How to be Idle, by Tom Hodgkinson
also How to be Free, by Tom Hodgkinson (the secret is being idle)
In the Land of Wonderful Dreams
Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams
Had a dream I was at a family dinner at my grandma's house, like old times. I was sitting next to my aunt, who was on her bullshit.
I awoke to the sound of my dog retching.
The feeling of relief that I only had to clean up dog vomit instead of having to be in the same room with my aunt is something that's going to stick with me.
I awoke to the sound of my dog retching.
The feeling of relief that I only had to clean up dog vomit instead of having to be in the same room with my aunt is something that's going to stick with me.
Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams
It's also possible, and I actually do mean this, that you heard the sounds of your dog vomiting while asleep and associated that with your aunt. The brain will incorporate sounds into dreams like that, which can lead to some really funny (or sometimes really disturbing) dreams.
In either case, your aunt sucks.
In either case, your aunt sucks.
Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams
sorry about your dog Thad
Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams
Thanks, she's okay AFAIK. Main thing I'm worried about is she's still excessively thirsty, and we'd thought the surgery would fix that. I took her off one of her meds and I'll give her a few days to make sure it's out of her system, then probably call the vet if she's still drinking too much.
Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams
So I frequently have anxiety dreams, nightmares, and adventure dreams. Often, my dreams take the form of a "movie" experience, where I am nominally "watching" a movie unfold (sometimes with friends) but due to the nature of dreams my POV often shifts between sitting on the couch watching (and sometimes making comments to friends) or in the action as the main character or side character.
This dream was basically all of that combined.
We open with a whole bunch of people coming together to meet on an island. Hundreds of them, in fact. It's not clear why this is happening. I am watching this movie on the couch, alone. I catch a glimpse of a few familiar faces, but they're shown so briefly that I can't be sure of who I am seeing. The action begins to follow Peter Dinklage, as he is herded along with everyone else into an abandoned mall. A loudspeaker barks "those who find the exit first will be chosen" and hundreds of people begin frantically rushing and stampeding around this dilapidated space, complete with broken kiosks, rusted storefront gates, and skeletons on the benches. I watch as Peter Dinklage slips off to a side, under a gate, and into a Macy's. Running through the aisles, he finds a back entrance and escapes. The exit closes behind him, meaning that each person has to find a unique exit.
Now the POV shifts and I am Peter Dinklage's character. This isn't unusual, I frequently dream that I am both genders, even when not inhabiting an actor.
Outside, the winners of the mall run trickle in. A total of ten before the remaining people are trapped in the mall to die. There's an exposition scene as the mad scientist who arranged all of this, played by a young Christopher Lloyd in tight black leather and goggles with one lens missing, explains everything.
"I wanted to select the nine other most resourceful people in the world," he says, pointing his rather nasty looking handgun at each of us in turn. It's connected to a large metal backpack he's wearing by a metal tube. I don't know what it shoots, but given the setting, I can't imagine it's painless. "Now you nine will join me on an excursion and adventure to the Isle of Madness, where the insane asylums of the multi-verse drift after their universes are destroyed. You could call it... the flotsam of insanity."
Lloyd chuckles at this. He waves his gun. "One of these abandoned asylums is the worst of the worst," he continues. "It was born of a world infected with madness from the beginning. It was a woman's asylum, and when their universe ended, eaten by a giant worm that consumed galaxies, the women inside were turned into ghosts."
We all nod. This is perfectly reasonable.
"Now they haunt the halls of this asylum. We will be going there to loot whatever treasure and artifacts we can find," Lloyd finishes.
We all look at each other. This means the trip will be competitive rather than cooperative. I feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. This is bad news, we need to work together in such a dangerous place. I raise my hand.
Lloyd sees me and points his gun at me, sneering. I suddenly realize that the doctor is also completely insane.
"Yes, dwarf?" he asks.
"Shouldn't we work together?" I say. It is my own voice which comes from Peter's lips.
Lloyd laughs. "We don't take advice from a slut like you."
