So, uh, what the hell is with dreams? This question recently popped into my mind during the rare occasion where my brain functions at work. The reason I ask is, over the past month 4 dreams occured that puzzled me greatly. The first is an accurate depiction of what happens when I try to date someone. It was a dream in which I had met this girl at a bennigan's-type eatery and we started spending lots of time together, then at the end of the dream she decided she would be better off being a Portugese nun. The reason Dream #1 puzzles me such is, I thought in dreams you at least got things to develop in your favor. Dream #2 started off with me laying in bed, watching Conan O'Brien. Now you may think this sounds not so bad, but just wait.... the dream takes a drastic turn: it turns out my TV is posessed, and apparitions of the previous owners of our house pop out and, with the assistance of some other spirits and apparitions, proceed to wreak havoc with me, chasing me around and breaking things and such. At which time I turn on the lights, toss some water on them and scream obscenities at them in hopes of getting rid of them. This is where the dream ends. Ponderment #2: What the bloody hell? This dream was so real that I remembered it completely after I woke up. I HATE that shit. Especially when i look around for said ghosts and peeps look at me like I'm crazy. I am NOT crazy. Plus this just solidifies my theory that our house has apparitions occupying it. Anyhoo, my third dream involved a situation bearing some similar elements to Dream #1. What happened is, I was in a wheelchair. Not because I needed to, but because i was trying to get some sympathy, though that was not evident to me until later. Anyhoo, I cruised around the Maplewood mall in this chair and had a few chats with sympathetic girls, when at the Goody i was talking to this one girl and I was telling her "yeah, this isn't permanent, just until my knees get better..." and shit like that. Then my dad walks up grinning like the damn Cheshire cat, and i shoot him a look and say "What? It's true." After which I wake up. What i was wondering is, why is the fake-sympathy technique used in my dream? Am I really that sad and pathetic? Answer: I don't know. The fourth episode in Weird Dreams goes like this: As a highly-paid executive who is so stressed he will stab with a pen the next person who walks into his office with a double-breasted twill blue pinstriped suit and extra wide tie with a polka-dot print, I decide that the ideal vacation spot is down in Marshall with my grandma. One of the activities I pursue is going "downtown" to purchase some baseball cards. After ripping my open my third pack of 1992 Donruss I uncover the very rare Elite insert featuring Kirby Puckett. I am very proud of my accomplishment, and because I an hungry I head home. Midway through dinner I am telling my granny of my find and when she asks to see it, I say "Sure" then look down on my fork to see a cardboard flake with Puck's trademark "34" on it. I had just eaten my baseball card!!! And I had thought it was just tuna hotdish with tater tots on top. Ponderment #4: WHAT?!?!?!? That is a twisted sequence of events that made no sense whatsoever, yet my brain decided to put the scenes together like a cheap network made-for-TV movie and give me the premiere. Well thanks brain, but I don't even think UPN would buy that shit. Try Pax.

My conclusion is.... dreams suck. What the hell is the point? Some of them are very vivid and real, others are semi-believable, and still others are so far-fetched and surreal that they cross lines Woody Allen wouldn't even approach. I don't get it. I wish my brain would just show me reruns of Happy Days, or something.

Labels: GOTW

Welcome to another Gripe O' the Week festivity. Tonight (it is approximately 11:00 in the PM when I am writing this) my gripe is about people... yet again. Apparently people have a hard time grasping what I try to say so I have to reiterate my point many times over before it traverses their thick skull and into their worm-infested heads. The question is: what the hell am I doing wrong, where people don't seem to like me? Wait a minute, let me correct that: they like me when they want something and I, like a sheep being led to slaughter, proceed to give it to them. So, Solution 1 is to stop giving people what they want. Unfortunately, that leads into another problem, where i am seen as a boorish, greedy, self-centered prick. Solution 2? Continue giving people what they want, in hopes that things will change. But as the universal law of nature "if it ain't broke don't fix it" states, they don't Thus Solution 3 comes about: Give people what they want, some of the time, and be seen as a selfish prick the rest of the time. Hmmm, Solution 3 sucks. Scratch that one. The solution I have been working with is Solution 4, which is to be nice to everyone no matter the consequences. It works okay, I guess, but the results are frustratingly similar, as outlined in this fictional sequence at the local shopping mall between me and a fictional female named Freida:

Me: Hey Frieda.
Freida: You spelled my name wrong. Ass.
Me: Yeah.... so anyhoo, how goes it?
(At this point Freida plants her left fist firmly into my jaw in turn knocking me out, then steals my pants and takes off in a purple VW Beetle with the B96 logo on it.)

That actually happened. No wait, it didn't. That's why it's fictional. Fictional or not, though, the results were disastrous. Especially since I end up being caught by the mall pigs for lewd exposure to minors and patrons of the Hat Stop. But that's okay because Freida got what she wanted: she laid me out cold and avoided contact with me. This paves the way for Solution 5, which I am deathly afraid to implement because it involves locking myself in the basement of Pauly Shore's house and subsisting on Crunch n' Munch and orange Shasta. Oh well. I guess there's a first time for everything.

Labels: GOTW