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DREAM
JOURNAL: OCTOBER thru DECEMBER 2005 |
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2005
October-December // 2005 July-September
// 2005 April-June // 2005
January-March // 2004 October-December
// 2004 July-September |
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2005.12.10 I'm lying in bed listening to music. I'm liking what I'm hearing - deep, layered textures, interesting rhythms, waves of synth and guitar. Very nice. I look at my computer screen to see what it is. Huh. Genesis' Calling All Stations. Better than I remembered. I'll have to replay the whole album sometime. 2005.11.28 I can do the voice of Cartman from South Park really well. I try doing other South Park voices, but none of them come out as well. I think it's because I have an innate grasp of Cartman's Nebraska accent. * * * * Watching Angel with Joe. In this episode, Angel the vampire is walking on a beach in Africa sometime during the Renaissance, dressed in his modern black leather outfit. It's late afternoon in the summer, almost dusk, but the sun doesn't seem to be bothering Angel, who would normally be incinerated by sunlight. Angel is pursuing a fugitive who supposedly has to wear gloves to conceal his horribly disfigured hands. Our hero spots his quarry wading in the ocean and runs out into the surf after him. He grapples the fugitive from behind, pinning his arms just above the elbows. The man raises his hands up at his sides, and we can see that he has normal-looking hands that match his own flesh tone. "Your hands aren't that disfigured," Angel grunts. "Those are my gloves," the fugitive says, and suddenly his real hands explode out of the gloves. They are giant, scaly gray hands, with tendril-like Struwwelpeter fingers that terminate in huge, curved metallic claws. He breaks free of Angel's grip in a flash and then plunges all ten of his scythe-fingers into Angel's chest. Angel screams in agony. I comment to Joe that the claws look a lot like Voldo's katar weapons in Soul Calibur. At this point the show turns into a Soul Calibur demo, with the claw-monster going up against all of the characters from that game. The battles are arranged in sequences of three rounds, with a different character in each round. In the first round the opponent is too aggressive, like Angel was, and ends up screaming and impaled on the claws. In the second round the opponent is too defensive and is unable to get inside the claw-monster's attack radius. In the third round the opponent is Ivy Valentine, and her attack is just right. The monster gets KOed. 2005.11.19 A peaceful demonstration commemorating the 10th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death was being held on the lakefront when a man was approached by a deranged drug dealer who tried to coerce him to buy a large container of marijuana from him. When the man refused, the dealer then begged him to take it and hold it for him, telling him that he could smoke some of it for free. When the man still refused, the confrontation became physical. Both men tried to attack each other with scissors. Then the dealer bit the other man on the lip, drawing blood. This enraged the man. As he said when talking to me on the street a year later, "I suddenly snapped, and I thought I was actually gonna stab him in the chest and pierce the guy's lung. But then I came to my senses." The police arrived on the scene shortly after the fight, and the memorial ceremony was shut down. The story was reported in newspapers across the country.
2005.11.10 I'm standing on a corner in a hilltop neighborhood somewhere in southern California. A friend is there with me. Large, leafy trees line the sidewalks, and just beyond the houses immediately surrounding us there's a panoramic view of the city below. It's mid-morning, maybe about nine or ten, and we're waiting for my grandmother to come pick us up. "Gramma," is someone I've never actually met before, I think. Anyway, she's late. And the big, dark raincloud I've been expecting to appear in the sky hasn't shown up yet either. "We might as well go home," I say, disappointed. 2005.11.05 I'm walking along Highway 528, going south out of the city of Rio Rancho into Albuquerque. It's Halloween night. People all around are dressed as ghosts and ghouls. I see the flashing lights of police cars up ahead. They've set up some kind of checkpoint. At first I think I'm going to be stopped, but then I see that they're only stopping motorists, not pedestrians. 2005.10.30 During the days of the Spanish Inquisition conquistadores used to chase people, subject them to on-the-spot heresy trials and then execute them. A group of maybe a dozen helmeted soldiers on horseback would run down a hapless alleged heretic in an aqueduct somewhere, surround him menacingly, read from a Bible or something, and then kill him with their swords. I solemnly reenact this tradition by eating little people made from jelly-filled rolls of gari (picked ginger) out of a little dollhouse while listening to pertinent quotes about predestination being read to me from the gospel of John and other sources. The gari-people and and the dollhouse all look like they're based on designs from an old Final Fantasy game. When I bite into the rolls a sickly-sweet red jelly leaks out, reminding me of the blood of the people killed during the Inquisition. It's not very appetizing, but I feel like I have to complete the ritual out of respect for the victims. 2005.10.27 I wonder what the passage "Hercules lit up his cigarette. Go, Hercules, go!" looks like in the English Standard Version of the Bible. I should look it up. 2005.10.21 I have badly chipped my right canine tooth. It's now about 3mm shorter than the left one. 2005.10.19 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.