This perplexes me. Why is Peter being called a slut? Then I realize that the Doctor's insanity permits him to see me, the person watching the movie/inhabiting Peter.
"Well," I say. "I might be a slut, okay I'm definitely a slut, but that doesn't make my advice bad."
This does not seem to impress Lloyd. He waves me off with his gun and turns to the rest of the adventurers. "We leave immediately," he says, and motions to a large bus. It is overrun with mad scientist gears and tubes, dozens of devices and machines attached to its hull that I cannot identify. We file inside.
The interior is larger on the inside and well stocked with weapons and supplies. One of the others rushes to claim a large shoulder mounted missile launcher. I recognize him as Tobey Maguire. Next to him another winner of the mall sits down, and claims an oversized energy sword. It's another actor, a man, but I cannot quite place his face. He has short red hair and a stocky build. He looks nervous, as does Tobey.
I sit next to them. "We should make a pact to watch each other's backs," I suggest.
"Why?" asks Tobey. His missile launcher is gigantic.
"It just makes sense if we're going to a dangerous place," I say. "And you two seem like reasonable people. At least more reasonable than certain others accompanying us," I say, gesturing to the front of the bus where Our Good Mad Doctor Guide is taking his seat in the drivers cab.
They consider my offer with measuring eyes. Finally one of them extends a hand. "Alright," he says. I shake it.
The bus lurches and begins to move. It drives out of the mall parking lot, into a waiting portal, and we find ourselves driving upon a highway suspended miles above the ground. Beneath us we see shattered lands, boiling oceans, and hundreds of ruined asylums, most in states of near total collapse.
I cast about for weapons in the bus. I know I'm a small person, so I look for small weapons. Finally, in a desk drawer, I find a small submachine gun. I take it and a handgun as well.
We continue on our drive to insanity. The horizon begins to tilt up and fold inward toward us. Everyone gasps, I duck my head and look at the floor of the bus.
"Don't look at it," I say. "I don't know much about this eldritch horror shit, but I know that the more you try to look at it and make sense of it, the faster you'll go insane."
The group heeds my advice. We all stare at the floor as the drive continues. Except for the Doctor, but he's already insane, of course.
Huge creatures shamble by in the corners of my vision. I can hear them breathing and shrieking as we drive past them. They are extremely large, at least as brobdingnagian as the bus if not larger. Tobey points his missile out the window without looking and fires.
"Don't!" I warn him.
The missiles fires and we hear the shriek of it briefly before it detonates upon the flank of one of the nearby beasts. The explosion is close enough to rock the bus. I look at Tobey one last time before he is snatched through the window by the creature he has angered.
The rest of the drive is uneventful. We arrive at the worst haunted asylum in all the multi-verse.
"We're here," says the Mad Doctor gleefully. "Don't forget to switch on your radios."
We stand at the entrance of the asylum. It's mostly intact. I feel a very strong urge to run.
"We should all enter at the same time to avoid being separated," the Doctor says.
We walk side by side up to the gates. They are, in a word, rotten. The place oozes malice and madness. Signs near the door have text on them, but I keep my eyes away, knowing that trying to read it would drive me insane.
We step through the gates. I am sweating badly. I wipe my brow and it comes away wet with blood. I blink, and the blood is gone.
"This isn't going to go well," I say.
The Doctor laughs. "That's the point," he says.
We find ourselves in a large entrance hall. I see three sets of parallel stairs leading down into the dark. I say "let's go down the center stairs."
"What stairs?" says my unknown actor friend.
We discover that we are all seeing different versions of the same room. No two of us sees the same thing, but the group has been roughly divided into those that see stairs leading down, stairs leading up, and no stairs at all. We proceed, my actor friend and a quiet black woman coming with me. As we walk down the stairs, we can see the others exploring their own versions of the asylum above us, but looking at them hanging there impossibly, overlapping their realities with ours, makes my head hurt. I look away.
There are portraits on the walls as we go down the stairs. They are all screaming. The quiet black woman looks at one and begins to reach out to touch it. I yell at her not to and she pulls her hand away, shakes her head to clear it, and rejoins us.
