A friend of mine had bought a rather complex cell phone.
friend: "Damn it. I canceled the plan for this phone, but now they won't let me return it. To make matters worse, I paid for it with a loan based on equity against my house."me: "I don't think it's very common to take out loans against your house to buy a cell phone. Was it really that expensive? Couldn't you have bought it outright?"
friend: "Didn't think of that."
me: "Oh, wait, this is totally nonsensical. Obviously a dream. All right, Mr. Gadget...here's one of my favorite new dream questions...what was the hot Christmas item last year?"
I started bragging a bit and exaggerating my abilities.
me: "But don't limit yourself. I'll remember anything after I wake up. Try chemical formulas, movie summaries, engineering diagrams. Just describe it. But obviously, try to optimize for both 'simple' and 'cool'."He showed me an odd hi-tek product brochure, which was actually a flipbook. The product in question was a keychain clock of some kind, though it looked a bit more like an odometer. The diagram had little padlock icons shown on each wheel. I was able to ask the flipbook to pause and go back or skip past seemingly random graphics which had no substance.
(Note: The gist of this catalog seemed to be that they carried products like at The Sharper Image...high priced specialty items for people with too much money.)
A movie played about how the keychain could be thrown into molten lava and be preserved. One woman in the ad gave a testimonial that she had started a whole religion by throwing hers into a volcano.
me: "I'm not sure I understand. The gimmick is that you can throw it in a volcano, and it will keep whatever time you had locked in before you threw it in? I don't see how locking down the dials is all that interesting, though knowing how to make a material that could resist molten lava would be very valuable to me."(Note: I can't help but allude to the Deep Thought by Jack Handey which says:
"If you drop your keys into molten lava, just let it go...because man, they're gone."
...but apparently, this isn't necessarily the case if you've got this thing.)
