Sweet Dreams are made of these.

August 19, 2008 6:06 AM

Let's Do The Time Warp Again! Let's Do The Time Warp Again!

Ever since this thread began the other day, I have had three epic dreams about Metafilter. These dreams resemble a Rocky Horror style mishmash of Mefites, with all the usual suspects. These dreams are never creepy, and I'm always sad when they're over.

I knew that I had to post this when i had a dream that I was making this post, and was having trouble finding the time warp video on Youtube. Do you ever have dreams about the filter?

I love you guys, Thank you!

posted by schyler523 to MetaFilter-Related at 6:06 AM (64 comments total)

Do you ever have dreams about the filter?
Yes. I'm taking something for that.
posted by chillmost at 6:18 AM on August 19, 2008

Yes. And then I have to wash the sheets.
posted by cimbrog at 6:31 AM on August 19, 2008

If you're dreaming about websites, I think you need a vacation.
posted by smackfu at 6:34 AM on August 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

I once dreamed that I was adjusting an old-style CRT monitor. I'd get the vertical just right, but then I'd have to do the horizontal again, and that would fuck up the pincushion, and so on. I did get it juuuuust riiight in the end.

Very "I need help."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:39 AM on August 19, 2008

smackfu: "If you're dreaming about websites, I think you need a vacation."

Yeah uh, I worked at a casino for a couple of years, and had dreams of working in the chip cage of the poker room.

I quit a short while after.
posted by booticon at 6:40 AM on August 19, 2008

Wasn't it Theonlonius Monk that said dreaming about websites is like dancing about architecture?
posted by electroboy at 6:54 AM on August 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

No, but last night I dreamt I was over Vladimir Putin's for dinner and I tried to persuade him to see my side of some argument. Can't say I'm too confident I succeeded.
posted by preparat at 6:54 AM on August 19, 2008

smackfu: "If you're dreaming about websites, I think you need a vacation."

Booticon: "I worked at a casino for a couple of years, and had dreams of working in the chip cage of the poker room."

Me: I can top that --

I'm a theatrical stage manager, and one of the things I have to do is monitor the time and make sure that the actors get five- or ten-minute breaks at certain points (the schedule for these breaks is predetermined by our union, so I really have to pay close attention to this; such breaks are called "Equity breaks", after the Actors' Equity union).

While I was in rehearsals for a particularly challenging show, I didn't dream about rehearsals -- I was dreaming about something else. But a while into the dream, I suddenly dreamed I stood up and announced it was time for a ten minute break and then all the other characters in my dream wandered off to get coffee, call their agents, etc.. I woke up, realizing I had just called an Equity break on my own dream.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:58 AM on August 19, 2008 [18 favorites]

No, but I do dream of ponies.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:58 AM on August 19, 2008

I made a picture with my poop!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:01 AM on August 19, 2008

I had a Half Life 2 dream last night that persisted through two pushes of the snooze button. I was a hero.
posted by minifigs at 7:11 AM on August 19, 2008

I dream about the flag queue every once in a while.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:13 AM on August 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

I dream about massive volumes of copy that need developmental editing and fact-checking. I also dream about dinosaurs.
posted by Mister_A at 7:16 AM on August 19, 2008

I had a Half Life 2 dream last night that persisted through two pushes of the snooze button. I was a hero.

I was a Viking.
posted by The Bellman at 7:21 AM on August 19, 2008

What were you a Viking at in your dream?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:22 AM on August 19, 2008

Yes. And then I have to wash the sheets.

real mefites savor the crust.
posted by quonsar at 7:23 AM on August 19, 2008

I had to wake myself up from a dream once because I was washing the dishes and nothing else was happening and I was utterly bored. Things didn't get much better after that.
posted by h00py at 7:38 AM on August 19, 2008

I just had a dream of grocery shopping and I had a little hand basket full of things that I gave to the cashier and waited while she took all the items out and made a big deal of me not emptying the basket myself. She was really really angry, and was really really rude to me for it.

So when the bagger asked if I needed bags or if I brought my own I told him to double bag everything in plastic bags, and that I was going to go throw them in a park where animals would eat them and die.

It's common to get back at cashiers by littering right?
posted by Science! at 8:11 AM on August 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

Sometimes after staring at video monitors too long, I look up and am amazed at how high res reality is.

