Grool The Demon

Yeah it is a pretty neat idea. Not sure how I’d feel reliving the dream that deeply to make a longer story though. I got goosebumps just writing the post.

It was around the time that game L.A. Noir first came out. I ended up getting really sick with the flu and I was having these really vivid dreams where I was a detective investigating gruesome crime scenes and questioning suspects.

Anyways, my girlfriend at the time worked a lot of odd hours and she had a late shift on one of the days I was sick. So I crawled in bed around 6 or 7 pm hoping I’d get to see her and be feeling a bit better when she got home at 11. I’m exhausted so I immediately fall asleep.

So, I end up having another detective dream where I’m going over this murder scene where this lady was butchered in her kitchen. It’s even in black and white. I’m gathering evidence, questioning the neighbors and other passers by and talking with my partner who reminded me of Robert Stack from Unsolved Mysteries.

While all this is going on I start hearing someone calling my name. Real light and slow like it’s far away. At this point I feel like I’m obsessed with the case and really closing in on a suspect. My partner and I stop to take a smoke break and go over some ideas when I hear my name called again only louder. At this point it’s been escalating louder, closer, and clearer for what seemed like an hour.

I look at my partner and he’s reacting as if he heard it. So I ask him if the stress of the case was cracking me up or if he’d heard someone calling my name too. He just kinda wryly smiles as he looks down stamping out his cigarette under his polished black leather shoe and then just sort of chuckles to himself. He says, “Yeah… I heard it… I guess we’ll have to finish the case some other time.”

I start to argue with him asking him what he means. We can’t stop now… we’re getting too close to an answer! That’s when he finally lifts his head, sort of tips his brimmed hat back, and looks me dead in the eye as he puts his hand on my shoulder. We stand there in silence for a second when we hear someone call my name again only louder and closer this time. That’s when he squeezed my shoulder and calmly yet sternly tells me “None of this matters, none of this is real… It’s time for you to wake up now.”

I instantly shot up wide awake. It felt like I was pulled back into reality, like a rope literally tanked me upright in bed. Now, I’m sitting there just heavily breathing and sweating bullets when my girlfriend walked in and asked me how I was feeling and that she’d been trying to wake me up for like 5 minutes because she’s gotten some soup and crackers ready for me to try and eat.

The whole experience was just so odd I couldn’t shake it for like a week. She’d been the one calling me but that 5 minutes in dream time felt so much longer. Also, it felt surreal how my partner seemed to have real agency and how it all felt so real.

In the end, I never ended up having another detective dream or finishing the case. It’s like the facade of the dream world was shattered in that moment and my partner was kind of saying goodbye. I don’t know why I dreamed of a good man, friend , and partner like Stanford McCallister but I still wish I could thank him for waking me up.

I kind of agree… I hated it at first but it grew on me.

In the US it’s probably because literacy and reading comprehension is the lowest it’s been since the 80s.

My wife and I are in very similar circumstances. We do try but I will admit it’s become so easy to be a homebody. We’ve had some health scares this past few years and been focusing on that. We’ve finally been getting out more again and trying to branch out and make good friendships. I’ll definitely take some of your suggestions.

Right? I dwell and think heavily about the meaning of things, the reasons for injustices, philosophical flaws, historical events, the paths that got us to today, and general answers to things. I love deep dive conversations about just about anything from movies, to history, science and tech tech, or just general catching up. I’m up for anything and yearn to share or learn something new. Yet, I can’t count on my fingers and toes how often I get called “heavy” then shortly thereafter hear some major bias or hangup that effectively stops the conversation because that friend’s comfort or energy has waned. I assume my comfort level is just higher than average. Odd, considering I’m pretty introverted but can really open up once I’ve gotten to know you. I’ve been to therapy, faced a lot of adversity and abuse in life, and I’ve been to the brink more than once… Maybe fewer people have faced that or are willing to share than I thought. I sometimes think it is me but anymore I wonder if maybe it’s the culture. The US definitely has a friendship pandemic and the reasons for that weigh heavily on me. Culture in the US has become so isolated and xenophobic. What are we to do when everyone is becoming lone wolves that refuse to be apart of a community or something real?

Edited for context and sentence structure.

Anyone else feel like they’re great at making friends but then something gets in the way to just end it? Moral compasses, politics, work culture, religion, race, taboos, talking points, intellect, gender… Like all that has become so weaponized that it ruins conversations and friendships now. I feel like I’m too open and honest and willing to build love and trust that it puts people off.

The fact that everything is controlled through “The Cloud” and some godforsaken subscription service is so terribly sad, funny, and horrifying at the same time. We’ve literally found every conceivable way to gather and sell people’s data while simultaneously milking them out of every last cent with the whole FOMO mentality driven through every piece of hardware and software now sold. It is just absolutely fucking preposterous. We’re living in a virtual hellscape that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

The Brotherhood of Stone has been at this for centuries making people believe in rocks. Its the most despicable, heinous, ludicrous conspiracy that has its claws reaching into everything, literally everything. I’ve been researching it for decades and I still haven’t found just how far the rabbit hole goes.

Obviously sleeper agents to spread the infernal unnatural words of the geologist conspiracy. Rock Hudson! Just look how long they’ve been keeping the blinders on all of us.

Rocks aren’t real people!!! Wake the fuck up and follow your instincts! It’s all a conspiracy conjured up by big GEOLOGY!

I am American. The answer is both a Yes and a No. It doesn’t have so much to do with stupidity, but that our education system has been slowly dismantled since the 90’s. Rather than teaching civics, critical thinking, and basic knowledge about government, economics and their inner workings we’ve setup a system that favors test scores and nothing else. Has that made people more stupid? Possibly, but I think it has more to do with only learning the answers rather than how to get there. There’s just this huge in-between of information that a lot of people don’t seem to be able to work out on their own without having a lot of hints of what the outcome will be. It saddens me to see people’s gears just come to a grinding halt trying to work out simple solutions on things.

I think the biggest bane in America is our work culture. We’ve setup a dog eat dog system of trying to strive for the most success at any cost. Work culture in America is fickle, back stabby, and rife with favoritism over quality of work. The biggest lie we were ever told was that we could be the next Bill Gates, or Elon Musk, or some other rich billionaire mogul. The biggest lie we were ever told was to invest in the stock market and have a 401k. The biggest lie we were ever told is that if we worked our asses off that we’d automatically be successful. America is just a grindhouse that treats the working class like shit and unless you decide to be a bridge burning greedy fucking asshole you’ll never really get anywhere with any real upward mobility.

Lastly, I will say that America and American’s themselves has become more and more isolationist in the last couple of decades. Maybe it is social media and the echo chambers they cause. Maybe it is the fake friendships and feeling like you are just collecting trading cards instead of making real insightful and meaningful relationships. Maybe it is the dog eat dog work culture or the keeping up with the Jones’s mentality of things like Instagram and Facebook. Maybe it is a bit of everything. The fact remains that there is a huge friendship pandemic in this country and it only gets worse and worse as many of us further isolate ourselves from reality, critical thinking, and the prospect of being really challenged by the people we could be surrounding ourselves with.

All of this has culminated in a culture that is becoming more work and money focused, less people and social relationship focused, and by and large more shallow and less well rounded and interesting overall. No generation is immune from it either. Whether you are young or old you can fall victim to all I’ve outlined above. Most people have let the technology and systems in place take away their freedom of thought and originality to instead become a husk of the human potential they once were or could be again because it is easier to fall prey to hive mind apathy and cynicism than to fight for your own uniqueness and truer sense of self.

Sir this is a Wendy’s…