I join a gym and come unprepared to the talent show

The goulash that I am serving up has no theme, just a few slices of unrelated snack products. If y'all want some more tasty morsels, try bringing something to the potluck next time. Otherwise, STFU and enjoy my meager offerings. Now, where was I? Oh, right. Last night's dream. Here goes:

I had joined a low budget gym which turned out to be nothing more than a room with a rubber mat for a floor and a shower/bathroom combo. After finishing up in the rubber mat room, I hit the restroom to pee. It seemed to be semi-busy in there with a bunch of guys milling about in the shower area, and one guy using the urinal on the wall. I waited til the urinal was free, only to find that the guy had simply been pissing on a loose tile, and there was no actual urinal. 

I moved on to the shower area where I discovered that the rest of the guys had used it for a giant urinal and made the floor quite wet. This was no shower, either. Just an area with tiles for a floor and a drain in the middle. I felt justified in relieving myself, but kept glancing out the open door, which was not even blocked by the partial partition of a bathroom stall. 

Girls were tittering and making snide remarks about how I was fouling up the restroom floor with pee. I felt that I needed to explain myself, but to no avail. Apparently, this was a unisex multipurpose type of situation. I don't know what the girls were expecting to do in there, but I was out of bounds with my soiling of the floor.

Next I found myself outside on a pier. But there was no ocean around. This pier was in the middle of wheat fields and farm land. I guess the ocean had been there at one time, but it was a ways off at this point. I saw a man making a wood pile and lighting it up with gasoline. 

I became upset and found the nearest wildlife officer, an older woman with a taut, permanently puckered brow. She seemed to be well-suited for her job of bitching at people for lighting unauthorized fires, so I pointed out the offender to her. She agreed that he needed to be punished, and so I asked her if we'd be hanging or shooting the guilty party. She seemed a little taken aback, but said she'd go and issue him a citation. Good enough, I thought.

From there I went to Sal Mendez's apartment. He's the all purpose guru/hero/big brother type that I worked with at Yuba City Honda. We all suspected he might be secretly gay because he was just a little too macho. That and the fact that he kept trying to kiss the guys and then making jokes about it. But I digress. 

In the dream he was just sitting in his sparsely decorated studio apartment talking with another fellow from work. He was eating fried flour tortillas in a syrupy concoction which looked to be something between maple syrup and candy apple caramel. I envied his ability to snack so decadently, but I refrained from asking for any. 

I used a paper towel to clean my hands and looked around for a trash can. There wasn't one anywhere to be seen. I was about to stuff it in my pocket, but Sal noticed my distress and got up from his seat. He'd been sitting on the trash can. I tossed the paper towel in, relieved. Now all was right again.

I had a talent show to get to, so I left Sal's and walked along the highway. The ocean finally made its appearance, and I am guessing I was in some version of Santa Monica, near PCH. I had been supposedly getting ready for the talent show over at Sal's place, but when I got there, I was just figuring out that I was going to be on next and had done zero preparation. 

Jeff Gross was onstage. I could hear him from outside. He was flubbing all the chords of some song he'd written. Maybe it was a cover song, I don't know. It was pretty pathetic, but I hurried to get inside so he'd see me in the audience supporting him. I was going to need support myself, so I made it a point to catch the last few verses. 

In the meantime, I spoke with Rick Johnson, my former band mate and singer from Malicious Mischief days. I complimented him on the old songs he'd written for the band, and he took the compliment with his usual humble pie approach, "Yeah, I know. I'm awesome, and those were great songs" etc. We finished up reminiscing and I told him I had a gig to get to.

That's about it. I know there is more, but I gotta poop. Thus endeth today's trasmission to Oceania. Listeners in Eastasia can continue listening on these shortwave frequencies: 6110, 5111 and 7150 mhz.

Robin Williams football team

I guess I don't have much in the way of a story. I was in high school, Samohi, to be precise. People were wandering down hallways and giving greetings to one another. It was football season and everyone was concerned with choosing up teams. I had shaved my head, which I just did last night in real life, coincidentally. I saw RJ Leon in the hallway, also sporting a shaved head. 

"White power," I said in a voice which, after the fact, I worried may not have conveyed the fact that I was joking. 

I wandered on down the hallways, in search of my team. I watched as a semi-truck, with a giant mousetrap lever-like contraption protruding out of the side of it, swept up a student and carried him off. This was a common occurrence and the reason for which most football teams were always short-staffed. 

