Dreamquest of Unknown Tennis Courts

I had such a bizarre dream last night that I had to tell you all.

I live for dreams like these, odysseys, voyages through my own subconscious. Last time I had a dream this elaborate I turned into a giant slug creature and went on a ski trip. There were also dragons. Either way, the very same morning of my writings this I had a journey that would take so many twists and turns that I began to doubt what was real.

It didn't begin last night though, while I do remember last night's dream it had little to do with the dream-quest. In a way it was only a prelude, or a prequel to what was to come.

Last night, I was in an enormous bookstore that may have doubled as a model home. This would make sense, because I've wanted to go see some model homes recently, just for old time's sake. Either way, I was trapped in this huge building, filled with books, with some dudes. They were all dressed in military fatigues and carried what looked like Smith & Wesson 76's. I had no doubt that they wanted to kill me so I started to search for a hiding place. Surprisingly, I don't think I had a gun. Ignoring this disappointment, I ran across a lawn that seemed to split the building in half. On the other side was a sort of cabin with more books in it. There was a back room behind here, it was very dark and there was a disco ball. Even further, behind a bead-curtain door is yet more books but also C3-PO and R2-D2. Again, this doesn't come as a surprise because last night I was listening to the disco version of the Star Wars theme song.

To my surprise, it wasn't the armed dudes who killed me, but my sister. It makes sense, it's always one's greatest fear that people confront in their dreams.

I woke up, and immediately set about writing down what had happened. It was 7:45 and I was still tired. I barely remembered falling asleep again...

I was in my house, my whole family was sitting around a table. Unlike my real house, this one is full of clutter and antiques. The entire building appears to be constructed from the same very dark, almost black, wood material.

Suddenly, we're outside and a swarm of rabbits engulfs us. While I'm delighted at the sudden appearance of bunnies I don't question it. There's a rusty old jungle-gym and an unnamed person put's a large brown rabbit on one of the swings. Everyone present tells this person how bad of an idea that is but they continue. Not unexpectedly, the rabbit breaks an arm. I rush over to take it and call a vet.

I'm in what I presume to be my room, with the rabbit at my side. I'm on the phone with a medical professional when who-else but Jeff the stuffed sheep appears.

As many of my readers know, I have a very extensive collection of stuffed animals, almost bordering on "man-child" quantities. Jeff is a tiny sheep with a little rattle inside and a perpetual smile. This makes sense, Jeff is a baby toy, as in, from the Baby Gap at the mall. Again, the term "man-child" seems an apt description.

Anyway, Jeff slithers across my bed to hand me a large stack of papers. They're all covered in esoteric symbols and writings, one of them may have even said I was dreaming. Either way, I wasn't paying attention to those ones because most of the papers were coupons and I was feverishly searching through those.

I'd just like to point out that I was questioning the reality of my situation this whole time, mainly because of the sudden changes of location and the appearance of dozens of rabbits. I actually thought several times, "This is a dream, this rabbit isn't actually in danger.". But at no point did I question Jeff suddenly coming to life and handing me coupons.

The house disappears again and I'm feeling very depressed. The rabbit might die and I'm somewhere else entirely. This time, I'm in a park. Freshly cut lawns and huge oak trees are everywhere, people are having picnics, there are several bands playing. Imagine Balboa Park in severe disrepair, covered in tropical plants and apparently built on top of an ancient tennis court and you have an idea of the place. There were old, crumbling tennis courts everywhere.

This is distressing, I don't even play tennis. But I'm all but certain that I'll be integrating this place to the new map if I can.

Either way, I'm having so much fun just strutting around that I forget about the rabbit (or that I'm not wearing shoes) and I can't help but smile. I spend several hours just exploring these Myst-like ruins, listening to the gentle sound of the bands playing in the background. There's a free movie theater somewhere and food courts everywhere. I go to one and a very large burrito materializes before me, it overflows with beans.

Some of my school-friends are there and I tell them about my plight.

"How am I supposed to go to Sea World if I'm trapped in this dream?" I ask them. "I don't even remember how I got here so I must be dreaming."

"HEY! SORRY I CAN'T MAKE IT TO SEA WORLD!" I yell at the sky, hoping that my cries will somehow pierce the veil of sleep. "I'M STUCK IN A DREAM!"

The sky darkens and it starts to rain, it's hot and tropical. A thick fog develops and the air get's steamy and humid. I'm in a city, it's almost nighttime and the sky is a deep purple dotted with stars. I have my fancy new MP3 player with me and I decide to start making a log of my travels.

"Captain's Log, stardate 42.56..." I start, but I'm almost run over by a car.

The person driving is a woman I recognize from another dream, she has a stern look on her face.

"It's time you wake up now." She said, tired of this adventure. "You're mother needs you."

