A most peculiar dream
What's even odder is that all parts of the dream flowed together and were more or less internally consistent, unlike most weird dreams which only make sense because they're dreams, and fall apart when you wake up. Unfortunately, I forget some of the parts that made it make sense.

I was in Philadelphia, doing something FreeCulture.org-related. Roblimo was taking over hosting duties for FC.o, as well as for the new Heavy Metal Hall of Fame. There was a good deal of thought dedicated to founding halls of fame for genres of music and how they are funded. Then I called the hall of fame and hung up after someone answered. (The person who answered didn't originally have a British accent, but my dream amended this ex post facto.) After I hung up, the person called me back, and said, "Newberry, eh?," although I never knew this, because I never answered the phone. At the time, I thought it was odd that he called back, and that he knew where I was from, albeit incorrectly (Newberry is near Gainesville). (In retrospect, this made less sense, because I am not from Gainesville, either, and in fact my phone is from neither Gainesville's nor Newberry's area code.)

So then something happened, which made sense but I no longer remember, and I was in a parking lot. There were two cars of interest, but I only remember one. In this car, Jeanna Mastrodicasa was about to drive Cory Doctorow to the airport. They both treated me with that I've-met-you-once-but-don't-really-remember-you etiquette, which is to say cursorily, which disappointed me. I tried to explain something about how I either worked for FreeCulture.org or for the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame, but they didn't care. (OK, so that part isn't internally consistent, either.)

Uh, so then I went to go vote, because apparently now I lived in Philadelphia. So I went to the precinct, (driving - insert scenes of urban Protestant churches), which used paper ballots. The mayor, a woman who looked a bit like Pam Carpenter, approached me and asked what I thought about that fact (the paper ballots, not Pam Carpenter). This was a bit surprising to me, but not totally. I hadn't been expecting to be asked that question, but apparently the mayor had recognized me as a person with an opinion about it, and decided to ask me on the spot. I told her that I thought comparing the running of that day's elections to the previous e-voting elections in the city would be the only fair comparison. Originally, when I arrived at the precinct there were few other voters, but as I spoke with the mayor (who wasn't distracted by anything in particular, but didn't seem to be paying attention) and added all these qualifications to my original statement, more and more voters arrived, and I became aware that the changes I was recommending were more expensive and time-consuming than e-voting (as if these changes were singlehandedly causing the queue of voters to grow longer). I realized that, at some point, e-voting will always be faster or less expensive than paper ballots, and thus I would need to justify paper ballots not only as better or equivalent on those grounds, but also better on some security grounds. At this point I woke up, and marveled at how odd that dream was.

In retrospect, I think everyone in the dream whom I tried to speak with may have acted as if they had ADD because my brain had a very short attention span, as my body was busy breaking down alcohol and being uncomfortably warm because my fan was off. If so, however, it's only more remarkable how coherent the dream was overall.