Gods I haven’t been so sick since I was a kid. I had the flu yesterday… a gift from my infant nephew. Everyone in the house was sick, except my mother, which is odd because she’s usually the first one to come down with something and I don’t usually get sick at all. I was so sick that I even dreamed I was sick. I forgot every other detail of the dream but for that detail while I wavered in and out of consciousness. I weighed myself today and I lost five pounds. That’s one, rather unpleasant and extreme, way to diet.

Last night I dreamed of superheroes. Whenever there was trouble, the main superhero would take a female superhero and a powerless superhero and go off to do battle. Inevitably he would end up marrying the female superhero and the powerless superhero would tragically die at the hands of whatever villain they were fighting.

Apparently, the powerless superhero decided enough was enough and faked his “tragic death” so that he could retire without the group dragging him back in and eventually getting him killed. So he took to wondering and eventually passed by a poorly kept Gothic mansion. There were tarps up over some of the turrets and the lawn was mostly dry yellowed sod, mud, and gravel.

He walked around the building, considering whether he might be able to find a room. As he reached the front of the building, he found a “for sale” sign in the window. When he went inside however, he found that the building was under renovation from a student group. He was told that if he paid for the students to complete the renovations and decorating as part of their project, the house would be his.

***

There are a few myths about dreaming that I’ve always thought were interesting. One is that most people dream in black & white, or only occassionally in color. I’ve always dreamed in color. I don’t ever recall having dreamed in black and white.

The other myth is that you know that you’re dreaming if you try to read something and can’t. I’ve never had that problem either. In some dreams I’ve read things without comprehending the actual words… I just knew what the content was by looking at it. In others, I’ve been able to see exactly what was printed. However, the simpler the message, the easier it is to comprehend. And I wonder, in the case of the dream above whether I read the “For Sale” sign or comprehended it as a symbol of sale. That may be the key to written word comprehension in the dream state. The fact that I comprehend words (not just the sale sign) as symbols (in the waking world) may be why I am mostly able to read in dreams.

I dreamed my sister went away and asked me to watch her home, but everytime I tried to go out, someone would be there wanting to come in and mess with her things or have a party. I told them all to go away, but sometimes I’d go to the store and find the house filled with gay muppets when I got back (and I don’t mean they were happy lol). Often I’d open the door and her landlord would be standing there… really, really tall and fat. He wanted to come in and have a party, but I told him no, repeatedly. Finally I got fed up. I wanted to see a movie, even though my mom said it was crappy. So I sneaked out and saw my movie, and when I came back, the house was full of the landlords friends and they were watching a Dragonball Z Marathon.

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This from the Grist…

The Rocky Horror Flats Picture Show

He once led a raid on the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant in Colorado, now Former FBI agent Jon Lipsky is leading the charge to keep people away from the site. The area is being turned into a national wildlife refuge open to hiking and school field trips, but he claims the government clean-up effort has been a farce from the beginning and the area is far more contaminated than it has been made known. Though the Department of Energy dismisses his charges as bunk, he and others are proceeding with a lawsuit that seeks to unseal documents related to the pollution and public health dangers at Rocky Flats.

I am left to wonder whether this is another experiment at public expense of the effects of radiation… like the experiments they did in the fifties, injecting plutonium into convicts to see what would happen.

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Well it’s snowing here. It only remains to be seen whether we get the “blizzard of 2005″ that they’ve been whining about for half the week. Last I heard we were supposed to get almost two feet. Oh the horror! heh People are so spoiled. If the weather scares you, don’t go out. Man, I hate driving in this weather. Not because I mind the driving, but because I hate being stuck behind someone who doesn’t know how to drive. It’s not that difficult a concept. If I didn’t have to work, I wouldn’t be going out in it. The best way to stay safe is to not tempt fate. And if some idiot didn’t decided they needed to go to the bookstore to spend the day during a storm, I wouldn’t have to drive to work, risking life and limb so that same idiot could sit all day in the cafe with a coffee and a book which they won’t buy cause they think we’re some kind of library. The amount of money they spend doesn’t even pay my wage. People are stupid.

Since my dreams were once again interrupted by my inconsiderate family (and nextdoor neighbor childred home from school because of the snow), I guess I’ll take this opportunity to post some “public service announcements” on this, the inaugural date of our faux president.

Actor, director and conservationist Robert Redford has been a member of NRDC’s board for 30 years. Recently, he sent out the message below urging Americans to protest President Bush’s plan to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to massive oil development.

