|
| It all started with this girl. I don't really know who the girl was, and in real life, I have never met her. I don't remember much about this part of the dream, but it was supposed to be something like a horror movie. This girl had just broken up with her boyfriend, and was walking down the road, on the right side. It was during the summer, and there was a fence behind her. The road was dirty, and there were a few clouds in the sky.
Suddenly, an old yellow muscle car came barreling through the fence, breaking it down. It was headed right for the girl. A split second before the car hit her, she turned around, and saw it. The dream-camera took a wide-angle shot of the scene, right as the girl got hit by the car. As she was hit, she flew up, over the car, into the air, out of sight. She landed right in front of the dream-camera, except, it wasn't her. It was something ghoulish-looking, something very dead. I realized that the girl had survived somehow, and that she had replaced it with some white-haired, ghoulish corpse mannequin.
This scene was like some sort of trailer for a TV show or something, but in my mind, I wanted to know how in the world the girl, in the last second, switched herself with the mannequin.
Back in real-dream-life, I was supposed to go to a show with Cora, one of the ones that she works on with the kids. She had wanted me to come to it for weeks, and I was there, dressed up and everything. She was wearing a lime-green shirt. Marli showed up with Tyler, and Marli was wearing an orange creamscicle colored shirt.
There was a large wooden theater building that they were having the show in. It was downtown somewhere, but it wasn't Parkersburg -- I have never seen this town before. The wood was a faded brown, and it hard dark streaks through it, like it had once been treated but most of it had been worn away by time. We went in, and I was going to try to sit with Cora, which was something that I kinda just expected -- but she started ignoring me, and went and sat with two of her friends. I was confused, and so I had no choice but to sit with Marli instead. Marli was to my left, and I was at the end of the pew. (Yes, for some reason, we were sitting in pews.) Tyler sat beside her, and everything seemed fine.
The show started, and I was intent on paying attention. Tyler was talking to someone on the left, and I was starting to get irritated. I confronted him about it, trying to get him to pay attention to the show. Cora whisper-yelled over to us, and told us that we needed to be quiet, and that we were being disrespectful to Cleo, who was in the show. I got so frustrated with everything at this point that I just stood up and walked out.
Outside, there was no one. I was kind of alone, and some dark clouds started rolling overhead. In front of me, someone had set up an inflatable jupiter jump type thing, like at the carnival rides. Specifically, this one looked a lot like the one that Brittannee Hairl and I worked on for Jill Carden. I was about to sit down on the end of it, because no one was there, when Cleo came out. Cora was pretty close behind her, and she asked me what was wrong. It was the intermission. I told them that I got frustrated with Tyler and that it wasn't worth it for me to argue with him and ruin the show for everyone. I said that I would have really liked to have been there, and I asked why Cora didn't want to sit with me. Cora just gave me her puppy dog sad face, and started walking back in. I held back for a second, thinking to myself.
After Cleo and Cora had walked into the building once again, I decided to go back in myself. It must still have been during intermission. I walked in, and the place was desolate, completely empty. Not even the pews were still there. I decided to head down into the green room downstairs. The stairs went straight into the floor to the right of the stage. As I walked there, two little girls came out of the in-ground staircase, and one of them approached me. She informed me that I wasn't allowed down there, and I realized that one of the adults had told them to guard the door. I told her that I knew some of the people down there, and that they would understand me being down there. She told me that she didn't believe me, and so I decided to ignore her and just walk down the stairs anyway.
I went down the stairs, the little girls pulling on my clothes trying to get me to stop the whole time. The basement was dank and mostly made of concrete. There were little changing stalls built into the walls that looked like old showers in an old camp bath house. The concrete was yellowed and old. There were little lime-green plastic curtains on the stalls. I found Cora sitting on a bench on the right as I entered the room, so I took a seat next to her. She told me that she would fill me in on the first half of the story if I would agree to watch the second half. I wanted her to sit with me, so she said that I would have to wait backstage.
We went backstage and she started explaining the show to me. I don't really remember anything about the show's storyline. There was apparently going to be a tape, but I said that I didn't want to watch it because it wouldn't be the same thing. There was a projector on-stage for a movie like thing that was a part of the show. The show script that they purchased had come with a DVD that was supposed to be played at this part, but they didn't want to play that one because they figured it was too "adult" for a kids version of the show. They commissioned a custom version from the kids that was a little bit cleaner.
