fishdreams

[fishdreams]

Dream Journal 2024-01-26: New Concoctions By Fish Davidson!

It's been a long time since I had a dream-based invention, but before we get to the explanation of this thing, let's talk about the

Dream Fragments

I was eating nachos, but instead of jalapenos to go with my sour cream, cheese, and beans, there were tiny cats. Completely normal (and alive) cats, except each one was no larger than my thumbnail. I thought it was unusual to eat them, but those were the nachos I had at hand and I wasn't going to let them go to waste.

Main Dream: Behind The Scenes Of Nissan's New Commercial

Note: the videos in this post have flashing/strobing effects.

The entirety of this dream was basically an in-depth look at a commercial for a new car by Nissan. The car is not important, and I recall pretty much nothing about the car other than it being a sedan that looked like any other modern sedan, and I think it was red.

What is important is the practical effects the commercial employed for the vaguely sci-fi bits (because cars can't be cutting edge without being from The Future). There was a white room that textured with lines of filaments the thickness of uncooked spaghetti noodles, and inside this room was a pedestal with a circular holographic projector on top that broadcast the headshot view of some alien from outer space who looked like a cross between a dog and a stag.

Instead of using a guy in a costume for the alien, the commercial used a special zoetrope to provide the animation for the alien's speech. The original zoetrope used a sequence of still images arranged in a strip that in turn spun around a cylinder to give the illusion of movement. Here's a video that describes a newer variety of zoetrope (though there is a discussion and example of the original zoetrope at the 1-minute mark of the video).

The variety of zoetrope that the commercial creatives used was a step beyond the ones show in the prior video. Instead of using multiple rotations of the cylinder/platter to show a repeating animation, the commercial used multiple nested platters that could rotate independently of each other and could also rotate in different directions.

You can hopefully understand how the device is constructed by looking at my crudely-drawn diagram in the header image of this post. I drew a dog instead of an alien because it wouldn't look anything like it did in the dream, and most people can intuitively recognize a poorly-drawn dog.

Apparently I was one of the people who worked on the commercial, because I had a lot of access to the props and stuff on the set. I spent a long time playing with the zoetrope, too, which is how I was able to recall its construction.

Each platter contains variations of a different part of the alien's head. The outermost platter contains different positions for the alien's mouth, lips, and tongue. The middle platter contains a smaller number of positions that account for blinking and small movements of the upper/lower eyelid. On the smallest platter is the back part of the head and it controls small movements in the position of the ears.

Because each platter is controlled by motors that can rotate forward or backward, it can play play an animation of effectively unlimited duration as long as you can move the platters into position quickly (and precisely) enough. The "holographic projector" was really this special zoetrope, and it was controlled in such a way that the movement of each platter made it look like the alien was talking about wanting to purchase the car (though the actual dialog would presumably be added during post-production). It gave the alien a cool stop-motion look when the platters were spinning.

Lastly, the final version of the commercial used Powerman 5000's song, "When Worlds Collide" as its soundtrack. My wife happened to have that song as her alarm when the dream was happening, but it was muffled by the bedsheets and didn't wake me up immediately. Instead, the song just crept seamlessly into the dream. Below is the official music video for that song, which I'm including because it's a good song and also because I forgot it had sci-fi and aliens in it.

Nissan, if you're reading this, I am willing to license this technology to you. Call me and let's talk.

#dreams #dream journal #when worlds collide #powerman 5000 #nissan #zoetrope #fishdavidson #video #invention #cats #fragments #Youtube

[fishdreams]

Dream Journal 2024-01-04: A New Cereal Appears!

This one is short and to the point: Kellogg's made a new spinoff cereal for Corn Flakes. It was just regular corn flakes that were crushed into a powder and then baked until they turned brown.

And Kellogg's called it Corn Dirt.

-----------

Image credit is Kellogg's because of their product art, but I'm not linking to their website because I'm a heathen who likes the cheaper store brands.

#dream journal #dreams #fishdavidson #corn flakes #cereal #corn dirt

[fishdreams]

Dream Journal 2023-12-31: Brainwashed On The Job

To close out the year, my subconscious has decided to give a somewhat unsettling dream worth sharing.

Our tale begins in a corporate office with a semi-open layout. It's basically one large room with several long tables and a few cubicles on the periphery. I'm here alongside probably about a dozen other workers, but I appear to have no significant personal connection to any of them. Also, all the colors are desaturated to the point of almost looking black and white.

A random coworker approaches me to make small talk about the day's tasks. He's tossing an apple from hand to hand as he talks. I give some sort of noncommittal response, but my eyes keep watching the apple. To be honest, such an answer is all I could probably reasonably expect to give. I don't know what my job function is in this office other than to do some sort of unspecified work.