Redford urges Americans to call on their senators and representative to vote against any bill that would plunder the Arctic Refuge for oil company profits, and instead to support tougher fuel economy standards and other measures that would reduce our country’s dangerous reliance on Persian Gulf oil. He also asks BioGems Defenders to help mobilize millions of Americans by forwarding his message to friends, family members and colleagues.

If you’ve already received Robert Redford’s message and forwarded it on, thank you. If not, you can send it to your friends by filling in the information below. Then, if you haven’t already sent a message to your representatives in Congress, please do so today (follow the link to the action page after you forward the letter).

Dear Friend, No one voted on Election Day to destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But President Bush is now claiming a mandate to do exactly that. Congressional leaders are pushing for a quick vote that would turn America’s greatest sanctuary for Arctic wildlife into a vast, polluted oil field. Even worse, they are planning to avoid public debate on this devastating measure by hiding it in a must-pass budget bill. Please go to SaveBiogems.org right now and send a message telling your U.S. senators and representative to reject this sneak attack on the Arctic Refuge. And please forward my message to your friends, family and colleagues. We must mobilize millions of Americans in opposition as quickly as possible. Don’t believe for a second that the president is targeting the Arctic Refuge for the sake of America’s energy security or to lower gas prices at the pump. President Bush knows full well that oil drilled in the Arctic Refuge would take ten years to get to market and would never equal more than a paltry one or two percent of our nation’s daily consumption. Simply put, sacrificing the crown jewel of our wildlife heritage would do nothing to reduce gas prices or break our addiction to Persian Gulf oil. But if the raid on the Arctic Refuge isn’t really about gas prices or energy security, then what is it about? It’s the symbolism. The Arctic Refuge represents everything spectacular and everything endangered about America’s natural heritage. It embodies a million years of ecological serenity . . . a vast stretch of pristine wilderness . . . an irreplaceable birthing ground for polar bears, caribou and white wolves. It is the greatest living reminder that conserving nature in its wild state is a core American value. It stands for every remnant of wilderness that we, as a people, have wisely chosen to protect from the relentless march of bulldozers, chain saws and oil rigs. And that’s why the Bush administration is dead set on destroying it. By unlocking the Arctic Refuge, they hope to open the door for oil, gas and coal giants to invade our last and best wild places: our western canyonlands, our ancient forests, our coastal waters, even our national monuments. This is the real agenda behind the raid on the Arctic Refuge and the entire Bush-Cheney energy plan: to transfer our public estate into corporate hands so it can be liquidated for a quick buck. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) admitted as much when he said this battle over the Arctic Refuge is really a fight over whether energy exploration will be allowed in similarly sensitive areas in the future. “It’s about precedent,” Rep. DeLay said. I take him at his word. If we let the president and Congress plunder the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the sake of oil company profits, then no piece of our natural heritage will be safe from wholesale destruction. Please go to SaveBiogems.org and tell your senators and representative they have no mandate to destroy the Arctic Refuge. Then please be sure to forward this message to as many people as you can. And thank you for speaking out at this critical time. Sincerely, Robert Redford Board of Trustees Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) . . . BioGems: Saving Endangered Wild Places A project of the Natural Resources Defense Council www.savebiogems.org

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Bush isn’t the only perpetrator of harm against the environment, though he does make it easier for others to follow suit by his example. And what many people fail to take into account is that what harms our environment will sooner or later harm us.

Even when ecological damage is not intended, human disruption of the envirnment can have unforseen affects. Take the former Lake Owens in Southern California for instance. At its peak, it was a 200-square-mile perennial lake. It is now an extreme example to the world of the destabilizing effect of surface-water extraction in desert regions. Have you ever heard of it? I hadn’t. Owens River was diverted in 1913 to the city of Los Angeles, and by the mid-1920s Owens Lake was dry. The dry lake bed is the single largest source of particulate-matter pollution in the United States. The dust contains carcinogens such as nickel, cadmium, and arsenic, as well as sodium, chlorine, iron, calcium, potassium, sulfur, aluminum, and magnesium. During windstorms, the toxic dust has been tracked by satellite some 155 miles to the south into the Los Angeles area. Air pollution around the dry lake bed has reached 25 times the level acceptable under national clean-air standards.