I don't really know why, but I had to go get the DVD from my dad. My dad now owned my old townhouse in Spring Mills, for whatever reason, but didn't want me to know about it. I don't know how I figured out that he had bought it. But anyway, I went in, because I still had the key from when I had lived there. No one was home, and for the most part, it was still empty from when I had moved out of it. I walked up to the third floor (which was the second floor in real life -- there was a dream second floor), to my old room (the green master bedroom). I went in, and found that there was a table and chairs unpacked there. There was a project attached to the ceiling where the fan had used to be, and there was a screen on the wall to the right where my computer desk had been.
I reached up and took down the projector. I was going to take it with me, for whatever reason. I knew I wasn't supposed to be there. I saw from my window that dad and Sandy were getting home. They came in and were walking into the house. I decided to hide for a second, but I realized that I would definitely get caught. He was my dad after all, so I decided to walk down and just try to talk my way out of it.
I walked down to the (technically non-existent) second floor, and my dad demanded an explanation for being there. I had taken the DVD out of the projector, but I didn't want to show him the real DVD. I said that I had to get this DVD that I left at the townhouse when I moved out, and so I came back for a quick second to grab it. I told him I would explain everything if he would let me use his computer for a second.
He brought his old Compaq laptop out to me, and I started it up. It has a slot loading drive that looked a lot like my Macbook one, and so I pretended to slip it in. I thought that he saw me, but he didn't seem to care, so I just kept trying to dig myself out of trespassing. I opened up Firefox and typed in"C:\windows\@autoboot.rom" and a flash movie came up. I kept trying to download it, so that I could save it or something, but it wouldn't let me and kept telling me that it was installed and not downloadable. My dad was standing there, waiting for answers, so I told him about the DVD. I played the movie for him, and I used the story of the DVD and the movie to distract him from the fact that I was apparently also going to steal the projector.
The movie was hand-drawn, and it was about a ghost that was flying through some park. The park was surrounded by brick buildings, and the entire place including the buildings was encircled with a concrete wall with a big black metal fence around it. There was a black metal gate at the entrance. The park itself was rectangular, as was the whole place. The camera followed behind the ghost in the movie as the ghost flew threw the park and eventually into one of the buildings. The credits came on the screen, and there were only two names on it. It was apparently drawn by a kid named Timmy, and my brother Tyler had done the voices (though I don't remember there being any voices in the movie).
My dad asked if I was going to sell this movie to them (the theater people) and about how I had made it. I told him that I didn't make it, that it was actually Timmy and Tyler, and that all I was doing was getting the DVD. He let me go, and so I walked out of the house.
Suddenly, I found myself in (dream-version) downtown Morgantown. There was a lot of nice houses with a few hills here and there. It looked a little like a nicer version of the residential area in front of Gihon elementary. For reasons I can't recall, I remembered that there was supposed to be a great deal at McDonald's for free McShishkebabs, which you could either get in Steak or Shark flavor. I decided to go, and convenitnelty there was one quite close.
There were tons of (excuse my racism here, but it's a dream, and I'm not racist in real life, promise) black people everywhere, and they all wanted free McShishkebabs. I was one of the first people in the McDonald's, and I walked in and they greeted me and about the next four people normally. I walked up and got my free steak McShishkebab. I was going to get a free shark flavored one too. I watched them make it, and the pieces of shark meat were in the form of a shark -- I was greatly pleased.
Just as they were about to give it to me, someone from corporate called the McDonald's and informed them that there were riots of people demanding their free McShishkebabs, and that they were no longer profitable. They told them to stop giving them away immediately. So I didn't get my shark flavored McShishkebab. All the other people (mostly black) were told, and they were super pissed. They walked out of the McDonald's in a storm, and I followed them.
Suddenly, there were hundred, maybe thousands of people in the streets, all rioting because of the fiasco with McShishkebabs. Cops were there, but they were overpowered One of them yelled, "Let's cross the bridge and head that way!" I looked up in the sky, and it was overcast in that direction. I figured there would be a lot of trouble if I continued with them. "I've had enough rioting for today," I said to myself.
