Date: 2002-11-12 15:56:55 PST

It's very rare to have several cool dreams in succession, but that's
what happened last night!

In the first dream, I was a witness (in a ghostly sense) to a serial
killer's heightened killing spree that took place over parts of
Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The dream was very strange in that
I was both a ghost and a person following this guy, able to walk
around and observe his actions as the FBI, DPS and other agencies
conducted a widespread manhunt. At points in which he would be
killing, drums would beat and strange music would play while light
would intermingle with the darkness. Blood and body parts would float
from the killer's paint tray (those metal things that hold rollers for
painting walls) across the sidewalk and into the street. At one
juncture, I followed the serial killer to a community of cottages
nestled in a dark and forboding forest of trees. The only lights were
that of the moon and the lights inside each individual cottage. At
another point in my 1st dream, the serial killer opened up a kiosk at
a mall to show off his paintings and native american style artwork. As
this scene progressed, he talked to people walking by about passivism
and the hopi tribes of the southwest. Then the DPS arrived and as they
did, strange music would play and drums would beat. They arrived from
both east and west portions of the mall, shooting at this guy's area
and spraying bullets as helpless people would dive out of the way and
the killer would shoot back. I had to duck out of the way to avoid
both the killer and the DPS from shooting me to death. The dream ended
abruptly with no conclusion and plenty of lingering questions. Who was
this guy? Was I a ghost, a victim of this murderer, chained to watch
his life until the end or some sort of resolution?

In my second dream, Willem Dafoe was the CEO of a large corporation,
but was being voted out by the board of directors (oddly like the
recent "Spiderman" movie). Well anyway, he started plotting revenge
against the people and the company, and at one point plotted to
destroy the former building in which he worked. In this second dream,
I was a P.I. attempting to stop him. In one scene, he was standing
with his arms to either side, like as Jesus might have done while
being crucified, and he said (as the building was blowing up below
him), "I walk free...". The building then collapsed, right as an
Apache helicopter whisked me away to safety, and he fell into the
smoldering debris below. End of dream. No real resolution, but a cool
ending nonetheless!

In my third dream, I was planning to drive to Las Vegas when my car
stalled along the highway. Just when I thought all hope was lost, a
group of native american joggers arrived and started pushing my car as
I started it and drove away. But the faster I drove, the faster they
ran, and they all had smiles on their faces! It seemed very evil, but
it was kinda cool too! And then I somehow ended up in my parents
neighborhood back at home (in Paradise Valley), except that it wasn't
it P.V. -- it was in Cottonwood! The dream ended with some kid with
white hair coming out of the garage and playing with some remote
controlled car as his mom (?) stirred macaroni and cheese in a big
white bowl while also talking on the telephone and (?) smoking a
cigarette? Anyway, the dream ended as I drove on down the street,
going through all the street lights and stop signs along the way,
while avoiding on coming traffic and narrowly avoiding running into a
police car. Strange thing was, he (or she?) did nothing as I raced on
down the street (strangely near Nana's house) towards Las Vegas. Then
the dream ended. No resolution, but kind of a funny ending anyway.

In my fourth dream, I walked into an all "1980's" store with
everything from the 1980's in it -- video games, computers, music,
toys, games, board games, clothes -- you name it, it was "Everything
80's"! Anyway, I strolled on down towards the computer section and
found several computers -- a Commodore 64 and a 128, a Vic-20, a
TRS-80, an Apple II and an IBM PC Jr. But I didn't see an Atari or a
VCS or anything like that (maybe it was on the other side of this
row?). Anyway, I noticed a box full of Maxell floppy disks, and peeked
inside -- only to find just about every single disk I had owned as a
child inside! Except that these were all of my programming disks
inside, including the elusive and lost "WestFront to Apse" game I
wrote on the Commodore 128 about eight years ago (you know, the one
with the "Westfront" sprite, the "3-d" map sprite, the "Interior
Surface Maps" of the tavern and armor shop, set in Norway and Oslo,
with Smurf village, "Mordimar", and a few weapons and armor names I
borrowed from Phantasy Star 2 (i.e. Sword of Ang, etc.). Anyways, I
took all of these disks up to the counter and asked how much it was.
The guy shrugged and just said, "Take it." So I smiled and walked out
with all of my lost disks. But when I ran the "WestFront to Apse" disk
on a Commodore 64 I found at a SEARS store nearby, the disk directory
would display utter junk like the following:

2A  WESTFRONT     WF
3   START         PRG
267 INTRODUCTION  PRG
384 7 TO 4980     PRG
7   DUNRIC        SEQ
214 ORIGINAL      PRG
"   Tavern GFDHHTR fdGDFGGFDSFD Jokey smurf
265 FOR X=1 TO 2000: NEXT SYSTAN FUCK VIRUS SHIT
665465465465476dsgfdfdggfd fgfdgf
28 blocks free.

Pages and pages of the disk directory had alterating portions of what
was on the disk and the "WestFront to Apse" game! It was like parts of
the disk directory was overwritten with BASIC code from my game! The
other weird thing was the alternating pages of gibberish, bad words,
virus complaints, and BASIC
language syntax intermixed together (like a Commodore 64 Machine
Language program had been interrupted while loading and you tried to
LIST the program).

Anyways, I somehow ran into Jim Butterfield (the noted Commodore guru)
at SEARS while he was looking at stereo systems with another noted
Commodore guru (but I forgot his name). I asked Jim to come over and
look at this disk directory, and so he did, along with his friend.

