Black Onions

I can't stop my teeth from chattering as I sleep. I think it must be strange to do that, but I'm having a good time with it. (Actually, I'm not sure if this is a dream).

My mother comes and gets me to take me to Subway. I don't want to eat, but I finally see that all of the ingredients look delicious. There are onions, similar to red onions, but shiny and black. As I am about to order she turns to me and says sternly, "What did you do with the couch?"
I reply, "I don't have a couch! Do you think I could fit one in my apartment?"
She looks annoyed and says, "There was a couch outside Jenny, and you know it."
I am silent. I know nothing about any couch.
She takes me into a nearby Bartell's and I wander the aisles, wondering what I'm supposed to be buying. In one aisle, a man is looking at plastic cases of some sort. The packaging says, "Perfect aesthetic for artists!" Curious, I look closer and see that it is some sort of lunch box. No, it is a camera case, and it comes in all different shapes for different cameras. All are very attractive shiny white plastic with black detailing.

Back at home I find a note in my bed from the boy who was there. It is divided into three sections. The first is addressed to Kathryn, which is surprising. It says he's sorry for falling in love, but he's had to leave on a mission, and something about the Palestinians. The second part is addressed to the Palestinians. It seems to be some kind of directions, but I skip over it, eager to see what he wrote to me, because I think he was supposedly in love with me. It begins "Dear Jenny," and I concentrate very hard on every word after that so I will be sure to understand what it says.
"I... hope... haven't" I can't make any sense out of the individual words, because they don't seem to be in the right order. It says, "I hope that I haven't you caused to have -"
Even with the terrible grammar, I almost manage to make sense of it, but wake up before I see the rest of the sentence.

I Go Somewhere and Get A Thing

I receive a package in the mail, which is a printer with a thousand tiny cords and two articulated halves. I go on an excursion with Rick Kenney, at the end he smiles and signs my copy of "Evolution of the Flightless Birds"; a number of other books I have with me are scattered on the table. He makes a joke I laugh about. He is teasing me. I take the bus back.

There is a great height, perhaps a cliff, with a way down. It may be some sort of slide, but at any rate the height is surmountable.

Not-so-Secret Spy Mission

Once we realized the fleas were spying on us for them, we sat very quietly staring at the wall behind the futon, waiting for them to emerge. Then the wall blew up and we made our way through the tunnel behind it to the burrow. The six or so of us huddled in the dirt, peering out the window overlooking the majestic valley interrupted by their giant machines and evil operations. Our leader determined at last that the plates were coated, and that any food we prepared from home grown produce would also be contaminated. He marched us to the stairwell where he made their henchmen bring us clean plates. We divided up and locked ourselves in the two hall bathrooms. I ended up alone with the leader. We began to fill the bathtub so we could sleep safely. He insisted on doing everything facing the mirror.

We were interrupted by a request to report. The wall opened like french doors, the bathtub splitting in half. We entered a room filled with aquariums and women, scantily clad in tight leather and spandex, many wearing capes or masks. At the signal, all knelt down in front of the throne in the corner (with much difficulty in tight gold spandex miniskirts). I was standing behind it, so I never got to see the boss, but an old woman's voice asked the leader of my group to report. He replied, "I have done everything you suggested. I became friends with the curly brown-haired one."
"Good," the woman replied.
"...Things also progressed from there. I didn't expect to fall in love with her."

A Conveniently Long Three Mintues

I was about to go to San Francisco to get MARRIED.

I go to the Robinson Center, and notice Alex's food sitting on the table (because Alex's food is instantly recognizable in dreams). I take the grapefruit and eat it, asking if he is around, and someone tells me he will be back in a second. I don't have time to wait so I walk out the door with the grapefruit and run into Alex. He says, "We should talk... This is absurd!" I agree that "this" is absurd, but have to run off to my midterm, promising to talk as soon as I finish, before I leave for San Francisco.

