Okay, okay, here's what I
just woke up from.
Segment
before two bits before deals with my being annoyed at a report being written in a publication about a cross-Himalayan (in fact, over the top of Mount Everest!) cycle ride as not being 'real cycling' in the context of the publicating organisation, when I knew
darn well that it was a lot closer to the roots of that organisaton than a lot of the stuff they were doing these days and also heavily publicising... (The anchoring onto the real world is obvious enough, but beyond an idle thought about when their annual get-together was (just checled., it's next weekend), nothing else experienced yesterday seemed to promote any bits of dream. But I'm gping into too much detail, this is just the run-up.)
The (actual) segment before then is in a room, a kind of mixture living room, computer lab, (disused) chemistry lab. Among other things, there's some books (need re-ordering) one of which is one of a series called "The Book of I" (it is, or should be, adjacent to the "Book of K", it seems there is no Book Of J in the collection) which seems to be dedicated in a good half-inch thick technical manual to the discussion of how a code segment consisting of an assignment of (new) text and an assignment of a value (new, or possibly incremented) to a couple of like-typed (but loosely-typed) variables
actially works. A whole book. As one in a series. I try to get someone interested (cue some sort of rant about "true computing", involving GUI vs CLI dscussion, none of which my interlocutor seems to know about, and my begrudging respect for Apple, ahilst thonking that they simultaneously did a good thing but also "spoilt it" really needs better description). Also I spectactularly fail to write on a wall, the worms coming out all wrong. (
See here. for reference.)
But
anyway, the bit I came here to report on...
I'm in Afghanistan (??!), it's a place I know and love (!??) with a modern shopping area not far from my protected compound (which may be the above room, within which the boss of the cycling organisation is writing his bad report on the cycle-ride that, in some ways, I was even more recently still supporting, the business of getting my own camera to take a necessary picture through the mirror, but a rider is currently resting against the car door, but I digress, or maybe
regress).
Memories aside, the place is more dangerous-feeling. I'm being wary of crowds, for some reason ignore the prone and unconscious body of an obvious-'westerner' on the ground, and then find that most of the shops I 'knew' and 'loved' are shuttered up, amd have been for longer than I last recall havibg been here. I wander back (past the unconscious westerner who is being attacked... no, dragged to rescue... by a local girl - and again I do not help as I am on a personal mission, but there's guilt there, this time) and round past my compound's hustling bustling (crowds!) entramce to more retail (and gambling?) units that
are open. None of this area is a traditional souk, by the way. It's modern (if delapidated) industrial-scale mall-style retail units featuring modern retail outlets and the like. Or should be, if not shuttered up (with hardboard).
Coming (back) out of one place, a jolly little old American-accented woman starts following me and spouting aphorisms at me. With the impression that she's rounder than she is tall, the garish 'casual' clothing and the manner of her accosting me, I gather straight off that she's trying to sell me something, and with resignation (rather than annoyance) I convince her to get to the stage of producing her product so that I can sooner just say that, no, it isn't for me...
It turns out to be a book (or, initially, a cardboard case for the book, but the book is soon also brought to me, by the lady's husband, to flick through, probably as part of stage two of the 'hooking' process of "touch it, feel it, now
that's a book!"... It is a bit thicker than the aforemsntioned Book Of I and has a title, and largely indecipherable contents, relating to stock and share investments... I suspect this to be the front-end of a complex financial scam (stage 1, buy the "get rich quick" book; stage 2, try to get rich quick, but ultimately all profit goes to tje scammers) produced by a vanity press. But I don't say this.
Instead I flick through the book and explain how this isn't for me, I'm not really her target audience, and try to justify this by discussing quotation marks upon sigmage. You know like:
"Please Keep Off The Grass"
- The Management
(That is an example for you. Yes, I know "The Management" is being quoted, but that newline-hyphen is sufficient to differentiate quote from quoter, the quotation marks makes it look like a more non-serious quote like an <does finger thong>air quote</does finger thing> somewhat invalidating the basoc veracity of the quote. Do they (The management)
really say that, or are they being misquoted, taken out of context or are we just repeating what we thought we heard someone else say that The Management might have said. I suspect that it's a scam by the sign-writers' guild to extract extra money for some minimally base-cost extra characters. Ditto unneccessary apostrophes.)
But
in the dream, although motivated much as I am for the above parenthetical, I use the example of my boss ("no, I tell a lie, my boss's boss", although there I
am lying, it really
is my direct boss, or was at one point) who had/has a framed (and enquoted) "<quotes>The Best be Boss In The World<endquotes>"... ...thing... ...picture-framey thing. (Not from me. From some other employee he is/was boss of. Or maybe a present from his wife. If not himself, totally without irony.)
I actually go off and
fetch the darn thing (whilst still simultaneously stand there, still psychologically 'trapped' by the saleswoman?!?) to prove my point (the point being that the reviews on the book cover/packaging
1 were <quote>quoted<endquote>. Oh, and I'm really not looking to invest, please don't waste your time, pleasant (?) though your transparemt sales pitch has been, from the start.
Then I woke up.
1 Another sort-of-bugbear: reviews upon a book cover indicate that it is a reprint, at least, of a previously unadorned book that was yet felt worthy enough to provide said "quotes". But, for me, such things are offputting in their disturbance of the original cover-art. Not an argument used in the dream, though. Never got around to it.
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Topic: The Dream Thread (Read 609793 times)