Nightmares

A few people have been writing blog posts about sleep issues and, especially, dreaming.

I don't tend to dream that often but when I do, boy are they long. They say that dreams are meant to be your subconscious mind rationalizing your feelings and events of the day, and trying to work out some meaning to it all.

Below is a dream I had about a year ago, back in October 2004. I do know that George Rennie is someone who works for my current company so obviously that's where I heard the name. Beauport sounds to me like it might be a version of Kingsport, which is a fictional town taken from H.P.Lovecraft's novels about the Cthulhu mythos. The rest of it is ... well... foreign to me.

The ending was very shocking for me and I woke up in a sweat. Now, for a long time, I've realised that once I know I've been dreaming, when I go back to sleep I can try and push the dream or nightmare into a more satisfactory conclusion - something that I can deal with that won't have me trying to work out where it all came from. So I have added a little note where the original ending was and the second ending was.

Have a read and see what you think...

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The dream starts with a man called George Renny, an American who walks into his home (in America) to find his wife ...erm... engaged in various lewd actions with another man. However, his wife and the stranger don't stop but continue with their passionate *cough* embrace. George feels his anger rising but just turns on his heels and leaves the house. Later, much later, his wife comes to look for him and tells him that she doesn't find him sexually arousing any more but that she has been trying to be a loving wife at home. George nods but tells her that he can't and won't put up with this and tells her he will be leaving soon. She replies that she can't stop thinking about the stranger that she has just been with and leaves.

Later - it has been a few weeks - and George finds himself in the French seaside town of Beauport. He is reading a paper and he sees the date is 1942 (this information is not apparent earlier). As he walks around the town he meets the various people, especially a young lady called Raquel who flirts with him. George reciprocates and they find themselves mutually attracted to each other.

Racquel tells George that he should'nt have come here though. The Germans have invaded France and have already "snatched" some people that have been outspoken to them. George replies that he isn't afraid, and as he's an American, they won't take him. I forget how but in the dream George agrees that he will go with her to a barn where she thinks the Germans have a few of the townsfolk.

As they travel to the barn, Raquel falls behind with a sprained ankle. She hobbles on but George tells her to wait here for him and he will go on and be back in an hour. However when he gets to the barn he gets captured by the Germans and one of them is a strangely Machiavellian-looking man with slick black hair and a finger-twirled mustache. For some reason this man brings dread to George. The man (I'll call him the Villain as he reappears later in the dream) tells George that he has been extraordinarily foolish and that he should not have come here. George looks around himself and then runs for the barn door.

He escapes and runs to Raquel, picking her up in his arms and runs to Beauport. There he tells her that the Germans are already on the outskirts of Beauport and that they must leave as soon as they are ready. Alas they are too late and German soldiers surround them. The Villain reappears and tells George that he will never leave Beauport...

Later George awakes and finds that he is in the barn again. He looks around but doesn't find anyone. As he walks back to the town, he notices some children playing by a water outlet and some of them bury themselves to hide from the others. As George rounds the corner, he meets the Villain waiting for him, who tells him he will never leave the town of Beauport.

George wakes again into another dream... and another... and another...

Years pass.

He's now an old man and a distinguished private detective who has just finished a recent case for some townsfolk of Beauport. As he reveals what has been happening in his case, the Villain reappears and congratulates him. George immediately feels dread at the sudden reappearance of this man after so long.

He suddenly whirls and jumps down the sandy dunes. As he runs he hears the Villain whistle for German guards to recapture him. George keeps running but suddenly he has a memory of the kids playing in the sand.

He stops and buries himself and the guards run past. George waits and waits and waits and falls asleep.
When he awakes he is still buried in the sand, so he waits a while longer and then gets up. Stumbling he walks along the beach before collapsing.

When he awakes, he's in a small fishing village where he's been found by a woman and looked after. Somehow, I am there but I'm from the British Embassy looking for missing people, etc. He tells me he is George Renny and when I check I find out he has been missing since 1942 - it's now 2004. He tells me his story so I immediately contact the authorities.

But then the villain reappears looking as he did in 1942. I realize then that somehow I'm dreaming George's dream as well. When I tell the Villain this, he replies that "You've always been at Beauport and you always will be".