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Beyond our impact on the environment, even when a company tries to make a product that has as little impact on the environment as possible, a few years later, they turn around and undo their good work. In 1999, Ford created an experimental electric Ranger to test new battery and vehicle technologies. Now that hybrids are all the rage, they’re trying to recall all this electric trucks in favor of a new hybrid. To quote one enthusiat: “Hybrids are better than nothing, but they’re a Band-Aid for the real problem: Detroit’s oil dependence.” Ford blames it on Government regulations… saying the government waver that allowed the pilot program has expired and they must pull all electric vehicles from the road.

The real issue seems to be that electric cars cause $0 in operating costs and 0 in environmental pollution while hybrids require $$ for gasoline and cause less pollution than a regular car, but obviously quite a lot more than an electric car.

:: cough cough :: kickbacks :: cough cough ::

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Just so you don’t think I’m picking entirely on America here… Apparently Tony Blair’s been sneaky lately. Not surprising considering how he and Bush have become such good buddies over the past four years. Apparently it’s come to  light that he secretly tried to dismiss key global warming targets. This in the face of his use of global warming as a central point of his presidency.

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And this is just shocking… L’Oreal and Revlon have agreed to eliminate chemicals suspected of causing cancer, birth defects and infertility from their products, including a common plasticizer in nail polish? Wow. I knew there was a reason I didn’t wear makeup aside from my sensative skin. Apparently my body was telling me something. Under pressure from various groups, Revlon Inc. and L’Oreal USA promised to adopt a new European Union anti- toxics rule. The European Parliament and the European Council jointly passed the rule in September, banning hundreds of known or probable carcinogens, mutagens or reproductive toxicants from perfume, makeup, hair dye and other cosmetics. Scientists are assessing additional chemicals for possible inclusion on the list, such as formaldehyde and aromatic amines from coal tar, which are used in some brown and black hair dyes. Geee, formaldehyde and coal tar…yah think?

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At any rate, most, though not all of these articles were found at the Grist, and if you have not heard of it, I suggest you acquaint yourself with it. It is one of the best environmental magazines online.

Monday night I got woken up too often by my noisy family to get any dreaming in, but last night I dreamt I was in a colony spaceship. Everyone got really sick, and just about everyone died from some kind of flu. There were so few of us left, we had to find a world to set down on fast because we could barely fly the ship. We were fortunate to find a world that already seemed settled, but we couldn’t raise anyone on the communicator.

We set down and investigated the only building present. It was all sealed up, the further we got inside, the harder it was to get the doors open. The first time we came across any people, they freaked out, demanded to know who we were and where we’d come from and ran away. Then some armed people started picking us off.

Finally there was just me left. I was in a corridor when this blackish oozy thing slipped around a corner and threw itself on me. I felt all burning, tingly for a second, then it let go and scurried off like it had tasted something bad. At that point, my “best friend,” who I had not seen in years and everyone had assumed was lost in space, showed up.

She’d seen the whole attack and was completely baffled about how I’d survived. It seemed the amoeba-like entity had been preying upon the settlers since they’d first got there and they’d barred their doors one section at a time, hoping to keep it out. So when we’d arrived and started opening doors, the thing had followed us in.

At this point, the people who had killed all my fellow shipmates caught up with me. They were about to kill me when my friend stepped between us and told them they couldn’t kill me because the entity hadn’t been able to eat me.

After studying me and hearing my story, they surmized that the flu that had killed most of the crew had made the survivors taste bad to the entity. So they managed to make a vaccine from my blood to make everyone safe from the creature.

However, since they’d closed themselves up in their complex, they’d gotten very fuedal and insular. So because I saved them, they decided I was going to marry their prince, but I was still an outsider and they wanted to make a fool of me. The prince’s mother dragged out this antique wedding dress. It was all these layers of clothes and I had to put them all on in addition to the dress itself. There were three different kinds of underwear! And these awful hose that pinched my thighs. I was at a complete loss until my friend came to see me and helped me with everything. She was really angry too, since I’d basically saved everyone’s life after they’d killed off all my crewmates and tried to kill me.

I dreamed I was at a spooky old mansion where a party was planned. During the course of the party, many people dissappeared until there was just a handful left. It turned out that they didn’t have permission for the party, and that the building actually had a very bad reputation. Of course, only a few people knew this prior to the party.

Like any situation where something mysterious is going on, the remaining partiers decided to pair up and investigate. So these girls were down in the basement when they found a secret passage. There was a trap door in the floor, then a layer of cardboard, and then a layer of wooden slats. Beneath all that was a secret passage that was little more than a crawlspace.