(really)
posted by lothar at 8:14 AM on August 19, 2008

Wait - this isn't a dream?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:33 AM on August 19, 2008

Dreaming about MetaFilter

Dreaming about MetaFilter

Dreaming about MetaFilter

Dreaming about MetaFilter

Dreaming about MetaFilter
posted by ColdChef at 8:47 AM on August 19, 2008

I did actually dream about metafilter last night. I remember only one thing: Brandon Blatcher was in it. Or possible just Brandon Blatcher's name.

Hmmm.
posted by rtha at 9:11 AM on August 19, 2008

Weird -- I was just writing elsewhere that I dreamt about Metafilter last night.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:15 AM on August 19, 2008

Yesterday I was very close to a lightning strike, so close I was stunned. "The Ballad of Cat Ballou" started going through my head REALLY LOUD and wouldn't go away even when I tried to drown it out with...other earworms I won't mention so as not to infect y'all.

So last night, when I went to sleep, that song was looping and looping and you know what else? MetaFilter. Scrolling by just an eentsy bit too fast for me to read, too fast for me to click on the links and the text was just a leetle too small.

I still have Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole in my head (but not as loud, which gives me hope) and, well, I checked the front page and it's behaving.

This is good. It means I'm not dead and my afterlife composed of that damn song and MetaFilter scrolling by for eternity.
posted by merelyglib at 9:26 AM on August 19, 2008

(but SORE! I feel like I got hit by a truck.)
posted by merelyglib at 9:30 AM on August 19, 2008

This is good. It means I'm not dead and my afterlife composed of that damn song and MetaFilter scrolling by for eternity.

Uhm, is the Afterlife accepting requests or pre-orders at this point? 'Cuz I'd really like to get in on the ground floor of the not-spending-eternity-squinting-at-the-Internet portion of Whatever Comes Next.

FWIW, I think I've dreamt about MetaFilter too, though I don't remember the specifics of the dream. Other highlights of the dream career of F. H. Terwilliger include dreams about/in which:

--Long division
--The characters sing, rather than speak (think recitative with the occasional actual song)
--I'm speaking German, usually better than I manage it in real life
--F. H. Terwilliger's Dreams! The Animated Series!
--Everything's going to hell and I'm holding the handbasket, except that I've forgotten to put on pants/am late to work/have walked right into a zombie apocalypse.

On reflection, maybe I need to go play outside for awhile.
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 9:49 AM on August 19, 2008

Oh, I'm sure they take requests. But I understand their inventory is rather limited and they don't usually take special orders.
posted by merelyglib at 10:01 AM on August 19, 2008

Half of me was wishing that this post was for a meetup at a Rocky Horror Picture Show showing.

Meanwhile the other half was wishing for a nuclear hand grenade.
posted by loquacious at 10:07 AM on August 19, 2008

Can we talk about who we find dreamy, and yell OMGOMGOMG while giggling and jumping up and down? Can we do that, at least?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:11 AM on August 19, 2008

MLK was pretty dreamy.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:42 AM on August 19, 2008

Here a blue screen, a geeky guy, a helpful long haired cultured gal and a jesus-haired musician join forces and everybody dances and has fun and asks what's going on here, because we're all together, together in electric dreams.
posted by Free word order! at 10:45 AM on August 19, 2008

I have a recurring dream about interacting with thousands of people on MetaFilter and I suddenly realize that I'm not wearing any pants.

No, wait...I'm wearing pants in the dream.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:53 AM on August 19, 2008

I've certainly dreamed of mefites I've met in real life, but it doesn't usually concern the website's use, iykwimaityd.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:01 AM on August 19, 2008

nid
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:03 AM on August 19, 2008

gb, she could NEVER think that. Dude.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:03 AM on August 19, 2008

I only dream about World of Warcraft and everything everyone speaks like the [2.Trade] channel in Ironforge.

Yeah. It's that bad.
posted by eyeballkid at 11:05 AM on August 19, 2008

everything everyone speaks like
posted by eyeballkid at 11:06 AM on August 19, 2008

Dream of genie with the light brown hare eating pancakes?
posted by Cranberry at 11:06 AM on August 19, 2008

Here a blue screen, a geeky guy, a helpful long haired cultured gal and a jesus-haired musician.

Oh, thank you so much for that... thing. That terrible, terrible movie that UP UNTIL JUST RECENTLY TOTALLY I FORGOT ABOUT.

