lastnite: a dream journal

The Oscars, Boys R Us, and playing the machines

You can always tell when I get a LOT of sleep, and that happened last night. I went to bed at about 1:30 am and woke up at 1:21 pm when the phone rang. I also woke up at 7:00 am, but I went right back to sleep. Even now, almost 3.5 hours later, I really just want to go back to bed.

I was both watching the Oscars. I was very confused, because I knew it wasn't time for the Oscars. Yet I still watched. At one point near the beginning, I was onstage. I was upset because I couldn't draw a box around me by rubbing my hands together and pretending to draw a box. My hands had bubble solution on them, so I wasn't completely insane. It had worked earlier. Instead the bubbles just burst and were not editable. Christopher Walken followed me onstage (I was now offstage, watching it all on television) ad said that there would be "some humor, some singing, and some old-tyme musical theatre acts." There were about eight pages worth of awards to hand out. I had the pages in front of me and they were for very odd things, like best use of a wa-wa pedal (or however you spell it) in a theme song (which went to a Wayans brothers' movie). The best love song by a teenager for another teenager came from a guy named "Tyrell," a white kid with deep chestnut eyes. The awards show played a clip from whatever movie it came from: as Tyrell sang, the love of his life, a female soccer player in a yellow jersey, was running in a meadow. She got up to accept the award for Tyrell, and she had her hair in two ponytails with big knots at the tops, somewhat like they do in Sailor Moon. Her best friend, a Japanese teenager, was sitting across the aisle, and they hugged and shrieked together. Then the awards production showed a clip from the Asian girl's movie: it basically involved her sitting on a boat, very dramatically, much like early on in The Piano. Then the show moved on to some animal theme, and we watched a clip from someone like Tom Green singing a love song to a dolphin. I noticed we had only covered about one page worth of awards (they had paragraph-long descriptions for each winner) and we were an hour into the program. I knew it would take forever to give out all the awards.

Then I was 'at work,' but not where I usually work, watching the awards show. I began talking about how I had given scholarships to this semester with Howard, and we thought about putting their names in our newsletter. I had given $200 to a home-schooled student who was unlike most of them. In the dream at that point, I knew her name. I think it was Mia now, but I knew for sure then. Mia had won the scholarship by passionately defending Dar Williams in an essay. So Mia took that $200 and joined the ultra-secret, ultra-powerful, ultra-exclusive "Boys R Us" club. They tried to block her, but couldn't since she could now pay the membership fee. Jon ran the club and started it for personal profit. He wrote out her check for her and made her sign it. The figure on the check was originally $700, then $100, and finally $200. With her generous membership fee, she was now an officer. Mia told Jon that I'd take over the website since I had five years of experience and would be vice-president of all of her committees. I took both of Jon's hands and held them in mine. "This doesn't change the state of our personal relations. Oh wait, there weren't any." I then giggled evilly, dropped his hands, and hugged Mia. I had no idea she'd completely destroy the Boys R Us club.

I then drove home from my parents' house (in my dream) and walked around my apartment complex. I noticed eight cars that were up on blocks and their back wheels stolen. I was glad I had stayed at my parents' house instead of coming home. I was amazed at how quiet it was though, and I took a walk since it was so peaceful. I knew it was early on a Sunday morning, and I was wearing a trenchcoat as I meandered down the street. Then I saw Holly fighting with the school's network, trying to get into her room. "Tell me about the whole scholarship thing. I hear Jon's determined to kill you." I told her the whole story about Mia, although I couldn't remember Mia's name. I told her that I could in "the dream," and we both knew the whole Boys R Us coup was a dream. We agreed it was a pretty funny dream.

Kathleen and I went to play slot machines, only they were more like those gift-dispensing machines at grocery stores. We played a game that was similar to Plinko from The Price is Right. Kathleen spent five dollars, and I spent one dollar playing the various games. I was much slower than she was: it always seemed that someone was in my way when I wanted to use the machine. I got gifts from another machine; someone had won trashy toys, but didn't bother collecting them. There were four things: a rubber superball, a glow-in-the-dark butterfly, a statue of a prince, and a glow-in-the-dark salt shaker in the shape of a bird that hopped a little bit. I kept the salt shaker and gave the butterfly to Kathleen. "Don't spill it," she said. I, of course, did spill a little, but I just wiped it off with my hand and pretended it never happened. I then left Kathleen to finish her gaming, and I put a quarter in a different machine to play a trivia game. Three players would line up at the trio of machines and shout out answers to basic questions, then the first person to answer a follow-up question won. "Name an animal," prompted the announcer. "Cat," shouted the first person. "Frog," I said, wanting to be the one who said cat. "Moose," the third person said. "What is missing from the series?" asked the announcer, and the third person said, "Scuba gear!" That was the right answer, and since I couldn't make sense out of anything anymore, I pressed the coin return button and got my quarter back. I also got an additional $1 in quarters and a bunch of CD-Roms: Spiderman Cartoon Maker ("I can always use another copy, I suppose," I thought), Spiderman Summer Update, Windows 1.0.0 ("WARNING: This is highly unstable release" it said on the CD), "Chapters 1-3" of Final Fantasy III ("free version"), and a few shareware games. I was happy, Kathleen had spent her limit, and we left. As we left, two secretary-types with big 1987 hair, were getting prizes from machines.