I started walking the other direction, back into the nice houses. There was this nice big Victorian house, and I saw Frank hanging out in one of the windows. I started talking to him, and he told me to come in, so I did. Joy and Frank's family were apparently having one of their standard cookouts, and I saw Frank in the living room playing games. I was a little confused as I just saw him on the other side of the house, talking out of his window. I started talking to him about his video game, and then I asked about how he got from one end of the house to the other so quickly.
"You forget that there's five of us now," Frank informed me. I was confused, and he told me some BS story about how he was playing this virtual reality Dreamcast game, and he tried restarting it, but it glitched. He restarted five times, which had accidentally made five Franks. I half-believed him, but I kept pressing him for answers. He showed me in his game where he had had two other people with him, both NPCs. One of them was named Ranger Cockran. The screen was green with lighter green text, and it said, "DEAD -- Ranger Cockran" for each time they had been cloned. Both NPCs were dead, but they had been cloned as well. We tried to remember when he had been cloned, and Frank thought it was pretty recently, in 2008, but I said that it must have been in 2007 because it happened before I worked for the government.
"So which one of you is the original Frank?" I asked.
"It doesn't really matter anymore."
I kept pushing him for answers because I didn't really believe him that a game glitch cloned him. It was a standard Frank-trying-to-get-me-to-believe-him thing just so he could make fun of me for believing him, which is a pretty standard thing for him to do. He eventually took me upstairs to his attic room, and there were old electronics everywhere. There were lots of boxes on his walls, with wires running everywhere. It was like his old room that had burnt down. In his closet, there were a lot of old analog switches, and they were all labeled red. He was switching a few of them, messed it up once, started over, and tried again. "So this is what you have been doing with those electronics you've been buying," I said to him while he worked.
Eventually, he took me downstairs to his basement after playing with the stuff in the attic for a while. There was a big white box that looked like a refrigerator with a TV in it. In fact, Frank called it his "TV." It had a big orange switch at the top, like the ones you find on a surge protector. He flipped it, and a quiet hum came out of the box. It was obviously attached to the electronics upstairs. "Watch this," he said.
Some things in the room started floating. I was confused. "How are you doing that?" I asked. At this point he had three things floating.
"With this box, I just wish things to come true, and they do."
"Can I try it?"
"Sure, it works on anyone in range."
So, in my head, I said, "UP!" and I started flying upwards. Obviously, I wasn't very good at this yet, so I hit my head on the ceiling and got stuck there. "Stop!" I said. Time just stopped. Frank and I were still able to move, but we couldn't wish for anything else because time wasn't moving. Frank walked over to the box and started playing with it. While he was playing with it, which was taking quite a while, I said to myself, "I wish I were somewhere else."
Suddenly, everything changed around me. I suddenly realized that I was in the real-life version of the park and buildings from the video earlier. I was standing outside the gate. Everything was kind of cartoony. In front of my eyes, Kingdom Hearts style, the name of the world was displayed. I don't really remember it but it was there, and it was in cartoony green font. Some crazy looking older man welcomed me in, and showed me around. On the right, off the side of the street, there was another one of these wish boxes, and there was a black metal cage to the right of it. There was a small tree in the cage, and it had two branches.
The man informed me that the tree powered the box, and that the box would grant me wishes. Hoping to get back home, I did the same thing as I did before, and wished that I was somewhere else.
Again, everything changed around me. I was in a basement, and for a second, I thought was a back to my universe. Suddenly, however, I realized that while this basement was familiar, it wasn't my universe. I was in my townhouse's basement, although in a different universe. A little girl chased a cat upstairs. "I'll make you eat pennies!" she yelled.
Seeing the cat, I remembered that Frank had said something long ago about cats and how they can power things. He had said something about another universe, and I realized that this must have been right before he wished to clone himself. He said there was a "recipe" for getting out of other universes, and that you had to do it just right. I wished I had asked him what it was. I figured that since the first time I got moved to a different universe, the wish box was nearby, it must have to move me to a place in another universe with a similar wish box device nearby. I decided to search this basement for such a wish box.
As I was sneaking around, trying to find the wish box, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. I realized that this house was now inhabited by a family consisting of a husband, wife, and daughter. The wife came downstairs, and put a case of Natty Light in the fridge. "A fridge!" I thought. "That must be the wish box and they just don't know it!"
I walked over, and said "Shh," to the woman. She looked up, and I realized she wasn't entirely human. The people of this universe were slightly different somehow. "Can you help me?" I asked.