We reach the bottom of the stairs and come to a large mess hall. It is overrun with filth and bugs. We begin to explore it. A labyrinth of nonsensical tables and counters runs through the room. We pick our way around them, looking for anything of value.
Suddenly a pair of female inmates bursts through the a door which does not open for them. They are colorful but transparent, clearly ghosts. They have stolen some food from the kitchen. They are giggling obscenely.
"You're gonna get in trouble!" comes a voice from behind us. I turn and the vast chamber is suddenly filled with colorful ghosts, sitting and eating. I know that merely looking at them is depleting my sanity and making me more vulnerable to this place, but I cannot look away.
One of the thieves sticks out her tongue at her admonisher, who responds by blowing her a raspberry. The two thieves slide back into their seats, concealing the stolen food under the table.
Two nurses burst from the kitchen. "Who did it!" they scream. Nobody responds.
The nurses are carrying large, two handed butcher knives. There's a handle on each end of the blade, they carry them in front of themselves at waist level, obviously struggling against the weight of the large blades.
"If you don't fess up, then it's shaving for everyone!" one of the nurses screams. She is very pretty but the rictus of her anger makes her face horrific. She has long, stringy blonde hair.
Nobody answers her. She screetches and reaches for the nearest inmate. She slams the girl's head down on the table and begins to crudely shave her hair off with her gigantic butcher knife.
Suddenly the room is full of staff. They all have butcher knives. They are grabbing girls left and right. I am grabbed from behind and slammed down on a nearby table. I pick myself up and whirl. Two nurses close in.
"If it's not your hair you'll want shaved, then it'll be your skin!" they say, grinning. They begin to hack at my arms raised up in defense. Deep cuts appear on my wrists and forearms. I fire my handgun but the bullets pass right through them. Not knowing what else to do, I put myself back on the table.
"That's a good girl," the nurses say. They begin to shave my head. Tufts of my hair float down past my vision onto the table.
They are having trouble shaving a specific knot of my hair on the back of my scalp. They grow frustrated. "Naughty hair deserves naughty measures!" one of them shrieks. They pull away, laughing.
I look to my left and see a new nurse approaching. She carries no knife. He face is done up in white and black makeup, like a clown. The black has run down her face, giving her a melted look. She moves in quickly and breathes into my ear. "I'm going to enjoy eating you," she whispers.
She begins to shave the remaining hair off of my head with her teeth. He mouth opens and closes at an impossible rate, making a sound like scissors being open and shut ten times a second. She finishes with the hair on my head. She lifts my chin up with one hand and says "And now for the hair on your face and body. Then the hair growing under your skin."
She begins to gnaw the tiny hair off my cheeks. I realize I have to do something or else she's going to finish eating all the hair off my body and then remove my skin. The clown makeup might be clue.
"Knock knock," I say.
The horrible thing pauses. She looks down at me.
"Who's there?"
"Orange," I say.
"Orange who?"
"Knock knock."
The thing looks annoyed.
"Who's there?"
"Orange," I say again.
"Orange who?"
"Knock knock."
Her face twists in rage. She looks like she's considering whether to eat me on the spot. Finally her curiosity gets the better of her.
"Who's there?"
"Banana."
"Banana who?"
I realize I have fucked up the joke. I say the punchline anyway, reasoning that perhaps in this world of madness, a reverse punchline joke would be funny.
"Banana'd you glad I didn't say orange again?"
There is a long moment of silence. Everyone in the room is still.
The clown-thing bursts into laughter. It's horrible, and discordant, but I feel relief wash over me.
She lifts me to my feet and pats me on the back. "I'll eat you last," she says, smiling.
I wake up.
THE END NO MORAL
This dream was basically all of that combined.
