1723: Sword of the Mind

I'm really not looking forward to the day that my imagination doesn't work any more — if indeed such a day will ever come.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer carry an umbrella and imagine it's the legendary sword Curtana, hacking and slashing my way through hordes of enemies (or, indeed, zombified shoppers who just want to get out of the rain but who are too cold and wet to actually exert themselves).

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer get on a piece of gym equipment accompanied by the Shadow of the Colossus music and imagine that, rather than simply engaging in the eminently pointless waste of time that is lifting a heavy thing then putting it down again lots of times, I am actually battling some monstrous foe that can only be defeated by lifting bits of it up, then putting them carefully down again.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer imagine what it would be like if my car could actually take off and fly, rising high above the surprised, bewildered and frightened heads of the other occupants of the traffic jam I'm in before shooting off into the distance via a far more direct route than any road ever offered.

I do wonder to myself whether or not my imagination will ever stop working. I doubt it will; after all, many creative types continue being creative well into the twilight of their life, though the exact form of what the imagination conjures up doubtless varies and changes as the years pass by.

I'm conscious of the changes to my own imagination, though in some cases these are due in part to other mental changes rather than the imagination itself. Take that period between going to bed and going to sleep, for example; when I was young, I could happily conjure whole worlds up for myself, exploring them and having all sorts of strange and wonderful adventures, blurring the lines between conscious thought and dreaming until eventually I'd awaken the next morning to the rather unwelcome sound of the alarm clock.

These days, however, I haven't lost the ability to conjure up mental pictures, but the darkness that resides inside my head occasionally uses this time to show itself: instead of strange and fantastic worlds, my mind shows me far more mundane things, but often with the worst possible outcome; sometimes it's nothing but words as I think about a conversation I've had — or need to have but am afraid to — while others it's a mental picture I simply can't look away from, no matter where I turn.

This isn't a decline of the imagination at all, since my brain still conjures up very vivid pictures — and, I hasten to add, it's not every night that I'm wracked with dark and terrible images that if not terrify me to my very core at least make me a bit anxious — but it is a change. I feel like I have less conscious control over my imagination: I can't simply send myself to another world any more, at least not all the time; there are occasions where I have to let my mind take the lead and follow along after it. (I realise that makes no sense, but little to do with the strange inner workings of the human mind and consciousness does.)

There are other times when I can happily immerse myself in a world of my — or indeed someone else's — creation, however. Reading a good book still makes glorious technicolour mental images appear before my mind's eye. Writing something creative has an even more powerful impact on my imagination, stirring it into action. Closing my eyes and listening to pieces of music can either stir up imaginative scenes or conjure memories that I haven't thought about for a long time.

The inside of my head isn't perfect, and there is much about it I would probably change given the opportunity. But at the same time, it's become a strangely comfortable place to be, dark corners and all; it's a defining part of who I am, which is why I doubt that the door into that wonderful, terrifying place will ever truly be slammed shut.

1559: Life Walkthrough: How to Defeat the Big Breakfast

You'll probably encounter the Big Breakfast on a weekend, particularly if you finish a Friday low on HP, MP or Sanity. If you want to guarantee an encounter with one, do one of two things: either ensure the fridge-freezer is stocked with Bacon, Eggs, Sausage, Hash Browns or Waffles and that you have at least one Beans in the cupboard; or alternatively, ensure that the fridge-freezer and cupboard have a complete lack of the aforementioned, in which case you'll fight a Big Breakfast in the wild rather than at home. The latter case is slightly advantageous in that you have a little longer to shake off the Sleepy status effect before the confrontation begins, but the former gives you the Home Turf boost.

There are a number of ways to defeat the Big Breakfast, but following this strategy is one of the most effective and efficient. Prepare for battle!

As the battle begins use the SAUCE — either brown or ketchup according to the preference you set during character creation — on Big Breakfast. Using the wrong sauce will provide you with smaller benefits.

Next up, grab the BUTTER and apply it to the TOAST using the KNIFE. Don't attack the TOAST yet, though; we'll come back to that later.

Equip the KNIFE and FORK and attack the TOMATO. This is the weakest part of the breakfast, but also has the potential to do the biggest damage to your Sanity. Try and defeat it in two attacks at most.

