The Dream Thread

[ntw3001]

That's the spirit.

[badplantmommy]

I have had lots of weird bathroom dreams (the "peeing couches" sounds familiar--I'm sure I've dreamed about something familiar)--either the toilets are missing, or broken, or clogged, or 5 feet high, or the restroom is disgustingly dirty. I usually can't pee in my dreams. I have heard people say they dreamed they were peeing and woke up to discover they had wet the bed; that's never happened to me.

--J--

[Dusk]

Haven't you made like 11 typos in the last 2 weeks?

SERIOUSLY how about those poorly cobbled together sentences?

[jvcc]

Haven't you made like 11 typos in the last 2 weeks?

SERIOUSLY how about those poorly cobbled together sentences?

JUST LEAVE ME ALONE, MAN.

[Binkatron5000]

I had a dream that I was on a plane to China, and the person sitting next to me happened to be super passionate about researching innate spatial biases (and cerebral laterality in general), and we had a freak-out-fest together while on a plane to China. "DID YOU KNOW THAT PEOPLE TEND TO ASSUME LIGHT COMES FROM ABOVE AND TO THE LEFT?" "YEAH TOTALLY, THOSE STUDIES BY ELIAS ET AL (2007-2010) RAISE SOME INTERESTING POINTS SUCH AS BLAH BLAH!" "OMG I KNOW! HOW ABOUT HIS OTHER STUDIES ABOUT BUMPING INTO poopcakes ON THE RIGHT SIDE?" "OH HELL YES! SQUEEE! SO INTERESTING! I WONDER IF BLAH BLAH, BECAUSE BLAH SUGGESTS BLAH!" I was so rickin'-frackin' happy in that part of the dream, it was ridiculous. BURSTING WITH JOY. What is wrong with me? Then I reached China and my boyfriend and I found a super HUGE house for super cheap, the only catch was that to enter the house you had to crawl up 5 floors of tiny, rickety, shaky, hobbled-together stairs/ramps. That was terrifying.

[Binkatron5000]

I had another toilet dream. As usual there were a mass of strange toilets smattered throughout the room, none with private walls... but this time, for once, there was nobody else around. Well, nobody human. Some toilets were couches with holes cut in them, some were shambles of toothpicks... ALL were very dirty. I found the most-normal looking, least dirty one I could find, lifted the lid, and was hit with a POWERFUL STENCH. Like an outhouse with a rotting corpse in it, all which have been rubbed with rotten eggs and rotten potatoes. (Ever smell rotten potatoes before?) I don't ever recall smelling things in my dreams so this is sort of new to me. Why did it have to be so disgusting?

Anyways, the odor dissipated a bit, and then I saw the bugs. Lots. Small. Plus one huge, hungry insect. It was about 1.5 feet long, and was shaped like a flattened ant with super long legs and antennae. And it was a sort of musty yellow colour. It crawled/skittered/spasmed its way to the top of the insect-ridden toilet, leaving a trail of smushed little insects along the way, and then it turned around and LOOKED RIGHT AT ME! IT LOOKED AT ME AND LICKED ITS LIPS. It was hungry. I was its next meal. I knew it was waiting for the right time to jump on me and burrow to my organs and devour me from the inside. I had nothing to defend myself with. It was hopeless. Then the alarm went off and I woke up, ohh phew!

[Null]

It could have been worse. Imagine this dream had awakened you in the middle of the night, and you realized you had to pee?

Also, what if you had monster-themed toilet paper, and one panel was in the toilet, floating and spinning and looking up at you? And you couldn't just flush it because it would wake up the others in the toilet paper.

[sum yun gai]

It could have been worse. Imagine this dream had awakened you in the middle of the night, and you realized you had to pee?

and when you opened your toilet, it STANK LIKE DEATH

[James]

Returning to the "his/her" versus "their" problem, the word that always gets me is "themself", because it doesn't exist. I tend to automatically use "them", but when it comes to referring to that person's self the plurality of the terminology is made unbearably apparent to me. I can overlook thems and theirs left and right, but "themselves" clearly refers to collection of people, and "themself" clearly announces an invented lexicon. "Him or her" and "her/his" are impermissibly inelegant, using "she" to balance out all the prior masculine favouritism implies one is making a point completely irrelevant to the subject in question, and neologisms such as the T-dropping "hem" and "heir" are gimmicky and bound to perplex. It's an impossible conundrum. I generally go for a complete restructuring, but with varying success, and it pains me every time.

So, what, dreams? I don't remember any for weeks.

[jvcc]

The "themself" problem you're expressing can be solved by using "herself" or "himself", or "herself or himself", can't it? Perhaps you could give an example.

[James]

NO. The very point of using the plural to refer to a single person is to ensure gender-neutrality, which in my case is usually because I'm speaking in generalities. I therefore cannot use "herself" or "himself" individually, and "him or herself" is covered by the impermissible inelegance clause in my preceding post.

Actually, I do use the latter occasionally, but it really is a bother.