While filling in the name bubbles on the answer sheet during the instructions for the final I remember that Alex is supposed to ruin my wedding, and also realize what is absurd is that I am 17 years old and getting married. I get up, under the semblance of going to the bathroom, and return to the Robinson Center. My fiance is there- some Asian EEPer packing his suitcase. Slightly confused about why I was going to get married in the first place, I tell him, "We're 17 years old! Let's not get married, we have to call off the wedding." When he gets all teary-eyed I grab his wrists and say, "We don't have to break up! Let's still be in love. We're so young, we should enjoy being young." He never really says anything, just looks sulky.

I leave him with his half-packed suitcase, figuring I should take advantage of my bathroom break and actually use the bathroom before going back to my midterm. I find the cellar where the bathroom is located, but I know I shouldn't bring the giant ziplock bag of Alex's pot I've been carrying around into the cellar with me because the supervisors check everyone before they go in there. I hide it under the window sill, but then suddenly realize bathroom breaks can only be three minutes long or they will fail your final. Instead of going to the bathroom, I decide I need to get coffee. I mean, I really NEEDED coffee, so I go into the Safeway next door and find Connor's checkstand. He understands my semi-urgency and pulls out the giant urn of drip and pours me a cup. Unfortunately, I can't drink it straight, and the only sweet thing around is caramel sauce. I pour some in- and realize I only have 23 second to get back to the final! The coffee isn't hot enough to dissolve the caramel, and I take two gulps, spilling all over myself as I run away

Endangered Species

In my living room, I am in the middle of a group of people dressed in academic clothing who file slowly forward, talking excitedly amongst themselves as they approach the front. The thing we are waiting to see, I find out, is some newly discovered, extremely rare creature. As I get to the front my neighbor tells me it is actually the last in existence, and we will be the only generation to have seen and documented it. It will probably die without its natural habitat.

I am confused at first when I do not see an animal in front of me. I then realize the focus of the academics' attention is the boy with a shaggy haircut and stooped posture. I walk forward and take his hand, looking him in the eye and saying, "It's nice to meet you." He replies quitely, "It's nice to meet you too." He looks completely normal, and I am not at all convinced that this person is not human. I examine his features closely, looking to see how he is different from us. His extremely alert expression and the sense of fear I get from his sudden eye movements give it away. He has been trained to interact in civilized company, but his mind is clearly designed for a more wild setting. I feel sad that he will die here.

Things Are A Little Different Now

I am getting a ride to school from my parents because I am late to dance. As we drive up Roosevelt I need to hop out, and they are looking for a place to eat. There is a large beige building on the corner with tiny windows very high up- I can hear the cooks laughing and having a good time, but why are they so high up? Inside it is plastic and themed.

I go to school, looking for some place to eat lunch. I walk east past about 5 tiny shops. I get around the corner and run into Julia and Andrea- we walk back looking for a good restaurant. My dad is there and orders pizza from one of the shops. I try to get some, but they are in the process of transitioning to a Greek restaurant. I try to order some hummus, but they haven't transitioned far enough into the Greeks theme to be able to serve that. There are only peach-filled cinnamon rolls.

In the car driving past Shorewood with Jen the 5.0 and Matt, I am in back seat and make fun of Matt, referencing the good ol' times. Jen says she knows, she has pictures too.

We visit Roderick in his new dorm. Everything he brought with him is colored bright red-orange.

We all go out to dinner, and Roderick brings along his new girlfriend, who looks and acts like a 10 year-old. Rod seems to think it's cute, and calls her sweetie pie and makes kissy faces as he straps her into a large high chair.