---(this is the original ending and I was very shocked by it. But I decided to try and dream a different ending, and this is what happened when I fell asleep again)---

I faint at this shocking statement and awake to find myself in hospital. A friend is next to me and tells me I've been rambling some story about someone called George. I ask him a trivial question that I know no one else will know the answer to. He looks stumped. And I realize I have been dreaming...

I awake again to find myself in hospital. My friend is next to me and tells me I've been rambling some story about someone called George. I again ask him a trivial question that I know no one else will know the answer to. Again, he looks stumped. And once again, I realize I am dreaming.

When I awake next, I ask him a whole host of questions and he answers every one of them correctly. When I ask him about George, he says they found an old man dead next to me from natural causes and I've been in a coma for a few days.

When I ask him if they've identified him, my friends tells me no. They don't know who he is. Only I know.

Games, Games

It's been a slow few days and I've been sticking into writing my little ditty, entitleed Pioneers. So far, I have a rough idea of where I'm going with it but it's completely outside the domain of science fact. Which I suppose isn't much of a biggie since it's really a sci-fi story. I'm still writing the introduction to it and it sounds like this might be longer than just the short stories I end up writing. I just have no stamina.

In the meantime, I've been bouncing off playing World of Warcraft. The game is just getting too boring. It only shines when you play with friends - since it IS an MMO - and since no one is playing, the interactivity is just not there.

This has led me to other games.

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction has a wonderful storyline with some great cinematics. It's a Blizzard game so it also has the quality of all their games. Blizzard games rock.

At the moment, I'm playing a Barbarian by the name of Nostarian. He's managed to get to Mephisto's Durance of Hate in Act 3 but hasn't yet killed the big guy yet. I've also got Istarian, a Paladin and Azure, an Assassin, who's really a fast combatant.

At the same time, I'm debating whether or not I should buy Starscape. It's a retro game that harks
back to the 80's so it doesn't have 3D realistic graphics but it does have immense playability.

Definitely worth checking out the demo.

Then there's this. A fan based computer game based on the Babylon 5 TV series. I haven't yet played it as I'm downloading it at the moment but so far it sounds good.

And last, but not least, we have the anticipated release of Stargate: Alliance. A computer game based on the current TV series of the same name. I am beside myself with excitement at the release of this game. Seriously.

I may have to actually buy this game when it gets released.

Keeping up appearances

Just a quickie.

As some of you may have noticed - probably not - I have added a series of blog links to the right under my archived posts. These are the blogs I check every day or thereabouts in an effort to better understand my fellow bloggers and the community I've suddenly found myself in.

ElshaUK and TheNumNum you need no introductions, nor Reader Meet Author. SwissToni and Lord Bargain, as far as I understand, are friends of TheNumNum and Alecya is one of their friends as well as being a partaker of Reader Meet Author.

There, done the introductions for the others. Now you can go and explore their blogs.

Collaborative Writing Part 2

Oh dear.

It says something when your readers post comments about items that you're going to talk about sometime last week but I haven't really had the time recently to browse blogs. My father has been ill and was at hospital for the past week, and this really brought the family back together. The upshot is that I've been very busy sorting out visits to my father, visits to my step-mum, phone calls to my eldest brother and receiving visits from my other brother who lives in Brighton.

During this time, work has also become busy - nay, chaotic. Customer Services at work have been revamped so that instead of three CS desks there is now one. This involved making four people redundant and then moving all the other's equipment upstairs, in a bid to make the new CS completely different from the old one.

Bizarrely enough, my manager decided to NOT write down all their phone numbers and data ports onto a single sheet of paper but decided to instead write them down willy nilly on post it notes. Now, I don't know about you but post it notes have a tendancy to fall off at any given moment so I told her I thought it was pretty slapdash. She replied that she thought she was perfectly organised - an opinion that absolutely no one else involved in the move shares.

Anyway, back to the topic of today's post.

As Alecya posted in last comments page, I have been involved in a collaborative writing blog entitled "Reader-meet-author" set up by SwissToni. So far I have penned two pieces - "Ravenous", a horror piece, and "Worrying about acceptance", a short piece of prose regarding Ravenous. Both of them were recieved well by the other authors. They in turn have posted a number of interesting pieces, and you should really have a read.

I am currently mulling over a number of ideas, two of which seem to be arriving at critical mass in my brain. The first one is a Starcraft story about a lone marine who escapes death from the talons of the Zerg long enought to run into the Protoss. Interesting but I'm not sure it will be that interesting to my fellow authors.

