I was talking to someone about cities of the future.
man: "It's not safe to touch things with your bare hands. Ever."
me: "Oh? What else is different?"
man: "It is legal to redesign your own genetics. But there is a mandatory 'randomization' factor, .1% of your DNA iss forcibly mutated in order to maintain diversity."
This was happening on a street just a few blocks away from where I live today. There was a sign for an open mic night that read "Music nights are like parachutes".
Note
This seems an obvious allusion to the joke "minds are like parachutes--they function best when open". Yet this is a twist by using it to describe an "open" mic. night. Given that I have to sit and figure out the joke, that makes it likely that the information is coming from outside of my head.
I stepped in and a performer on stage addressed the audience.
performer: "I'd like to give a a shout-out to Ike and Err! That's right, who would have expected that this little TV program would have such a following and grow into a $150 million franchise?!?"
Note
Though I can find no reference to "Ike and Err" on Google, it comes close to the "Ignignokt and Err"--the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Hearing the performer's mention, I searched for "Ike and Err" in a database on some library's computer. It turned out to be the title of a children's book. Laboriously, I managed to write all the book's information (including its ISBN number) on a scrap of paper. When the information on the paper started oscillating, I picked up another piece of paper and started writing all the variations on that one.
Turning on a desk lamp to get a better view, I saw it make a circular illumination on the table. Suddenly surprised that a lamp would work so normally in a dream, I got up and walked over to the wall and found a light-switch. It bathed the room in a fluorescent light. Turning it off and then back on again, I marveled that it was functioning quite properly.
me: "And they say light-switches don't work in lucid dreams. Yeah, maybe not in THEIR dreams. Those people don't know what they're talking about."
Finding a magnifying glass on the table, and imagined it might help reading the paper. I could read it more easily, but as I pulled the magnifying glass further away the numbers on the paper increased. When I pushed it closer to the page, the numbers got smaller. The authors also changed as I moved the magnifying glass.
Note
The only author name I could remember upon waking up was "Burnin' Bambam".
Two guys were now in the room next to me, listening to me exclaim about never hearing of any of these names.
guy one: "Really? You haven't heard of Coronardo? It's one of the most famous streets in Nevada!"
me: "I'm trying to figure out the nature of my body here. Where is this? Who am I?"
guy one: "Oh, they're going to kill him when they find out. The only way is with a knife to the skull."
Note
I had the impression that this guy was also an "alien inhabitor" of the body he was in.
me: "What do you call our kind? I've taken to fancifully calling us 'the CIA', though obviously not the human CIA."
guy two: (laughing) "Oh, I get it. Sort of a play on 'the CIA put a chip in my head!'"
guy one: "Yeah that's funny, I guess, but couldn't you try a little harder to fit in?"
At that moment I realized that we were in some kind of diner. I was midway through dismantling the table top with some kind of tool, un-mounting it from its stand. When I finished unscrewing it the table top went flying and hit the ceiling. I got the attention of someone who seemed to be a waitress.
me: "Why did the table top go flying up? Shouldn't gravity have made it fall down?"
waitress: "The planet's rotation is 'gravity-opposite'. So that table top will be up there all night."
me: (to guy one) "What on earth does the direction a planet is rotating have to do with gravity? Isn't gravity based on mass?"
guy one: "Yes. Gravity would work the same way no matter which way the planet was rotating."
me: (to waitress) "Do you have to buy some kind of apparatus to stop table tops from doing that? If so, who sells it?"
I woke up.