"Damn," said Robin Williams, captain of my new prospective team, "Truck got another one. We'll need to replace him." 

I figured this meant he was recruiting me, so I followed him on down the hall, mindful of the sweeper/reaper trucks. 

See, I told you there wasn't much of a story there. All for the best. I have another day to get through, so I may as well be about it. I've been harvesting cannabis for the last 3 weeks straight. It's become a tedious, boring job which I can't do for more than a few hours at a time without eyestrain becoming a problem. 

I know it sounds like a guy in paradise complaining that there are too many coconuts, but that is exactly how it is. Coconuts here, coconuts there. If I never see another bloody coconut, I'll be a happy camper. No, on second thought, I'm sure I'll find something else to bitch about.

Jay Herbert's warehouse business

Very sketchy details are remaining from my dream, but here they are:

I was talking on a CB radio and a voice came through that I recognized. 

I responded by saying, "Hello, Jay. How have you been." 

It was an old friend and ex-employer, who had a TV repair shop in Chico, but had fallen on hard times since no one gets anything repaired anymore. He gave some enigmatic answer, but I gleaned that he had a new business that he was pursuing. 

I left off talking to him and went to the supermarket and that is when I discovered him living in the bushes outside of the Safeway. He had a chair setup in the parking lot, so I made myself comfortable. 

He told me that he had his warehouse business in those same bushes and I decided to have a look. It was one of those bigger on the inside than the outside situations, and sure enough, there was a large stockpile of canned goods in boxes in row up on row, just hanging out waiting for orders to fill. 

We talked for a little while about the possibility of nuclear war and such and there was the sense that Steve Clark, aka KFI, an old CB rival of his, would make some kind of appearance. Everything Jay ever did in his entire life was in direct competition to this guy, so that was nothing out of the ordinary. Kind of like cereal being placed on the table and awaiting the arrival of the milk. 

I don't really recall much of a theme beyond this. My sleep was rather fitful. Meanwhile, my guineas are disappearing, being taken off one by one when I am not looking by some wildland creature. I will most likely have to trap it and release it 15 miles or so from here if I intend to stop this process from re-occurring.

Lisa Fletcher's Pajama Party, Miss Shayla moves to Lake Isabella and I catch a giant catfish

First up was Lisa Fletcher deciding to rent a hotel room in Fort Bragg. She bought several pair of brand new pajamas and intended for me and Jeanette Antoine to wear them while we drank and caroused about the town. The hitch came when Jeanette declared that they didn't fit her and she wouldn't be wearing them. 

I said, no problem, you can have mine, to her chagrin. She really just didn't want to be seen wearing these cheap gray-striped pj's in public. I tried on the ones that were intended for her. She had tried them on already so they couldn't be returned. I found they fit quite nicely except for the pants were a bit short around the ankles. 

"No problem," I proclaimed, "I'll just sag them. That's still a thing, right?" Probably as much of a thing as wearing pajamas out in public, at any rate. 

So off we went for our day trip to town, sporting PJs, Jeanette tagging along in street clothes. We decided to do some fishing, since we were in a fishing village. I had some nice spots in mind, garnered in a previous dream. We didn't wind up going there but settled for a pier where people were both fishing and swimming and generally milling about. Not the most fishing appropriate, but I was in it to win it. 

I cast out my little yellow jig with the rubbery fake worm/fish dangly thing and reeled it in with my signature jerks which pretty much guaranteed me some action. Sure enough, I started getting bites. Then, without warning my line starts getting pulled off the spool in classic Jaws fashion. 

My uncle was there and perked up. "Looks like you got a big one," he acknowledged contrary to his usual pessimistic prognostication. "Careful you don't get it hung up." There it was. 

Anyway, I followed it around some trees that were growing in the water next to the pier and around a group of swimmers, waders and other people fishing. They all looked quite amazed as the line was being fed out, then slowly tightening, then reversing direction as I reeled and reeled. It was coming my way. 

I got the damn thing landed amidst gasps and cheers and behold, it was a giant catfish. Like four feet long kind of giant. It was old and beat up and its tail was missing, having been bitten off by a shark. His mouth was deformed from many battles with the hook and his fins were pulling away from his skeleton, revealing his sharp, poisonous spines. 

"Yep, it's a catfish," I announced, "His spines are poking me in the hand." 

He looked smaller now, not the four foot behemoth, but a more realistic foot or two. No matter, it was still the same giant fish to the crowd. 