"I thought you said shh... if you want to be quiet and sneak around here, why are you asking questions?"
I walked over to the refridgerator and looked around. It looked like a normal fridge, but it had the same orange switch. The switch had no power and it wasn't making the hum. The wife walked back upstairs, and I heard them sit down to a meal. They prayed over their "cylindrical feast," which I soon realized was a penny each -- they were eating pennies. I realized that this family was quite poor.
There was a small microwave-shaped box to the left of the fridge. I realized that this box was how to power the wish box, and that it was cat-powered. The cat had come back downstairs, and so I grabbed it and shoved it in the box. It was mad and hissed at me. I tried to calm it down but nothing was working. I threw the orange switch, and a light came on in the cat-box. The cat growled and hissed, but I heard the quiet hum. I wished in my head to be back in my own universe again, and suddenly, once again, everything changed around me. I was home.
I was thinking to myself, standing there, on the verge of waking up, that this must have been how the girl from the very beginning of the dream saved herself. She must have had the power of the box inside of her, and at the last second, wished that she was somewhere else.
| | |
| I woke up from this dream thinking that it was a fact, that it was more like a memory than anything else. I'm wondering if this was a lucid dream or not. I woke up thinking it was life-changing -- it was a weird feeling. I felt like a new person. It was such a powerful dream, I'm not sure I can put it into words. Maybe I should start staying up all night for two nights in a row more often. :P
Before you start reading this, you should know that this is easily one of the longest dreams I've ever had, even though I had it while only sleeping two hours.
The dream takes place some time in the future, theoretically during my senior year of college.
I was hanging out with Zach Kuhl and Frank, but this part of the dream is blurry. We were supposed to be playing D&D, but Josh never showed up, so we just hung out in a house in the middle of a field in thd middle of nowhere. It was sunny and warm there. The house was mainly empty with hardwood floors. After hanging out for a little while, we left. I remember that I then went over to Frank's house. I went down to his room and he was playing one of those old handheld LCD games. He apparently loved this one a lot, and I was like, "Frank, why do you always have to play games like that?"
I left Frank's house and decided to start hanging out with the people in knew in college. At this point, for some reason or another, I decided to go to New York with Andrew Ankrom. I believe we were going to play Yu-Gi-Oh, which was why we were going. We got to the place where we were going to play Yu-Gi-Oh. There was a large glass room with three white plastic tables, one on each wall except the back one, which was a large glass wall overlooking the Hudson Bay.
While playing with the cards, I found my old Vic Viper card set, and on one of them, I had written "test3.ly," which was a reference to some code I had written before my freshman year in college. test3.ly was an early version of some old code that I written to start a heist against Google Artifiacts, which was a user generated wiki-style website about rare artifacts. I started looking for the code and reminiscing about my heist, which I did before my freshman year of college started. Google had just bought Artifacts from some other smaller company right before my freshman year started and built a building to act as a museum in New York to showcase some of the artifacts that were featured on the site.
I got on my computer and started looking for the old code. I couldn't find the final version, which did everything, but I did find test3.ly. I showed Andrew and started him Andrew about how I had used the code to perform a heist against Google Artifacts.
Google Artifacts was originally another website by another company. It was on version 2 when Google bought it. Google had just bought it and it was on version 2. it had a lot of flaws. I remember that I found this stuff out because of my editing on Wikipedia, and I made an account on this other site, calling myself "Transdescent." (In the real world, my Wikipedia username is Iridescence -- I change my name on this other site in the dream because I didn't want anyone to figure out who I was.) The website had downloadable objects for each artifact the downloads were encrypted and hidden in some sort of Wikipedia pages. I figured this all out on my own, just by playing around with the Wikipedia and Artifacts pages. I wrote my own program that decrypted these objects, dynamically pulling the key out of the Wikipedia pages. I wrote it in Python but the files all ended in .ly. I decrypted the object, which was some sort of real world key for the Google Artifacts building in NYC. For some reason, I had been going to New York anyway during my senior year, and I was going to stop at the Artifacts building while I was there.
When I went to NYC to find the Artifacts building, in the dream's timeline, I met Cora and Clara for the first time (which I will describe at the end of the dream -- it doesn't really fit here in the dream timeline).
