So Close

Last night in my sleep I ended up dreaming of a task, not a player. Earlier this week I attempted Damaged Mail and I got my letter back, although ripped up, with no damaged mail bag. In my dream last night I was sitting at my desk and saw that letter. I turned it over and to my surprise saw a "Damaged Mail" STICKER! It contained much of the same information that the bag does. I thought it made sense - if the post office thinks all that's left is one piece, why would it need a bag? I was like, "awe damn!" and was ready to submit the proof online.

I wake up this morning and see that letter on my desk. It causes me to remember the dream. I pick it up, and sure enough, no "Damaged Mail" sticker.

I did this. +1

I almost never remember dreams. I doubt I've been able to recall more than five dreams in the last ten years, and all of those have been tiny, fleeting fragments: a still image, or an emotion. (In passing, I feel the need to point out once again that sleep is a disease. A chronic, widespread epidemic, which robs its victims of nearly a third of their lives. One day we will find a cure.)

I figured this was an impossible task and never gave it any thought; however, last night I managed to complete it. I got home late after a costume party and spent a half hour tasking before bed. Woke up to an alarm clock this morning with an unusually long dream fragment still fresh in my memory.

I was in a room I've never seen: a living room, airy with a lot of glass windows or doors, a fireplace in one wall. We were there for some sort of event involving many players, but at the moment there were only two other people in the room: Mink, and Mink's husband. (I have no reason to believe Mink is married. Not sure where that came from.)

After re-examining a few Mink images, my dream was pretty accurate, except that my Mink was a wee bit older than her photos indicate. She was intensely talkative, and spoke in long, passionate, run-on sentences. Her husband, also a prominent SF0 player, was a wiry guy with an academic look, twenty years her senior, with a close cropped grey beard and wire frame glasses. He didn't say much, but he seemed to radiate silent glee.

We were talking about which cities in the world are best for finding things to do in the middle of the night. Then, out of nowhere, we heard some scraping noises from the back of the room. We walked over to investigate, and as we stood around looking at the wall, Orion emerged from the fireplace with a big coil of coax over his shoulder.

I distinctly remember recognizing Orion in the dream from his player photo, but can't recall any other details about him.

Then I woke up.

Although I've admired many of Mink's task completions and traded comments on occasion, I haven't had a whole lot of in-game interaction with her, and I've certainly never met her in person. Orion I know only through the dispatch and from occasionally browsing old completions. Can't imagine why I'd dream about those two rather than players I've actually met, unless my unconscious remembered the details of this task and sought to fulfill them.

Whoa +1

last night Haiku made a cameo appearance in my dream. I don't think there was much to it, or at least I don't remember much. But this Gentleman looking exactly like his player photo was suddenly standing there and i was like, "Hey! That task you did, with the tea, that was wonderful!"

and he smiled. I think he was pretending not to be annoyed.

dreaming of someone you've never met is Bizzare. Unless, of course, it's Ralph Nader. I can't imagine NOT dreaming about Ralph Nader.

(no subject)

I dreamed last night that Loki (I actually think the message started out being from Spidere but turned into Loki by the end of it) sent me a message saying that he really really like praxes with screen shots in them, and that I should do something to encourage people to make them (cause otherwise he wouldn't do them). I considered making a team devoted to them.

(no subject)

I had a dream about prom last night.

We all got eaten by elephants.

(no subject) +1

I wish I remembered my dreams. I'll bet you guys are in them all of the time. You guys and Logan Tom.

(no subject)

I had a dream with Lincoln in it, but I'd already met him once at that point so I don't know if that counts.

It's the middle of the night, and I've remembered a dream. +5

I've woken up from dreaming about SFØ. Normally that would be fine, and I would write it up in the morning. But I've got a cold sweat, the room is warm but I've goose pimple up my arms and on my neck. I can feel a very real adrenaline rush that's quite familiar, and that means I won't get back to sleep any time soon; I was dreaming about Journey to the End of the Month.