I chided them all, "Don't make fun of the rubber worm! This thing has caught me just about every kind of fish you can imagine. It always works." No one argued with me.

 

 

Somewhere else in the world, Miss Shayla Sullivan, a local equestrian and animal rescuer, bought some land and was busy cleaning up her candy apple red Camaro in the front yard. 

I say yard, but it was more of a dirt patch. I recognized the place from my childhood. It was Gracie and Bill's property in Lake Isabella. The structures were all there, the house the trailer, the garage and the fish house, plus a few of Shayla's things thrown in the mix. The place looked a bit small for her and she wasn't all that thrilled with it, property-wise. I talked to her as she cleaned out her car. 

"So, you have this brand new car and you let animals of all kinds ride in it?" I asked.

She obviously cared more for the animals than for the car, though her cleaning it meticulously afterward said that both were things she cared about. 

"People give me lots of attention for this car," she stated to me. "When they see this car, it is an icon they recognize." 

I disagreed and told her that she was the icon, the car was just window dressing. She demured, but the compliment wasn't lost on her. She knew it, but was just playing the role of the innocent, "Who me? Pretty? Shucks." type of girl. Part of her charm. 

Her dog, Lucky Penny (deceased in real life) ran about sprinting like a filly. She was so exuberant that she actually looked like a little paint horse. The coloration was such that she was brown on one side and white on the other, so when she ran one direction you'd see a white dog/horse and when she'd turn and run the other way she was all brown. I noted that she looked happy and free, not at all like the shaggy rescue that Shayla had taken in. I guess that's what love will do to a critter. 

She showed me around the property and I informed her of my childhood connection to it. I wanted to see the inside of the fish hut/man shed that Bill had built to keep his drinking and nasty magazine collection from Gracie. It had been converted into a bathroom at some point so there was no fish sink or Playboy centerfolds to be seen. 

I tried to snap a picture of the inside of the fish hut, but my camera was set to video and all I got was this weird few seconds of a red scene in the center of a photo aperature slowly opening, like a James Bond title sequence. It was creepy, but I kept it for posterity. 

Next she showed me the inside of the trailer where she had stored an entire inventory of cowgirl show shirts with a variety of prints, some cheesy, some flashy, reflecting decade upon decade of horse shows and the history of horse show fashion. It turned out that a friend of hers had owned an equestrian clothing store which had gone out of business, so she got the show shirts. But probably, as in real life, she was the proud wearer of most of those shirts during some show or another spanning decades. We exited the trailer and it was time for me to leave.

"If you're gonna leave, you'd best get going. Traffic, you know. Gotta move," Shayla admonished me. 

My car had been parked in the driveway which they were grading. A giant pile of gravel was nearly burying my red Toyota Corolla SR5 (yep, the one I owned in the '80s). I brushed the gravel and it fell away easily and my car became unstuck in a minute. I thanked Shayla again and was on my way. 

The trip through town was a twisty turny affair, and there was indeed a bit of holiday traffic. Or it could have been commuting to the great employer of the region, Disneyland. Everyone worked there, so it was quite a cluster fuck on the highways. I made it down to Huntington Beach or somewhere in OC without much thought. 

I found myself in an alley going up to a main street with people riding bicycles and such. I decided to take my pants off and sit hunched over with my knees pulled up to my chest. I just wanted to see if anyone would notice. 

Sure enough, soon a girl riding a bike circled back around and started talking to me. Ignoring the elephant in the room, she questioned me about something she'd heard on the radio recently, asking if it was me doing the broadcast. I could sense that it would have been to my advantage to have claim that it was, though I had no idea what she was talking about. I denied any knowledge of it and she went on to describe some racy sounding DJ patter, which I'd have gladly owned, but alas, I was going to be honest. 

"I don't even have the equipment to broadcast," I explained. And with that she pedaled away. 

Damn. I looked down to note whether or not my junk had been visible during our entire conversation. Sure enough, my butthole was hanging out and my balls dangled freely for the world to see. Surprised the girl had maintained a straight face throughout our conversation.

Next I decided to put some pants on and get a move on. I began walking past some unfinished cul-de-sac construction. Someone had laid out some green plastic army men and accessory buildings, also made of the typical dark green plastic. I picked up one of the buildings and Godzilla-like, smashed it on the ground and kept walking. Take that, you stupid, tiny war machine. 