My bike is in the shop right now

I have picked up my bike, newly repaired, near the north end of campus and plan on riding it back to Parrington lawn, where I live with my mother. I don't have a helmet, and wonder if I should really ride it because something is bound to go wrong if I'm feeling paranoid. I decide it's time to take a chance, so I get on and push off. Somehow I end up immediately turning down a road that is marked "Access to Authorized Vehicles Only". I decide now is a good time to test my brakes, so I do, and but I'm not able to slow down much. I almost continue down the forbidden road, but decide to get off. It's a good thing I did, because when I look I see that the brakes haven't really been fixed. I knowledgable voice echoes in my head about proper braking, and I feel guilty that I may have ruined the brakes. But no one ever told me!

I walk it home to the lawn and go in to work. The rest of this dream is really the most stressful dream about work I've had yet, and it mainly consists of me repeatedly making bad shots and almost poisoning customers for about a half an hour until I wake up.

A Day

I am in a hurry to go somewhere, sitting on the ground, Kathryn urges me to hurry and I look for my shoes. I grab the nearest ones, which are Alex's smelly Sambas, and lace them as tight as they will go. I figure he won't mind, and then he walks in looking for his shoes. I yell that I have to borrow them and run off before he can object.

I am on my way to class behind Smith, and I spot Kris ahead locking up his bike. I quicken my pace to get a sort of running start into hug. My huge shoes flop as I run, making an echoing noise on the pavement, which catches Kris' attention. He turns around and laughs at me. The sun is very bright.

I am visiting Mt. Rainier's IB science class in Communications where I usually have French. I remember feeling disappointed that my version of the same class was taught by a professor who didn't care and never gave us interesting labs.

My Sandwiches Are Off-Limits, Even to George Clooney

Damn.

George Clooney, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich bandit, strikes again. Curse his celebrity, otherwise, I would call the cops. I want my sandwich back.

Sah's Curse

So this dream had to do with an urban legend of some kind. In the far end of an alley, there was this guy named Sah, and he was cursed. A group of caucasian kids with silver honda accord, they piled in kind of drunk to go see what his shit was about. They were all guys with the exception of a blonde girl with greenish blue eyes. No one was with the blonde, she was just friends with all of them, and she was also kind of a tough chick anyway.

Sah's thing was that he was cursed--he couldn't leave his red chain basement until some conditions were fulfilled--but the kids didn't know what they were past going in and killing Sah or somehow defeating him. If you went into the red chain basement, you were guaranteed for death, too, but the kids (and when I say kids, I mean like college-age) didn't figure this out until the brunet guy went in and got his ass kicked. When he came out, he was all beat up, and Sah had cut off a hand or something like that. Anyway, he shriveled up and died in the darker haired guy's arms, so he (his name I caught, it was like Joe or something) he goes in to fight with Sah.

Sah is like this huge muscle guy, and the reason he's cursed is because this sort of saint type girl figured out that he was a psycho sadist type. So she worked it so he was trapped in the red chain basement until he overcame his desire to mutilate people. Joe nailed him in the face with something metal, so half of it puffed up and got real swollen red looking. Then the dream camera thing switched to outside, where the blonde was thinking all sorts of worried thoughts. She goes in, and pulls out Joe really quickly. Sah decides to lock himself behind a door to make it easier on the blonde chick (or harder.)

But since both Joe and the blonde have been inside the red chain basement, they are marked for death unless Sah is killed/defeated before the end of the night. The blonde figures she'll just sleep until the next night and that'll save them both, but the last remaining friend of hers says that those are her rules, not Sah's, and they might not apply. Blonde chick decides not to take a chance. She goes into the red chain basement to face Sah.

He's still behind the door. Blonde chick has to figure out how to kill him--she can't do it when he's behind that door. She pulls up the metal bar locking it from the outside, and he rushes through to choke her, and she kicks him. Obviously it's not too effective.

The blonde chick, though, begins to sparkle somehow, and Sah realizes that she's a good person even if she is a bit bitchy. He says that she's very beautiful and he could learn to be a good person from her if she would let him follow her out of the basement and forever--I suppose this is the equivalent of a marriage proposal. The blonde is just furious at him though, and starts crying and yelling about how he killed her two friends (I'm not sure if this means that Joe died or not).

