Jay Lake: Writer

[dreams] Always more with the postcards from the subconscious

Two nights ago, I dreamt I was hanging out with kenscholes and Mrs. kenscholes. For some reason it was very important for me to buy her a coat. (In real life, she works in the fashion industry, so this was more than a little odd — why would she need that from me?) The coat search became a desperate hunt.

Last night I dreamt I was at a casino with some friends from the Day Jobbe. It was a very strange place, sort of the Hotel California brought to life, but without the warm smell of colitas rising up through the air. The ominously not present owner had hired a large number of attractive young women with whom the guests were absolutely forbidden to flirt or otherwise engage. It was some kind of weird contest and power game. C— from work wasn’t having this, and kept trying to chat up these women. I kept trying to get him to leave, in which I only succeeded by promising to chat them up myself. Then out in the snowy, cold parking lot we could not find the exit.

Anxiety much?

Tags: dreams, friends, Personal, work

Posted: 6:29 am Mon February 20 2012 | Comments(0) |

[dreams] A world of fonts, a world of tears

Dreamt last night that I was living in an alternate world just like ours with one major exception. The only fonts that existed were Cooper Black and Comic Sans.

Talk about a screaming nightmare…

Tags: dreams, Funny

Posted: 9:13 am Sun February 05 2012 | Comments(2) |

[dreams] Dreaming of writers, redux, with full contact Jenga

Last night I dreamt I was at some sort of SFWA gathering in Texas. We were playing full contact Jenga, which I was losing to scalzi, maryrobinette and brendacooper. Alcohol may have been involved.

The “B” plot of the dream was that scalzi was trying to get a Texas driver’s license ab initio, that is, without surrendering his Ohio license, so he had been going through the written and road tests. He’d managed to flunk the road test, and was pretty unhappy about that. I was offering advice on what sort of car to take in for road tests, and tried to pick up the drinks tab for the whole mob, but scalzi wouldn’t let me. Apparently it was SFWA’s turn to pay.

Ah, my tribe.

Tags: redux, with full contact Jenga, [dreams] Dreaming of writers

Posted: 8:12 am Sat February 04 2012 | Comments(0) |

[dreams] Capers, middle aged white guy style

I’ve been watching too much Mission Impossible. In fact, the_child and I watched MI III [ imdb ] yesterday evening, which quite clearly influenced my dreaming.

In my sleep, I was part of a strike team also composed of joshenglish (a fellow Portland writer) and howardtayler (of Schlock Mercenary fame). Our assignment was to kidnap a teacher (played by a dream person rather than someone from real life) from an American boarding school in Japan and bring him back to the United States. The three of us flew across the Pacific, and executed our assignment, also snatching his girlfriend and their three little kids. We wound up in a hotel near Narita airport waiting for our flight home, where joshenglish bailed on the operation, and howardtayler more or less went on strike.

It finally occurred to me that we hadn’t grabbed our target’s passport when we snatched him, and I began to wonder how we were going to get him through Japanese immigration on the way out, or US customs and immigration on the way in. Then I realized I had no way to get him onto the plane without him speaking up and asking for help from the airline reps. So I went and took a shower with all my clothes on (no, I still don’t know why), until the kids came and pestered me to get out of the bathroom so they could wash up.

Apparently, I’m not even capable of being an international superspy even in my dreams. As for those two rats on my team, gentlemen, I have to say I’m disappointed in your lack of commitment to my imaginary mission.

Tags: Child, dreams, friends, Funny, Japan, Movies

Posted: 8:06 am Sat January 07 2012 | Comments(3) |