I was spotted, however and some mall cop style security men in a golf cart started following me. I took a turn and began doing some clever cliff climbing maneuvers on a brick wall behind the cul-de-sac. They had to follow on foot, but seeing my impressive moves decided not to hassle me and instead complimented me on my agility. I was hanging one-handed and flipping back to front, front to back alternately as I switched hands to advance, traversing the wall at about the same speed as a person walking would. 

"I used to do that," the guy noted. "It's really good exercise." 

Yeah, it was, I agreed, though it was entirely unnecessary, since you could just as easily have walked on the sidewalk a few feet below. It didn't provide me with any special powers of evasion, either, since the guy was following along and talking to me the whole time. 

That's about it folks. Woke up, had to write this down while it was still fresh. I think I got all the major parts and didn't conflabulate too much in the process. Until next time.

A day at the beach (Eminem soundtrack)

I only remember the dream that I was having before I got up to pee, not whatever I was just dreaming when I woke up. I was spending a day at the beach with family, I believe. I was being encouraged to play in the ocean in the shallows, as I was not a good swimmer, much like my real life self. I watched the people who were a little farther out riding waves on boogie boards and surfboards and longed for that kind of fun. 

I let the tide take me out just a little way and got a little panicky, so I caught the first wave in. It broke after it passed me sucking me down over the falls and into the washing machine. I didn't go all the way to the bottom, however, and maintained my above water status the whole time. 

I enjoyed it so much I began searching out any abandoned boogie boards, because I was ready to get myself out there to ride. The song "Without Me" was playing over and over in my head on loop. "I'm back, dana-nana nana nana nana..."

Ok, a vague notion of me working again at The Dealership came up. I was doing very light automotive work, basically eyeballing cars for damage to be sent out to a body shop. I was dealing with service advisors and customers. 

 

One customer was a black lady in a red dress who looked like Michelle Obama. Not her, but just a ringer. I looked over her car for damage and found only one minimal scratch. It was a 97 silver Civic coupe with a nice patina of dust, which made my inspection for fresh damage very easy. 

I brought the repair order back to Randy Mitchell, a devious drunk service writer who used to work there in the real world. He was really a devious drunk, but in my dream not as much. Just happy ass Randy, only slightly conniving. We both agreed on the course of action to take with the lady's Civic. 

I went to go find her as she wandered around the dealership. You'd think I'd be able to spot her, what with her red dress and, you know, being like the only black lady there. I finally picked her out of the crowd and tried to get close enough to her to advise her on her car, but she kept eluding me. 

I wound up following her down the street where I encountered Joey from Friends, working a small booth on the side of the road. It looked like a tiny dispatchers shed, with just him and a telephone in it. 

I asked him the famous "How you doin'?" and he looked up at me, happy for the recognition. He said his job was multi-faceted and he did a few impressions for me of the different characters he had to portray as he answered the phone for the many different functions. 

I had to go and bid him and some other guy named Dave goodbye. I wasn't sure about Dave being the guy's name, but after I kinda mumbled it, I heard someone else call him that, too, so I felt better. At least it sounded sort of like Dave when I mumbled, "Goodbye Joey, goodbye  ...Mmdeeaavee......" 

I continued following faux Michelle as the soundtrack continued on in my brain. "Danna nana nana nana nana nana nana. It's disaster, such a catastrophe, for you to see so much of my damn ass you ask for me....a nuisance, whose scent? You sent for me?" I guess the world needs me, since the theme of the song is that it would be "so empty without me." 

Oh, and the LED is still on. My Itunes (both the PC and Ipod) have played the Margi Lantos reading that I got back on Sept 5, 2018. I think Sharon wanted me to get something out of it, as the two events have been concurrent. The message of the the reading was for me to have faith, love and mercy, awareness and harmony. There were a lot of little details that I believed she was straining for at the time, so I didn't give the reading as much credence as I probably should have. Some details were nice, but unproveable from an earthly perspective. 

But Sharon, I am listening for your voice. Sometimes I'm pretty thick (and stubborn) but I do value your input and need your comfort most of all. You could always talk me down and make things easier for me to handle. Thank you for showing up the other day before my eye appointment. I think I'm going to go with my gut, that this LED is your way of saying you are still around. And thank you for that. I love you, always. Even if I'm a rat and a scoundrel, I still love you. Be merciful, I'm not done here yet. I don't know what my purpose is, but I hope I can fulfill it and make you proud. Today is Saturday, so you know what I'll be doing. I hope you can stand the racket.

