I was walking down the hall of my apartment and needed to take a shower. For some reason, I thought the only way to access the bathroom was through my roommate's bedroom.
Note
This is not the case, there's a shared bathroom at the end of a common hallway.
me: "Ahhh... dream, wait. So I'm mixing up the floorplan from the house my parents and I lived in Virginia with our apartment. Wonder why I'd do that?"
roommate: "Yeah, I keep making similar mistakes. Weird mappings. I put a whole movie theater in our apartment... a 40 screen cineplex. Except, all the movie theaters were bugged."
me: (sighing) "All of them probably are."
This switched to where I was in something like a train station, and I found a young man scribbling in a book at an area that seemed a bit like a diner. He was seated in a booth. I don't remember much of our conversation, but it was pleasant, and then suddenly interrupted when a proctor for a test walked in and addressed him.
proctor: "All right, pencils down, tests in."
He motioned to get up and leave his book on the table.
me: "Oh, I'm sorry for taking your time, did you not finish your test?"
young man: "Don't worry about it."
me: "Well don't you want to turn it in, for partial credit?"
young man: "Even if I had finished, I couldn't have afforded the grading fees. Few people here can. I was just practicing, it's no big deal"
me: "Oh, that's too bad."
young man: "I'm not actually who you need to talk to. Here, I'll show you."
He took me through what looked like a library to a woman with glasses, seated behind a computer.
me: "Hi, I'm what they'd call in my world a lucid dreamer. Which means I can tell you, y'know, that I'm asleep and went to bed in Los Angeles, and now I'm here and..."
I picked up a piece of chalk out of a box on the desk.
me: "Now I'm here, in ur reality, steelin ur chalk!"
librarian: "You need to get us pictures. Y'know, like... your coke cans, something to correlate with the date and track you."
me: "Oh. Hm. Well, how would I get any of that information to you? I mean, should I post something on the internet... or... hey, hey, I got an idea. Take some notes!"
Note
If it helps anyone, I bought this Coke in August 2008:
...pulled that out of the recycling bin for this entry.
The librarian had a computer in front of her, and started typing what I said.
me: "We've got basically two competing drinks, right? They're colas, the drinks are dark brown, they're sweet. Coke and Pepsi."
young man: "You don't have only two drinks."
me: "Well, no I mean, we have water and orange juice and a lot of things. But the competition between these two is a weird cultural thing and it gets advertised in all kinds of strange places. Once they had a time where Coke changed it's formula for a little while, they changed the cans then... it was New Coke, but there was a public outcry and they changed it back. There are other cola products that are slightly different, like, oh Dr. Pepper... and Mr. Pibb. I think Mr. Pibb is still around, but, not very popular."
I gave some more information but somehow this distorted into a scene where I was in a bedroom with some people, including a girl who was trying to cross-reference songs with me.
girl: "You know the lyrics to that one? It's all about 'you shouldn't have sex if you're non-concentrated'..."
me: "Uh no, that's not how it goes with us. Music is about sex."
girl: "What about Fred Beans?"
me: "Fred Beans? Never heard of him."
girl: "You've never heard of Fred Beans!?"
me: "No, sorry. Ever hear of David Gray?"
girl: "The name is familiar, I can't recall any of his songs offhand."
Note
Fred Beans is apparently a popular automotive dealer that I'd never heard of, but if you dig through you'll find some weirdness, like... this question on Yahoo! answers where a girl asks why people keep thinking she's Fred Beans and stalking her.
me: "Okay, does this sound familiar: 'Imagine there's no Heaven... it's easy if you try.... Imagine all the people.... Living... uh... Oh I don't really know the lyrics to this darn song, Imagine by John Lennon, I was just trying to think of something iconic."
Note
I actually don't know the lyrics very well. Probably should, but, I just don't care much for the music of that era. Listening to it now. Oddly enough, LiveJournal user "mexgeek" quoted it as his response to my God Criteria Essay.
me: "Do you have the Beatles?"
girl: (singing) "Love, love me do!"
me: "Yeah, there's another band I don't know the lyrics to their songs very well...not my favorite band, again, just iconic. I know the tunes. Um, Sargeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club... that one of their albums?"
girl: "Yes."
There was a guy in the room, I started talking to him.
me: "How about Garbage? You heard of them?"
guy: "Garbage? I was just listening to Garbage this morning... I'm only happy when it rains......"
me: "Yes, that is a song by them I know and sounds correct."
guy: "Let me show you the video."
In the video, a band was dancing around in what looked like a junkyard that was on fire. I couldn't get a fix on the members of the band, but there was a pink guitar. In the background of the video, however, there was a translucent overlay in red of the white house being destroyed, along with various footage of cityscapes being destroyed.
me: "Wait. There's extra information, overlaid on this video. It's in red, of cities being destroyed. Can you see that part?"
My point of view changed to where I was watching some other movie, in a theater. It had two overlays showing different things... one red, one blue... superimposed on top of the footage. In this one buildings were just moving around, not being destroyed. I was reminded of the classic "3-D" glasses.
Note
The Garbage video on YouTube does not feature any junkyards, though it all takes place in dilapidated circumstances...and Shirley Manson wears two dresses, a blue and a red-ish one... although the red-ish one could be interpreted as purple or pink in a couple of the lighting shots:
...and it's interesting to note that in the red version she's in a bathroom. The band members are busy trying to destroy giant reams of celluloid film. Perhaps suggesting that realizing that your life looks ruinous, it is just a video veil over reality. A music-video telling of the matrix tale?