Come with me

SteveDallas · 12-12-2007, 08:25 PM

I am not sure where I have gone, and perhaps if you come with me someone else will have some insight that eludes me. One thing I will say in preparation is that although I'm sure the experience of being drunk is subjective, one thing I feel when I'm really drunk is a surreal remoteness from my own body, as if I am not there, but sort of running things by remote control, and there is a soft gauziness to how everything looks. I might describe this as the same sort of thing as far as the sense of remoteness, but in this case the focus is very sharp, unnaturally so.

So let's go along and visit this place. I'm not sure how to describe it, except to say that there are a bunch of other people with me, my comrades, who are they? classmates in school of some kind? coworkers? neighbors? it is really not clear to me but at any rate I know them and they know me and we are all here at what for lack of a better description I will call a conference center. Perhaps it is a cross between the world of Logan's Run (visually I mean, and I have no idea why that cropped up since I haven't seen that for ages, but there it is) and a Chuck E. Cheese's for adults (in the sense that there are lots of things going on that you can pick and choose from). We are here, my comrades and I, doing whatever it is that we need to do in this conference center. We are wrapping things up, and things are looking quite good for me as we finish. I have done some things that look good, and I am requesting some furhter information from the staff, information that seemingly might lead me to return again, something that seems unusual but definitely very positive. One thing is quite clear, and that is that I have brought way too much stuff with me. My cohorts all have their own stuff, most of them a small item like a PDA or an ipod, and a few have a couple books or a laptop and some discs to the extent that they need a small backpack. None of them however require three good sized cardboard boxes to carry their belongings in, and that's the situation I find myself in, trying to schlep all this stuff back to our transportation (bus?), causing me to be late and thereby marring the successful end to the trip. Somehow or other it all ends and I do manage to drag things on, with the help of a couple colleagues, and we depart.

I end up returning to the same place soon after, this time with my family, and this time it is not a conference center or anything but more of a hotel. In fact you actually park your car in a private space that includes a small suite, and that is where I find myself and my wife and kids. We are, again, wrapping things up and trying to leave. I have to take a leak, so I go to the bathroom to take care of business while my wife settles up our bill with the front desk. I am standing in front of the toilet at the moment when, apparently, she checks us out, because a video screen on the wall comes one and text informs me that I am no longer entitled to the use of the suite, and I need to get out. Unfortunately I am unable to finish and get out before the timer expires and we find we are unable to leave because the doors are all locked and in order to open them and drive the car out we have to feed the automated system a $5 bill as extra rental. We do finally get out and no longer have to worry about this.

It is abundantly clear at this point that I am at a great center of higher learning. A couple of the more impressive scholars I know are lecturing, and I have checked out what they're saying. They are, indeed, there to speak as part of the festivities for our great holiday, and travel to and from the center is somewhat complicated by all the holiday traffic. At any rate I am standing in the lobby of one of the center's auditoriums waiting for one of the lecturers to finish. At the end I go off with him and several mutual colleagues. My progress is once more complicated by the large number of things I'm carrying (five boxes worth this time), but it's not as big a deal since there are fewer people to deal with and less time pressure, so I'm able to make a couple trips. I get interrupted in between as the staff of the center approach me, in one case to ask my advice on an issue related to the backup of a partiular file server, and in another to find out if I thought the lectures were going well. A group of my colleagues left, and I was a bit worried, but it was OK because three or four of them stayed and were talking as I made my last efforts to put my belongings in sensible form. So we leave and the most obvious route back to where we're going isn't available (due to the holiday traffic) so we have to make several detours. In the event it is fairly clear that we're lost, and we continue to get more and more lost, until we become so lost that we arrive at our destination, namely our laboratory. I'm deep into a discussion of experimental technique as regards the psychology of the human subjects available, and the information we have looks like it will be fairly easy to make into something that can be published. In fact it looks good and we definitely have to do some more rigorous timetables.

classicman · 12-12-2007, 08:35 PM

Steve? That was a fascinating read - Where the hell are we?

LJ · 12-12-2007, 09:22 PM

it's an interesting dream.

just handle one(box) at a time. if you try to fix(carry) it all at once, it will never work. you'll just get overwhelmed. the most important message is that your wife is there for you. let her help. you'll get there in the end.

SteveDallas · 12-14-2007, 01:29 PM

This is apparently the effects of 24 hours without Effexor (yeah, I forgot to take it). What freakish dreams--in five minute installments most of the night.

For those keeping score at home, I had my wisdom teeth out this morning and am currently on vicodin. Who knows what that will cause?

