Craps and Music (and Independent Game Development)

I haven't had a really solid narrative dream to blog about for quite some time now, so that explains why I haven't been around here too much lately. I know all you readers are probably just bursting at the seams trying to restrain yourself from saying something disapproving, but have no fear! I am still alive and sleeping every night, and sooner or later a good dream is bound to come along.

Actually, the truth is that I have a couple sheets of dream notes that I need to blog about, but I lost my steam a little bit with this blog. I don't think it's quite dead at this point. I think I am still going to keep up this blog from time to time. But I don't think it'll be particularly frequent.

Last night, I did have two dreams that I can vaguely remember. Though most of the details are gone, I do remember a couple really basic concepts from them, so let me share...

The first involved learning to play Craps. I don't gamble. I'm good enough at math to know how bad an idea it really is. So I'm a little hazy on how exactly the game of Craps works, but in my dream world, I was learning how to play it. It seemed to be a bit more like Roulette in the dreamspace, except not so entirely up to chance. There was actually some significant element of skill in placing bets, and in fact, it was not really that hard to win. I got myself ahead quite easily and started to develop a crowd of old ladies who were impressed by my ability.

Then, somebody was being mugged in another part of the casino, and I alone sprang into action. When I got back from rescuing the victim, the old ladies had stolen my winnings.

Upon waking, I realized that my subconscious does not understand Craps at all.

The second dream involved a former college peer named Matt Glickstein visiting my apartment for some musical reason. I think he was listening to rare Avenged Sevenfold B-sides on my computer.

You might remember that I've mentioned Matt before on this blog. He was the other Music Composition major in my year at the University of Redlands, and I've always admired his music because he has such a knack for writing effective songs. I usually don't write songs. While at University I think I never wrote songs, and although I probably felt at the time that it was because I didn't like the traditional song-based structure for music, I think now that part of it might have been that I wasn't very good at it. Matt is good at it. You should go listen to his songs, and then buy his album.

I think he was listening to Avenged Sevenfold because yesterday I was reading about Mike Portnoy's departure from Dream Theater and trying to figure out why some of his fans were upset with something that he had said. I couldn't find any reference to what he said or did to make them mad. Anyway, until recently Portnoy was also the touring drummer of Avenged Sevenfold. I don't listen to them really. I used to listen to Dream Theater a lot, but not so much now.

The other reason that I haven't been blogging very much is because I'm trying to complete an album of my own. Once that happens, I will probably link to it from this website, but it'll have its own website, and I expect I will focus more on that one than this one.

I'm also trying to get myself solidly into independent game development. I've been inspired by two guys mostly: Terry Cavanagh and Jonathan Blow. Their games have had a deep effect on me. Particularly, three of Cavanagh's games: VVVVVV, Pathways, and Don't Look Back. And Blow's Braid, which has affected me in a way that no other game ever has.

I'm starting to write down all the ideas I have for small games that I might be able to complete without too much difficulty. Usually my ambition defeats me. Even projects that start small eventually become huge and are subsequently abandoned. This will not do. So I'm trying to force myself to keep my ideas small, and when I attempt to create them, I will do so as quickly as I can. Getting a few projects done, whether or not they are particularly good, is my current goal.

Of course, as I am presently working on a Computer Science degree, it may be slightly difficult to find time to work on that stuff.

I think I might be spreading myself a little too thin.

The Ubiquitous Shredded Chicken Tree

Last night, some old friends, some new friends, and I were playing some kind of weird game involving golf balls in the courtyard of a shadowy motel. This courtyard consisted of a peanut-shaped swimming-pool-like depression in the ground, which was covered in grass at the bottom rather than cement and was surrounded by an ordinary sidewalk. At the two central points in this depression were pits covered by grates consisting of only a few iron bars. One could easily fit through these bars if one tried to. These pits were quite deep, and at their bottoms we could see dark murky water. I jokingly referred to these pits as sewer foyers.

By accident, some of the golf balls fell into these sewer foyers. We knew, sadly, that they were lost forever.

I was planning to jump up to the sidewalk surrounding the grassy depression, as all my friends did, but I became aware that this area was a sort of "horror movie/game area, or something," and my curiosity held me there. I wanted to see just how scary the horrors of this area were.

So I stayed put.

I had the option of loading up different "levels" of this horror attraction, and so I tried some. The water level rose until it was at the brim of the grassy depression, and I was submerged up to my shoulders or so. Piranhas and sea monsters came up out of the water, but they didn't bother me, as I am tough.

I asked my younger brother what he felt the scariest level of this arena was, and he told me it was called Undermann.

So I loaded that one up.

Instead of sea monsters and piranhas, a young girl, probably around eight or nine years old, came up out of the water and started floating on her back at the center of the flooded depression in the ground. Her face was pale, and her eyes were off-white with no pupils. She tried to grab me and pull me down under the water, deeper and deeper, I was aware, into some unfathomable watery abyss.

I withdrew upwards in that dreamy sort of magical flight and escaped her grasp. But she leaped upwards after me without altering her horizontal position, though she turned as she rose, sometimes orienting herself face down, sometimes face up.

"You can't escape," she insisted. I believed her.

Nevertheless, I continued to withdraw higher and higher. Still, she continued to rise after me, reaching toward me.

"I'll pull 2,000 Bibles down, too!" she cried. I understood clearly that this was an extraordinary measure of evilness.

There was something in this whole ordeal that had to do with Islam. The girl, Islam, and fear were all connected somehow, though not in any obvious way of which I was aware.

As I drifted back to life from the world of the ether, there existed a Ubiquitous Tree. This is a tree-like structure, a thing with a root and branches but no ends to the branches. It extends forever in all directions, continually branching out and filling every part of the Universe. This particular Ubiquitous Tree was made out of soaking wet shredded chicken.

~  ~  ~

What?

I've been reading a book called The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali. It is about the misconceptions that people have about Islam and Muslims in general, and particularly about how the sensational images of brutality and oppression that many Americans have come to associate with the religion do not actually represent most members of its community of believers. It's a very good book, I feel, that has taught me how little I actually know about Islam and the Qur'an.

I am really starting to like Islam a lot, though I am not becoming a Muslim at the present moment. I don't believe that I am presently capable of choosing my religious beliefs volitionally, but let's leave the discussion of that matter for another time, because it's large enough on its own to serve as a whole blog entry without a dream to report at all.

Islam is very interesting to me. It's amazing to me how backwards the misconceptions about the religion appear to be. Now I'm having dreams in which Islam appears to be taking form subconsciously in subtle ways. I'm pretty sure that this dream does, in fact, stem from my subconscious reaction to reading about Islam, although I'm not sure what it indicates. I'm very uncertain what it indicates.

The 2,000 Bibles bit seems suggestive of the moronic Qur'an burning that's planned for this weekend in Florida. Let me just go on record officially by saying that it's a stupid idea. It's a very, very, very stupid idea. While we're at it... If anyone is even reading this, if you see Muslims celebrating on 9/11, they are not celebrating the destruction of the twin towers. They are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, which occurs at the end of Ramadan, which happens to fall by coincidence right around 9/11 this year. They are not being hateful! They are just grateful to God that they are once again allowed to eat and drink during the daytime!

The shredded chicken forming the U-Tree probably has something to do with the tacos that I had for dinner last night.

I'm kind of a weird person, I think.