"My Friend the Lesbian Robot"    01/30/04
I was going shopping in a downtown type area with my mother when we passed a storefront that had hardwood floors and beautiful mannequins but no other displays or merchandise within the store.  My mother and I decided to go inside to see what the place was all about.  Suddenly I realized that F was one of the mannequins, but that she wasn't actually a person, she was a person-like robot who looked like a housewife from the 1950s.  I later realized that this was not a store but was a place for ballroom dancing lessons, however, F seemed to act more as if it was a performance theater rather than a lessons studio.  She grabbed me and began dancing. The situation was awkward because I was being led around by this robot, but it was also weird because the wood flooring was now on an incline of maybe 45 degrees.  Plus, I don't know the first thing about ballroom dancing.  Overall it was fun, but I felt weird because F suddenly kissed my lips without warning.  Her mouth was overwhelmingly sweet like applesauce, but it really made me feel like I needed a glass of water.  After this I looked over at my mother who was now sitting at the base of the incline.  She was happily watching and smiling. 

"Death Threats and Litigation Skills"    01/20/04
I was running around and chasing J in a way that can best be described as frolicking.  We were having a great time, but then my brother came in and held a knife to my throat and threatened to kill us both.  I was terrified.  Eventually he let J leave and was then only holding me hostage.  Somehow I managed to escape to law school.  I realized that I was late for my litigation skills class, so I ran to the law library, the location where the class was meeting this week.  I wondered why the class wasn't being held in a normal classroom, but then I saw the number of people present.  There were hundreds of students, far too many to fit comfortably in a classroom.  The professor was already lecturing, so I quietly found an empty seat.  I heard the professor ask if anyone would like to speak.  No one was raising their hands, so I thought about volunteering, but then suddenly a guy sitting across the table from me eagerly raised his hand.  I looked over and saw that he was  Kato Kaelin of OJ fame.  He stood up and walked around the library as he gave a very dramatic speech that seemed planned but was supposed to look unplanned.  At the end of his speech you could tell that the professor was extremely impressed based on his gushing praise of Kato's speech.  Then the professor asked if anyone else would like to speak.  Needless to say, no one wanted to follow that act.

"Spanish Speaking Shuttle Driver"    01/20/04
I was riding on a shuttle bus at the university which I attend and speaking to the driver in Spanish.  I knew that she was Cuban and spoke little to no English.  I explained to her that I didn't know where I had left my car and instructed her where to take me.  She took me to the administration office when we couldn't find my car, and as I was waiting to speak to someone she answered the phone in perfect English.  I realized that she was also the university receptionist and that they hired her because she was so polite and was able to answer the phone in perfect English with no trace of an accent.


"Strange Happenings at a Marina"    01/17/04
I went to an apartment complex that was also a marina.  I really wanted to move into that building because I had heard that the apartments themselves were very nice.  Before I could get to the building I had to walk along a dock that held many houseboats as well as small remote control boats.  I was about halfway to the apartment building when I saw J bent over by one of the remote control boats.  I spoke to him briefly and determined he lived in the building.  I don't know if the boat he was admiring was his or not.  I tended to think it was not.  He seemed to like the boat so much, and I admit that it was cute, but it just seemed strange for a grown man to like a toy so much.  I told him I would talk to him later and continued walking toward the building.  I was shown a few apartments, which were nice, but they were not of the level of luxury that I had been expecting.  Also, I didn't really want to live in the same building where J lived.  On the way out I discovered that my car was in the garage in the building's garage.  Then I realized that I had left my keys in my car, so I would have to call someone to help me break into my car.  But just by chance I tested the door handle and it opened, so I got into my car.  Suddenly my Constitutional Law professor ran up to the car and held a gun to my head.  He was accusing me of stealing the car and forced me to get out.  I tried to explain that it was my car, but it was difficult to explain with a gun pointed at my temple.


"Abandoned by a Friend"    01/13/04
I was walking in what may have been a large school or office building when I passed J, a friend who was standing in the middle of the hallway.  I stopped to say hi to him, but he began screaming as if he were angry that I was being friendly to him.  I tried to talk to him briefly, but I didn't want to cause a scene in the very crowded hallway by crying in public, so I continued walking down the hall.  I walked around the corner and waited a few seconds, then I turned back and stood at the end of the hall watching him.  His back was now to me, so he didn't know that I was watching.  I noticed that he was holding a cane and that his legs might have been in braces.  He was struggling to even walk.  I just stood there shocked that he had kept this secret from me for so long.  At this point I couldn't help but cry in public because I just felt so sorry for him.  I would have thought that we had a close enough relationship for him to share something as life-altering as a disability, but I could understand that he would have felt embarrassed and afraid to tell me out of fear and his own insecurities.  I realized that the reason he had been yelling earlier was because of these insecurities and the fear that I would abandon him, so instead he abandoned me first.