I went into the building, in plain daylight. My target was the main exhibit, a large golden plate that had an egyptian eye in the middle of it. I walked straight for the back of the building, which was where the main exhibit was. The glass was all darkly tinted. Towards the back, there was this very large user-collaboration project which was a giant black-and-white photo of an old town. I specifically remember that I really liked this project and looked at it for a second before moving on.
I got the to the treasure room, which was like this large, golden, rocky museum room where people would come in and see the plate in its protective glass. There was a slit in the red display table underneath of the plate. The treasure room was like a puzzle, using the key, so I got into the room, locked the door (locking the museum-goers out), and then solved the puzzle. I then opened the door, went outside and around, then got under the building in some sort of underground maintenance tunnel used by Google Artifacts. The tunnel looked a lot like the level in Goldeneye where the Golden Gun was stored. There was a long hallway, and then a small chamber, and there was a small slit in the ceiling where I could fit my hand. There were no doors between any of the rooms.
So with all of the tourists there, I climbed up the chamber (which was pretty narrow) using my legs. I got to the top and had to jump over to the small place in the ceiling. I put my hand up, and I was inside the glass case where the treasure was. I grabbed the plate and ran right out of the building, thinking about how easy that was for me.
That was when I finished explaining all of this to Andrew. I explained to him that I sold the golden plate to help get money for college. I then decided to leave the card thingy.
As I was walking somewhere (presumably, "home," although I don't know where that was in the dream), I decided in my nostalgia of solving puzzles, hacking, and heisting that I would go and try it again, on the newly-released Google Artifacts v3. They had a newly-renovated building and everything. So I went to the building again, only this time at night. The front door was unlocked, but I had to unlock all the other doors with the old key I had (which still worked).
There was a ruby amulet with a gold chain being featured as the main exhibit this time. I again walked to the back of the building, and they had updated the black-and-white picture that I saw before. I remember that I didn't really like the new one and that I preferred the old one. I then went into the chamber room and figured out the puzzle of the amulet, and then I went around to the maintenance tunnel again. It was very dark, and they had doors now that would lock behind you. The doors had small glass vertically rectangular windows in them. I walked into the treasure chamber below the treasure room, and the door locked behind me. There was a large glass wall in front of me looking out onto Times Square.
I started climbing the chamber wall just like before, jumped over to the smaller part in the ceiling, and tried to stick my hand through the slit into the treasure box, but it wouldn't fit this time. I climbed back down and was getting ready to leave. I got up to the door, and looked out the window. At the last second, I saw a guard wearing all black, and the next thing I knew, he fired his gun through the door and hit me square in the left part of my chest. (Somehow, I was hurt and bleeding, but not harmed in the slightest.) I staggered back. "You thought we would just let you come back to steal more?" the guard yelled at me as he opened the door. I saw a very wide red laser target appear and quickly move over the guard's face. I heard another gun go off. The glass wall shattered, and I looked up just in time to see the bullet hit the guard right in the head. Stunned, I stopped for a second. Someone from outside yells to me, "Someone is looking out for you, boy."
I ran out into the streets through the broken glass. There were lots of mexican bars on the right side of the street, which was right in front of me. I ran over there, but I got stopped by Tito, who was apparently a mexican bar lord that I knew. "Zack, you did it! I can't believe you did it!" he said to me. At this point, I think it's Tito who sniped the guard. Tito hands me the biggest glass of beer I've ever seen, which is actually Corona, but he's drunk and calls it Jose Cuervo. "There's more of that in there, and for you my friend, it's all free!" he says, pointing to his bar. While he was talking to me, I kept trying to drink the enormous glass of beer, but I can't help from spilling more of it on me than I get in my mouth.
I decide to skip out on the beer and get back to hanging with the Childress people, who were all at the Blennerhasset. So I headed back to WV. For whatever reason, I was still in NY and had to walk to where I was going. As I was walking there, I saw a shady kind of apartment for rent. It was a glass storefront that had been converted into an apartment setting. There were two available, the one on the left and the one on the right. Each one had the original display glass for the storefront, and you could look into the apartments right there.
The one on the left was already taken, and even thought the one on the right hadn't yet been taken, I knew the guy who was going to take it. He was bald, but he had a very huge white beard. In my memory in the dream, he was sitting in something that looked like my grandma's basement, and he said, "I just dropped out of college!"