Some Dreamworld facts:
JTTEOTM is a high profile game. It works more or less like JTTEOTN, but on an international scale. It started in Canada, and had a checkpoint in Tijuana. Canada included most of Washington state, Montana, Idaho, a bit of North Dakota (dreams can be strange sometimes). The game's running over a month, and we're almost at the end, on our way into Florida. Everyone's excited because we're arriving in the state where judges gave the election to Gore and dozens of politicians (Including Jeb) got arrested for conspiring to rig it the other way. The general political climate isn't hugely different, but there's less war and less terror. So people play more, and a huge network of supporters has grown around the game. Runners can count on communities to take them in secretly, much the way the Weather Underground had friends who were still on grid but ran safehouses and could sort out transport. But some things are independent too, and many players opt for complete disappearance, because the chasers draw on networks of surveillance. This has already caused very public controversy, as police watching their own feeds have turned over information to the public that led to catches in game.

At the start of the game, everyone saw everyone else. A party of about a thousand, everyone trying to remember faces and not be remembered themselves, no one knowing who the seed chasers were. Then the runners getting an hour's lead time to vanish into some other part of Vancouver. I disappear to a drugstore, for hair dye (in the dream I still have hair) and shaving cream. I shave my moustache, and my partner (an old friend of mine, not currently a player, from Vancouver) shaves his beard; we both dye our hair dark brown, trim the back and sides to look generic. In this game, you're not allowed to travel between cities without another player, and most pairs of runners stick together as long as possible. Larger formations happen on an ad hoc basis, but rarely work together for long. But if your partner gets caught, you're still free if you can find someone in the same situation in the same city (of course knowing that your partners have almost certainly met up as chasers in need of partners can advertise more freely). Chasers tend to change partners frequently to keep a given pair from becoming too recognisable.

My partner got caught in St Louis, as did Bex. So for the last stretch, I've been travelling with Scarlett, who's hair is currently a bright but natural-looking red. We'd been working with different underground networks, so between us we have a lot of resources and feel pretty confident going into the home stretch. We've gotten onto the train in Raleigh, and have been on it for a while, though knowing we'll have to get off outside of Orlando. (Did I mention in the dream that the public transport infrastructure is way better? Well it is. The train network is massive. Also, in JTTEOTM, private transport is forbidden, though hitchhiking is not. There are prizes for creative routes, so people are documenting their practices carefully, which makes harder to cheat.) We've seen other people get on the train that we think are players, but it's been weeks, and people keep changing their appearance. No one in this game wears armbands. You have to use your memory from the party at the start of the game. But bystanders have almost certainly heard of the game, and probably follow its events online (documentation of catches is often posted soon after they happen, a few everyday--but there are hundreds of players), so they're accepting of some strange behaviour on the part of chasers even if they aren't a part of a support network. And in this game social norms are a bit bent from the the shear amount of gameplay going on anyway.

Before I go on, go googlemap 'Florida'. Kind of amusing.

So yeah, Scarlett and I are on the train as it pulls into a station in Jacksonville. Trains are only safe while they're moving, so you keep a low profile then but you can relax a bit. For now I'm looking carefully out the window and spot Dax and Burn Unit walking towards the front of the train, suited, looking very sharp. They aren't carrying much, just light bags. "Chasers," I whisper. By the time I've turned around, two strangers and the other end of the carriage are stood bolt upright, scared, staring at me with arched eyebrows. I nod, and they bolt with their packs towards the caboose. Scarlett's already up too, ten paces ahead of me, and I shout "Slow," winking when she turns, not wanting to tell the bystanders what I'm thinking. She does and we keep jogging. Terpsichore and Tiny Dancer go past us. I think I spot Minch ahead, but hard to tell in the hustle. There were more players on the train than we'd realised.

