busybee Writing Dream log

I was in a secret relationship with an architect who presented himself in a very Willy Wonka-esque way. He had a great quality of showmanship, and parlayed this into becoming president of the United States of America, with me as his vice president.

Several times I explained to him Willy Wonka’s whole deal, and he kept on pretending to not understand or not see how this applied to him. After explaining specifically Gene Wilder’s take on the character, with the cane and the somersault to tell the audience that he was lying, I came to realize that this one was lying too. I still loved him, but I was suspicious of him.

One evening we were taking a stroll around the White House grounds, when we heard a sound coming from a glass container that we used as a storage facility. I saw a shadowy figure trying to cut small holes in the glass, and the president and I split up to take a look. I managed to subdue the figure; she was an Italian spy, dressed in black and masked. The president ran off for safety while I struggled with her, and when I unmasked her, she turned out to be a chinchilla.

“What were you doing?” I asked the chinchilla.

“I am trying to prevent a president from being the president.”

“Are you trying to murder my husband?!”

“No… back in time. The fifth president. They should not be a thing.”

We had a struggle. I accidentally stepped on one of her paws, causing her to yelp in pain. I felt bad for her, and offered to take her home.

On the way we discussed anarchy, and I admitted that I was only vice president as a point of convenience and distraction, and that I was myself an anarcho-socialist, and I was very interested in her ideas about how to bring down the presidency, and the government as a whole.

For hours we tried to navigate through the Washington DC subway system, and as we talked I became increasingly self-conscious about my vice presidential ID badge hanging around my neck.

Finally we made it to her subway stop, and we agreed to meet up for coffee later.

“So, hey, I have a friend with what I think is a pretty… unique situation. You’re pretty savvy with this pronoun stuff, right?”

“Hm, I try to be, anyway.”

“Okay, so, this friend was born male—”

“Assigned male at birth.”

“… Right. Anyway. Assigned male at birth, totally identifies as male, one hundred percent happy being male. Wears men’s clothes, uses the extremely masculine name given to them, is completely secure in her masculinity, completely normal cis man.”

“Wait, so uh… okay, ‘normal’ is loaded, but… ‘Her?’”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. She prefers to be referred to with she/her pronouns.”

“… Huh. Is there any particular… reason for that?”

“Not as far as I can tell! I’ve asked her about it and she said that she just… likes it.”

“But… …she… doesn’t identify as a woman at all?”

“Nope. And I thought that maybe she is trying to, like, normalize the idea that language is a social construct or something, or push against the idea that ‘he’ is the gender-neutral pronoun, but nope. She just likes the sound of it.”

“And you’re sure she isn’t, like, trans or anything?”

“I mean, I asked her if she feels bad being called he/him, and no, she doesn’t seem to experience dysphoria around her gender or around being called he/him. She just.. prefers she/her.”

“Huh, okay. Well, I mean, anyone can choose to have whatever pronouns they want, and we should all respect that, no matter what the underlying reason is…”

“That’s just the thing, everyone around her does respect it. Even if they’re awful about misgendering actual trans women, for some reason they’re 100% on board with using she/her pronouns for this… well, totally nor— … um, extremely cis man.”

“Aside from the pronouns.”

“Yes, aside from the pronouns.”

“Huh. Well, um… this is an interesting situation, I think, but it probably shouldn’t be interesting. It’s kind of refreshing to hear about? I mean, sort of. I wish people would respect my pronouns that easily, but…”

“Yeah, it’s like the dog thing.”

“Dog thing?”

“Y'know, how people trip over themselves to make sure that they’re using the correct pronouns for a dog? That doesn’t even know what pronouns are and doesn’t give the tiniest shit about them? While still misgendering trans people because it’s ‘so hard?’”

“Ah, yeah, that. Well. Okay. So what’s the problem your friend is having?”

“Oh, she isn’t having a problem at all. I’m just wondering, do you know what this situation would be called?”

“Sounds like she’s a… she-male?”

“…”

“Yeah, I only realized what I was saying as it was leaving my mouth.”

Have you heard the latest craze? it’s Muppet Speed Dating! Here’s how it works.

First, your soul is transferred into a muppet. Then you sit at a grid position, and you face one of your neighbors. The devil tells you to RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE, and then you stand up, and you and your neighbor get two prompts, one for each hand. Try your best to do both prompts at each other!

The prompts might be an action like “wave,” “have sex,” or “uchi wa-wa.” It’s up to you to figure out what that means!

You have three seconds, and you will be judged.

Remember to keep track of your achievements and failures. Send us a screenshot to get a free commemorative button.

Do this for as long as you like, but don’t overdo it. We don’t want you to become addicted and oversaturated. After all, the devil wants to see as many different souls as he can.

Just remember to mix it up, and always uchi wa-wa as best you can.

I had a dream in which I was sitting on a train and talking to an ostensible coworker (nobody I know in real life) about programming languages and some of the interesting stuff going on in performance evaluation, when suddenly she asked me, “Dude, are you okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Then why are you turning bat-cave black?”

I suddenly realized that I was turning blue with hypoxia, and promptly woke up to find myself not breathing.

After a few seconds of hyperventilation, my first thought was: “Uncaught exception propagated up the stack.”

(I’m fine, but a bit concerned as I have no idea what happened. Also, now I have a headache. Chris did once comment about how I’d stop breathing in my sleep but didn’t snore, so this has been going on for a long time in any case — probably the only reason I noticed this time was that the context was interesting enough to, er, trip my monitoring. I don’t think it was sleep apnea, as I was sleeping on my side and it didn’t feel like an obstruction, and technically the fact I woke up makes it by definition not sleep apnea.)

I was looking at the wall of terrariums filled with lizards, iguanas, and other such reptiles. They all seemed tired and depressed, so I flipped the switch that turned on all of their blacklights, causing most of them to scintillate with fluorescent glows surrounded by a purplish light embrace. But the chameleon on the upper rung was still in darkness; one of his two small blacklights had gone out. Moments later, he scurried over to feel the love of the working lamp.

“Well, I guess we need to get that replaced,” Chris said.

He made a phone call and asked about going to the pet store for supplies. A few uncomfortable minutes passed. A uniformed police officer appeared at the door.

“You called for an escort?” he said.

As the three of us walked to the pet store down the street, Chris got on his cellphone and called ahead, asking about a particular blacklight by part number. “Also, one of my lizards had little bugs crawling all over him,” he said. “Any suggestions for what I should get? … No, little tiny ones, like…”

“Like ticks on a rabbit?” I offered.

“Like ticks on a rabbit,” he repeated.

The person on the other end made a few suggestions, Chris occasionally interjecting with an “Mm-hmm” or “I see.”

“Okay, then,” Chris said. “I’m on my way with my wife,” he chuckled, looking at me, and hanging up.

I grumbled. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

He teased my hair. “What should I call you, then?”

“I don’t know… partner? Companion? I still don’t know what we are.”

I dreamt that due to FTC intervention, the laundromat started to let people into the secret place in back where all of the missing socks/underwear/shirts/relatives/etc. went. It was a huge, serpentine conveyor belt which went on forever in all directions, slowly but deliberately carrying a six-foot-deep pile of missing laundry. I was able to find a few of my missing pairs of socks pretty quickly. Strangely, everyone could tell what was theirs, and the honor system worked pretty well.

I also found some of my underwear, but I decided it’d be better to be safe than sorry and left it behind.