We open with a whole bunch of people coming together to meet on an island. Hundreds of them, in fact. It's not clear why this is happening. I am watching this movie on the couch, alone. I catch a glimpse of a few familiar faces, but they're shown so briefly that I can't be sure of who I am seeing. The action begins to follow Peter Dinklage, as he is herded along with everyone else into an abandoned mall. A loudspeaker barks "those who find the exit first will be chosen" and hundreds of people begin frantically rushing and stampeding around this dilapidated space, complete with broken kiosks, rusted storefront gates, and skeletons on the benches. I watch as Peter Dinklage slips off to a side, under a gate, and into a Macy's. Running through the aisles, he finds a back entrance and escapes. The exit closes behind him, meaning that each person has to find a unique exit.
Now the POV shifts and I am Peter Dinklage's character. This isn't unusual, I frequently dream that I am both genders, even when not inhabiting an actor.
Outside, the winners of the mall run trickle in. A total of ten before the remaining people are trapped in the mall to die. There's an exposition scene as the mad scientist who arranged all of this, played by a young Christopher Lloyd in tight black leather and goggles with one lens missing, explains everything.
"I wanted to select the nine other most resourceful people in the world," he says, pointing his rather nasty looking handgun at each of us in turn. It's connected to a large metal backpack he's wearing by a metal tube. I don't know what it shoots, but given the setting, I can't imagine it's painless. "Now you nine will join me on an excursion and adventure to the Isle of Madness, where the insane asylums of the multi-verse drift after their universes are destroyed. You could call it... the flotsam of insanity."
Lloyd chuckles at this. He waves his gun. "One of these abandoned asylums is the worst of the worst," he continues. "It was born of a world infected with madness from the beginning. It was a woman's asylum, and when their universe ended, eaten by a giant worm that consumed galaxies, the women inside were turned into ghosts."
We all nod. This is perfectly reasonable.
"Now they haunt the halls of this asylum. We will be going there to loot whatever treasure and artifacts we can find," Lloyd finishes.
We all look at each other. This means the trip will be competitive rather than cooperative. I feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. This is bad news, we need to work together in such a dangerous place. I raise my hand.
Lloyd sees me and points his gun at me, sneering. I suddenly realize that the doctor is also completely insane.
"Yes, dwarf?" he asks.
"Shouldn't we work together?" I say. It is my own voice which comes from Peter's lips.
Lloyd laughs. "We don't take advice from a slut like you."
This perplexes me. Why is Peter being called a slut? Then I realize that the Doctor's insanity permits him to see me, the person watching the movie/inhabiting Peter.
"Well," I say. "I might be a slut, okay I'm definitely a slut, but that doesn't make my advice bad."
This does not seem to impress Lloyd. He waves me off with his gun and turns to the rest of the adventurers. "We leave immediately," he says, and motions to a large bus. It is overrun with mad scientist gears and tubes, dozens of devices and machines attached to its hull that I cannot identify. We file inside.
The interior is larger on the inside and well stocked with weapons and supplies. One of the others rushes to claim a large shoulder mounted missile launcher. I recognize him as Tobey Maguire. Next to him another winner of the mall sits down, and claims an oversized energy sword. It's another actor, a man, but I cannot quite place his face. He has short red hair and a stocky build. He looks nervous, as does Tobey.
I sit next to them. "We should make a pact to watch each other's backs," I suggest.
"Why?" asks Tobey. His missile launcher is gigantic.
"It just makes sense if we're going to a dangerous place," I say. "And you two seem like reasonable people. At least more reasonable than certain others accompanying us," I say, gesturing to the front of the bus where Our Good Mad Doctor Guide is taking his seat in the drivers cab.
They consider my offer with measuring eyes. Finally one of them extends a hand. "Alright," he says. I shake it.
The bus lurches and begins to move. It drives out of the mall parking lot, into a waiting portal, and we find ourselves driving upon a highway suspended miles above the ground. Beneath us we see shattered lands, boiling oceans, and hundreds of ruined asylums, most in states of near total collapse.
I cast about for weapons in the bus. I know I'm a small person, so I look for small weapons. Finally, in a desk drawer, I find a small submachine gun. I take it and a handgun as well.