Follow up by attacking the MUSHROOM. This is likewise weak, and its status effects can be mitigated if you applied the SAUCE correctly.

Once the TOMATO and MUSHROOM are down, you'll need to begin attacking the SAUSAGES, but don't jump straight in to pure attacking. Instead, use STAB on a SAUSAGE and then attack the EGG with it — you'll be pleased that you did. After you've done this on both EGGS, you can commence normal attacks. Each attack will drain your MP significantly so don't be afraid to take a turn or two to rest if you need to.

Follow up the assault on the SAUSAGES by attacking the EGGS. Weakening them with the SAUSAGES beforehand will make this part of the battle much easier.

Attack the BACON once the EGGS have been defeated. The bacon should quickly fall to a concerted assault, but keep a close eye on your MP. You should find that your HP is steadily increasing as you defeat each opponent.

Following the BACON it might be tempting to go for the next target in the list — the HASH BROWNS — but pass them by for the movement in favour of an attack on the BEANS. Characters with low agility will need to take a few turns to defeat these, but they're nothing too much to worry about.

After the BEANS have been defeated, you'll notice that they've left a pool of BEAN JUICE behind. This cannot be defeated with normal weapons, so instead you must use the STAB move on a HASH BROWN to attach it to either your KNIFE or FORK — preferably FORK, since using the KNIFE carries a risk of damaging your own HP — and only then attack the BEAN JUICE.

If the HASH BROWN attached to your weapon breaks, use STAB again on one of its remaining companions. Repeat the process until the BEAN JUICE has been defeated. If you fail to defeat it before the HASH BROWNS have been defeated, however, don't worry, you still have a final weapon up your sleeve.

Unequip the KNIFE and FORK and pick up the TOAST. Equip it in either hand, then attack any remaining BEAN JUICE. If none is left, simply open your Item menu and USE the TOAST like any other item. If you find your MP are too low to be able to use the TOAST, rest for a turn or two until they restore. To restore them more quickly, either use the COFFEE or get up from the table and visit the TOILET. Note that if you pick the latter option you will need to be partied up with at least one other player, otherwise upon your return you will find that Big Breakfast has been taken away, and you will not receive full XP value since parts of it were left undefeated.

Once Big Breakfast has been defeated, sit back and enjoy the cutscene, then save your game. The true weekend begins here.

1328: Saturday Morning Ramblings

Look, I managed to blog in the morning rather than last thing in the evening! This is probably a mistake, as we're supposed to be heading out to a wedding in about half an hour and I still need to have a shower and get dressed, but I have coffee to drink and I shower quickly. Yes, I bloody well do. So there.

In lieu of anything particularly massively exciting happening in the intervening hours since last night and this morning (largely sleeping) I thought I'd mention a peculiar dream I had. It is one of those ones that was very vivid but didn't really make much sense, so as such I found it quite intriguing.

The main gist of it all was that I was using a computer of some description. For some reason, the casing for the computer (which seemed to be some sort of strange hybrid between a desktop and a laptop system) was open, and I could see into it. I dropped a piece of chocolate (I don't know) onto a vent on part of the casing that was still covered, and I could see it was seeping in, so I wanted to do something about it. I opened the case further and saw that there was, for some reason, a screwdriver that had been left inside the machine. Against all of the advice people give you when you're learning about computers, I reached inside to grab it, when…

ZZap!

I felt a slight electric shock, and the display on the screen went what can only be described as "wrong". If you've ever seen what a graphics card with a loose connection does, it was that. Wrong colouring, fuzzy bits, pixels where they shouldn't be. I hastily switched off the computer, removed the screwdriver, gave it a moment and then turned it back on again.

Instead of booting up normally, the computer switched to a second display that invited me to fix the problem with the main screen by drawing straight lines across photographs of walls. Except after I completed the first one, I somehow found myself actually drawing paint lines across a real wall with my big toe. I couldn't make it all the way across one of the walls, so I gave up, turned the computer off and back on again. It went back to having broken graphics, and then I saw a leaflet on the desk explaining the wall-painting thing — it was a piece of software you could install to randomly pop up the wall-painting game randomly whenever you turned your computer on. It had no discernible benefit whatsoever, and certainly couldn't fix a fried graphics card.