Would you like your ten pounds of hate delivered in a box or can I just fax it to you?
posted by loquacious at 11:17 AM on August 19, 2008

Heh. I dreamt once that Matt had decreed that, henceforth, Metafilter would only be written in some odd language that I wasn't real sure I had ever heard of, and bannination would ensue for using English. I think it was the garlic in the soup.
posted by pjern at 11:37 AM on August 19, 2008

Once I dreamed that I had an undo function in real-life.

When I woke up and realized it was a dream I think I cried a little.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 11:39 AM on August 19, 2008

That terrible, terrible movie that UP UNTIL JUST RECENTLY TOTALLY I FORGOT ABOUT.

Are you kidding me? That movie was great. The voice of the computer? Bud Cort. BUD FREAKING CORT! And you watch that last scene where they're driving along and the ghost of the computer is saluting them with spraying fireboats and tell me you don't weep. Have you no heart?!
posted by ColdChef at 11:41 AM on August 19, 2008

Are you kidding me? That movie was great.

You need to send me samples of whatever special-brew embalming sauce it is that you've been drinking because it's obviously powerful stuff.

And you watch that last scene where they're driving along and the ghost of the computer is saluting them with spraying fireboats and tell me you don't weep.

Oh, I wept. The same way I wept when they "hacked the Gibson" in Hackers, the same way I wept over the pseudophilosophy in The Matrix, the same way I wept over the mind-bogglingly stupid ways pseudotechnology in Lawnmower Man and Strange Days. I wept for the unredeemable stupidity of the movie industry and the audiences that support them.

What? No, I don't get invited to go to the movies very often. Why do you ask?

PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE DON'T FUCK UP NEUROMANCER YOU BLOCKHEADED DICKBEANED FUCKWITS OR I SWEAR I'LL BURN MYSELF ALIVE IN YOUR FANCY LOBBY.

CONTACT DETAILS ARE IN MY PROFILE. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU HIRE ME AS A TECHNICAL ADVISOR BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.
posted by loquacious at 12:06 PM on August 19, 2008

Oh yeah cuz hard SF makes for excellent cinema.

Did I mention my most recent dream was about arguing with loquacious on mefi?

IT CAME TRUE!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:20 PM on August 19, 2008

Oh yeah cuz hard SF makes for excellent cinema.

2001, 2010, Bladerunner, Aliens... these are all SF movies I didn't hate at all.

Wait a second. None of the bad movies I mentioned in my last comment are hard SF movies, anyway! What are you trying to pull here, Ms. Karl-Rove-Whom-Likes-To-Misframe-The-Argument?
posted by loquacious at 12:26 PM on August 19, 2008

I wept over the mind-bogglingly stupid ways pseudotechnology in Lawnmower Man and Strange Days

While I can't be sure what you meant here since your verb has vanished into The Wired, you seem to have a problem with grandiose technological absurdity, or maybe just silliness in SF cinema. Hackers I won't defend, as it's unabashed pulp, but Strange Days and The Matrix both captured cultural tensions between audiences and their contemporary technologies, and used layered strategies to play upon the insecurity of authenticity in the era of cyberspace. Also, their uses of people of color and commentaries on their subjectivities are absolutely fucking amazing.

Strange Days is sort of a sacred cow among SF theorists, a real corunucopia of content for analysis that just keeps on giving as the real tech and our relationship with it moves forward. But that's because, above all, it's a commentary on the media experience itself.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:39 PM on August 19, 2008

When Sinead O'Conner recorded that video for Nothing Compares 2 U, she got the waterworks flowing by sitting through William Gibson's First Person Shooter episode of the X-Files.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:56 PM on August 19, 2008

The Matrix

...was allegedly scripted originally as having the machines using humans not as a power source but as a neutral net. Which would have been so very much goddam better of a premise that I don't really even care if this factoid is ever vetted to my satisfaction: I'm going to assume it's true anyway because it makes the world a slightly less bad place (and re-affirms the idea of meddling hollywood execs as being the main problem with pop cinema).
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:58 PM on August 19, 2008

Last night I dreamed that I got an iPhone and it was all pretty and shiny.
posted by gingerbeer at 12:58 PM on August 19, 2008

When Sinead O'Conner recorded that video for Nothing Compares 2 U, she got the waterworks flowing by sitting through William Gibson's First Person Shooter episode of the X-File.