[jvcc]

If you're interested in gender-neutrality you can try "her or himself", not to privilege the feminine noun, but because it's in alphabetical order.

Also, try "oneself." It's gender-neutral and more grammatically correct than using "themself" or "themselves".

[EvilJekyll]

If you're interested in gender-neutrality you can try "her or himself", not to privilege the feminine noun, but because it's in alphabetical order.

Also, try "oneself." It's gender-neutral and more grammatically correct than using "themself" or "themselves".

Many will try, but few will pleasure oneself. ?

[jvcc]

Yeah, if James would provide me with some examples I could attempt to answer the question more effectively. And I'm tired. Figure it out amongst yourselves.

[chrismachine]

the example just provided was a good one to illustrate his point. The other part of his point is that he has spent a great deal of time thinking about this, and is just as good at this if not better than any of us at this sort of thing, and is merely expressing his frustration as there is no currently-existing solution. I agree, but fortunately it doesn't bother me all that much.

[Null]

"The Borg put their thumb in their eye all by themself."

[jvcc]

A borg can be an it, can't it? What are we even talking about? Why is this in the dream thread?

Sleeeeeepy.

[PonderThis]

OK here's an unusual dream even for this thread. Last night I dreamed I developed a new card game. Not a regular-deck card game, but a unique-deck card game like Uno or Magic:TG. You can tell I've been playing Civ V waaaaay too much because it's called "Civilization: The Card Game" although it's only loosely based on Civ. And because I still have the details in my head I'm going to inflict it on you.

OK, you have several different decks. The main play deck is the "Land Deck". It has cards labeled with all the different land types you see in Civ V, plus the occasional "extra", like, say, "City-State cards" that give you certain bonuses. Everybody gets initially dealt, say, eight cards from this deck.

For your initial turn, you pick one to play as a solitaire-like foundation. This is called "founding a city". The card has to be a non-mountain non-sea card (and not a bonus card either). For each additional turn you pick a card from the land deck and then you have options. You can play more land cards on the city (this time you can use mountain and sea cards) to make it "grow" or found new cities. More cities means more options, but small cities are harder to defend. Unless you have mountain cards, which are useless for anything except defense. Or you can play a City-State card (if you have one) next to your cities in which case it becomes an "ally" and provides some sort of ongoing bonus. Or you can "use" the City-State immediately in which case you get an immediate extra turn (draw two cards/play two cards).

Oh and when you "found a city" there's a stack of chips with random city names on them. You pick one and set it next to your founding city card for future reference, specifically for military attacks; player A states to player B "I'm attacking London" or some such.

Now then, you gather enough "land" on your city, you can "dedicate" that land (i.e., turn in a certain number of cards) for specialty purposes. There are three special decks that can be drawn from: (1) The Achievement Deck (sort of a cross between Science Achievements and Wonders). This gives your civilization a permanent achievement that cannot be taken away. Plus they give you a bonus somehow. (2) The Military Deck; you get a random military unit. (3) There was a third deck. Now I've forgotten what it was.

I haven't worked out how the military angle works, but it has to be in there somehow ...

[Binkatron5000]

Your brain is awesome, keep on developing this and you'd have a game that I could see people wanting to play! Are there a number of different ways to win like in the Civ games?

[jvcc]

I bet my sci-fi group would love to play that. They had a contest to make up a new game last year, and the two I've played were really fun. One is a card game that's too difficult to explain, and the other is like Chat Noir, except you play against one other person. So, yes, develop this.

I remember one time I had a dream that someone was wearing a Hershey's kiss costume for Halloween, but they put on a mustache and beret so that they were a french kiss. I've yet to see this costume anywhere else. I think that my subconscious has happened upon a marketable idea.

[fanelian]

I don't remember much... hell, I don't remember almost anything. Loofah and Nik were visiting me. Loofah was driving a truck: A Freight truck with a very long cargo box. At some point they were going to follow me in their vehicles (Nik's was a normal sedan type of car), but the road was so small Loofah had to wait for us to return from wherever we were going, because her truck wouldn't fit....

[ntw3001]

Chat Noir

I didn't notice this before, but urgh. dang cat won't stop scampering. I've trapped it like, once.

[jvcc]

Chat Noir

I didn't notice this before, but urgh. dang cat won't stop scampering. I've trapped it like, once.

Oh my, I love the word scamper. And stamper. I've trapped it MANY times, but I may have played it more than you. Someone I know invented a sort of two-person version of Chat Noir where each person has a grid and you place pieces on the other person's grid to try and trap their player.

[loofah]

I don't remember much... hell, I don't remember almost anything. Loofah and Nik were visiting me. Loofah was driving a truck: A Freight truck with a very long cargo box. At some point they were going to follow me in their vehicles (Nik's was a normal sedan type of car), but the road was so small Loofah had to wait for us to return from wherever we were going, because her truck wouldn't fit....

Little did you know that I had the rest of the spamusers in there, and it was actually a mobile luxury hotel.

[jvcc]

I've captured le chat three times today. This is truly an achievement.