Weird fish dream

It wasn't a weird fish, but my method of catching it. I was fishing from a rather teeterous floating piece of aluminum dock, approximately six feet long. It was unbalanced and had a high spot in the center like a teeter-totter, but I managed to keep myself upright while casting out for fish in a small river. I wasn't using any bait, just casting a bare hook into the water and reeling it back in as if it were a lure. It seemed to work because I was getting bites. 

I hooked into one, and the dock broke free from its mooring. Off I went downriver, alternately towing and being towed by my unknown catch. 

Eventually, we went down a bit of a waterfall, and things evened out a bit. I reeled in the fish, at least close enough to catch a glimpse of him. It was a small-mouth bass about 6-8 inches long. Not the biggest prize for all my trouble, but a nice fish. I don't think I wound up keeping him. 

I still had the dock to think of. It had become entangled in some fiber optic cables which were strewn up and down the river in the sandy bank. I used the cable to haul my raft-like piece of dock back up the river. Getting back up over the waterfall was a bit of work, but I managed. 

I inspected the cables to make sure I wasn't toting any high voltage electrical lines. Nope. Just multicolored hollow bundles of cable, wrapped in a grey wire loom tape. The wires were actually so big and so hollow that they could have been pneumatic tubes, like you'd see on some older vehicles, connected to vacuum operated accessories. They were soft and squishy, but relatively sturdy, apparently, since I managed to used them to pull the dock quite a ways back upriver. 

It appeared that the dock was the terminus for these wires, so I felt it was necessary to put the dock back where I found it. I don't know if I ever got it all the way back or not, as I woke up soon after the initial success of re-navigating my journey back up the waterfall.

I'd forgotten to record a minuscule dream snippet that I had while dozing off with a washcloth on my face the other day. I was falling asleep with the tune of "Everything's Alright" from Jesus Christ Superstar playing in my brain. Nancy Leon was singing to me. I don't know why I felt that was important to write down, but it happened several days ago, and I kept telling myself not to forget to include it in this dream journal.

Machining a new crankshaft pulley, my eyelid and a lame MLM scheme

I was working at YC Honda again last night. I ought to be getting paid, all the time I spend there in my dreams. I never seem to be doing good work, though. Last night was no exception. 

I was doing a new car Pre-Delivery Inspection, aka PDI. The car, being brand new, should have no problems, and these inspections are considered gravy. This car, however, had a problem. 

I don't know how I determined it, but apparently it was necessary for me to inspect the crankshaft pulley. I found it to be outside of tolerance, which was causing the car to run poorly. Something in my brain told me that it just needed to be "tweaked" a little. 

So off it came, and I set about machining off some extra grooves, which would allow the belt to ride in its natural position. Only I didn't think the whole process through, and soon I had machined off way more than the belt's width of grooves. Now the belt would be torn up or begin edging its way off of the pulley. 

I went around to the various parts of the dealership trying to garner some support for my actions. I got the guy in parts to look at it, but he wasn't much help. He just wanted to dance and lip sing to some girl song, like Cindi Lauper or something. 

Next, I went to see Sal, who had his own department, which was run like a pirate ship within the dealership. He was doing all the PDIs in an assembly line fashion, with minions performing the various tasks. I asked him for a little help, but he was preoccupied with the PDIs. 

"Don't forget the most important part," he admonished the crew. 

He held up a can of BG, a fuel system treatment designed to remove deposits from the intake manifold. Snake oil at best, it was completely unnecessary, since these were new cars and would have zero deposits accumulating anywhere at this point. I reminded him of this fact, but he jumped all over me with his defense of the product. 

"Have you ever tried it?" he demanded of me. 

I told him I had and that it had made no perceptible difference in how my car ran. When we would run it in higher mileage cars, it would put on a big smoke show which resulted in the car belching out huge clouds of the accumulated deposits in the form of white smoke from the tailpipe. After a period of running even worse, the car would clear itself up and eventually smooth out. My car didn't have enough deposits to do more than just burn up the can of BG, and so I felt it was an unnecessary additive. 

He stood by his position, and I basically had no support from him for my crankshaft pulley machining fix. I sought help from another guy in the parts department, who offered to machine me a brand new custom pulley out of billet steel. It was going to be all fancy and racy looking. 