I have no idea what all that means. It's probably some sort of metaphor for some sort of dee-seated anxiety or neurosis. But I don't really have time to think about it now. Coffee. Shower. Wedding. Later!

1175: Stream of Rubbish

I'm really not at all sure what to write about tonight, so I'm going to indulge in some "freewriting", if you'll pardon me. For those unaware, "freewriting" is where you just start writing and keep going for a set period of time without stopping or going back to correct the things you've done in order to make them make sense. (When freewriting on the computer, I find it very difficult to break my normal habits of automatically correcting typos for the most part, so I am allowing myself that small indulgence, but otherwise this post will be pure, bona fide stream-of-consciousness bullshit. I hope you enjoy. And if you don't… well, I don't really care all that much as it's 11:33 in the evening and I'd quite like to go to bed. I should probably close these brackets and finish this paragraph sometime soon, huh.)

Anyway. What is happening right now? Not a lot, because it's 11:33 in the evening and I'd quite like to go to bed, as previously mentioned. I am sitting in front of my Mac frantically typing this blog post while Andie is sitting in the other room watching Family Guy on BBC Three. This must be at least the sixth or seventh time I've heard the whole series go around and around and around and I'm never quite sure how I feel about it. Family Guy can be quite entertaining, but it's one of those things that it seems to be quite fashionable to bash on these days, so I'm never quite sure if I'm supposed to like it or not. I do know that I like it rather less now that it's been around and around so many times. Certain things remain entertaining on repeat viewings — as I've previously said elsewhere on this blog, for me Friends is one of those shows that I can watch over and over again without getting tired of it for the most part — but for me, Family Guy is a bit of a one-trick pony, particularly when they start pulling the "remember the time when" etc etc jokes where they cut away to something HILARIOUS that probably didn't really happen. What a hoot!

I'm going to stop talking about Family Guy now and think of something else to say. But what? Hmm. How about food? Today we went out for lunch with my parents to Yo! Sushi in WestQuay. I'm a big fan of Yo! Sushi even if it is a bit expensive, really. Go on Sunday, though, and it's an all-you-can-eat for £20 sort of affair, though, so if you leave plenty of room you can ensure you get your money's worth. I really like the food there, too. It's tasty. I'm sure it's not quite up to the standard of a "proper" sushi restaurant, but it's certainly very tasty and a bit different from the normal sort of things that you get around the place.

I can still hear Family Guy and it's a little bit distracting. I will try and maintain my concentration. I set a goal for myself to keep writing non-stop for ten minutes and I'm about halfway through at this point. Lucy the rat is currently running rather aggressively on the wheel in her cage — I can hear, not see her — so I will have to go and check on her in a bit. I like our rats. They are friendly. Lara likes to run up the sleeve of my dressing gown, which is very amusing except when she does a wee in my armpit. To be fair to her, she has only done that once, but it was not very nice.

Anyway, I believe I was talking about sushi before I got distracted by Family Guy. One of the things I like at Yo! Sushi is takoyaki — octopus dumplings which various Japanese video games taught me about the existence of. (I'm specifically thinking of the takoyaki stand people hang out at in Persona 3, but the game I'm currently playing on the DS, Lifesigns, also features a lot of mentions of takoyaki). For some reason, mentioning something repeatedly like that really makes me want to investigate it and try it for myself — and hey, what do you know? Turns out that takoyaki is pretty tasty, though I'm not sure it was quite what I expected when I first had it. I recommend you try it. I didn't have it today because by the time it came around on the conveyor belt at Yo! Sushi, we were already pretty full on everything else we'd eaten. Another time, dear octopus balls, another time.

One more minute to go. Can I break a thousand words by the time that minute passes? Probably not. I'd have to type a little bit quicker than I am typing right now. I can type pretty quickly, but I'm not sure I can type 250 words in a minute. That would be pretty speedy. Superhuman speedy, in fact.

Oh, time's up. Time to go. I apologise for the disjointed, dumb nature of this blog post but I thought I'd do that instead of babbling on about Ar Tonelico II again. (I'll get back to that tomorrow! Just kidding! Maybe.) Anyway. Time for bed. Good night.

