember if it was a boy or girl), and as her first phone call we called the parents of that baby and had them put the baby on the phone. She just wanted to say hello. She apparently called her grandkids frequently, and somehow knew even from the sound of the static which one was on the line. Then somehow I could see the baby's house. They had a red Western Electric telephone and the baby was listening joyfully even though they didnt understand anything. Robert Miles' "Redzone" was playing as background music as I watched the baby put their head to the telephone. And the grandmother was lying down now, and drifted away to sleep as she was listening to the baby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpsrUpiRyGI <-- Red zone (couldve sworn it was spelled as one word on the album though)

[Ghostfishe]

Sure Yog--er, Soap. Eggman is the "correct" name now, it seems, but he was always called Robotnik while I was growing up and I still have a hard time taking the name Eggman seriously. I think he'll always be Robotnik to me.

And I love spontaneous telepathy when communicating in dreams. It's just so... totally random.

[Bob Johnson]

eggman is the original name

[Ghostfishe]

Oy, I had another. Someone tell my subconscious to shut up, please. I'd like to get real sleep for once. D:

I am (actually) an operator who moderates a chatroom for a game fandom. It's a sandbox type of game, kind of like The Sims in some respects, so this chat room gets a lot of different people in there. Occasionally we get some preteen visitors. This chatroom has the typical rules you'd expect given the circumstances, eg. no telling people your address, and so on.

In the dream, I had gone to our apartment building's mail room and there were these two oddly-shaped boxes that were addressed to me, with no return address. When I opened them they were these autographed little statuettes--football paraphernalia. I just thought to myself, WTF. I didn't order these. I haven't ordered anything recently. And I'm really not a fan of football. And I could tell (because they still had the pricetags on them) that combined they were worth about $280. But, they were obviously addressed to me.

So logically(?!) my next course of action was to log into chat and start telling my friends about this bizarre occurrence. And this one guy, who was this annoyingly persistent, pestery youth I suspected was 10-12 years old, spoke up and said, "oh yeah, I bought those for you as Christmas presents!" Which put me in a huge dilemma, because again this is like $280 worth of stuff, but it's stuff I don't want--not to mention how totally inappropriate the whole situation is because he's just this 12-year-old kid from the UK, whom I don't know hardly at all even as an online personality. Much less have any clue how he could have gotten hold of my mailing address. But since I didn't have his I couldn't just send the stuff back.

Then the dream changed completely, and I was telling this whole ordeal to my mother while we were driving around town birdwatching. We had to pull over to get a closer look at this squirrel that was in somebody's yard, and ended up being taken hostage by these two mafia crime lords who were working together. But I managed to sneak away with my mother's phone and call 911 and explain what was going on. And instead of handling it themselves the police sent Laura Croft to kick their butts.

[Astraios]

Real sleep is without dreams? The best sleeps are the ones with super long dreams with real plots. I haven't got enough sleep in the last waytoolong, so I haven't been having proper dreams. It's nearly the holidays now though, so I'll get enough sleep then and hopefully have awesome dreams again.

[Torco]

In my experience you dream more when you have less stress and sleep longer.

[Ghostfishe]

What I meant was the kind of sleep where you actually wake up feeling rested. Generally if I've been dreaming I wake up feeling sapped, like I need to go back to sleep just to recover from having been asleep. That's no fun.

[Astraios]

For me waking up feeling rested or not only really depends on if I woke up naturally or if something woke me up.

[Kereb]

Ever since i can remember, the most recurring image in my dreams has been floods.

I never see the flood rising though, there are never waves or panic or destruction. It's always already there, flooded up to the second floor or so, and the water is still and murky. And it's always where I live. When I lived in Richmond, I dreamed of a flooded Richmond. And now that I live in Vancouver, I recently dreamed of finding my home neighbourhood flooded. Life has ground to a halt but there isn't any chaos. Just stillness.

[Buran]

I had a rather frightening dream, which I can best relate as a story.

My house is surrounded by the trees.

A forest of them, bare of leaves, black as the snow on the ground is white. The moon, full and unnaturally large, looms overhead. I stand just outside my door, looking into the abyss of wood and ice. Around the house for perhaps fifty paces, there is snow. But beyond this open ground, the trees. The cold is creeping through my bones as my boots freeze to the ground.