I realized at this point that I'd gone way too far and should have just taken pictures of the anomalous pulley before I fucked with it. Honda engineering would know what to do with it. I assumed ordering a new pulley would have been the logical fix. Why I didn't think of that before I cut it all to pieces, I'll never know. 

---

Now I have to get going with my day. I have to make an appointment with an eye doctor. I have a small growth on my right eyelid. I think I was bitten by a bug there over three weeks ago. The eyelid swelled up at the time and was painful. After a few days the pain and swelling went down, but now there's a pimple like nodule on the margin of my eyelid, inside of the lash line. 

To make matters more ominous, Sharon's LED has just now come on, as if to say: "Aren't you going to do something about that? You really ought to have that looked at." 

I've been missing her LED for a while now, wondering if it would ever come back on. Wondering about life, and death and suicide. I'm not getting any younger, and these health problems will just become more frequent and perhaps permanently debilitating. 

I think of my uncle and his solution. I wonder how long will I last before I choose that option. Then I think of Sharon and how she played her hand right to the bitter end. Would I be able to do that? Surely, not with such courage and grace. 

But do I have the courage to even end my own life, even when I'm dissatisfied with it? I'm like a scared child. I just don't want to feel pain or be in misery. The worry over my eyelid problem magnifies everything so much. I feel alone and frightened about the future. I don't get the kind of comfort from my online friends that I do from just seeing the little LED. I don't know what it means, actually. But whatever it means, I always take it as Sharon has a reason to be here, and I'd better pay attention. 

So, I'll try to make an appointment at Walmart Vision Center. Maybe I will email my provider at Ampla Health too. Would that be a good course of action, dear? I see you flickering. Meanwhile, perhaps another soaking with the warm compress wouldn't hurt.

---

Another dream from two days ago which I forgot to write down. I was being recruited into some multi-level marketing scam by a girl who was peddling fake Oxycontin and other opioid-derived pills to homeless people. 

She had a profit sharing plan that included a strawberry cheesecake with which she illustrated the gist of the whole "top down" strategy. It was to be given to me upon recruiting my first member, a fellow who used to live down the block from me who I will call by his Facebook name, since that is all I know. 

Anyway, after bringing TowJam Hooker on board as a fellow pill pusher, she delivered the cheesecake and promptly sliced off half for herself. She then instructed me to slice the remaining half in two and give one half to my new recruit to do with as he wished. I started to get the idea of how the rich stay rich, and the poor keep getting smaller and smaller pieces of the pie. 

That's about it for that dream. I never made a good pusher-man. I kept having trouble getting the orders correct and spent way too long on the phone with my suppliers in Canada.

My Flanders Doppelganger

I don't know if I dreamed of my '80s doppleganger or if I was having an out of body experience in my sleep. It was weird. 

I was standing behind and to the right of a guy who looked like I used to look in the '80s church days. He was skinny, wore a nerdy sweater and had big plastic-framed brown glasses, a buzz haircut and mustache. I distinctly felt as if I was staring at myself from outside of myself. I was like, "Oh, wow, is that what people see?" 

It was disturbing, but I got used to it and was wondering if I might possibly be dead. But if so, why was this body still walking around? And why was he looking like a much younger, uncool version of me? 

I remember when I was in the church and used to dress and look this way. There was one day when we were having a car wash and some people were laughing because this guy got out of his car to have it washed, and he looked exactly like me. I went over to see and, sure enough, the guy was a ringer.

Michael Lopez buys an excavator and becomes a crack shot slinging rocks, Sharon and I look at birdpoop

I had a potpourri mashup of characters in my dreams last night. 

I was living in a rural setting, with farmland adjacent to my property. My neighbor, Michael Lopez, and I were doing ranch type work. Well, my neighbor was. I was watching. 

He had just purchased an excavator and was doing all the fun stuff one does when they come into such power: moving rocks around, digging long trenches for no apparent reason and creating huge debris piles to burn. He was burning one long row of last years crops when I noticed that some of his older orchard trees were catching fire. 

This should have alarmed him, but he was too busy picking up rocks with the excavator and flinging them at other rocks. He was a natural, possessing the skill to hurl one rock directly at another so that he could crack a boulder right down the middle. He proudly showed me two boulders that he had split with the precision of a jeweler. 

In the kitchen of his farmhouse was Suzanne Reed, somehow married to him in this configuration. She was in the kitchen and going about her day doing housework of some kind. 