Sah gets angry, re-realizes his psycho sadist side and punches her in the eye socket. That part of her skull crunches inward and pops off, spraying this gray and green stuff all over Sah's face. She falls to the ground, obviously dead, with one half of her face gone. Her brains and other head-inside-things act as an acid on Sah's face and burn off the skin there. He touches his raw, even uglier face and says, "It's so soft." He realizes that he lost his chance at breaking the saint girl's curse, and now it's less likely that he'll get another.

What the Hell Is Going On?

My alarm has gone off.

I am awoken by my mother and sister returning to the house. I am alarmed, because if they are back, it means I have missed the IB test, which is at one o'clock. I glance at the clock. It says 5:07.
My watch says 2:38.
Panicked, I run out into the family room in my pajamas. The wall clock says 11:43.
My watch now says 7:24.
My father sits at the computer playing Everquest.
"Dad, what time is it?"
He tells me it is 11:43, like the clock says. I sigh in relief, but do not bother to reset all the clocks that are wrong. I know they will simply get off as soon as I turn around.
On the coffee table are mounds of food that look absolutely delicious. My mother and sister are sitting on the sofa, stuffing their faces. They have returned exhausted and famished.
The After Eight Mints and the bean dip are especially tempting, but I am not allowed to have any, as my IB test is in ten minutes. I am sorely disappointed. They will eat all this food without me.
"That guy was so wasted," my mother proclaims around a mouthful of chocolate. "Wasted."
"He always is."

I wake up, my alarm going off again. I try to roll out of bed to shut it off. I open my eyes to find that my floor has become cold and grey, and it is covered in maps of France and Europe. I am trying to put my feet on the floor, but something is obstructing me. Opening my eyes further, I realize that gravity is pulling me from the right. Instead of facing the center of my room, I am, in fact, facing the wall, with my feet up against it. No wonder I couldn't get out of bed.

Never before has sleep been that disorienting.

Whatever

I am walking down a street in a more posh version of Fremont, when we suddenly feel the approach of a wave of excitement and cheers, coming from around the corner. It reaches us and suddenly we are caught up in the massive crowd as a group of cyclists in a race fly past. Ariana is there, yelling in a very appropriate manner for Kris, and Kris' mother Julie is halfway between me and Ariana, about ten feet away, also yelling. I stand on my tiptoes, craning my neck to see the contestants, about to cheer with everyone else, but I decide against it at the last second, as I haven't actually seen Kris. In any case the finish line is just past where Ariana now stands with Alex, out of my range of view. The race has already ended, and I hear Julie tell Ariana that the final run is about to start from that point; Kris should be in front. A gun goes off and Alex, Ariana, and Julie all see Kris before I do, but the instant I catch of him, his hair flying back, we all gasp. He forgot to put his helmet back on.
I am first to yell "Kris stop!", but is comes out as a murmur. His mother's attempt is louder, and I join her. Finally he realizes he forgot his helmet and brakes in shock. My heart nearly stops, as he is in the center of a pack, but the other riders miraculously avoid him (I suspect some ride through him, like ghosts). He topples onto the sidewalk and walks over to Ariana and Alex, unharmed as soon as the last rider has passed. Julie joins them and I remain where I am, wondering how to approach the situation.
Then I feel a heavy arm placed comfortingly around my shoulders, steering me towards the small group. I look up to see Kris' dad, and he silently tells me I don't have to worry about causing tension, just to talk to Kris.
I feel less anxious, but when we get to the group and Kris turns around, what comes out of my mouth is, "I thought you shaved your head. I saw you on your bike the other day, and you had a hat on but it really looked like you had shaved your head. I guess I was wrong." And he says, "Yeah," and turns away, following the rest of the group as they leave.

Adventure Is Not Always So Amusing

I - and a few others in my adventurous party - slowly approach a desert city, in awe of the towering walls and open khaki-colored houses on top.