The conversation concludes and the guy is still standing there, leaning against a table and still tossing his apple from hand to hand. I look at the apple again and my vision glitches. For a moment, everything shows up in full color. The office around me looks to have been long abandoned, with fallen ceiling tiles and peeling paint. My coworker is still there, but he's not tossing an apple anymore.

He's tossing a grenade from hand to hand.

Just as quickly, my vision glitches again and we're back to the desaturated normal office and apple tossing. Something's up, and I'm afraid, but I don't let on yet.

I look across the room to the windows. There's a generic cityscape outside, and it's filled with tall buildings and mirrored glass. My vision shifts again, and the cityscape is replaced with a featureless black void outside the cracked and broken glass. I turn away from the window and hope that moving to another spot of the office will help, but it doesn't.

My vision continues to shift between grayscale office and full-color deadly alternatives. A colleague who's eating a sandwich appears to be taking bites of fiberglass insulation smashed between two pieces of drop-ceiling tile. Another person who is writing with a pen is actually using some sort of medical syringe to scratch up the table.

With each flash of the ruined environment around me, knowledge that was previously locked away begins to surface. I know that the ruined world is actually the closest thing I have to a true reality and that my boss in the office world is not actually my boss. The entity that asserts influence as my boss is actually some non-human intelligence that is able to force people to share a collective hallucination. My "boss" does not yet know that I am aware of the truth of the situation, but I have to pretend that I'm just a regular office worker in a safe and predictable office environment to avoid being detected.

Things do not get better.

The flashes get more frequent until I'm basically seeing only the horrible ruined world. I soon understand that this is a sort of test, but not a good one. The boss is trying to root out people that can escape the hallucination, and showing any indication that I am seeing the truth will have me "fired" (and likely killed).

I must pretend to work in order to stay alive, but I have no idea what the ultimate purpose of the hallucination is. I only know that staying alive and undetected is better than whatever happens if I'm found out, but I don't know how much longer I can keep up the charade.

But the work goes on.

-------------

Header image taken from the Infra page on modDB

#dreams #nightmare #fishdavidson #dream journal #office #bad dreams #aliens #workplace #reality #apocalypse #dark city

[fishdreams]

Dream Journal 2023-12-30: A Korean Surprise!

Hello! welcome to the inaugural dream of my new sideblog!

Dream Fragments

One of my sisters went to a restaurant and brought back some leftovers for me. It was a tempura-fried lobster tail that was as big as my forearm. Although it was breaded and fried with the shell still on, it was apparently supposed to be eaten like a soft-shell crab. The meat was black, but flavorful.

The Main Dream: The Hamilton Breach

I was staying in the guest room of my parents' house and playing on my phone when I got a notification that I have been invited to attend something called Kyofest*. My wife sees the notification and congratulates me, and tells me that she didn't realize I was Korean. In order to participate in Kyofest, the logic of the dream dictates that you must be Korean.

Surprise, surprise! Traditional ethnic histories do not apply to Fish Davidson! My life history has been subtly altered to include my revised birth in Korea. The dream jumps forward in time a bit, and I have just arrived in Korea after a long flight. With me on the flight was another Surprise Korean who also had his place of birth changed to Korea and was on a pilgrimage to see his new ancestral homeland.

The two of us were waiting on the tarmac for our tour guide to show us around, because neither of us spoke Korean. We wandered around the empty expanse of asphalt for a bit until we found a small fruit garden next to a low stone wall. I grabbed some fruit and split it in half to give some to my companion. We both realized that the inside of the fruit looked like stylized genitals.

Because my sense of humor is on par with that of an 8 year-old's, I was struck by a fit of giggling and opened all the fruit in the garden to uncover the naughty parts within. My companion and I then displayed all of the suggestive fruits atop the wall and took selfies with the fruit.

Our tour guide arrived and was aghast at our conduct. Apparently my companion and I had just trespassed on the sacred Hamilton Gardens. By taking selfies with the scandalized fruit, we had unwittingly caused an international incident between the US and Korea that would be known in future history books as the Hamilton Breach.

We were swiftly deported and banned from entering Korea ever again. And I never got a chance to find out what Kyofest was really about.

*Apparently KyoFest is a real event according to the internet, but I have zero waking-life knowledge of it. It's some sort of music festival focused on the Kyo islands.

---------

Image of Jin from BTS taken from Aminoapps.com

#dream journal #bts #fishdavidson #dreams #korea #lobster #fruit #kyofest