An Amalgam Of Dreams
For some reason, I really like recording my dreams on my blog. It just feels so good to let these things out of my head. Perhaps it's the perverse hope that I'm providing free material to a psychology class somewhere while, or perhaps it's just that it's an easy excuse to blog something - we may never know. Needless to say, however, I enjoy it.
So, for those of you following along, here are the three most recent dreams (that I'm willing to share, anyway).
1. The Bookstore and the Muffin
I was staying with my father at a relatively high-class hotel. Think of it as a cross between The W and Windsor Castle, though the surroundings were decidedly foreign. From experience, I can say that the overall environment screamed of Hong Kong. Everything in the room was controlled by a central console near the bed, and there were odd pictographs all over the place.
I had gotten bored with whatever was going on in the hotel room, and took a stroll through the cavernous hallways of the hotel. Despite my hatred of all things 'elevator', I entered an elevator in the lobby, and took it to a higher level. In the elevator with me was a young woman who was obviously with child. She seemed nice enough before the door closed, but once the elevator car started its ascent, she began to complain about nearly everything. From the glow of the buttons we had each used to select our destination, to the dimensions of the elevator car, she complained - loudly - about it.
Eventually, I stopped understanding what she was saying. I pressed the button for whatever the next floor was, and got out, leaving her to her self-manufactured hell. On this floor of the hotel was a large library/bookstore, and like every modern bookstore, it sold baked goods. I grabbed myself a cinnamon muffin, and looked around the store. The muffin, by the way, was slowly growing in my hand. It was made of mostly cinnamon frosting, and was growing faster than I could eat it. I didn't think this was weird.
There was a book I was interested on the top shelf of the section I was browsing, so I jumped in an attempt to get it. I immediately shot up all the way to the ceiling. Upon my return to the floor, a nearby employee informed me that they had turned the gravity down in the bookstore so that people could easily reach the top shelf. Pretty cool, I thought.
With my book in hand and some Invader Zim dolls I had found (and a lobster, though I'm not sure how I ended up getting that...), I headed for the checkout stand. I put my purchases down on the felt-topped counter, and reached for my wallet, but I couldn't get it out of my pocket because of the muffin. I tried putting the muffin down on the counter, but it would have gotten the felt all dirty. Just then, a man I can only describe as a butler came by and gave me a to-go bag for my muffin.
I then explored the upper floors of the bookstore, which were, apparently, entirely dedicated to feminine hygiene, as illustrated by posters everywhere. It didn't work with the decor of the upper levels, which was very Star-Trek-Meets-The-EMP-Meets-The-W-ish.
I woke up.
2. Component Parts
I don't recall many details of this dream, except that there were turkeys and toxic substances involved. I was back in Wisconsin, living near where my father's house is. While walking along the road, I noticed that a house had fallen over. The house looked as though it had rusted badly, though upon closer inspection the house was actually wooden and the discoloration was chocolate.
Signs were posted in various places on and around the house indicating that the chocolate was actually a radioactive biohazard (though, only when ingested, apparently). A woman walking by explained the situation to me (none of which I can remember) and gave me a small turkey.
Being a geek, I was interested in how the turkey worked so I began to disassemble it into its component parts. Now, that may sound crazy, but the turkey actually came apart very easily. There was no blood, and it didn't harm the creature in any noticeable way. In fact, stripping the turkey down to its core actually made it perform significantly better - at least, that's the conclusion I came to in the dream. I'm not sure how you can measure the performance of a turkey in any meaningful way, so I can't go into particulars about the benchmarking process.
Meanwhile, another turkey - colored pure white - happened by, and was terribly distraught at the sight of the disassembled turkey. It began clucking and crowing and gobbling and whatever else it is that distraught turkeys do - I don't know.
I abruptly fell into a ditch filled with radioactive chocolate leaking from the broken foundation of the house.
I woke up.
3. Customer Service
I was heading somewhere to meet my dad, and was running low on gas. I had to pull off to get some fuel, which I suddenly realized that I was hanging out with a friend of mine from back home - Justin. Justin and I decided that we should go get some liquor (because that's really all we did...). At roughly the same time, Dad called me and asked me what I thought of Charleston Chew (it's a type of awful, awful candy). I told him that I hated it, and he suggested that I stop by and pick some up. I didn't object at all, as I knew where I could solve both problems.
There was a combination liquor/candy/book store out in the country near our current location. Justin and I drove through the rain and wind and finally arrived. We walked in and spent some time browsing. I grabbed some Charleston Chew, and walked up to the counter to purchase it. The clerk watched me walk up to the counter, nodded his head in greeting when I got there, and then walked over to another counter across the store to talk on the phone for a while.
Justin and I got kind of pissed about this, so Justin walked to the other side of the counter to look at something on the computer. This seemed perfectly logical at the time, so I made no objections. The clerk came back and accused us of stealing something because Justin was on the other side of the counter.
At this point, I just unloaded on the guy. I yelled at him for making the accusation. I yelled at him for his lack of customer service skills. I even offered to settle the dispute with him in the parking lot.
He made some joke about it, and I reluctantly gave him a high-five and left. This seemed perfectly logical at the time.
I walked outside and noticed that Justin was nowhere to be seen. I entered the store again, only to find that the clerk was replaced by my current boss, who explained that the store was under new management - him. He said that he really needed to take care of something in the back room, but he couldn't leave the counter because there was nobody else there to watch it, and he didn't want to frustrate his customers like the previous clerk had. I offered to watch the register for him, despite my hatred of handling people's money.
He tried to give me a quick lesson on how to work the register (which, incidentally involved inputting the price of the item, and then multiplying it by five), but I told him that I didn't want to know how to work it. I'd just stand there and tell people that they'd have to wait until someone who knew how to use the register showed up. That was acceptable to him.
Again, this all seemed perfectly logical at the time.
So, a balding guy entered the store, and I went over to the bookshelf and pulled a copy of 2600 Magazine (as well as a porno magazine that was meant to be a parody of 2600) and went back to the counter to read them. The balding guy came up to the register with his purchase. I told him that I wasn't able to use the register, and that it would be just a few minutes until my boss would be back and was able to help him.
We had a little go-around about how it came to be that I was manning a register that I had no idea how to use. It really broke down to me telling him he was an asshole, and that I'd be glad to settle his dispute in the parking lot. My boss came back and started to apologize to the customer for my behavior, and the inconvenience of waiting. I began to interject little bits of information about what a dick the guy had been, which my boss seemed to ignore.
I put the magazines down on the counter, took a penny from the penny jar, and left.
I woke up.