We jog for about 20 seconds. We were 5 carriages from the front, and they might get slowed down by other players behind us. Soon the tension is too much and I hit a door release. A quick peek at the platform shows it empty, which gladdens my heart. We get off and start creeping back towards the front of the train. We can see in, so we're crouching low, moving slowly. There's still plenty of commotion on board. I see Dax go pass, catch someone I can't see. Another carriage on, we see Burn Unit and Spidere conferring. But no one's seen us yet. We get on the next carriage, all non-chalant, and sit separately, but within eyesight. I haul out a book, and start reading. Dax comes from behind me and sits down just as the train rolls out. I'm safe from being caught, but don't know if he'll recognise me. In the dream we've never met. I look up and see that Tom has sat down next to Scarlett. They're chatting away, as Dax and I start to. I spin some yarn about how I'm going to visit a cousin who's in Daytona beach bumming around after an Atlantic Centre for the Arts residency before heading to Istanbul. And how I'm American (which I'm not, in the the dream), because I wan't to distance myself from my real back story. Though that will get awkward if State Troopers board the train as I'm travelling on a fake German passport.

I make an excuse to go to the dining car, but Dax comes with me. On the way back, I pop into the restroom. I scribble a note, in Italian (mine is much better in the dream than in reality), with an acrostic in it that will tell Scarlett what our new drop point will have to be, as we were originally planning to ride to Palm Bay to hitch back. I hide it behind the mirror.

A few minutes later, Scarlett starts to get up, and Tom does too. But he goes into the restroom, not her. He can't have seen me come out of there, can he?

The tension is too much and I've woken up.

And I'm getting tired again, so might be able to get back to sleep. There were more details, but I wanted to get the whole shape down, and enough of it's there.

(no subject)

So, er, I played entirely too much Fallout 3 last night. When I finally slept, I dreamed of wandering a post-nuclear Fallout-style wasteland in search of tasks to complete. Suddenly, Lincoln was one of my adventuring companions. Despite never having met him in person, this was a fine survival-oriented decision by my subconscious. I do remember him complaining about my not having the right sort of medical supplies for walking barefoot for months in irradiated desert, but he was incredibly useful to have in my party. Thank you, Lincoln!

well that was unexpected! +2

This morning i wake up to recall a very random sequence of events indeed!
It occurred as such:

I was on a bike ride with my father and younger sister, and we're riding around a city which had the street/housing organization of cities like say, Concord or Walnut Creek (large, six lane boulevards and branching residential side streets, strip malls every six blocks or so) but the houses, instead of being cookie cutter homes were all very nice San Francisco-style Victorians with nice yards.

I'm under the impression we're off to visit a friend, but at that moment on the bike ride I was unaware of who we were going to see. We arrive at the house, a sky-blue three-story Victorian, and as my dad and sister lock up our bikes out front, i make my way into the basement entrance ahead of them.

When i walk in, lo-and-behold there's Rubin!
At this point, i should mention that i have met Rubin in real life, many times, so we are acquainted in person but we haven't really been engaged in conversation for more than a sentence or two. We follow each other on Flickr and Twitter and such, and I've always been an admirer of his photos and snarky tweets but I've no previous grounds for what happens next...

Once i walk into the basement I'm pleasantly surprised to see him but once Rubin sees me walk in, he approaches me with this completely enamored look in his eyes and walks over and embraces me! (!!!) He tells me how long he's wanted to do this, then plants one on me - right on the lips!

At that moment my dad and sister walk in from locking up the bikes, and Rubin steps away from me with this annoyed look on his face from being interrupted. My dad and sister shrug and continue past us up the basement stairs into the rest of the house.

Then Rubin & I walk down the road to the Longs Drugstore and proceed to steal stuff from their stockroom.
I awaken shortly after we leave through the front door with our arms full of goods.

man, i can't explain it but i'm totally on a roll here

Last night was a goddamn smorgasboard of dream players!

The basic premise of my dream was that it was Oakland Journey 2.0 - and this time i was determined to run it the entire way through.