Ladies and gentlenerds, may I present to you the great cortex! Shattering hopes and dreams and confirming your worst fears since 1979!

I'll just start weeping now. Maybe if I start drinking gasoline I can light myself on fire with my tears.
posted by loquacious at 1:18 PM on August 19, 2008

I have Metafilter dreams pretty regularly; usually it's just some text scrolling by in my mind with people making all sorts of strange comments that I don't fully understand, or in-jokes that I've clearly missed the origins on.

On special nights, the words are narrated in increasingly strange accents and dialects. These naturally stick with me in my awake viewing of the site and color my perceptions of all of the contributers here.

It is for this reason, that I'm convinced that cortex speaks with a thick Xhosa accent, and most of his words therefore have some sort of glottal click.
posted by quin at 1:30 PM on August 19, 2008

When I was a kid, I dreamed once that mum had bought me Omega Supreme, and I woke up all excited-like, and then there was a turn of events, and a month later I was off to boarding school.
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:53 PM on August 19, 2008

There was a dream of being sliced into pieces, not sure by who but cortex was somehow involved and later he either was trying to categorize the pieces or input them into a database.

Vague memories of another where Jessamyn appeared in huge brown mountain boots, stomping on something or someone I *think* was MetaTalk related.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:55 PM on August 19, 2008

Back in BBS days when I was a wee youth with a 300 baud modem and a 32K CP/M based laptop that I used as a basic, portable modem terminal, I fell asleep at the keyboard laying on the floor of the living room near the phone jack I was using.

My mom had tried waking me up, and was asking me something about dinner or something. I turned over and air-typed at her in my half-sleep. She'd asked me what I was doing, and I air-typed some more until I finally woke up and figured out what was going on.

Thankfully, my family is kind of weird - and we were fairly early adopters, my mom had long been writing books and articles on the Apple //e - so it wasn't really ever remembered by anyone but myself.

However, somewhere there's a picture of me passed out at the foot of a friend's computer hugging an old IBM XT keyboard like a teddy bear. I'm very glad that it was taken before digital cameras and flickr.
posted by loquacious at 3:11 PM on August 19, 2008

Bud Cort, dude.
posted by ColdChef at 3:14 PM on August 19, 2008

I did actually dream about metafilter last night. I remember only one thing: Brandon Blatcher was in it. Or possible just Brandon Blatcher's name.

Hmmm.
posted by rtha

You know, I just had a dream with Brandon Blatcher in it someplace. I'd forgotten til I read this comment.

My most common MetaFilter dream involves me trying to remember an even cooler site that I used to go to, run by somebody named Mike.
posted by Biblio at 6:04 PM on August 19, 2008

"No, wait...I'm wearing pants in the dream."

Was there a fish in your pants?
posted by Jahaza at 7:02 PM on August 19, 2008

I had a dream a couple of years ago in which Metafilter member yerfatma was addressing me from a balcony. He and his wife were on the balcony (it was in a Renaissance marble-faced city or some Vegas-style copy of one), and I was on the ground. A big crowd was all around me, but they'd given me a 10' semi-circle of personal space. yerfatma yelled to me "Don't forget how to NEGOTIATE!" and the crowd cheered. Then the dream went in a totally different direction.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:04 PM on August 19, 2008

A...sexy direction?
posted by turgid dahlia at 8:36 PM on August 19, 2008

A Bud Cort-y direction, anyway. YMMV.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:54 PM on August 19, 2008

The Matrix

...was allegedly scripted originally as having the machines using humans not as a power source but as a neutral net.

Urm, cortex - I think all nets are neutral, it's the person wielding them that determines their alignment.
posted by pupdog at 2:45 AM on August 20, 2008

Clearly I meant "neutered net".
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:32 AM on August 20, 2008

My net is lawful evil.

NET: Do as I say!
ME: No, i don't want to eat the head!
NET: IT IS THE LAW!!
ME: OK.
posted by Mister_A at 10:23 AM on August 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

I dream about cocaine. I dream I've got the cocaine in my hands, and it's running out through the gaps in my fingers while I frantically look for a mirror to put the cocaine on.

By the time I find a mirror, the cocaine has all gone.

I still have this dream regularly, but it must be a good twenty years since I last saw cocaine.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:36 PM on August 20, 2008