1156: Dream a Little Dream

Sometimes I like my subconscious. Sometimes it comes up with creative, awesome ideas or simply entertains me with peculiar, fascinating and sometimes grotesquely compelling images that then provide suitable fodder from which to compose a blog post later in the day. I know I have at least one friend for whom the experience he dubbed "the poo dream" is a source of considerable amusement.

Sometimes, though, I don't like my subconscious. Today is one of those days.

I don't tend to suffer from nightmares a lot. I don't have many memories of being woken up suddenly by something unpleasant happening to me in my dreams, and I've certainly never done the Hollywoodesque thing of suddenly sitting bolt upright, wide awake and covered in sweat. This morning, though, my brain decided to show me some messed-up crap.

And yes, I said morning. As those of you who remember my previous posts on vivid dreams will remember, I tend to experience my most vivid flashes of weirdness from the subconscious after I've sort of kind of woken up once and drifted off back to sleep. In this case, it was shortly after Andie had gone out to work at half-past some ungodly hour in the morning, and I was far too tired to get out of bed at that point. So, without much encouragement required, I fell asleep again, and the peculiar images began.

This time around, I was back at my old secondary school. Specifically, I was in the music department's main room. This was quite a big room with a stage at one end, though it was relatively rarely used for concerts when I was there — school concerts tended to take place in the large (and extremely reverberant) sports hall. Regardless of that, though, there was a concert going on this time around. I was set to perform. Specifically, I was set to perform Carnival of the Animals on the piano, which the astute and/or classically-trained among you will know is a piece of music that normally requires at least two people and two pianos and possibly some additional instruments too. However, for reasons that were at best unclear over the course of this dream, I was set to perform it solo, and I was extremely nervous about it.

I don't remember anything else that was going on in the concert, but I remember the audience feeling somewhat rowdy. In fact, it felt more like a performance in front of a class of schoolkids than an actual concert — as I looked around, I remember noticing that the desks were laid out just as they always were — three rows, with another at 90 degrees to the rest of them down the side.

My time came to perform and I psyched myself up. I was going to give a small speech prior to starting my performance to explain why I was going to be performing Carnival of the Animals as a soloist, but as I stepped on stage the noise level from the audience (who, it was clearly evident by now, just were schoolkids) increased and increased and increased. I stood there mutely waiting for them to calm down so I could give my speech, but the hubbub didn't dissipate. Eventually I gave up, laid my music down on the piano that was on stage and prepared to take a seat.

Suddenly, from out of the audience, out burst a kid who was a fairly notorious bully when I was back at school. His appearance in my dream was just as when I last saw him at the age of about 15. While I was at school, I didn't have a lot of problems with this particular individual personally, but he was someone that I was wary of and tended to avoid whenever possible — not only because I was afraid of him, but also because I thought he was a bit of a tosser. Anyway, that aside, he leapt at me, and it wasn't until it was too late that I saw he was wielding a knife. He slashed across me as he leapt at me. I didn't feel anything, so I figured he missed.

Then I looked down and saw he hadn't missed. The front of my clothing was stained crimson with blood, and the pain suddenly kicked in.

Then I woke up. That was not a pleasant way to wake up, I can tell you, and it's not an exaggeration to say that it pretty much put a downer on most of the rest of my day. I've been feeling low and depressed all day and while I'm sure not all of it can be attributed to the activities of my subconscious, starting the day in that manner probably didn't help.

But what does it mean? Well, aside from the apparent long-term damage to my sanity that classroom teaching did… who knows? And I'm not sure I want to know!

1131: Lavatorial Subconscious

It is, as I have noted a number of times previously on these very pages, during the hours of the morning between waking up for the first time and actually waking up enough to be able to get out of bed that your subconscious works the hardest to show you the most fucked-up shit possible to get you wondering what the hell someone was injecting into you while you slept. These "morning dreams" are also the ones that tend to stick in your memory a lot more than the things your brain dreams up in the main part of your sleep cycle, too.