It started off around the same time of day, but ran a different route than before, starting off in a dingy loft/studio approximately where checkpoint five was (just outside of the Jack London Square area) and ending (for no particular reason) at what's listed on our route handouts as "between Stuart and Parker" in Berkeley (i'm just going to assume my brain meant Willard Park - which is the only landmark in between Stuart St and Parker St and College and Telegraph.

For some reason this Journey was run rather differently, runners seeded from many points along the Oakland shoreline, and there were a variety of options to visit for your number one and number two checkpoints. Also, the armbands were the colors of this latest SF Journey.

I was going for time, speed, and stealth here so I decided on two checkpoints that were most direct from my seeding point that would lead me to checkpoint 3, which was the first common checkpoint for all players.

The first checkpoint was located on the outskirts of Chinatown, near Alice & 12th or something, and it was an unmanned checkpoint that was a bar- it's worth noting it was probably the perfect blend of both The Alley and The Ruby Room (Oakland dive bar favorites of mine). There I had to use the phone booth and call a number to confirm i had reached this checkpoint successfully. The phone was in use by the player Emily Smith (who i've never met) when i arrived, so i walked around only to discover the bar was filled with people from my high school that i was acquainted with but never really talked to. i thought this was rather strange, so i hurried my phone call and made my way to the second checkpoint.

Saw a few runners and chasers on my way over, but i arrived at the second checkpoint without event. It was located in what was the commercial ground floor of one of downtown's high rise office buildings, in a store that sold rather gaudy interior decor - and upon arriving most of the lights were dimmed and no one was around. Then Kyle Hamilton (who i've also never met!) appears carrying two trays of food - one filled entirely with slices of pound cake and the other entirely with sliced cheddar cheese. He explains that all i've got to do is have a snack then i can be on my way - I am more than delighted to have both pound cake and cheddar cheese (separately, though perhaps together could be tasty!) and return to the streets for checkpoint three.

Making my way over I see a higher number of runners and chasers - narrowly avoiding swarms of chasers myself - and arrive at the third checkpoint. It's located near Broadway and West Grand - and is rather much a modified Mel's Diner. Arriving safely, I check in with Sam, Ian and Sean (who are enjoying eggs and hash browns) and I'm happy to see many groups of runners arriving. While there I run into Bryce (Engaging Lonely Between) and JTony and we venture out to checkpoint 4 together. It's starting to get dark now, and looking at our maps we notice a bonus checkpoint!

It's over on the shores of Lake Merritt, and when we arrive we find Alanna (anna one) dressed in all black. She asks us a riddle, which we answer correctly, and she gives us the go-ahead to skip to checkpoint five!

Making our way to checkpoint five, we encounter Minch, Fonne Tayne, and Rongo Rongo -- and we form one big happy travelling group! We manage to not encounter chasers at all until we're about to reach the checkpoint - at which time we all scatter.

the checkpoint itself is rather curious - it's pretty much entirely fictional - the best way i can describe it is if you crossed a Barnes and Noble with a Circuit City and made it four stories tall. Don't ask me where it is, either - unless you account for the extra surreality dimension that is located between Oakland and Berkeley. the checking-in place is located on the top floor, and making my way up the four levels of escalators I run into C.M. Gonzalez and his wife Heatherlynn (neither of which whom i've met!) - we're all just relieved to have made it into the checkpoint in one piece.

Arriving on the top floor there are many runners about - but this time it's like SF Journey in that almost everyone's suddenly in a halloween costume!
The dream ends with me feeling a little out of place and lost in a crowd of strangers dressed up like giant chickens and such.

-whew- that was a lot to recount!

(no subject)

I was dreamng about Miss Minx tonight. We and someone else I don't remember were having something like a mashmallow-competition. We had to handle huge marshmallows that were dig under big rice-noodles with chopsticks. We were supposed to take them, cover them with walnuts and then grill them. Myrna was just so good:she didn't drop it once and her giant marshmallow was perfectly equally coverd with nuts. Mine fell down a couple of times and the walnuts didn't stick on it, haha!