Suddenly the one girl screamed at the other to cover the space back up. The other girl leaned over the hole and said she could see a light. It was getting closer. The first girl started freaking out. She said there was a ghost baby that wanted to be born and that’s why people were disappearing because it hadn’t found it’s mother yet and it was killing everyone else. Outside of what the two girls were experiencing, I could see a baby carriage slowly moving along the passage. So the first girl ran off down a upward sloping corridor, and the second girl threw the layers back over the hole and ran after her.

Meanwhile, some of the people who had died in the house were in Hell in a cooking class, learning how to make waffles from people. All these people were lying on slabs, and the people in the class followed their teacher from slab to slab as she showed them how fold something that resembled a George Foreman grill over a portion of the person lying on the slab and turn it into a meat waffle. The people on the slabs were awake (because I saw one blink), but they didn’t seem to suffer from the procedure.

Back in the house, the second girl came across a payphone in the passage. She picked up the receiver and immediately a window opened in the wall revealing the hellish waffle class. They tried to catch her, but the first girl came running back. She demanded they let the second girl go because she was one who knew all about the house and hadn’t warned anyone and so she deserved to go to Hell. The people in the class were like, eh, whatever, and grabbed the first girl, letting the other girl go. At the last minute, the first girl changed her mind and tried to get away, but it was too late.

Then the dream switched to a wasteland necropolis full of miscellaneous piles of bones and other objects. A group of cenobites (a la Hellraiser) were gathered around a small pile of those rawhide doggy chew treats shaped like baby shoes and discussing the possibility they might have to get to earth and kill a cow to replenish their stock.

I may be sane, but my subconscious is clearly certifiable.

Last night I dreamed of a pair of vampires. Not only had they just woken up in this century, they were illegal immigrants. They set up house in an abandoned mansion and allowed a local boy to come in and fix the place up.

Since they didn’t legally exist, the first order of business was to get a fake identity. So the boy put them in touch with the Mafia. After agreeing upon the price, the male vampire drove up to a drivethru to purchase the identities. They got into a discussion and the vampire mentioned an Italian saying that he’d always been fond of. The guy at the window got excited and whipped out a little gold plaque with the saying on it, giving it to the vampire. There was one little modification that changed a word meaning man to fool and they laughed about it.

When he came back to the house, the lady vampire told him that she’d found out the boy was sleeping in the woods because his father was beating him. She convinced him to let the boy stay in the house with them. They just had to make sure he didn’t find out they were vampires. They explained to him that they were night people and didn’t really care to be out in the day, so he agreed not to disturb them during daylight hours.

At some point, the boy convinced the vampire lady to adopt a pet. She went into a pet store and there was a beautiful green parrot which cooed and chirruped at her and nuzzled her with its beak until she just had to buy him.

Then they won a billion dollar lottery. They gave the boy a couple million and he bought a house, then they went to the stock market to invest the rest. The lady decided to invest in 400 shares of natural energy research. (Since I don’t know anything about investing, I don’t know if investing in research is actually something you can do with stocks! lol) Then President Bush popped up, acting like a spoiled baby because of their ecologically friendly investments. He kept pointing to a chart that showed oil investments going down and natural energy going up. So she bought 400 more shares and told him to shut up or she’d invest a couple million in natural energy! Yay! lol

Unfortunately at that point, an Italian couple came out and said we were using their identity and that the money should belong to them since we weren’t even American citizens. (Of course that doesn’t make sense since the money would go to the ticket holder, not the Italian couple.) For some reason they were more worried about being deported than being found out as vampires, but I don’t know why they didn’t think of all that when they claimed the proze. So the vampire couple escaped with the boy and the parrot and they went to the house the boy had bought with the money they gave him.

But it was a very little house, two rooms and litte more than the size of a dog house. All three of them barely fit into one room and they had to sit or go through the roof. The boy made banana smoothies with milk and half a chocolate covered banana.

**

Ever notice how my dreams start out somewhat realistically and then quickly spiral into surrealism? lol

Boy all those months of nary a dream and now they’re catching up with a vengeance. Guess I was too tired to dream before. What a relief. I was getting worried. If I don’t have a dream to pick over when I wake, I almost feel like I’m being neglected.

Last night I dreamed I was married, and apparently I’d married well. Unfortunately, my husband didn’t want to be married any more and thought having me killed was a good alternative to alimony.