I kept walking, and eventually I made it to the Blennerhassett. I walked into the building, and there was a small corridor on my right. I walked down it and there was a small arcade game type of area there. I saw Celia there, and she was playing a DDR game. She had three kittens with her, and they were all sitting comfortably on top of the front of the machine, which was lime green. The kittens were orange with black stripes. I knew Rick was around somewhere, but I couldn't find him.
I sat down against the wall in this yellow hallway, and there was a large glass cooler in front of me. Cecil came by and saw me and showed me some ice cream they had sitting around. I started looking at the ingredients/flavors to all of the ice creams, and some of them were really weird. There was a lemon one (which was obviously in a yellow container) and a peanut butter one (which was obviously in an orange container). The last one I was looking at was lime juice and salt flavored. I specifically remember that two of the ice creams that I saw were alcoholic, and I'm pretty sure that it was the lemon one and the lime/salt one.
Cora was there, and so was Mikayla. Celia, Cora and I decided that we were all bored, and so we decided to go over to Celia's apartment. We were all going there, and when I got there, I walked in, and it was at the District. In fact, it turned out the Celia had gotten my old apartment! She even got my old room. I was surprised about the coincidence. Celia had decided to paint the whole place a sort of macaroni-and-cheese orange. This apartment now had a basement, and so we decided to hang out down there. I was walking with Celia to some room, and she showed me that she got a lime iMac G3. I was proud of her. She asked me if I had a really old copy of The Sims, because it had a special version of Font Book in it.
After that, Cora got out some old pictures, and we started looking through them together. There were a lot of good ones. This is when the memories of meeting them (in alternate-reality dream world, no less) started coming back to me. I saw a picture of Cora looking at the plate I had stolen in front of the building. I realize suddenly that she was right there with me, at least up until where I had gone down into the maintenance tunnel. She was the one who locked the tourists out of the room while I figured out the puzzle. I had apparently handed her
There was another one of me and Clara, and it was supposedly the first picture of the two of us together. The memory of meeting them came back to me then. The first time that I went to New York, I was walking along the streets, and then I saw Clara, who was wearing red. It was cold, and I was wearing my burgundy coat. Someone had taken a picture of the two of us standing in front of a large, golden theatre building. I was kind of looking away with a stupid surprised look on my face, and Clara had some super-happy expression on her face. I was turned around backwards in the picture and Clara was in front of me.
I had apparently made this my Facebook profile picture when I got it. This made Cora jealous. I tried to make her not jealous, but it didn't really work. I looked at the picture again, and saw how young I looked in the picture. I was really embarassed about it and started talking about how dumb and young I looked.
That's when I woke up. I woke up sure that I had hacked a non-existent Google Artifacts, stolen some rare piece of history and sold it for college money, met Clara in New York in front of some golden building, and that we had taken some picture that made Cora jealous when I made it my Facebook picture.
Yeah, it was a strange feeling. For the record, it took me exactly two hours to write this dream down. So yeah. That's about it. Weird, huh?
| | |
| to write in this thing when I was robbed a few days ago.
I consider this a personal accomplishment.
Oh yeah, by the way, if you didn't know, I was robbed a few days ago. Initially the insurance company said that they weren't going to cover it, but now they are. They took pretty much anything of value that I had, including my 360, Wii, and my Macbook Pro. Also, did I mention that they walked in while I was here with my bedroom door open? Yeah. Pretty gay.
Anyways, peace out and all that nonsense.
| | |
| So here I sit, listening to The Fray's album, "How to Save a Life," which I was listening to at about this same time in 2007. This isn't what spurred this, though.
Earlier tonight, I was playing Sonic and the Secret Rings, a game that I actually really liked for the Wii. I thoroughly enjoyed that game. So I stuck it in and fired it up. When I got to the file load screen, though, the time of my last save was May 14, 2007. At that moment, it hit me just how fast time is passing; it feels like just yesterday that I was playing that game in my dungeon at my mom's house on my crappy little CRT TV with my laptop on my right.
That got me to thinking just how far I've come over the past year. The song "How Far We've Come" by Matchbox Twenty really is my song of 2007. I'm 20 years old now. It's an awkward, life-altering age. Just a year ago, I was an immature, foul-mouthed, lost, confused, and weak person.