"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. * * * *
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."
* * * * I have a new motorcycle, classic-styled with chrome, dark red and white trim. It's called "the Staunton," and I ride it around on the waterfront at sunset, zooming between boats over the narrow wooden planks. I zip past the open dining area of a tavern on the pier, and as I'm going by, Bender, I guy I know who happens to be sitting at a table there, mischeviously tries to snatch the striped scarf that I'm wearing. He fails to catch it, but then I narrowly avoid hitting a small boat that's lying on its side just in front of me. 2005.10.08 As I lie in bed, I am suddenly struck by a harsh but not-quite-painful tingling sensation, as if my brain was being boiled or agitated somehow by a beam shot into it from somewhere outside. It seemed to be magenta in color (even though I didn't actually see anything), with a wavelength of somewhere between one and five millimeters. It lasted for about four seconds and then went away. 2005.10.03 Someone is telling me that plaque is not the real cause of tooth decay.
Right now I'm in the frozen foods section of the supermarket, mentally berating myself for not turning the tables on the man before it got this far. Knowing that it's only a matter of minutes before he finds me again, I fight my terror to crank the wheels in my brain and try to come up with a way to defend myself. It occurs to me that I should be carrying a weapon. I made a feeble attempt to fight the man once or twice before, and it just ended with me being beaten especially badly. Still, I'm convinced that a well-chosen weapon used with maximum viciousness is my best chance at neutralizing him. I'm in luck: someone has left a pair of scissors sitting in the freezer case. I pick them up and conceal them in my pocket, blades open, with a hand tightly wrapped around the handle. I imagine how it will go down. I will lash out with the scissors as soon as my stalker is within range, and he will block with his arm, causing the blade to make contact on his wrist. At this point I can use my free hand to shut the blades on his wrist, bracing with all available leverage to try to sever his hand, or at least a major artery, causing blood to go everywhere. Then I realize that it will appear to the witnesses in the store that I attacked a strange man without provocation, and then I'll be prosecuted for assault. I imagine a different scenario. I make a quick jab at the man to surprise him, and while he's momentarily stunned I run away, calling out for help. The man then walks up behind me and slashes my throat with a straight razor. |
2005.11.17 
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--
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.
2005.10.11
I have an ongoing romance with White Debbie from Sealab 2021.
She is pregnant with my child, and we travel through time together
like "Doc" Brown and Clara Clayton in Back to the Future
Part III. But there are many suitors competing for Debbie's affection
in different centuries, and at times I think she is unfaithful, which
makes me jealous.
2005.10.02
A bald, middle-aged, chain smoking man with a long, gray, ratty moustache
has been stalking and terrorizing me (me, Elvis Costello circa 1994)
for months, watching my every move and coercing me to steal things
for him with threats and beatings. It has got to the point where every
time I leave the house, day or night, I pretty much expect him to
appear and beat the shit out of me. I think that he might be a well-known
engineer at a recording studio a couple blocks from where I live,
but I have no proof. Besides, I'm not at all confident that I could
provide a description of the man good enough for someone to spot him
before he finds me and kills me.