A shape. There, in the trees. A man. Crouched. No. It's on all fours. And the legs are wrong. And the shape of the head... There are more. I shift, breathe out, and it moves. Eyes. Looking right at me, all dilated pupil, reflecting the moon's light. It breaks cover. Dark fur, fangs, claws. Hands.

I turn, and the door can't be opened fast enough to get away from this thing. Close it, lock it. The cold is in the house, in my gut. I can still hear the howling, joined now by more, dozens of voices, howling like a gale trying to rip the house from its foundations. I will my frozen legs to move, and I am running up the stairs as fast as I can. The safe, the safe, I must get to the safe.

In my bedroom, in the closet, is a gray metal safe, six feet tall, bolted to the floor. My hands fumble at the combination knobs, restarting the sequence of left twice, right twice, left again when I fumble and turn too far. I can hear the things pounding at the door downstairs. The lock clicks, and the safe opens.

Cold steel gleams inside. I pull the shotgun from the safe and fumble for the box of shells. The noises from downstairs are getting louder. I slide the shells into the gun, brass and steel gleaming in the cold light streaming through the window. Then I hear the sound of the door breaking.

I rack the pump. It's the loudest sound I've ever heard. My heart is pounding in my ears, my blood like fire against the cold in my bones. The things are coming. I stand, gun shouldered, waiting.

Fangs in the hall. Moonlight flashing from jagged teeth. It crouches, and I falter. And then it's leaping right at me.

I pull the trigger, and for a brief moment, the world is illuminated in thunder and fire. The thing lands on top of me, blood spattering my face as I struggle from underneath it. The second is waiting for me. I pull the trigger, and it lunges just as I realize I haven't pumped the shotgun.

I woke up then.

[Kereb]

eggman is the original name

It is, but it's terrible. Robotnik is a way better name. I guess Eggman won out cause fans found out it was "original" and of course also moru japaniizu.
But whatever, that whole franchise hasn't been any good since the 2D era.

[Soap]

...

Wow. Totally the opposite of what my dreams are like. A few years back I dreamed a bear had cornered me in a barn and was about to eat me, and i liked it. Another time I was driving on the highway and rolled off the edge of the road and off a cliff, and I just thought "oh well, I guess my time has come". I'm not suicidal or anything, it's just that everything in my dreams is harmless and enjoyable.

Last night my dream was slightly premonitious of today's xkcd what-if, in that it involved a storm that moved slowly around where I lived and wouldn't rain because it was "building up" its energy in order to be especially powerful when it did start raining, and would damage only one small area around my house. But it wasnt going to be one giant drop, it was going to be a Cat-5 hurricane.

[Astraios]

Wow. Totally the opposite of what my dreams are like. A few years back I dreamed a bear had cornered me in a barn and was about to eat me, and i liked it. Another time I was driving on the highway and rolled off the edge of the road and off a cliff, and I just thought "oh well, I guess my time has come". I'm not suicidal or anything, it's just that everything in my dreams is harmless and enjoyable.

Things in my dreams tend to be hilarious and bizarre when I look back at them, but during the dream they're absolutely terrifying. Like last night, I dreamt that Voldemort was riding a giant cactus and chasing me across a hill which was inside my classroom here at uni.

[Thry]

XD you got his nose!

[Astraios]

I don't know why he was chasing me... That's just what he does.

[Ghostfishe]

Things in my dreams tend to be hilarious and bizarre when I look back at them, but during the dream they're absolutely terrifying. Like last night, I dreamt that Voldemort was riding a giant cactus and chasing me across a hill which was inside my classroom here at uni.

That's hilarious. And it also sounds incredibly painful (for him).

[Bristel]

Had a dream that I was riding a tram in Egypt, with very friendly women edging up next to me on the seat.

After getting off the tram, I had to run through a familiar (as I seemed to know my way around) college campus chasing after my roommate who is a professor.

I end up getting blocked along the way, and have to walk underneath some powerlines that are damaged and sparking in the heavy rain. The sparking gets louder and I tried to dodge the lines before I woke up.

[dunomapuka]

I was in DC, part of some conspiracy to destroy the government or something - first taking out all their equipment with a handheld electromagnetic pulse thingy, then shooting the guards. I think I was on the National Mall moving from building to building. Then I got shot by a sniper.

Meanwhile, a new Olympic sport had been invented: a cross between water polo and basketball, played with a tiny ball, in three-foot deep water. The players wore tank tops and sock-like underwear to cover their junk, but their asses were still exposed.