As you will recall if you've been following this blog for a while, I have recounted these peculiar and surreal experiences in the past. And I thought I'd do that today, largely to resist the temptation to write about Ar Tonelico yet again.

This morning's weird dream was once again somewhat lavatorial in nature, at least in part, so for that I apologise.

I forget the specific circumstances which brought me to the situation, but something had caused me to arrive at a building which looked somewhat like Kazuma's orphanage from the video game Yakuza 3. There were a few differences, though. For some reason, inside the wooden building there was a large room with windows all around its walls, except for one completely wooden wall, which had a toilet on it.

I had arrived at the building to see someone I knew — I think they were a teacher, but I don't recall seeing their face clearly. Their class were with them, but ignored me until I stepped into the bizarre "toilet room" and started having a piss, at which point some kid pointed out the fact that I was clearly having a piss, and that everyone should watch closely. Naturally, once I had started, I couldn't stop — you know how it is when you really need a piss and you release that valve — but I was also very conscious of everyone standing around outside this room, with me on display.

Somehow, I managed to find a way of standing where I knew that no-one would be able to see my knob or the seemingly never-ending stream of piss erupting from me, but the crowd began to become more rowdy. At first it was shouting and laughing, but then it changed to singing — a few scattered voices at first, which eventually became as one, singing a driving, dramatic song that inexplicably developed an orchestral backing after a while despite the fact there was clearly not an orchestra present — at least not one which I could see. As the music built in intensity, volume and tempo, I became aware that I was losing control of my, uh, "flow" and it was going everywhere, and that everyone could see this.

Suddenly the music stopped, and I was done. I flushed, and went to wash my hands at the sink that I'm sure wasn't there beforehand. The sink was full of paint and the draining board next to it looked rusty and dirty, but clean water came out of the taps, at least. I washed up and left the room, trying to get far away from my "audience", who thankfully didn't follow me. I'm not sure how long I ran or to where, but eventually I found myself in a room with Emma Watson, who grabbed me and kissed me rather forcefully.

And then I woke up, disappointingly. Well thank you, subconscious, for keeping me asleep during the bizarre, slightly traumatic part and waking me up just as things were getting interesting.

1121: Dreamscape

I had a "game dream" last night. As any longtime gamer will tell you, these happen with increasing frequency the more you like or have spent time playing a particular game, are often extremely vivid and are usually quite memorable, too.

In my case — and disappointingly for this blog post, which is about to get a whole lot of padding — I can't remember the specific details about said dream. What I can remember, however, is the peculiar combination of games that formed the basis of said dream. First up were Ar Tonelico, which is my new RPG jam having finished Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2; and Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 itself — hey, I really, really liked it, okay? These two aren't especially weird to put together, since Ar Tonelico's developer Gust also contributed to Hyperdimension Neptunia and was even personified in the game as the character called, err, Gust.

Combining with Ar Tonelico and Hyperdimension Neptunia was the visual novel Kira Kira, which I was reading shortly before I went to sleep last night, so it's perhaps unsurprising it put in an appearance. Kira Kira doesn't really fit with the other two, though — it may also be Japanese, but it's 1) not an RPG 2) not in a fantasy setting and 3) not quite as "crazy" as the other two.

This isn't as bizarre an inclusion as the presence of CD Projekt Red's dark fantasy opus The Witcher, however, which also put in an appearance courtesy of its white-haired protagonist Geralt, who looked very much out of place alongside the colourful characters from the other games.

As I say, I can't remember what actually happened in the dream, so this story is mostly a waste of time, but I thought it was an interesting combination of things that my subconscious chose to put together — particularly since I haven't played The Witcher for quite some time.

Game dreams don't always blend together experiences like this. Sometimes they're a focused experience based on a single game. Puzzle games used to be particularly bad for this — I remember shortly after getting my very own Lynx (Atari's ill-fated 16-bit handheld which was absolutely enormous) and playing a whole bunch of Klax that I had a number of Klax-related dreams, which mostly centred their attention on my mental image of the female voice that whispered such sweet nothings as "Klax Wave!" and "Yeah!" and "Oooh!" while you were playing. (I think it was the latter that made me go weak at the knees. It was quite a sexy "Oooh!". I have tried to find it on YouTube but instead found nothing but Flight Simulator videos. Apparently "KLAX" is the abbreviation for Los Angeles International Airport. What was I talking about again?)