So I was at a convenience store buying some gas for my red convertible when a female hitperson comes in and tells me she’s there to kill me. I asked her how much she’d been paid, and she said $15,000. I laughed and asked if he cut her a check. She pulled out a wad of bills and said no, she’d got in cash. I laughed again and asked if she’d counted. At that, she looked a little worried and said no, she hadn’t. So she started counting it. I went out to my car.

Someone had put the hood down, and I was trying to start it and put the hood back up when the hitlady came back out of the store and approached the car. I fully expected to get shot, but she said I didn’t have to worry because she’d counted the money and it was mostly fives and tens rolled up in some larger bills and she was not going to kill me. She said she and her partner (who I never saw) were going to keep what they’d been given, since my husband had not dealt with them in good faith, and if he made a stink, they just might kill him instead.

So I drove to the exit which was really badly maintained, with huge potholes and rubble all over the place. I drove to a planned community and hid out in a one story house with no roof. After a while, I discovered that there were two children living there. They were very hungry and for some reason I had a pocket full of bread ties and pennies. First I shared out the bread ties between the three of us, and then the pennies.

Then we went into the kitchen and made pizzas. Honestly I don’t know why we didn’t have pizza first thing. lol A knock came on the front door and I hid while an Asian neighbor introduced himself and gave the kids a large pizza with green peppers. He said he had just moved in and was trying to meet all his neighbors and make a good impression. He left and we threw the pizza away because it smelled really bad and for some reason I knew it was poisoned. I knew the guy wasn’t another hitman. He was some kind of serial poisoner.

Then a lawyer came to the door to see me, but I hid and the kids said I didn’t want to see anyone. The lawyer insisted and said that they wanted me to testify against my husband because of the attempted hit against me. I woke up then without having agreed to testify or not.

I dreamed an elderly friend had inherited a home from an aunt. It was a bit run down, but otherwise very large with an extensive front and backyard.

Mostly I just sat around with her and her biddy friends while they nitpicked the house and gardens. We walked to the front yard with its flowers and series of fountains culminating in a pond. All the biddies started criticizing it and saying what they would do and how fountains were so gauche. Everytime they said something else, the garden got a little shabbier until it was just a bumch of wilting flowers (Lupine I think) a yucca plant and a bird bath. I could tell my friend was getting depressed, so I said that ponds and fountains were very lovely and gave the illusion of a much larger and natural area when done correctly. And the yard expaned and became full of flowers and a great pond and tree… much the same as it had been when they first started criticizing it.

All the biddies retired back to the kitchen while my friend and I went around the side of the house and continued to talk about the garden and what we would do. And of course, the garden continued to improve the more we praised it.

We went in through the backdoor and there were all the biddies sitting around the table in a dirty kitchen, surrounded by dead and dying potted plants. (I wonder if those plants were still alive when they sat down?) They mentioned a neighborhood yardsale going on and coerced my friend into accompanying them.

So we walked to the blockparty where one old lady had a display of quilts, but right away my friend recognized an embroidered one from her aunts home and demanded to know how the lady had got it because she knew that the lady had always coveted it (and it was expensive). The lady selling the quilts sniffed disdainfully and said that my friend’s friends had let her into the house and told her she could have anything she wanted. All she had wanted was the quilt. “So you could sell it?” I asked. And there the dream ended.

Last night I had a Brothers Grimm dream in three parts. First I was a small child going to school with my cat for show and tell. But my cat was not a cat. I’d built it from wood and wires and covered it over with soft fur. For all intents and purposes it looked and acted like a cat, but all one had to do was pick it up and anyone could see it was a cat golem. It had one cat’s eye marble for an eye, and a plain white marble for the other.

When my teacher saw the cat, she new immediately it was not a normal cat. None of the students liked her; most were afraid of her. She was kind of the evil stepmother/wicked witch of the dream. I’m not exactly sure why she did it, but she took me aside and down into a vault where she showed me a special clay which could be molded and given life. Then she locked the vault and took me back up to class. She seemed angry about the whole thing. Like I’d done something wrong or incorrect.

In the mean time, there were these dwarves who kidnapped me and my little brother. They wanted the secret of the witch’s clay. They could make their own clay, but it wasn’t as good. To show they meant business, they killed my brother, but I wouldn’t talk.