"Copying a Monet and Religious Extremism"    01/11/04
I was walking through my neighborhood when I saw woman with cardboard signs posted outside her house.  On the signs she said she was Irish and that she was unhappy because her husband was a religious extremist.  I think that she was going to get a divorce, but the community would ostracize her because divorce was unacceptable among such a conservative group.  I felt bad for her because I knew that she seemed like a good person.  I came home and talked to my mother.  I said that if somehow I had married J I would have ended up like that woman.  This was a weird thought for me because I realized that in real life J is not a religious extremist and isn't even really that religious.  Additionally, we would never get married.  Then I began walking through our house with mom.  I realized that my parents were trying to sell their house but couldn't because they had too much junk inside the house, so I agreed to help purge the house.  Then my mom and I went and sat on the couch.  They had a Monet that was hanging above couch, except that this wasn't a Monet painting from real life.  It was just a painting of a glass bottle and some flowers.  But I knew that it was a Monet whether other people recognized it or not.  I got out paint and canvas and began copying the painting.  I was actually surprised by how easily I was able to paint something that looked like a Monet.  But then I wondered if I was violating copyright law, which is funny because we were just discussing the same type of issue in copyright class in law school this week in real life.

"Ursula Moved into a Studio Apartment"    01/10/04
I went to visit Ursula at her family's luxury condo, but I got lost within the hallways of her building.  However, I did see what I thought was Oscar's door with lots of tiles on it.  The tiles reminded me of refrigerator magnets; they were small shapes placed randomly about the door.  There was only one square tile on the entire door with words above it that said, "Place mail here" with an arrow pointing to the tile.  For some reason that made me laugh.  I figured that delivering the mail to that condo probably annoyed the mail carrier every single day.  And God forbid that there would be a substitute carrier one day.  I knocked on Oscar's door, but an old woman who spoke Spanish answered.  I decided that maybe that was his grandmother and I didn't speak Spanish well enough to explain who I was or maybe it was simply not Oscar's condo.  Finally, after walking around some more, I found Ursula's condo, but she and father were just about to go out.  I left as they did, but I asked Ursula if she had my purse because I thought I left it inside their condo.  Ursula said that she did not have it.  Then I think my mother said she had gotten my purse, but that seemed weird because she hadn't even been in the condo with us.  Later I was at home and decided to go visit Ursula in the new apartment she had just moved into.  I think this might have been the first time she ever lived away from her parents and their life of luxury.  I went downtown to find her new apartment, which was only one room and very dilapidated.  It looked like maybe she hadn't unpacked yet or that maybe she had no closet, so all of her belongings were just stacked around the room.  She asked me if I wanted to move in with her and I politely declined in favor of continuing to live in my own apartment, but I knew that I must have had a horrified look on my face as she invited me.


"Signing Off"    01/09/04
I was in a large outdoor park, sitting in an SUV with very large windows, which looked like a Hummer H2.  Somehow I had a wireless internet connection and was using my laptop to send instant messages.  I saw that my friend J signed off in the middle of a conversation and then I knew he was avoiding me. I wasn't sure exactly why he was avoiding me, but I felt so depressed.  I wanted to leave the vehicle, but I couldn't leave because there were evil men outside with guns who would shoot me if I left.  I wondered why they didn't just shoot me through the large windows in the SUV, but I realized that the SUV was bulletproof.  I began talking to my cats Fluff and Zenith about how sad I was about J and also about why we had to stay in the SUV.  It seemed like they understood what I was saying.