Um, anyway… Yeah.

Dreams are a strange thing. I am fairly convinced that you can influence your own dreams strongly by what you're doing immediately before you go to sleep (wash your mind out, pervert) but it seems that the most vivid dreams tend to show themselves when you're not specifically trying to think really hard about something, and instead have a mind full of things that have stimulated it. In my case last night, the rather wordy prose of Kira Kira obviously kept my mind active as I drifted off to sleep, and then other influences that I felt strongly about drifted in there, too.

That still doesn't really explain the presence of The Witcher, but eh, I'm tired, so I'm off to read a bit of Kira Kira and then go to sleep for hopefully some more subconscious happy fun times. See you on the other side.

1056: More Things I Thought Were True, But Aren't

[I have written twelve articles of between 500 and 1,000 words each today so I am too tired to do a comic strip. They'll be back tomorrow.]

A long while back, while I was in my faintly delirious "holy shit my life has just fallen apart, I need to distract myself in any way possible" phase, I composed a series of fever-dream blog posts that I have a feeling might have actually been relatively amusing. (Or at least I found them amusing. Your mileage may, as always, vary.) One of these posts was Things I Thought Were True, But Aren't, in which I explored a selection of things that I had ingrained into my brain for various reasons — either I'd overheard my family or friends say them and gullibly believed them, or I'd simply never seen anything to prove my opinion wrong.

So, in the spirit of that original post from way back when, here are some more Things I Thought Were True, But Aren't.

1. Taking a drink into the bathroom is forbidden.

You just can't do it. You shouldn't do it. I never questioned why this was — I believe the somewhat vague explanation of it being "unhygienic" may have been bandied around at some point — but over time I just sort of gradually grew to make up reasons why people didn't take drinks into the bathroom, unless they were attending a house party, in which case everyone must take their drinks into the bathroom.

My favourite explanation of why you shouldn't take drinks into the bathroom is because of all the "poo particles" floating around in the air as a result of whoever last had a dump or did a really big fart. If you take a drink — particularly a hot one — into the bathroom, then all the poo particles are naturally attracted to the drink and infect it with poo. So when you start drinking your drink that you took into the bathroom, you'll then be drinking poo. And no-one wants to drink poo. So don't do it.

2. You can make yourself dream about a thing by thinking about it really hard before you go to sleep.

I'm actually in two minds as to whether or not this one is actually true. Because certainly when you do something intense (get those thoughts out of your mind, hentai) before going to sleep, you'll often dream about it. See: playing too much Tetris/Klax/Dr. Mario before bed and consequent surreal dreams. (My favourite was the one where I met the lady who said "Klax Wave!" before every level and "Ooh!" every time you got a 4-tile Klax in Klax on the Atari Lynx, and she was like totally fit and into me and we… wait, what was I talking about again?)

For a long time, though, I was utterly convinced that lying there with your eyes shut trying to picture something really vividly would influence your dreams. Of course, it doesn't; your brain occupies itself too much with trying to picture something really vividly rather than actually attempting to shut off and get to sleep, making the whole exercise a fruitless endeavour. I've also found that as I've got older, my concentration span for lying awake trying to think of things has lessened considerably than it was when I was a teenager. This is perhaps a side-effect of the build-up of depression and anxiety over the years.

3. The first time you see something is the first time it ever happened/existed.

I genuinely believed this as a kid. The first time I got a copy of Fast Forward magazine, I thought it was the first issue. The first time I saw things on television, I thought it was the first time they'd been broadcast. Kind of silly, now that I think back on it.

This attitude did sort of perpetuate itself even after I left home, though. When a friend referred to baseball cap and tracksuit-wearing white trash as "chavs", it was the first time I'd heard that word and I thus assumed that it had originated in our social group. Of course, it transpires that the word "chav" is very much in common usage to mean exactly what we thought it meant. It must have spread around the country somehow. I wonder where it originated? I'm pretty sure it didn't originate from my friend Cat on the No. 11 bus heading to Safeway in Portswood, Southampton.