Shawnee123 · 12-14-2007, 01:31 PM

SD...I know the withdrawal on Effexor is horrendous, and quick. But, not unlike Edgar Allen Poe, your (lack of) drug-induced writing was chilling in its complexity and meaning.

BigV · 12-14-2007, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveDallas

This is apparently the effects of 24 hours without Effexor (yeah, I forgot to take it). What freakish dreams--in five minute installments most of the night.

For those keeping score at home, I had my wisdom teeth out this morning and am currently on vicodin. Who knows what that will cause?

Less wisdom? More space along your jaws? Fewer teeth? Shorter brushing times? Longer chewing times?

lookout123 · 12-14-2007, 02:49 PM

a convenient place to store your gum.

Flint · 12-14-2007, 05:45 PM

That sounds vaguely familiar. I mean, that kind of thing.

I mentioned this in a thread somewhere, that I simultaneously derailed at my own expense; but have you ever been under the impression that your dream contained a very specific piece of information, only to discover, right at the moment that you attempt to communicate what it was, that it doesn't actually exist. Did it ever?

Case in point: my dad had a dream in which he looked up at a street sign and took note of the fact that he was at a certain intersection, that actually exists. He thought he remembered what it was, until he got to work and tried to tell somebody about it. When he began to say what the intersection was, there was...nothing to say! That information simply didn't exist anymore. Did it ever?

And does it even matter if you are sleeping or awake? Is the waking world any less a world of neurochemical phantoms than the other side?

kerosene · 12-14-2007, 05:53 PM

You're freaking me out, Flint.

SteveDallas · 12-14-2007, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flint

And does it even matter if you are sleeping or awake? Is the waking world any less a world of neurochemical phantoms than the other side?

From a philosophical perspective, it's an interesting conundrum.

From a practical standpoint, nobody ever gave me a paycheck during a dream.

classicman · 12-16-2007, 12:14 AM

Not one you could cash in real world anyway.

TheMercenary · 12-16-2007, 10:53 AM

Yes Steve, but did you get laid?

SteveDallas · 12-16-2007, 01:14 PM

No.

No money. No sex.

SteveDallas · 04-28-2008, 01:10 PM

It's getting to be time for dinner, a dinner which I seem to be attending with several colleagues. As I come back from washing my hands, the door to my office (which I have to go through to get to the meal) is cracked open. I see a woman, who seems to be a colleague but not a close friend, leafing through a typewritten document. This is in fact the document which is my personal record of all the heinous atrocities I have committed. I have always known that these things would come to light, and that when they eventually did, I would be immediately hunted down by the police and possibly the military.

I back away from the door as quietly as possible and go, just go anywhere, leaving the city. I avoid likely travel methods and any use of my credit card and end up on the bus.

It is clear that the reaction is pretty much as I had expected. Within a couple hours one can't look at a TV without seeing news stories about the shocking revelations. Details of what I have done trickle out mercilessly over the airwaves, and my closest friends and confidants express their disbelief, shock, and revulsion. They are unanimous in their hopes for my fast capture by the police.

I end up in another city, after diverting through two or three others, and I head for the quarters of my bitterest arch-rival. Why I do this is unclear. I know this is tantamount to giving myself up, and yet it seems like the most reasonable thing to do. Again my journey is accompanied by horrified expositions of my transgressions.

I arrive at my rival's place and am immediately confronted by a platoon of soldiers. They express great relief at seeing me. They are in fact not interested in capturing me, because they know that all the horrible things I did, which I did with malice aforethought and documented in disgusting detail, were complete fabrications put in place by the alien civilization currently mounting a siege of Earth--fabrications which deceived even me.

These hostile aliens feared only one thing, and that was having to deal with me. (Perhaps they were scared I'd poke them with a knitting needle, or play Bach so loudly it would damage their sensory organs.) The whole scandal was just a smoke screen to divert attention from my real location while distracting aliens from beginning their attack while my status was (officially and publicly at least) in limbo. Things are getting ugly as this siege has (perhaps not coincidentally) happened at a time of great political infighting, and it is now time for those of us who have remained loyal to the President to marshal our forces.

Trilby · 04-28-2008, 02:20 PM

didn't read above. all know it is SD said "come with me" and I will, I will....