So many things happened today that made me think of how things used to be. For example, Tanner opened up the same Bank application in CS 230 today that she showed us in CS 111. I looked through my old emails in Gmail, and found old Betrayer's Moon Tactics stuff.
I simultaneously ask myself, "What the heck was I thinking?" and "Where the heck has that time and stuff gone?" Kevin's in Texas with the BMT stuff, my freshman and sophomore years are behind me, and I'm getting ready to move to Kearneysville for an internship with the Coast Guard. Heck, I even recently bought the rest of the Five Iron Frenzy albums because I miss hearing them.
In a very short time, I'm going to be disconnected from everyone I previously and currently consider my best friends.
I might be being a little overly sentimental here, but I miss the person that I called best friend for four years of my life. I miss that hard, nasty dorm bed and watching Star Trek every day with Ben. (Although I don't miss Physics.) I miss spending time with my mom, and I regret how mean and how hard I wanted to get out of my house when I was in high school. I wish I could take back every hurtful thing I've said to my parents and my brother, and I wish I could relive those life-changing moments that I didn't realize were going to be life-changing moments.
Stupid college, getting me all sentimental. Sometimes, I wish I could punch time in the face.
Ugh. I'm almost done with my sophomore year in college. I'm taking a master's level course next semester. Time's moving way too fast for my tastes. I wish I could slow things down and appreciate them just that little bit more. I've learned so much over the past year, even through hardships with my dad, brother and mom, car wrecks and dysfunctional relationships, and the good times, too.
So, I guess one of the things that I'm aiming for in writing this is to apologize to the world for being so hateful and disrespectful in 2006 and half of 2007. I was lost, I was confused, and I was disconnected; such is the life of a starting college student. I've learned from my mistakes, though.
Hopefully, when I get to the afterlife that I know is there, I'll be able to go back and relive all of my favorite times in my life, like being on Kevin's mattress on his floor because he didn't have a bed playing fighting games, getting Jesus Pizza with Kylee and finding the ratio of how much faster I eat pizza than she does, teaching Ben crazy C code in Ash's class, going to prom with Rachel and flinging cherry cheesecake all over the place, breaking toys in Kay-Bee with Clara, collecting Bionicle with Frank, debating with Sarah in between games of Yu-Gi-Oh at North, or getting milkshakes with Cora at 3 AM.
Alright, I'm done for the night. I had to get that off my chest. If you read this far, thanks for listening.
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| I am honestly sick and tired of the vile closed-mindedness that permeates throughout America's culture today. As you've probably noticed, a lot of people have been calling for a boycott of the books and movies of the His Dark Materials trilogy, more specifically, The Golden Compass, as of late.
Now, I know most of you don't know this about me, but one of the things that I avidly detest in this world is the idea of book burning. But it isn't just the act of burning a book that irritates me; at its most fundamental level, all you're doing is burning some paper, glue, and ink arranged in some arbitrary fashion. But what you're really doing when you burn a book is you reject the ideas in the book and every last ounce of creative effort and personality within it outright. You burn the book in your mind; you don't burn the book in your hand.
This is effectively what people are doing when it comes to boycotting this "dangerous" film and movie. First off, it's not even reality. It's called a fantasy novel for a reason. And if you don't like it, you can exercise your right not to read it, although I couldn't imagine someone coming up with a reason not to read such a well written, descriptive book like The Golden Compass. But, nevertheless, the choice is yours.
I also find it ironic that the people calling for a ban of the book haven't even read it. I mean, seriously people, haven't you ever heard of the concept of not judging a book by its cover? I know it's usually used to describe people, but it can be quite literally taken to apply to books just as easily. And, actually, I think that this very thing is actually what the book speaks out against: the people that blindly want to ban anything that, on the surface, disagrees with their beliefs. The book definitely has anti-authoritarian views. That I won't deny. But these people running around like chickens with their heads cut off screaming "BOYCOTT!" are exactly what's targeted by the book. Seriously, read it. You'll get the idea.
But, in the end, this is my request. If you say that you want to ban the book, then you should read it before you say anything about banning it. That's the only way you can grasp what the book's ideas are. You must read it to understand it. That's true of any book. So understand before you judge, and read so you can understand. Please? For me? The world would be such a better place if people understood before they judged...
We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? - Ray Bradbury, "Fahrenheit 451" | | |
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