Had 3 different dreams about Scott “slatestarscratchpad” Alexander the other night, which was curious.

First one was me reading a post, or maybe series of tweets, by him, about coding a point-click adventure game and his design decisions about it. Like, he wrote about the tradeoffs in creating a sense of player autonomy, actions that can affect game state vs. actions that just create some flavor feedback vs. the necessity to limit the player to clearly delineate some finite number of viable paths.

And about how he handled memory allocation and how that affected porting to different platforms, and about how he had originally had two separate points meters hovering above the player avatar as purple and green circles with attached tags, only he had merged them into one circle with overlapping colored arcs and no text.

And it was all in his actual writing voice and whatnot but it eventually got incredibly tedious and I was aware it was a dream at points and kept trying to wake up enough to break out so I could dream about something else instead.


Second one we and a bunch of people were hanging around some party by the docks of a lake house, and then me and his consort ozymandias271 went up to check out the bridge of some three-decker fishing boat, only all of a sudden there started being crazy waves on the lake that dragged the boat out and started the engine, and then knocked us into the water.

And the boat was still heading to the opposite coast where it was going to beach or hit some houses, but the wave had also knocked off two jet-skis mounted on the back so I jumped on one and chased after it, and just before it hit the shore managed to hit a jump, and then leap off onto the bridge and turn the wheel to safety.

And so I dropped anchor and went back to recover the jet-ski, which had sank in maybe 7 feet of water, and this crusty old fisherman guy was giving me shit about how that was incredibly dangerous and it was much more likely that I would have hurt myself and damaged the jet-ski accomplishing nothing, and I just rebuffed him like “nah man, I’m not even going to pretend to care about your point until you admit how totally badass that just was”.


Third one I had front-row seats at like, WrestleMania, but the whole dream was just about setting up the arena, like it was a flat, super-huge high school gym where they had to bring in big white folding tables and chairs. And I got my good seat, only after they set up all these tables they started building these cage cells like, on top of them, with barely any headspace, and putting naked strippers in them.

And I was like “huh, I guess this is pay-per-view, they can do full nudity”, and the cell on top of my seat was this 40-something black woman, 8-inch heels and a little dumpy around the waist, and we had a pretty decent chat about where she grew up, but it was really cramped and ruined the view.

So they moved us to another table out from under the cells, but then they started to set up the ring somewhere else, and I was like “I thought I had front-row seats”, and they explained that front-row patrons were actually specifically selected for telegenicity, but then I made the cut, it was just me and a bunch of old guys from, like, some south(/)east-European social club circa 1982, flat caps and checked blazers and skinny, smelly cigars.

Anyway this dream was about him because the whole time I was moving around I’d been bringing along a book that was actually his blog in trade paperback form, the cover in the tricolor of the Cascadian “Doug Flag”.

Another fucking dream last night, someone asked me to tell her a story and I had to consciously piece one together in a way where the plot and motivations made sense (i.e. not dream logic), and would appeal to what I’d figured of her tastes. And I still remember it, but not the rest of the dream.

So I guess that was two halves of my mind having a storytelling competition at each other?

Gradually trying to expand my cooking range, I tried something new last night, a rice pilaf with roasted almonds and baked jerk-rub chicken.

It was decent, but I should have grilled or pan-fried the chicken or something, there wasn’t enough contrast with the mush-texture of the rice.

I felt happy enough but it wasn’t until I went to sleep that I noticed the secret downside of the dish. Several times I farted so hard I woke myself up. Must’ve been the onion.

It did interrupt my sleep at the right times enough that I got to remember some interesting dreams. The thesis of one was “an important step on the way to sexbots is teaching AIs how to tickle feet”.

It’s this weird combination of scary and hilarious that there are parts of your mind that aren’t under your control and this is what they spend their time on.

craftbeerhallputsch:

specterofcommunism:

zhouenlaid:

heroque:

kingcheddarxvii:

Had a dream just now that Macklemore was named TIME magazine’s Most Muggable Musician and he showed up at an interview to accept the award and they mugged him

What’s the point of mugging someone who only has $20 in their pocket

$20 can get you many peanuts

explain how

Money can be exchanged for goods and services

Had a dream I met Woody Allen in a pool because he was introducing me to a visionary filmmaker who was actually a small shark. But the guy was sick and needed help breathing and as things continued I realized I was dragging this dead shark in circles on a leash not quite sure if I was being put on or I had accidentally killed his friend.

Been remembering a lot of my dreams lately and one of the nice things about that is hey, sex dreams, more random sex in my life.

But 3 times this month I’ve had a dream where I just go down on some girl for like 10 minutes and then wake up and dammit, that was a wasted opportunity

So remember how I said I dreamed a whole episode of Family Guy once? Well last night I dreamed a few episodes of a new (yet another) Eva reboot, this one as a 26-episode series.

In this version, there had been a bunch of Children, but before the first episode they were all doing a synchronization test when they started to synch together racing past 100%. The test was emergency shutdown because they were threatening to start an Impact wrong, and the kids were left unconscious in LCL-filled stasis tubes in NERV HQ.

Shinji was revived in Episode 1, I think Rei was already awake. By the 6th episode the 5 Children from the recent movies were all up and running.