12-12-2007, 08:25 PM	#1
SteveDallas Your Bartender Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Philly Burbs, PA Posts: 7,651	Come with me I am not sure where I have gone, and perhaps if you come with me someone else will have some insight that eludes me. One thing I will say in preparation is that although I'm sure the experience of being drunk is subjective, one thing I feel when I'm really drunk is a surreal remoteness from my own body, as if I am not there, but sort of running things by remote control, and there is a soft gauziness to how everything looks. I might describe this as the same sort of thing as far as the sense of remoteness, but in this case the focus is very sharp, unnaturally so. So let's go along and visit this place. I'm not sure how to describe it, except to say that there are a bunch of other people with me, my comrades, who are they? classmates in school of some kind? coworkers? neighbors? it is really not clear to me but at any rate I know them and they know me and we are all here at what for lack of a better description I will call a conference center. Perhaps it is a cross between the world of Logan's Run (visually I mean, and I have no idea why that cropped up since I haven't seen that for ages, but there it is) and a Chuck E. Cheese's for adults (in the sense that there are lots of things going on that you can pick and choose from). We are here, my comrades and I, doing whatever it is that we need to do in this conference center. We are wrapping things up, and things are looking quite good for me as we finish. I have done some things that look good, and I am requesting some furhter information from the staff, information that seemingly might lead me to return again, something that seems unusual but definitely very positive. One thing is quite clear, and that is that I have brought way too much stuff with me. My cohorts all have their own stuff, most of them a small item like a PDA or an ipod, and a few have a couple books or a laptop and some discs to the extent that they need a small backpack. None of them however require three good sized cardboard boxes to carry their belongings in, and that's the situation I find myself in, trying to schlep all this stuff back to our transportation (bus?), causing me to be late and thereby marring the successful end to the trip. Somehow or other it all ends and I do manage to drag things on, with the help of a couple colleagues, and we depart. I end up returning to the same place soon after, this time with my family, and this time it is not a conference center or anything but more of a hotel. In fact you actually park your car in a private space that includes a small suite, and that is where I find myself and my wife and kids. We are, again, wrapping things up and trying to leave. I have to take a leak, so I go to the bathroom to take care of business while my wife settles up our bill with the front desk. I am standing in front of the toilet at the moment when, apparently, she checks us out, because a video screen on the wall comes one and text informs me that I am no longer entitled to the use of the suite, and I need to get out. Unfortunately I am unable to finish and get out before the timer expires and we find we are unable to leave because the doors are all locked and in order to open them and drive the car out we have to feed the automated system a $5 bill as extra rental. We do finally get out and no longer have to worry about this. It is abundantly clear at this point that I am at a great center of higher learning. A couple of the more impressive scholars I know are lecturing, and I have checked out what they're saying. They are, indeed, there to speak as part of the festivities for our great holiday, and travel to and from the center is somewhat complicated by all the holiday traffic. At any rate I am standing in the lobby of one of the center's auditoriums waiting for one of the lecturers to finish. At the end I go off with him and several mutual colleagues. My progress is once more complicated by the large number of things I'm carrying (five boxes worth this time), but it's not as big a deal since there are fewer people to deal with and less time pressure, so I'm able to make a couple trips. I get interrupted in between as the staff of the center approach me, in one case to ask my advice on an issue related to the backup of a partiular file server, and in another to find out if I thought the lectures were going well. A group of my colleagues left, and I was a bit worried, but it was OK because three or four of them stayed and were talking as I made my last efforts to put my belongings in sensible form. So we leave and the most obvious route back to where we're going isn't available (due to the holiday traffic) so we have to make several detours. In the event it is fairly clear that we're lost, and we continue to get more and more lost, until we become so lost that we arrive at our destination, namely our laboratory. I'm deep into a discussion of experimental technique as regards the psychology of the human subjects available, and the information we have looks like it will be fairly easy to make into something that can be published. In fact it looks good and we definitely have to do some more rigorous timetables.

12-12-2007, 09:22 PM	#3
LJ i am myself Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: via blackberry, maybe Posts: 750	it's an interesting dream. just handle one(box) at a time. if you try to fix(carry) it all at once, it will never work. you'll just get overwhelmed. the most important message is that your wife is there for you. let her help. you'll get there in the end. __________________ Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show ... -C.Dickens

12-14-2007, 02:49 PM	#7
lookout123 changed his status to single Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Right behind you. No, the other side. Posts: 10,308	a convenient place to store your gum. __________________ Getting knocked down is no sin, it's not getting back up that's the sin

12-14-2007, 05:45 PM	#8
Flint Snowflake Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Dystopia Posts: 13,136	That sounds vaguely familiar. I mean, that kind of thing. I mentioned this in a thread somewhere, that I simultaneously derailed at my own expense; but have you ever been under the impression that your dream contained a very specific piece of information, only to discover, right at the moment that you attempt to communicate what it was, that it doesn't actually exist. Did it ever? Case in point: my dad had a dream in which he looked up at a street sign and took note of the fact that he was at a certain intersection, that actually exists. He thought he remembered what it was, until he got to work and tried to tell somebody about it. When he began to say what the intersection was, there was...nothing to say! That information simply didn't exist anymore. Did it ever? And does it even matter if you are sleeping or awake? Is the waking world any less a world of neurochemical phantoms than the other side? __________________ **************** There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio**