The second one is based loosely around Phantasy Star and is about a Hunter who begins his occupation learning all about the dangers of Ragol. A little bit more interesting and challenging for me as well.

All I have to do now is find the time to pen the words running through my head; not easy, when I have had such a demanding schedule recently.

All I want to do at the moment is sleep.

...well, and play Diablo 2. :)

Collaborative Writing Part 1

"And do write more, put up a story online on a blog, you'll be surprised at the comments (good and bad)."

If you read the comment to the last post, this was what TheNumNum suggested I do.
Since the only things I really care to write about is roleplaying and this blog, I've decided to start up a new project for myself, loosely entitled "Writing up Roleplaying".

As Roleplaying is a collaborative effort by all the players involved, what better way to write it all up than to create a Wiki dedicated to our own peculiar gaming sessions.

I'm actually very excited by this because having a Wikispace will not only allow me to upload any and all information that I've collected or authored over the past 14 years so that people can read up and work away from the personal sessions, but it also allows my fellow players - those both in this country and abroad - to add their bits as well.

Here you will find a whole collection of stories I've written up over these past years and just reading them, you can really see the improvements I've made with character viewpoints, emotions, conversations, etc. I'm actually impressed by all the mistakes I've made and how I've moved myself to correct them.

On other news, I've been hit by a particularly nasty piece of spyware/malware that keeps on messing up my google searches in Internet Explorer, and so I've decided to split with Micro$oft and go with Opera.

I'm especially taken with Opera's ability to continue from your last location, meaning that if you're a bit of a wanderer when it comes to surfing, you can actually go back to where you last were, rather than having to work out all over again just what it was you doing in that last session.

And finally, another co-worker has decided to try out World of Warcraft. I know, I haven't mentioned Wow of late. That's because Crucifer long ago hit level 60. Azaghul is now about level 36 and my current character, Istarian the Tauren Druid, is now about level 25.

But I've decided to try my hand at Starcraft again and this time I'm going to actually beat the Expansion - Broodwars. I've also decided to try my hand at the other expansion packs.

Resolutions

Last night ElshaUK and I saw "Catch Me If You Can" starring Leonard Di Capri and Tom Hanks. Despite my initial fear of it being a turkey, it was actually a good movie. It actually reminded me of the case where the notorious hacker, Phiber Optik, was captured by Federal authorities for hacking into computer systems and phone phreaking.

Just as in that situation, the main protaganist in the movie was able to do so much damage because the system allowed him to. It wasn't just a case of someone going out and committing these crimes - it was that the system wasn't designed to stop people.

There is a old saying, that if you put on a white coat and act like a scientist or a doctor, people believe you are a scientist or a doctor. After all, only scientists and doctors wear white coats.

Ergo...

It's a crazy state of affairs, but I wonder if I wore a white coat, just how much damage I could do in somewhere like Ealing Hospital where no one checks who you are and no one challenges you when you walk in to a ward.
Definitely food for thought.

On Saturday night (New Years Eve), a bunch of us went out to TheNumNum's new house to celebrate his birthday. We had wine, some fantastic food, a home made firework's display and some excellent conversation.

I really loved looking around his house and it made me green with envy. Not so much that he has the place but that he's putting down roots. It's something we still have to do. Hopefully, 2006 will be the year to do it.

Which leads me to...

New Year Resolutions:

1) Write more. I'm still doing a good job of writing but I need to do it more often. People do read this blog even though I'm sure it doesn't interest them in the slightest but it sure as hell interests me when I come to read it months later.

2) Save. We need to budget our income and expenditure and make the books balance.

3) Be happier. This also means less arguments at home and less all round miserness with ElshaUK.

4) New Job. 'nuff said.

5) Increase productivity. In an email conversation, I mentioned I was interested in Linux. Actually I've been interested for awhile but I've never had either the inclination or the ability to pursue this. This year, that changes. I can set up a 2 way switch and work off a second computer, which will be my scratch machine.
Things to look forward to:

In March, Greevesi finally moves back to the UK from Japan - with his bride to be. Blimey! Where did the last 3 years disparate to?

In December, hopefully we move to Perth, Australia. It's a big step but hopefully it will be in the right direction.

Plenty of family visits - Bath/Bristol for ElshauK's family and Brighton and Surrey for mine.

All in all, it looks like this year will be a big year for changes, improvements and an end to old habits.