We continue on our drive to insanity. The horizon begins to tilt up and fold inward toward us. Everyone gasps, I duck my head and look at the floor of the bus.
"Don't look at it," I say. "I don't know much about this eldritch horror shit, but I know that the more you try to look at it and make sense of it, the faster you'll go insane."
The group heeds my advice. We all stare at the floor as the drive continues. Except for the Doctor, but he's already insane, of course.
Huge creatures shamble by in the corners of my vision. I can hear them breathing and shrieking as we drive past them. They are extremely large, at least as brobdingnagian as the bus if not larger. Tobey points his missile out the window without looking and fires.
"Don't!" I warn him.
The missiles fires and we hear the shriek of it briefly before it detonates upon the flank of one of the nearby beasts. The explosion is close enough to rock the bus. I look at Tobey one last time before he is snatched through the window by the creature he has angered.
The rest of the drive is uneventful. We arrive at the worst haunted asylum in all the multi-verse.
"We're here," says the Mad Doctor gleefully. "Don't forget to switch on your radios."
We stand at the entrance of the asylum. It's mostly intact. I feel a very strong urge to run.
"We should all enter at the same time to avoid being separated," the Doctor says.
We walk side by side up to the gates. They are, in a word, rotten. The place oozes malice and madness. Signs near the door have text on them, but I keep my eyes away, knowing that trying to read it would drive me insane.
We step through the gates. I am sweating badly. I wipe my brow and it comes away wet with blood. I blink, and the blood is gone.
"This isn't going to go well," I say.
The Doctor laughs. "That's the point," he says.
We find ourselves in a large entrance hall. I see three sets of parallel stairs leading down into the dark. I say "let's go down the center stairs."
"What stairs?" says my unknown actor friend.
We discover that we are all seeing different versions of the same room. No two of us sees the same thing, but the group has been roughly divided into those that see stairs leading down, stairs leading up, and no stairs at all. We proceed, my actor friend and a quiet black woman coming with me. As we walk down the stairs, we can see the others exploring their own versions of the asylum above us, but looking at them hanging there impossibly, overlapping their realities with ours, makes my head hurt. I look away.
There are portraits on the walls as we go down the stairs. They are all screaming. The quiet black woman looks at one and begins to reach out to touch it. I yell at her not to and she pulls her hand away, shakes her head to clear it, and rejoins us.
We reach the bottom of the stairs and come to a large mess hall. It is overrun with filth and bugs. We begin to explore it. A labyrinth of nonsensical tables and counters runs through the room. We pick our way around them, looking for anything of value.
Suddenly a pair of female inmates bursts through the a door which does not open for them. They are colorful but transparent, clearly ghosts. They have stolen some food from the kitchen. They are giggling obscenely.
"You're gonna get in trouble!" comes a voice from behind us. I turn and the vast chamber is suddenly filled with colorful ghosts, sitting and eating. I know that merely looking at them is depleting my sanity and making me more vulnerable to this place, but I cannot look away.
One of the thieves sticks out her tongue at her admonisher, who responds by blowing her a raspberry. The two thieves slide back into their seats, concealing the stolen food under the table.
Two nurses burst from the kitchen. "Who did it!" they scream. Nobody responds.
The nurses are carrying large, two handed butcher knives. There's a handle on each end of the blade, they carry them in front of themselves at waist level, obviously struggling against the weight of the large blades.
"If you don't fess up, then it's shaving for everyone!" one of the nurses screams. She is very pretty but the rictus of her anger makes her face horrific. She has long, stringy blonde hair.
Nobody answers her. She screetches and reaches for the nearest inmate. She slams the girl's head down on the table and begins to crudely shave her hair off with her gigantic butcher knife.
Suddenly the room is full of staff. They all have butcher knives. They are grabbing girls left and right. I am grabbed from behind and slammed down on a nearby table. I pick myself up and whirl. Two nurses close in.