It was fairly light and fun, there were some cool battles. One running thing had been that whenever the Eva units operated outside there would be a few spectators who would gather to watch them and cheer, like picnickers at a Civil War battle. I was thinking “heh, Eva fandom”.

Then in the 7th episode things got darker. It was mentioned that some of these fans had become a cult worshipping the Evas, and then suddenly Nerv HQ was invaded. By who - the cult, SEELE, ??? - I don’t know. But Misato was shot through the chin point-blank in a perfect reversal of that scene from EoE, and the invaders smashed all the stasis tubes and executed the Children inside.

Ritsuko organizes a counterattack and kills the attackers, and then the last shot is this wide hall of NERV HQ littered with corpses, blood mingling with LCL.

Then there was a black card with white Japanese text on it, subtitled in English. It was a message from Anno, saying that now was the point when fans who got into Eva from this series (he called them “tan fans”) should consider looking into the other versions.

It’s funny that of all the fucked up shit that happened in this dream, “tan fans” was the one thing that seemed odd.

(Update: Oh you know what? Maybe he didn’t mean the color but the stereotypical childish mispronunciation of “-chan”, because this series would be the “baby” of the Eva metaverse.)

Hilary Clinton’s residence in Washington is a penthouse in a large Art Deco tower. Somehow I learn the official password to her private elevator (“Equinox”) and decide to go there for shits and giggles.

I get in the wrong elevator, though. The attendant is a nice woman of maybe 38. She takes me to a floor marked as having 4 units. One of them is labeled “a politician” and is marked with a hand-size bust of Richard Nixon.

When we arrive, waiting in the elevator lounge is a 30-something Richard Nixon dressed in 1988 style. No one thinks this is odd, I suppose that perhaps Nixon had a son or a grandson (I don’t know if he did) and that it would make sense for him to look like his patriarch and hang around the family property.

Some old and very friendly woman notices me in the lobby and strikes up a conversation. There is a man sharpening pencils by hand with a knife. When he leaves he leaves a pencil on a table and I pick it up.

The old lady has me follow her as she wanders into and out of apartments visiting friends. The tower seems divided into units by quarter, with each unit 3 floors on an open plan. A few people are in each one, they seem a bit artsy and refined. The only one I recognize is Chuck Klosterman.

Jean Paul Gautier is looking for his favorite pencil, it is bothering him much. Eventually I remember the pencil I picked up and offer it to him, it is the correct one. He offers me a sharpener-sharpened one in exchange. I have no idea who Jean Paul Gautier is.

We go down some stairs and meet some more people, I have the sense that everyone here is sort of famous and I have no clue who any of them are. We stop in a narrow lobby full of overstuffed and mostly occupied chairs.

I think that this place seems like a cross between artists’ lofts and a retirement home as designed by Wes Anderson. I notice that Wes Anderson is sitting in one of the chairs, wearing a giant deconstructed bow tie and a Mad Hatter-style oversized hat.

I look down to tie my shoe and when I look up everyone has bowls of beef and onion soup that they are dipping bread into. Anderson gently mocks me for not having brought a bowl.

I look over and notice there is a gift shop selling prints, kind of a more upscale version of those college town poster shops where freshmen buy copies of old French absinthe ads. Sitting visible from the door is a large sign mounted on a floor stand saying that THE MANAGEMENT DISCOURAGES DANCING AS A MATTER OF ETIQUETTE AND PUBLIC ORDER with a picture of 1960s police beating hippies. I cannot tell if that is a print for sale or an honest sign.

I wake up.

Salon 2012::Newsweek 1997

(Salon 1998::Newsweek 1962?)

I dreamed a whole Family Guy episode once, a plot and b plot and visual gags. The A plot was a Close Encounters of the Third Kind/Day The Earth Stood Still alien contact parody, there was a spinning magazine gag where there were three headlines about contact then a Newsweek cover with “Did Jesus…” [white Jesus holding his hands demurely over some great knockers] “…have tits?”

The B Plot was about Meg jerking off goats.

Man I had a dream last night that I was watching a movie directed by Natalie Portman starring Anne Hathaway that began with a meet-cute with everyone in a movie theater eating bad chicken, having stomach problems, fleeing the theater and being confused for a zombie mob (because they were walking awkwardly bcuz they shat themselves) and turned into a sexysleek heroin addict jewel heist movie with modern video game-inspired self-referential thirdwallbreaking.

I remember thinking “yes, this feels like Natalie Portman - clever, but icy.”

A few weeks ago I dreamt a complete Family Guy episode, complete with A-plot, B-plot, visual jokes and cutaway gags. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been smoking weed. If I ever did one of those Ad Council “hey doodz don’t smoke weed” ads (I won’t) it would riff off the theme of “getting your dreams back”.

I don’t have a fuckcrush on Anne Hathaway (I only have celebrity fuckcrushes on redheads), but I totally have a celebrity makingouttoplessfeelinghertitspressedagainstmychest crush on her.

played skyrim

played too much skyrim

played so much skyrim

i fell asleep and dreamed

i was playing dwarf fortress

in skyrim

i was like “shit, gotta dig this drainage system”

and craft and install and lock these doors

so i can flood this floor

to create mud

to grow leeks.

then i woke up to pee and was like

gotta get back to that dream, and do all those things

but luckily part of me was like

‘no, gotta NOT get back to that dream, to NOT do all those things’