Dream Log: August 13, 2000

I was on a United Air plane, flying from Shanghai to Toronto. I knew because of the funky info-display the 747's have in the front of each section of cabin. But the funny thing was, I was like the only person in the whole airplane. Does that rock or what? All of a sudden, these semi-nubile stewardesses came out and started doing this funny strip dance of sorts. Wow....

"This is what you've been missing in economy class." said one in a husky voice. Snoogins. Dinner was served, instead of the usual airplane food junk, I got a giant steak! In-flight entertainment was X-Men on a giant TV. Then I was in Toronto airport. Best airplane trip I've had, ever. It only lasted like an hour instead of the usual 15.

Then this big Greyhoud bus appeared in front of me. It said "Cornell" in big letters, so I tossed my luggage in and stepped on. Holy shit, it was Bill Gates! Then he started growing these huge horns, until he looked like Diablo out of Diablo 2! Welcome to the hellbus. Christ, this was going to be a long trip. Disharmony indeed.

The seats were all uncomfortable and pricky, and the driver must be 80 years old because he won't go any faster than 35 miles an hour. Wesley Willis was there, and he was headbutting Diablo in some kind of headbutting contest. Wacky. He then started singing "Casper the Homosexual Friendly Ghost". After a while, the dream got really boring, and I woke up.

-/+

My dad was taking me to an outlet mall to buy clothes. As if I were not a citizen of this earth, he explained the concept of malls to me when I complained that there wasn't a Maurices (which I don't really understand why I cared, big woop). "Not all malls have the same stores Aimee. As you trek the great American malls, you will find everything in discordian." I got out of the car and went into a far end of a mall which was an old Greek building with a 20-foot high ceiling. I took a seat with my mom, who was there now, a woman who appeared to be a friend of hers, and her young child. There was a small television set, and I was intent to turn it on, but couldn't. So I would club it with my hand. This was a problem.

This part quickly faded into the next part of the dream, where I am sitting in one of the many computer labs at my school. My old keyboarding teacher is back and he's teaching Web Publishing again. I silently muttered to myself, "Oh great." I had a long rant in my head about how uneducated the computer teachers at my school are, and how I am usually the one that other students call for when they need help. My teacher is going on a tangent about XML after reading about it in one of those Samson's "Learn --whatever--- in 24 hours!". He has pages photocopied and is under the impression that XML is the same thing as CSS. "Now to embed XML in your HTML pages, click file on Microsoft Word. Right, Aimee?" "No." A huge fight breaks out between us and I'm all set to hit him when instead, he decides to punish us all by making us work in pairs to write reports on various elements of computing.

I end up with the boy I mentioned in "What person from school would you never want to meet again?". I sit down with him and I instantly pull out two printed papers with information on them. I've already decided that we will be doing our report on object-orientated programming and that I will be doing the entire report by myself because it is a huge risk to take to leave anything up to someone as devoid of knowledge as he is. But my plan fails when the teacher finds out. So I give him the option. "You can do either the main research, just basic information. Or you can write a program in any language using object-orientated programming." He looks at me thinking I mean Spanish, French, and says, "I know Spanish. I'm in Spanish 2." I laugh. "Aren't we all? And with a 78 average too, I'll bet!" I say something to him in Spanish that he doesn't understand ("Los arboles me besaron anoche.", "The trees kissed me last night."). I explained again that I meant programming languages. He said, "Well I DID do a little bit of QBasic!". My insides scream. He goes on. "Yup, I can write some PRETTY long codes.. 100 lines even." My insides are now curdling. "Um how about you let me do the program?" He acts upset, but finally we come to a compromise.

Now I am wandering the halls of my school. I come into a room lit only by candlelight and students are standing around talking before class. As I walk in, the attention of my friend/love focuses on me, but he says nothing. I walk past him and to the other door exiting the room, and it's the last I see of him. I felt smooth doing that. Now I'm in the hallway where my homeroom in seventh grade was. I stand by the door looking around, and 2 girls approach me. One is this flunkee, Crystal, and with her is a girl I have never seen before. Crystal says, "Yeah Aimee, we got a new student." She extends her hand to me, but I don't shake it. I merely am shocked at the idea that Crystal will have another opportunity to corrupt some innocent child's mind.

I walk away, thinking about my code, then I wake up.

I entered a building that had the combined aspects of asylum, old folks' home and hospital, with a couple of random friends.

The place was deserted of activity; there were elderly patients in some beds, unresponsive. We looked around for people, in vain. We go through the hospital from one end to the other and end up out back. The building leans up against a hillside. I see something on the side of the hill--my animal side kicks in, and I chase after it.

As I get closer, it appears to be some kind of zombie, all dirt-brown and green, although the dream insisted on having me call it a ghost. I am unable to catch it but I get rather close; it doubles back, reaches out and grabs me with its fingers--and the sudden thought hits me: ghosts aren't supposed to have working fingers. The ghost disappears.

We all go back inside, and find some empty beds to sleep on for the night. The place is full of windows; you have pretty much an equal chance of seeing something outside as inside. I fall asleep, and...

I see the face of the ghost above me. I wake up. The ghost's face is abruptly replaced with that of a pretty female doctor. One of the random friends I came in with, whom I think I recognize as Dart from LoD, introduces her to me. I begin to get the feeling this is another videogame dream.

I am seriously affected by my earlier premonition: This nurse must be the ghost in disguise. Like an idiot, I act on my impression and call her out for it. She turns into the ghost; we fight; she clobbers me.

---

It's not game over though; apparently I get another chance. The second time around I manage to keep from freaking out when the doctor appears. I take her down when she isn't looking.

I was walking downtown at night and turned left into a bar that had several feet of pavement between the street-facing walls and the door. When I turned, I passed in front of a small band: two men and one woman. The woman was pale, with a heart-shaped face and dark sunglasses. She had a pageboy haircut, a black beret, and a sad, clear voice. I noticed that as soon as she finished singing she would press her face into the chest of one of the bandmates, like she couldn't face the world if she wasn't singing.

There was a room behind the bar section, and I went there to do something - make a phone call? An amazingly massive man, with a beard and also in sunglasses, sat like Jabba the Hutt in the middle of the floor. To his left were a few open pizza boxes, with the pizza still there. In one of the boxes was a sign that said "The contents of this box are incomplete. We needed part of it to take the plane from London to Algiers." (I have no idea).

I glanced at him several times. We were the only ones in the room. He made no sound, nor did he move. It was a tad awkward.

And, of course, on the way out, I saw the woman sing and press her face into her bandmate's chest again.