4. If you fart when you're not ready, you'll shit yourself.

I have no doubt that in certain circumstances, this may be true, but for the most part, the act of farting and the act of shitting are two distinct motions — unless, of course, you're attempting to force out the fart, which carries a significant risk of following through. Let it come naturally and you'll be safe. Probably. Right? OH GOD NOW I NEVER WANT TO FART AGAIN.

5. If you sleep on your back, you'll…

To date, I'm not entirely sure if this actually happened or if I dreamed it at some point, but I am absolutely convinced that for a sex education class at secondary school, all the boys were taken to the library while all the girls went off to talk about periods, and we watched a video of a 1950s-style very British man explaining how if you slept on your back, you'd probably spunk your pants in your sleep. He obviously didn't use that exact terminology — I forget the exact words he used, probably "nocturnal emissions" or something — but I vividly remember it. At the same time, though, I also have the strongest feeling that I might have made it up. Because it just doesn't seem very likely.

That said, I used to have a recurring dream where I was going to have sex with someone on the London Underground, but couldn't go through with it because I didn't have the sheet music for it, so… wait a minute, that doesn't really help at all.

I'm off to bed now. To sleep on my side. I have a hellish week coming up. See you on the other side, and apologies in advance for any day's entries that are just "AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH".

1008: Three Wishes

My mind regularly wanders, particularly when I'm trying to get to sleep, and often delves into the territory of rather predictable fantasies. No, not that kind of fantasy — well, not all the time, anyway — but rather the sort of fantasies that tend to provoke conversations in the pub or at the end of a house party. Things like "what superpowers would you like to have?" or "what would you do if you had three wishes?"

I've always found the idea of three wishes a fascinating one, ever since I first heard various genie-toting tales from the Arabian Nights and the subsequent primary school "I wish I had three more wishes" jokes. I've never quite managed to come up with a definitive answer as to what my three would be. The closest I've come is determining that I'd probably have two "practical" ones, one of which is usually ensuring that my body is in perfect physical condition — because, well, if you have the opportunity, you might as well ensure you're in full working order, right? (And also I'm fed up with having an itchy scalp. TMI? Fuck off.) The second practical one is often ensuring I'm in a situation where I don't have to worry about money. (This fantasy came up considerably more frequently while I was out of work, as you might expect.)

It's the third wish I often spend a long time pondering, though. I figure once I've done the vaguely responsible thing and wished for things that ensure my affairs are in order, I can cut loose with the third one. (Of course, I could also set the genie free with my third wish, but where's the fun in that?)

Several recurring possibilities usually enter my mind for this third wish. They probably say something about me. Please do not read too much into them. (Or do. I don't care. You can do what you want.)

My first possible third wish (you're following, right?) is the ability to "do magic". Perhaps as a side-effect of my love of role-playing games, every time I imagine requesting this wish I picture the genie bringing up what essentially amounts to a character creation interface and inviting me to pick my spells. The magic I end up choosing usually ends up being of the elemental variety. Thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure why I pick this, because if there's one thing that probably isn't that useful in everyday modern society, it's elemental magic. Whatever role-playing games might tell us, there are not monsters wandering around outside every town, problems cannot always be solved by setting fire to people who disagree with you and broken machinery cannot be repaired simply by calling down a thunderbolt on it. (In fact, some might say that usually has the opposite effect to repairing it.)

My second possible third wish is that my car would become a VTOL flying vehicle powered by anti-gravity technology which is physically impossible — so far as we know, anyway. Or it might be magic, given that said car doesn't usually require any fuel. This is a fairly self-explanatory wish usually provoked by the fact I've been stuck in a traffic jam at some point during the day and inevitably found myself picturing what it might be like if my car could just rise up off the ground and fly over all the frustrated motorists beneath me. It would be awesome. Don't say it wouldn't be, because you would be wrong.

