waider

Some time in the wee hours of this morning, there was a bird singing outside my window. It sounded like it had been taught to sing by a car alarm. Ugh.

I dreamed U2's new album[1]. I can only remember that the first and last tracks concerned meeting a girl on a train and seeing the girl depart on a train respectively. Actually, it might have been a tram. And the leaving tram/train was in a horrible accident with the implication that that's why there wasn't a next song. And when I say the songs concerned these things, I mean I was watching and/or starring in the videos. I don't recall music or lyrics, just that there was definitely some of both. The dream seemed to be partly lucid, too.

After the trainwreck song (hah) I was again on a train, this one being derailed by another train but somehow maintaining its pace, and then being chased by an avalanche for a bit.

Dreams are curious things.

[1] I don't know that U2 have a new album, but they're about due one.

Stick-figure art is so passé, but it's all about the dialogue. If you're not already subscribed to xkcd's feed (regular RSS and LiveJournal syndication both available), you're missing out.

...or Robert Anton Wilson's. I woke up very early this morning having just had a semi-lucid, very lurid dream involving a girl in a FURRY SUIT. It may have been Teddy Snow Crop, hence the potential blame on R.A.W.

So last night I dreamt that I was on the piss with Warren Ellis, and we'd no sooner gotten into a bar when he'd persuaded two girls to come sit with us, one with a Northern accent and the other Dublin, I think. Then he wandered off, and when he came back the bar filled up with people wearing soccer team shirts and scarves (blue and white; for some reason, the word "Millwall" bounced around my head) who proceeded to stab the ethnic staff in a really slow and casual fashion. At which point I very suddenly woke up with a racing heart. JEEZ, Warren. Turn off the frickin' brane ray.

1. Ploughing my car sideways to obstruct a car that was being chased by police. Rank stupidity in the line of civic duty, or something.
2. This actually caused me to wake up in a panic: I dreamt that I had a math exam today. And not easy math, either. Serious college-grade engineering math that I've completely forgotten everything about. The funny thing about this is that the secondary school exams start today and I wasn't consciously aware of that until just now.

Participating in a mediæval battle, using a longbow, except where you'd normally expect to find a nice bit of Yew there's ... a painting. In a gilt frame. WTFF?

Hanging out in a town I don't recognize with an exgrilf, now regrilfed (to coin a phrase), but sporting some sort of painful-on-contact skin irritation that makes it difficult to put my arm around her. For some reason there's a little black kid first with a tree-branch baseball bat and later with a small cannon that causes her to get upset. Hard to explain without writing a ton of description, to be honest, so I'll handwave that. I can partially understand the skin irritation bit since I finished reading Involution Ocean last night, but, ah, the rest, well, jeez. HELLO BRANE PLEASE REPEAT YOUR TRANSMISSION WAS GARBLED.

Denis O'Brien (in person, no less) wanted to headhunt me for work unspecified but with implications that it was continuing from work I'd done previously (I've never worked for any of Denis O'Brien's operations, to the best of my knowledge). Also, for some reason, he was hanging out with his boyfriend. To the best of my knowledge he's not actually gay or anything.

Yesterday was a long, long day of fighting with a DSL box and Linux, culminating in a further couple of hours poking at it remotely once I'd established that it was working.

ALL last night I was dreaming about PPP daemons.

Freaky.

A big party, evidently celebrating Ireland's qualification for some soccer tournament or another. Some misguided folks are singing a song about Dion Dublin, who plays for an English Premiership team, and wouldn't qualify as an Irish international player. It's really crowded; there seem to be a lot of people from my college days here, including my brother and a bunch of his friends. At some point, I'm out on the dancefloor (dancefloor? are we in a nightclub?) talking to someone and I turn around to see a girl I have some interest in (exgrilf? protogrilf?) dancing with a guy I used work with. Lots of shocked looks, they disappear out the door, and her friends come over and make soothing noises and apologise. Apparently I had some connection between the song playing and the interesting girl, and everyone's shocked that guy would dance off with girl during song, if you follow. They're arguing over it now, and I'm trying to tell them that look, this is my problem, I have no claim to either the song or the girl, etc.

Then the alarm went off. Why I set it for 10:30 is beyond me.

Most of the above has parallels in reality, funnily enough, except the bit about the song having some special meaning. I had a song with special negative meaning for a while, but the circumstances which led to it are so convoluted that you'd think I was dreaming again. The guy I used work with went out with a girl in the office after she'd broken up with me. Ireland have qualified for several soccer tournaments, and I've been at several resulting parties - usually impromptu affairs in the pub where we all watched the crucial game. Oh, and one of the machines I was working on until 4am this morning is in the same city as the University I went to. I guess old mister brane got a bit stirred up.

Buying a house. More specifically, inspecting a house which I was considering buying. Seemed to be some acquaintance selling it to me. The house was great but I couldn't afford it. Afterward, we seemed to be driving through a highly stylized version of the town I grew up nearest to.