Suddenly, I "wake up". I'm back at the house. I ask everyone if the rabbit is okay, they nonchalantly tell me it died as I sink back into another depression.

And then I wake up again and immediately started writing this here and now you're reading it.

Keep in mind, all this happened from 7:50 something to 10:00. This was a sprawling, labyrinthine quest that took whole days. It very well could have been a dream within a dream too. Who knows how many of these I have and I just don't remember them, all the more reason to start working on that dream-recorder I keep telling people I'm going to invent.

Also, if you want to psychoanalyze these events, feel free to do so in the comments section.

Devious Schemes

Hey everybody! Just a quick update this time mainly because I don't have much interesting to say.

It's been over two months since Insomnia finished and I'm not quite ready to tackle the final map in the Paranoia trilogy. Although, my sister and I were discussing it and we're inclined to think that Hypnophobia will be much more horror-themed then the last two. I'm already getting visions of blood and skeletons. Mostly skeletons.

Also, I'm sure you remember a few posts back where I said that Insomnia eventually stopped compiling because there were too many brush faces. Well, I'm thinking of starting Hypnophobia with the same areas I was planning for the end of the last map. This means it may or may not start in a modern art museum.

Neat!

The Scoop

Good news everyone! I'll be gone for the next five days on a camping trip, so you won't have any of my precious blog posts for practically a week. I know this upsets you all so much, especially now that we've reached a grand total of three posts this month, truly a milestone in posting frequency.

Either way, don't be upset anonymous, silent readers because the good news is this...

...the very early planning for a certain map called Hypnophobia has begun.

While I'm gone there's just a few rules:

• No wild parties.
• Don't do drugs.
• Don't summon any forgotten gods from the dank underdark of caverns within the Earth.
• Don't invite Daleks over.
• Feed the Triffids.
• Don't go wandering off in some creepy hallways and get lost in a nightmare-city.
• Heino is always watching.

ALWAYS.

Battle of the Gods

I would really really like to know why simple videos like this are so hard for me to make. It should be easy shouldn't it? It's just a minute of footage.

Well I'm starting to realize that I'm not the problem here, it's the people I'm forced to work with. Yeah, if she's reading this she knows what she did. I'm talking about my awful awful (Just dreadful) sister.

"Tyyyyleeeer! I want to make a video! D:" She kept saying last night.

"No! I'm playing chess against myself!" I said.

She scampered into the room, slightly confused. Then she saw it: me, with a giant PHX chess board in Garry's Mod with Daleks strewn all over the map. I was having a surprisingly heated battle against myself. I had just moved the white queen into position to take the black king but I forgot that I left a black night in the perfect spot to retaliate.

"Tyler, that's so sad! D:" She said as she made some imitation of the "Forever Alone" face.

I knew the point she was trying to make but it was futile, I was having a grand time. Besides, there was obviously no other way I could have a true battle of wits seeing as she was the only other person there. Either way, we decided to try and start a server to try and have a proper game of chess.

I was cringing the whole time, hoping it wouldn't work. The scenario played out a dozen times a second in my mind, I envisioned a great flame. I started to have flashbacks to when I made videos with Idontknow and how we eventually had to defend ourselves from Gary Busey by smashing all the windows.

So before I could even spawn the board we were having a gun battle.

And then we fought in real life, I have no shame in telling you I was behaving in an extremely childish manner. It was the only way I could defend myself.

At least nothing was set on fire.

For the Rest of My Life

I have a very good reason why I haven't posted anything on here since last month. Basically, I graduated High School.

Yay!

To everyone's surprise, I was deemed acceptable to join society at large after I "completed a course of studies in accordance with the requirements of the State Board of Education for Graduation" from my school and therefore was rewarded a shiny new diploma. Whether it was a terrible mistake of the State of California to give me this power has yet to be determined.
In the meantime, I've been busy writing thank you cards and partying it up. There's been much cake to be had by all here. The strange feeling has already passed after I've spent a week not going to school. I can tell you now, I already miss the opportunity to interrupt my classes by giving impromptu lectures. No doubt that my first place of employment will have to let me make similar speeches or I won't be there long.

All my bros and I have agreed that we need to stay in contact now that we're all adults doing adult activities. Ordinarily this would mean we're condemned to never speak again, but seeing as how everyone in my social circle (including my awful awful sister) is on Steam this shouldn't be a problem.

With school out of the way I can focus on what truly matters. All my attention can go to preparing for the future, to setting right what has gone wrong. Armed with the knowledge I have acquired I can make a difference in this world. There are problems in our society that need fixing and I think I have the solution. It'll be difficult, but with enough hard work and sheer grit I think my generation can solve this problem that has been plaguing the people of this great nation for far too long.

What I am talking about, of course, is Daleks.