12-16-2007, 12:14 AM	#11
classicman barely disguised asshole, keeper of all that is holy. Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 23,401	Not one you could cash in real world anyway. __________________ "like strapping a pillow on a bull in a china shop" Bullitt

12-12-2007, 08:35 PM	#2
classicman barely disguised asshole, keeper of all that is holy. Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 23,401	Steve? That was a fascinating read - Where the hell are we?

12-14-2007, 01:29 PM	#4
SteveDallas Your Bartender Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Philly Burbs, PA Posts: 7,651	This is apparently the effects of 24 hours without Effexor (yeah, I forgot to take it). What freakish dreams--in five minute installments most of the night. For those keeping score at home, I had my wisdom teeth out this morning and am currently on vicodin. Who knows what that will cause?

12-14-2007, 01:31 PM	#5
Shawnee123 Why, you're a regular Alfred E Einstein, ain't ya? Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 21,206	SD...I know the withdrawal on Effexor is horrendous, and quick. But, not unlike Edgar Allen Poe, your (lack of) drug-induced writing was chilling in its complexity and meaning.

12-14-2007, 05:53 PM	#9
kerosene Touring the facilities Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: The plains of Colorado Posts: 3,476	You're freaking me out, Flint.

12-16-2007, 10:53 AM	#12
TheMercenary “Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo” Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Savannah, Georgia Posts: 21,393	Yes Steve, but did you get laid? __________________ Anyone but the this most fuked up President in History in 2012!

12-16-2007, 01:14 PM	#13
SteveDallas Your Bartender Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Philly Burbs, PA Posts: 7,651	No. No money. No sex.

04-28-2008, 01:10 PM	#14
SteveDallas Your Bartender Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Philly Burbs, PA Posts: 7,651	It's getting to be time for dinner, a dinner which I seem to be attending with several colleagues. As I come back from washing my hands, the door to my office (which I have to go through to get to the meal) is cracked open. I see a woman, who seems to be a colleague but not a close friend, leafing through a typewritten document. This is in fact the document which is my personal record of all the heinous atrocities I have committed. I have always known that these things would come to light, and that when they eventually did, I would be immediately hunted down by the police and possibly the military. I back away from the door as quietly as possible and go, just go anywhere, leaving the city. I avoid likely travel methods and any use of my credit card and end up on the bus. It is clear that the reaction is pretty much as I had expected. Within a couple hours one can't look at a TV without seeing news stories about the shocking revelations. Details of what I have done trickle out mercilessly over the airwaves, and my closest friends and confidants express their disbelief, shock, and revulsion. They are unanimous in their hopes for my fast capture by the police. I end up in another city, after diverting through two or three others, and I head for the quarters of my bitterest arch-rival. Why I do this is unclear. I know this is tantamount to giving myself up, and yet it seems like the most reasonable thing to do. Again my journey is accompanied by horrified expositions of my transgressions. I arrive at my rival's place and am immediately confronted by a platoon of soldiers. They express great relief at seeing me. They are in fact not interested in capturing me, because they know that all the horrible things I did, which I did with malice aforethought and documented in disgusting detail, were complete fabrications put in place by the alien civilization currently mounting a siege of Earth--fabrications which deceived even me. These hostile aliens feared only one thing, and that was having to deal with me. (Perhaps they were scared I'd poke them with a knitting needle, or play Bach so loudly it would damage their sensory organs.) The whole scandal was just a smoke screen to divert attention from my real location while distracting aliens from beginning their attack while my status was (officially and publicly at least) in limbo. Things are getting ugly as this siege has (perhaps not coincidentally) happened at a time of great political infighting, and it is now time for those of us who have remained loyal to the President to marshal our forces.

04-28-2008, 02:20 PM	#15
Trilby Slattern of the Swail Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 15,654	didn't read above. all know it is SD said "come with me" and I will, I will.... __________________ In Barrie's play and novel, the roles of fairies are brief: they are allies to the Lost Boys, the source of fairy dust and ...They are portrayed as dangerous, whimsical and extremely clever but quite hedonistic. "Shall I give you a kiss?" Peter asked and, jerking an acorn button off his coat, solemnly presented it to her. —James Barrie Wimminfolk they be tricksy. - ZenGum

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