My third possible third wish is the ability to switch bodies with someone — usually a person of the opposite sex who has absolutely nothing to do with my normal life and who possibly exists outside of normal space and time. This is pure curiosity, and come on, who hasn't wondered about how "the other side" lives? Different times I've had this particular fantasy have varied slightly — sometimes the other person simply ceases to exist when my consciousness isn't present in her; other times she goes about her normal life and simply switches places with me willingly; sometimes she's an empty vessel (like a robot body) built to hold my consciousness; other times, she is me in a parallel dimension and I am actually both people, I'm simply only aware of one at a time; other times still, the change comes without warning at unexpected moments. (The latter situation, I've recently discovered, is the plot hook of the anime Kokoro Connect, so naturally I've immediately started watching it.) My motivation for this wish is simply to see what it would be like living another life that is completely different to my own — opposite in almost every respect.

A variation on that third possible wish is to gain the ability to shapeshift. When I picture this wish, my imagination usually puts some surprisingly conservative limitations on my power. I can usually only shapeshift for a limited amount of time, meaning that I can't just stick in another form — I'll just change back to my real self after a set period of time has elapsed. I'm usually only limited to changing into other human forms, as well — no turning into, say, a xylophone or a fridge for me. It's enough to have a similar experience to the "body-swapping" wish, though — I get to try out what it's like to be someone completely different for a little while.

Obviously, I know all of these will never come true so it's a completely moot point. But I wonder, if the opportunity did arise, which one I'd actually choose when the time came?

#oneaday Day 976: An Open Letter to the Robot Lady Who Lives in the Sainsbury's Self-Checkout Machines

Dear Robot Lady who lives in the Sainsbury's self-checkout machines,

I'm sorry to write to you out of the blue — and so publicly, too — but no longer can I go on with my life and our relationship without saying something.

It's not you, it's me. No, wait, it is you.

I know you're just doing your job. I know you're just reading the things that the nice people who pay your wages — do robots get wages? — tell you to read, but seriously. I know how to use you by now. I know that I jiggle the things I want to buy over your scanny bit until you go "bip!" and then I put them in a bag, and then I repeat the process until I want to pay. Then I put my card in and type in my number and we're all done. Then I go home and cook and/or eat the things I've paid you for.

This is all fine. You should know by now that I'm fine with this, as indeed are most of the people who avail themselves of your services.

So why are you so needy?

"Unexpected item in bagging area," you say as I put the item I've just told you to expect in said bagging area. "Checking item weight," you'll retort as I put an item that isn't sold by weight into the bagging area. "Approval needed," you'll helpfully inform me as I put an age-restricted product into the bagging area.

Why must you do this to me? I came to you because of your promises of efficiency; of not having to wait behind the old grandma who has bought fifteen thousand tins of dog food and a microwaveable corned beef hash; of not having to make small talk with a cashier who has to have a piece of paper taped to their console saying "SAY HELLO, THANK FOR WAITING, ASK HOW THEY ARE" in order to remember how to have a genuine interaction with another human being. I came to you because I thought you could help me and that you could ensure the whole miserable process of shopping in a supermarket is dealt with as quickly as possible. But you taunt me, you wound me by forcing me to stand around waiting for someone in a Sainsbury's fleece to notice the big flashing red light above my head — that light that seems to imply ha! this person fucked something up! HELP!

Your lack of faith in me is disturbing. Why can't you trust me? What have I ever done to you? I push all your buttons with loving care and attention and still you can't trust me. I've bought everything from a big slab of meat to a basket full of blind-bag My Little Pony figures from you, so you know I trust you. At least I did. Now I'm not so sure. Now all I want to do as soon as I see you is press your volume button until your voice goes quiet. Still you mock me from your screen, but at least I don't have to hear your voice any more. At least I don't have to deal with you talking at me just slightly too slowly and calmly to be comfortable. At least I don't have to put up with you telling me to do things I'm already doing. Your friends over at Tesco and Asda don't patronise me anywhere near as much. So why must you mock me, you damnable machine? Why?

We could have had something. Something special. But no. I'm sorry. This is it. No more.

Oh, what am I saying? I know I'll be back. I always am. I need you. I don't want to admit it, but I do. Together forever, enraptured in a relationship of mutual disdain, our lives pressing ever onward until our inevitable demise. I might buy some sushi from you tomorrow, or possibly a muffin. It doesn't really matter. Nothing really matters. Nothing except your cold, heartless slavery to the capitalist machine, and my ever-present need to buy food from you and then eat it.

Regards,

Pete