David Jonhouse/sleep paralysis/Congressman Forbes...

I'm watching the episode of The Simpsons with the Rugrats crossover. You know the one. Suddenly a guy I used to know in high school is standing there in the room with me. I seem to recall that his name was...David Jonhouse? I tell him that it's funny that he's there, because I had just recently had a dream about a guy from high school whose name I had forgotten, but I think it was actually him.

He's digging in his wallet for cash to give me, as a belated birthday present. He hands me a twenty dollar bill and continues to fish out ones, and puts them on the table in front of me. I hand the twenty back to him, saying "No, no, keep it....or else tell me when your birthday is so I can give you something in return.."

Then David Jonhouse walks out of the room without saying a word. I assume he's looking for the bathroom. I follow him out into the hall, and before I can stop him he walks into my sister's room. I hear yelling, and I run into the room to see that he is attacking Nina. I jump onto Jonhouse's back, attempting to dig my heel in and snap his spine. He yells but is not seriously injured.

I pin Dave's arms behind his back as if I'm going to handcuff him. He drops something from his hand. It's one of my They Might Be Giants shotglasses, full of tequila. I pick it up with my free hand and march him out of the room. Then I knock him in the forehead with the blunt end of the shotglass, and threaten him--

"You know what I'm going to do to you?"

"Oww! No..."

"I'm going to tie you up, blindfold you, gag you--"

"Gag?"

"Yeah. And I'm going to leave you in the garage...and that's all."

I place special emphasis on the last part, to make him understand that I intend to leave him there to starve to death. This makes him start to weep pathetically. In reality, although this guy scares me, I still feel bad for him and I'm already thinking about calling the cops to come pick him up.

"That's why you don't fuck with my sister," I say, hitting him again with the shotglass.

* * * *

I'm watching Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within while browsing websites dedicated to UFOs and conspiracy junk. Then I wake up in my bed, totally paralyzed. I struggle to yell out or move my arms, but my body is completely unresponsive. I start to hear the muffled chattering of voices all around me, speaking in some unfamiliar tongue. Then the sounds fade away, my mobility returns, and I sit up in bed.

* * * *

Congressman Steve Forbes is appearing on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Stewart is very old, or perhaps wearing makeup, because he is mostly bald, with scraggly white hair where there is hair remaining.

Forbes is in the middle of a rant about how bad grammar is one of his pet peeves. After a minute of two of listening to this, Stewart interrupts him and asks him about how he was recently the object of a "T-1 censure" from the House of Representatives because a young girl was able to accurately describe his genitalia as resembling a "small elephant's head." The audience turns angry and starts booing Forbes when they hear this.

Forbes, caught off guard, looks terrified for a moment, then turns contrite and says, "Well, the truth is I acted like an A-1 jerk."

* * * *

I'm watching a video of Genesis performing "No Reply at All" in front of a live TV studio audience in 1981. The camera pans over the audience, and it's a weird collection of sketchy looking people, all male, mostly in their 20s and 30s, some with thick Coke-bottle glasses, some with big ugly scars, some with eyepatches. They look like the sort of audience you'd see in a Mad magazine cartoon, or a gang of post-apocalyptic marauders. One of the scarier-looking guys stands up during the performance and shoots a young man in a military dress uniform who is sitting near the front row, an off-duty US Marine. Later, I'm reading a Internet message board thread about the incident where some troll is badgering the deceased man's grieving mother, asking why he wasn't serving in Iraq at the time instead of being at the Genesis show.

* * * *

I'm at work in the shadow-universe call center. I ask a senior specialist (a floor supervisor) for help with something. She's a cute, bespectacled girl in her mid-20s, tall and voluptuous with sandy blonde hair. She comes over and clumsily sits down in a chair near me. She invites me to take some candy from a bowl she's holding, then leans in close to me and puts her arms around my neck.

* * * *

Dad asks me to join the church that the rest of my family has joined, saying that "We get a discount there."