So they made me a slave and forced me to cook and clean for them. I had to make food from the clay. It would become the food once I molded it properly. So they left and I set about making dinner, but as I molded the clay, my hands formed it into ghostly shapes. The dwarves came back and were furious. They said I was trying to kill them and I was more troublesome than useful to them. They decided to kill me, but before they could, the clay came to life and defended me. They had made the clay from my dead brother and he was angry.

I ran away and my brother met up with me after a while, but he was a ghost and said the dwarves were still after us. We decided to lead the dwarves to the vault and trap them there. The school was deserted and fallen down when we got there. It looked as if they whole thing at been abandoned for years. The dwarves were hot on our heels, so we quickly ran down into the vault and directed them to the safe where the clay was kept. They rushed past us, into the vault, but I knew the key to locking the vault. The doors would seal instantly if anyone said, “No, no, no” in a certain melody. And so we sealed away the dwarves with the clay they wanted so badly.

Then the dream skipped over to a period before the beginning. There was the teacher-witch on a farm. It showed why her clay was better than the dwarves because hers was made from living things while the dwarves made theirs with dead matter. She would lure people to her garden and plant them in the ground. Eventually a gourd-like vine would grow and she would take the pumpkinesque fruit and work them into clay.

Could it be that I’m finally dreaming with some regularity again. A dream two days ago and two last night, though the second was more than a little fuzzy…

In the first I was some kind of secret agent man, hunting down my arch-nemisis, the head of an international crime cartel. He escaped me, but I managed to snag a teleportation watch. After my people looked it over, it was decided that I would use it to get into their hideout with the mission of discovering its location and relaying that to my superiors. I was not supposed to engage the enemy.

So I used the watch and poof, I was in a library (I’ve been in this library in other dreams BTW). I walked through the library and then I was in a what appeared to be a flea market with baby toys and tacky costume jewelry. It was at this point that I discovered I had no weapons. Apparently they’d all disappeared when I teleported.

So I began looking for a weapon among the baby toys. The best I found was a rather small wooden hammer shaped like a mallet. I was just about to accept the hammer as the best of the lot when I saw these things under the toys that looked like drill bits of varying sizes. I began gathering them up and stuffing them in my pockets. And then I found this weird wand-thing with lots of metal spikes to which they should be attached.

Having wasted enough time, I set off through the rooms till I found myself in a series of offices. No one paid any attention to me at all, as if I wasn’t even there. Of course, then I saw my arch-nemisis coming out of an office and I ralized even if everyone else ignored me, he certainly wouldn’t when he recognized me. So I started looking for a way out of the offices, but I kept going around and around in circles, trying to avoid him and escape all at the same time.

Finally I found a stairwell, but as I reached the bottom it was filled with stolen merchandise, mostly VCRs, which were tagged with information about date of theft, location, and thief responsible. I came falling through the packages, disrupting some thieves filling out paperwork on where, when, and how they had done their deeds.

I ran further, passing many exit signs with locked doors, until I came to what appeared to be an old theater concessions area with a series of revolving doors to the outside. As I ran through the doors, there was shouting as my pursuers and the people at the concessions/desk followed me out. I turned to look at the building and found it really was an old theater, though the sign was cracked and falling in. I knew I was in New York City, though there were no people anywhere around.

I was just about to contact my people when my arch-nemisis caught up to me. He grabbed hold of my coat, screaming, “Stop thief!”

“Thief?” said I, holding up one of the drill-bits to do battle.

“Yes! That’s my pick-a thing.” He answered pointing at the drill bit.

So I plunged my hand into my pocket and pulled out all the bits and pieces. “Is that what you call it, Old Bean? It’s quite nice.”

That stymied him and made him happy at once. “Oh yes, it is, isn’t?” and he proceeded to show me how it worked, while his henchmen stood around us looking a bit pissed.

“Christ! They’re like children!” muttered one of them.

***

The second dream involved an affectionate Shetland pony with an unfortunate case of diarreah. A truck driving midget who was attempting to drive two vehicles at once and managed to almost hit my car with a van when he failed to put it in park before jumping out to drive the truck a little way. Fortunately the van coasted past my car and a truck to collide with a parked U-haul. Then I was in a mansion with several people for some kind of reality show. I had to take off a swimsuit to get ready for dinner, but I could get the darn thing off. There were always more straps, and they kept getting tighter. This was alright though, because there was a cannibal who was going to eat everyone at dinner and my not being able to change for dinner effectively saved my life (though I was forbidden from telling everyone else about it).