Mr. Butterfield explained that parts of the game had been somehow
written to the Track 18 portions of the disk directory. When I asked
him how this might be, he said that it was because I used
"SAVE-WITH-REPLACE" so many times that it altered  the layout of the
disk contents. I told him I used SAVE-WITH-REPLACE every single time I
saved stuff to disk, and he smirked, and then said, "Let us have a
look at this disk, and we can restore it's contents to working order."

I gladly gave him the disk and went back home. In a few weeks, he sent
me the disk back in the mail, along with a backup copy and the
original "fucked up" disk. He said in a note that he had fixed "the
problem" and noted that "you should really make backup copies". He
explained the faults with SAVE-WITH-REPLACE and suggested that I
"start using a real programming language" or words to that effect.

Anyways, I tried to use Omni-clone to copy the original disk to a
blank floppy, and the program said that the blank floppy had the virus
"Effe64 clown re Russia" or something like that. Part of the words
were written in some obscure Russian dialect, but even the Commodore
64 knew the disk had a Windows XP-class virus! Strange...anyway, I
tried coping the same disk to another blank floppy, and two successful
READ-WRITEs into the process, Omni-clone cleared the screen and
said,"There is not enough memory to complete this operation. Please
turn off the 64 and try again."

So I was pretty desperate now, and so I flipped through my collection
of disks and found a Red colored "Fuji-Film" disk that was brand new
and never used. Just as I was about to use it, a representative from
Fuji-Film suddenly appeared and said that their disks were "defective"
and not to use them. He showed me a "slit" in the disk I was using,
and explained that Fuji-Film used an "Extraterrestrial" process to
coat the disk to the "white paperish layer" inside the disk jacket. He
also mentioned that Fuji-Film disks failed after several years of use,
and then suddenly was vaporized into thin air by smoke (?) from the
window. Strange.

Anyway, Jim Butterfield called me up and asked me how things were
going, and I complained that I couldn't copy the disk. He said he'd be
right over, and in about 30 seconds he walked into my living room with
another disk and a "walk-through" for my game that he and his buddy
had played at length that he also forgot to mail to me. The
walkthrough was five folded up sheets of 8" by 11" paper with pen
markings and "Spiderman" logos drawn on them, in addition to "In Sync"
and "snakes" he had drawn while playing Pitfall on the Atari. But there
were also directions on how to finish the game, and on what cities to
visit. This all for a text adventure!

He gave me the disk and showed me the directory on the Commodore 128.
It had about 18 files, and everything was normal. It even had 28
blocks free! Anyway, he copied this disk successfully on Omni-Clone
and gave me a second copy. He then waved to me and the dream ended.

In the fifth dream I had, I was flying through the air in my
neighborhood and noticed that my new collection of disks that Jim
Butterfield had given me was laying in the next door neighbor's yard!
I then "jumped" around like on a "Pogo" stick and collected each disk
one by one, as I hopped high in the air with each disk I collected. I
then "flew up" towards a palm tree and saw a cat in it, and rescued
it. Somehow I flung the cat over the next door neighbor's fence and
into the swimming pool, where it turned (?) into an alligator and swam
around. Anyway, I then collected all of the disks and placed them on a
bench outside of my parent's house. The dream then ended.

In my sixth dream, I was working at a Bakery in Phoenix, Arizona for
this guy named "Cleo". He owned the bakery and I was in charge of
helping him stock shelves, cook the food, and serve customers. The
store was fairly small, with a glass partition and window near the
front door. You could see clearly through the front of both the door
and the windows to the outside near the street. As we were baking
cakes and serving customers, two hispanic (?) teenagers approached the
class and started making suspicious movements and hiding what appeared
to be guns behind their backs. One of the teenagers (who couldn't have
been older than 15 or 16) flashed his two silver gloc-9mm pistols in a
crisscross fashion across his chest, and then pointed it mockingly at
the window. The strange thing was, the "clear" windows became murky at
this point and we were unable to ascertain the ethnicity or gender of
the suspects outside.

Cleo, who had been baking a cake, pulled out a sawed off shotgun from
behind the counter and blasted one of the teenager suspects through
the window (??), right as he was about to shoot at Cleo. I then
grabbed a pistol (?) from behind the cash register and aimed it at one
of the suspects. However, just as I was about the shoot the suspect,
the suspect pointed the gun underneath his chin and pulled the
trigger. He flew several feet backward and then died. The suspect had
committed suicide. I then shot two bullets through the window to make
sure he was dead.

About ten minutes later, Cleo put a sign up in the Window of our
Bakery that stated:

"Ceo Meo.
Cleo's Bakery."

Anyway, Patty Kirkpatrick from news channel 3 arrived and started
interviewing us to see if this was a criminal matter. She interviewed
Cleo and he told her that the hispanic (or who he assumed to be
hispanic) teenagers flashed what appeared to be gloc-9's at him
through his window and he shot the teenagers in self defense. I then
explained to Patty that I also fired to bullets in self defense from
my pistol, except that it didn't hit anyone and that one of the
teenagers had shot himself. Cleo backed my story up, as did security
cameras that Patty also viewed. The police arrived and interviewed us,
and I was allowed to play with a remote controlled car while Cleo
talked with the police. They eventually decided (from our testimony
and from viewing the security cameras) that the hispanic teenagers had
acted dangerously and that Cleo was right in shooting them in self
defense with his sawed off shotgun. The dream then ended.

Pretty cool.

Regards,

Paul Panks
dun...@yahoo.com