In a place some people might call a church, a monstrous wasp or mantis is suspended bottom-down by its thorax. The mottled brown exoskeleton blends with the intricately carved teak walls and the marbled flooring. The insect's head, far above, is invisible in the dimly flickering gas lamplight.
The shape of the abdomen causes condensing water to run to the point, where a large piece of papyrus has been spread underneath. Suspended like a pendulum, the insect wriggles and sways, forming intricate designs on the paper depicting each of four parts of our quest that will lead us to the ultimate treasure. The swirls and scribbles dissipate quickly, so we hastily memorize the next step. We hurry out of the room, afraid that we might soon become a meal.


In a strange house, everything is in shades of blue and grey. I glance out the window - we are perched on top of a hill - the town below glows with the aura of what must be death. I come to the conclusion that I am in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, and that the killer will soon be arriving here. Waiting, I lounge about in the kitchen as passing cars illuminate the refrigerator in locomotive bars of light.
A young, unpreposessing man steps from the bedroom closet. Genially, he asks me if I want some coffee, I decline, but he makes me some anyway, then pours some for himself.
"You don't have to kill all these people," I say. "It's just a movie."
He raises his eyebrows and grimaces into his coffee cup. "Obviously you know very little."

McSweeney's Dull Dreams

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/4JessyRandallandDanielM.Shapiro.html

That's Nonsense

While sleeping, in the middle of the night my companion leaves and is replaced with a man who snores and groggily calls me "baby".

I go to visit my parents in Burien. At midnight they go to bed and I get something to eat in the kitchen. Alex knocks on the door and enters as if I should have been expecting him and begins to tell me about an interview he just finished. Nothing he says makes sense, but I gather something is wrong, and I interrupt him to say, "I'm sorry, I have to give you a hug". He then says, "And I've decided I don't want to be an English major anymore!" and walks into the living room, rambling again. I follow him as he takes off his suit jacket and sits down on the couch. Staring at his shoulder I say, "I don't understand, Alex! What are you going to do then?" But he just says it doesn't matter, he just can't stand writing anymore. I worry that something terrible must have happened to make him feel that way, and I touch his shoulder to try and get his attention, but he doesn't notice, too absorbed in not making sense.

In Which We Have A Grand Time

We are all in Aaron's Ford Explorer: Sally, Holly, Anna, Kellen, Andrew, Aaron, Courtney and myself. It is early morning, they are all eager to be off. I race back from buying a granola bar from a vending machine underneath a stand of trees and hop into the moving car.

We arrive at a store. The entryway is a little dumpy, dusty, and crammed with useless stuff. Everything is a faded grey-brown. Moving into the next room, the treelike architecture remains, but the rooms are white and very spacious. The ambient lighting seems to emanate from the floor. There are display stands of shoes, and out on the balcony there are designer suits an strings of beads. It seems that there is some sort of high-class function going on, like an art show but with clothing. A large man in a purple suit sips his martini while his buxom blonde companion laughs at a private joke.

We are done shopping, people seem to have gotten what they need. We pile back into the car, and Courtney drives us off into the woods. I sit behind the driver's seat, and on a tray table in front of me there is a touchpad, like on a laptop. Courtney jokingly lets go of the wheel, and I find that by pretending there is a small steering wheel flat on the touchpad, I can control the car with my pointer fingers. I push forward, and the car lurches onto the road. Everyone seems to think Courtney is still driving, so she puts her hands in the air. Everyone screams delightedly as I clumsily speed us down a dirt road through trees.

More Caves and Corners

I am on an adventure at some sort of specialized art school. Narrowly escaping the vampires, I skid to a halt on the metal grating covering the floor and turn the corner into a damp cave that has been turned into an admission advisor's office. The two women speaking there ignore me, and I sneak over a pile of pillows and hang on the edge of the cave, trying to prepare myself for the plunge into the icy cold river rushing by below me. A small black beetle crawls over my shoe as I swing to and fro from one arm.