The new Daleks introduced in the second half of Victory of the Daleks to be precise.



Look at those things. Those are not Daleks, those are toys. For children. They are hunchbacks, they are plastic, they are brightly colored disco bumper-cars and they simply will not do.




They're even worse in diagram-form. Look at how bulbous they are. Everything about them is too big and awkward looking. Their eye-stalks are big and bulbous, so are their plungers. Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure their gun-sticks are bigger than the old Dalek's plungers even. I'm not pointing any fingers here, but I'm sure a certain Doctor Sigmund Freud would have something to say about their insecurities and repressed feelings, especially so considering the fabulous color schemes they appear in.



"Sometimes a plunger is not just a plunger..." -Freud

As you may recall, in Dale's first post here he mentioned this same episode before going on a Scarlet Johansson induced rant. He probably never actually watched the episode or else he would have marched across the Atlantic Ocean, stormed into the BBC building and rip Steve Moffat's face right off. It's a bit late for that now so I'll just let him tell you in his own words how he found out about these abominations...

HOW DALE FOUND OUT HE WAS BEING REPLACED BY ABOMINATIONS
BY DALE

GREET-INGS IN-FER-IOR LIFE-FORMS. I AM DALE. THIS IS A PHO-TO-GRAPH OF MY BROS AND I WORK-ING AT THE OFF-CE. THIS IS WHERE WE PLAN ALL OUR EVIL DEEDS.

THAT IS DA-LEK CHUCK SITT-ING IN THE CUBICLE NEXT TO ME. EV-ER-Y-ONE AT THE OFF-ICE IS CON-CERN-ED ABOUT HIS DRINK-ING HA-BITS.



LA-TER THAT DAY I WAS SPEAK-ING TO DALEK THAX ABOUT THE NEW SEASON OF DOCT-OR WHO. WE WERE HAVING A DIS-A-GREE-MENT ABOUT WHO IS WORSE: THE DOC-TOR OR HIS BOW-TIE. THE SUB-JECT OF THE MAS-TER-RACE (CODEWORD FOR THE DALEKS!) CAME UP, HE TOLD ME THAT WE WERE RE-PLA-CED BY A NEW MO-DEL.



WE CON-SUL-TED DALEK CHUCK FOR MORE IN-FOR-MA-TION REGARDING THE NEW PARA-DIGM DALEKS AND IMMEEEEEEDIAT-LY REGRETTED THE DESCISION.

WE VOMIT-ED IN RAGE FOR THE NEXT FIVE THOUSAND RELS (DALEK UNIT OF TIME EQUAL TO 1.5 EARTH SECONDS) AND BURNT DOWN AN OR-PHAN-AGE. AFTER THAT, WE HAD A TEN THOU-SAND REL THER-A-PEU-TIC SCREAM-ING SESSION TO COPE WITH THIS AWFUL NEWS.



THE SCREAMING THERAPY DID NOTHING TO EXTINGUISH OUR RAGE AND NO AMOUNT OF AROMATHERAPY BATH-SALTS COULD HELP SO WE CREATED A MASTER-PLAN TO DESTROY THE IMPURE DALEKS.

THIS IS A PICTURE OF ME INSTRUCTING THE BOARD ON OUR PLAN. I WAS VOTED CHAIRDALEK OF THE BOARD AFTER I EX-TER-MIN-A-TED THE PRE-VI-OUS CHAIRDALEK.



WE MOVED IN-TO POS-I-TION TO ATT-ACK THE IMPURE DALEKS' HOME IN WEST HOLLYWOOD. DA-LEK KAHN FOR-GOT TO BRING S-NACKS.



THE "ETERNAL" DALEK AN-SWERED THE DOOR, THINK-ING WE WERE PIZZADALEKS SENT TO DE-LIVER A PIZZA. WE EXTERMINATED IT AND STARTED BURNING THE IN-TERIOR OF THEIR HOME. WE DID NOT SPARE THEIR EX-PEN-SIVE LEA-THER SO-FA.



WE FOUND A COPY OF THE SPICE GIRLS MOVIE ON DVD UPSTAIRS. WE EXTERMINATED IT!!!



AFTER WE EXTERMINATED THE IMPURE DALEKS EVERYONE WENT OUTSIDE TO FOR A GROUP POSE. I MIGHT PUT THIS LAST PICTURE IN MY PORTFOLIO ALONG WITH ALL MY OTHER GLAMOUR SHOTS. SEEING AS HOW STEEEEVE MOFFAT HAS LEFT ME WITHOUT A JOB I HAVE LITTLE CHOICE.

I AM HOPEFUL THAT THE PEOPLE FROM THE BBC WILL CALL ME BACK, THEY SAID THAT I'D BE A GREAT PRESENTER ON MASTERPIECE THEATER!!!