"Michael Jackson's Science Project"    01/06/04
I was in a house that my grandmother was going to move into.  Jillian and I were decorating the living room of this house, but we were only decorating it in brown and white.  There were two bunk beds in the living room which we slept on.  Apparently we could never leave the room until we were finished decorating.  Jillian was trying to help me find a style that my grandmother would like, but as we kept working I realized that brown and white was horribly boring.  The room was octagonal with white walls and built-in wooden furniture, including three umbrella stands stuffed with umbrellas.  I wondered why my grandmother would need so many umbrellas for just one person.  Jillian and I decided to go to sleep on the bunk beds, but she was going to sleep on the top half of the one I was sleeping on, which I didn't appreciate, so I convinced her move to the bottom of the other set based on her fear of the dark and the likelihood that she would fall off the top bunk.  I wondered if she would be mad at me for manipulating her, but she didn't even seem to notice the manipulation.  As we looked out the giant picture window I saw strange flashing lights.  They looked like stars, but instead of twinkling they were flashing at a slower and more purposeful rate.  I decided that I couldn't sleep until I figured out what was flashing.  But when I went into the next room I was in something which looked like a shopping mall and I passed a chubby friend of mine.  He was not anyone I actually know but more like a composite of all of the chubby people I know.  He was wearing two hats, which he put on me, and we were pretending to be each other.  Then some punk kids at the mall attacked us, but I was able to talk to them and they left us alone.  They had thrown the two hats behind a bookcase, which seemed to be especially disturbing to my friend.  We eventually got the hats back, but my friend had seemed extremely worried.  I said goodbye to him and left the mall and went back to the house Jillian and I were decorating for my grandmother.  When I got there I saw that Michael Jackson, Beyoncé Knowles, and several young male engineers now lived in the house.  They were trying to figure out the mystery of what was flashing in the sky, but they knew it had something to do with Michael Jackson being extorted by people who disliked him.  The engineers were using a device they called "Quarkshop".  I decided that it must be kind of like Adobe Photoshop except that you could cut, copy, paste, and change the color of real life events.  The engineers were trying to load all of the significant events from the past year for each age group into the machine.  Apparently doing this would help them figure out what was flashing in the sky and figuring that out would help them discover who was extorting Michael Jackson.  The engineers were filling in the most important events of the year for people in their 20s, but they commented that Beyoncé would have to help fill in the answers for people in their 30s.  I wondered why they wanted her to help with this because she was also in her early 20s, just like the engineers.  The next scene was Michael Jackson standing in a pit in the floor in the next room.  He looked extremely worried.  Then the scene changed to show the people who were extorting him.  They were controlling his life through a magical game of mahjong, but they all wanted to go out because it was Saturday night, yet they didn't feel that they could leave the game unattended because in that time Michael might be able to figure out how they were controlling his life and break free of their spell.  The three mahjong players argued and the man said that they could all go out because he had heard in interviews that Michael Jackson goes to bed super early, so the older woman of the group began a monologue in claymation about why that wasn't true.

"Infatuated with a Murderer"    01/01/04
My brother and I lived in separate apartments in a high-rise building in the same city.  For some reason if you were walking to the building from the outside you had to walk through the parking garage to get to your apartment.  I was very scared because an insect landed on me as I was entering the garage.  I screamed out loud and then a little Hispanic boy came over to ask me what was wrong.  I explained to him in Spanish that I was afraid of the insects and also afraid of the dark.  He was very young and his parents were not around, so I asked him if I could walk him back to his apartment.  He agreed and we walked up to apartment 250, which was labeled with "murderer" just below the number.  The door was open.  As we approached a man in his 20s leaned out the door holding three guns.  At first I thought that he was going to shoot me, but then I realized that he was just cleaning the guns.  I knew that he was the boy's father.  I explained to him what had happened.  I could have sworn he was either flirting with me or trying to find out information about me so that he could stalk me and murder me later.  I lied to him that I didn't live in the building but that my brother did.  He further questioned me about school.  I told him that I was a student at University of Miami and that my brother was a student at Florida International University.  I had to think really hard to come up with FIU, so I'm pretty sure the guy knew I was lying.  I also told him that the only reason I had come to this building was that I pick up my brother from school every day and drop him off at his apartment building.  The guy smiled and then commented that I must drive to FIU a lot.  He began rambling about how he drives there a lot, which led me to worry that he would catch me in my lies.  I had never actually driven to FIU and had no idea how to get there.  I told him that I had to be on my way and left with a smile.  I hurried to my own apartment as quietly as possible, but I felt as if the man was following me, so I decided to go to my brother's apartment instead.  I was having trouble remembering whether his apartment was 215, 210, or 205.  I went to 205 and opened the door, which led directly into a bedroom.  No one was in there, which left me annoyed that my brother would leave his apartment door unlocked when no one was home, but then I saw that he and my mother were in the living room.  I quickly explained to them that someone was chasing me and that we had to be very quiet.  Of course, that was the cue for my mother to talk even louder.  I moved away from her, but then I noticed that there was a large rectangular cutout in the wall that was open to the outside.  The father of the boy then walked buy and yelled to Sal that someone was in his apartment.  Apparently he thought I was in Sal's apartment.  I tried to hide behind a newspaper, but I realized that between the brightly patterned dress I was wearing and the fact that my mother was talking very loudly in a voice similar to mine, the guy would recognize me.  He was carrying a gun, so I was again afraid that he would shoot me.  Finally I put down the paper and explained to the guy that I was in my brother's apartment visiting him.  Now I was sure that he was flirting with me because he suggested that maybe we should hang out.  He smiled and suddenly I felt as if this man was not that scary.  In a way he seemed more like an awkward teenage boy asking a girl out for the first time than a murderer.  However, now I began to worry that if we dated I would eventually have to explain to him that I had lied about not living in the building.   Nevertheless, I agreed to see him again in the future and he left.  I wanted to go to my apartment, but I was still somewhat scared, so I decided to go outside where there was a family playing volleyball and having a picnic.  I spoke to a young girl who was sitting on the edge of the sand.  She began talking to me about food and I discovered that she and her family were all vegetarians, although she did talk about shrimp, which made me wonder if they were true vegetarians or just wannabes.  She invited me to have dinner with them in the future and for the first time I really felt like I had a family where I fit in with the rest of the members.