"If it's not your hair you'll want shaved, then it'll be your skin!" they say, grinning. They begin to hack at my arms raised up in defense. Deep cuts appear on my wrists and forearms. I fire my handgun but the bullets pass right through them. Not knowing what else to do, I put myself back on the table.
"That's a good girl," the nurses say. They begin to shave my head. Tufts of my hair float down past my vision onto the table.
They are having trouble shaving a specific knot of my hair on the back of my scalp. They grow frustrated. "Naughty hair deserves naughty measures!" one of them shrieks. They pull away, laughing.
I look to my left and see a new nurse approaching. She carries no knife. He face is done up in white and black makeup, like a clown. The black has run down her face, giving her a melted look. She moves in quickly and breathes into my ear. "I'm going to enjoy eating you," she whispers.
She begins to shave the remaining hair off of my head with her teeth. He mouth opens and closes at an impossible rate, making a sound like scissors being open and shut ten times a second. She finishes with the hair on my head. She lifts my chin up with one hand and says "And now for the hair on your face and body. Then the hair growing under your skin."
She begins to gnaw the tiny hair off my cheeks. I realize I have to do something or else she's going to finish eating all the hair off my body and then remove my skin. The clown makeup might be clue.
"Knock knock," I say.
The horrible thing pauses. She looks down at me.
"Who's there?"
"Orange," I say.
"Orange who?"
"Knock knock."
The thing looks annoyed.
"Who's there?"
"Orange," I say again.
"Orange who?"
"Knock knock."
Her face twists in rage. She looks like she's considering whether to eat me on the spot. Finally her curiosity gets the better of her.
"Who's there?"
"Banana."
"Banana who?"
I realize I have fucked up the joke. I say the punchline anyway, reasoning that perhaps in this world of madness, a reverse punchline joke would be funny.
"Banana'd you glad I didn't say orange again?"
There is a long moment of silence. Everyone in the room is still.
The clown-thing bursts into laughter. It's horrible, and discordant, but I feel relief wash over me.
She lifts me to my feet and pats me on the back. "I'll eat you last," she says, smiling.
I wake up.
THE END NO MORAL
Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams
I dreamt that I was sleeping a long long time while I was waiting for something to happen.
Eventually I had slept so long that I got sleep paralysis.
I felt something jump on top of me, and freaked out because I couldn't move my head to see what it was.
Then I started to hear purring and feel kneading.
It wasn't a sleep paralysis demon, just a cat!
Then I woke up and there wasn't really a cat :(
Eventually I had slept so long that I got sleep paralysis.
I felt something jump on top of me, and freaked out because I couldn't move my head to see what it was.
Then I started to hear purring and feel kneading.
It wasn't a sleep paralysis demon, just a cat!
Then I woke up and there wasn't really a cat :(
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Re: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams
I occasionally dream about you guys, commonly enough to be not rare. Most of the time, it's fairly minor stuff that's not worth mentioning.
Last night I had a dream that paco and I were finalists in a debate championship where the topic was "Online Friendships and Social Dynamics in a Digital Space" and we spent like 30 minutes practicing before the actual debate. I was playing the opposition (my position was that true "friendship" could never occur without full emotional investment, and investment is precluded by distance and lack of emotive body language) and paco was arguing that online spaces had become not only "real" but a requirement for society to move forward to a global at large recognition of everyone's humanity. His argument was that eventually, as English became a language that nearly everyone knows, the online world would allow friendships to form across national lines, eventually leading to exposure therapy and the fall-off of racism and nationality.
Last night I had a dream that paco and I were finalists in a debate championship where the topic was "Online Friendships and Social Dynamics in a Digital Space" and we spent like 30 minutes practicing before the actual debate. I was playing the opposition (my position was that true "friendship" could never occur without full emotional investment, and investment is precluded by distance and lack of emotive body language) and paco was arguing that online spaces had become not only "real" but a requirement for society to move forward to a global at large recognition of everyone's humanity. His argument was that eventually, as English became a language that nearly everyone knows, the online world would allow friendships to form across national lines, eventually leading to exposure therapy and the fall-off of racism and nationality.
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