She was kind of vaguely aware that they were having a problem with birds in the kitchen and pointed out some bird poop on the floor. She wasn't too bothered by it, though, and left me to investigate it on my own. 

I saw Sharon from a hallway view, standing there wearing her summer attire, shorts and a tank top. I ran to her and gave her a hug, full of emotion from not having seen her in real life. In the dream it was just another day, and she looked at me strangely for the over-the-top greeting. 

We examined the bird poop together, and she commented about the fact that Suzanne appeared to not be a very conscientious housekeeper, due to the fact that there was an accumulation of poop from the top of the pantry door to the floor. This was apparently a long running situation, which hadn't ever been addressed. 

The time got on to where I was going to have to get to school. I was supposed to be at the local high school for some kind of continuing education. I was about 2 hours late and I contemplated having Sharon write me an "Andrew is late today because..." excuse, but it was an afterthought. I was already on my way to school. I was taking the "water route." 

To save time on my commute, I elected to jump in a lake. It was a large lake with a huge dam at one end. The current leading to the dam was moving rather rapidly, and I had to jump in and then try to direct myself toward some rocks before I got sucked into the spillway. I was able to maneuver quite easily, like a skydiver in freefall, and soon I collided with the rocks. 

The collision must have been pretty forceful because this is about where I woke up.  

Ordering a battery and a handful of cactus thorns

I was walking with a teacher, some kind of guru or Mr. Miagi type. He was carrying a cactus fruit, like a Nopale but with the longer thorns. His fingers were positioned carefully, avoiding the large spikes. 

I asked him if this variety had similar micro-spikes, which I dreaded. He said something evasive, which made me decide to find out for myself. If he could pick one up, why couldn't I? 

I picked one up and after a minute I looked at my hand. It was covered with tiny hairlike needles, like a field of miniature wheat. I tried removing them, but as per my experience, they all started breaking off at the skin level, leaving me with a thousand splinters under my skin.

Next, I was in the parts department of my favorite dream car dealership, you guessed it, Yuba City Honda. I needed a battery for some reason for a brand new Accord. I was attempting to get the parts guy to order one for me, but he turned it around on me and asked me to order it myself. I began my mild protest but decided it was better if I just went along with the idea. How hard could it be? I struggled for a while with the catalog and then a telemarketer called and woke me up from my dream.

Spotfires, Greg Miller's Fire Brigade, The Pit of Pastel Hell and I help Vivianne with a TV antenna

It started with the usual fire dream business. I was on high alert since spot fires had been reported in the area. I looked out along a golden ridge of tall, dry grass waving in the breeze, just waiting for the first sign of a spark. 

Suddenly, there it was, about the size of a car and spreading rapidly. I spied it with binoculars, I think. Greg Miller and I were going to leap into action and go after it in some sort of firefighter capacity. Yellow vests were donned, and I jumped on my motorbike. But after some clumsy maneuvering, I decided to just jump in the truck with Greg. I say Greg Miller because that was the sense of who it was, though it looked like a young Roger Daltry. 

My travels with Greg landed me in a different location, somewhere near Chico, with notes of Lake Isabella, kind of a potpourri of past haunts of mine. I was there to help Vivianne Van Asperin fix a TV antenna. I took down the old one using a crescent wrench, which I promptly misplaced, while discussing the finer points of the new HD antennas with Vivianne. She had her opinion about them, and I had my own set of facts, which I shared with her, regarding range, dB amplification etc. 

It went ok, though I don't remember actually finishing the job. I wound up never finding my exact crescent wrench, but no matter, there were plenty of similar ones available.

Prior to the fire watch, I had been perusing a path around an excavation. The digging was hidden by a six foot tall wood fence, designed to keep people from peering in, and falling in, too, I suppose. I was  continuing the walk around, when I came to the entrance of the fenced-in portion. I found it to be an easily accessible, almost touristy area, the kind of place where people take selfies overlooking the giant spectacle. 

It was grand indeed. A very deep, pit which had, at its bottom, a beautifully painted hellscape. It was reminiscent of the painterly landscaping technique used in Robin Williams' "What Dreams May Come." The colors were a gentle kaleidoscope of pastel southwest hues, but extra bright, like those neon paint pens you can buy for arts and crafts. 

I decided that I needed to get closer and take a selfie, falling for the allure of the gently sloping funnel shaped brick walking area at the top of the giant hole. Surely it was paved this way to encourage this sort of thing. 

Like a honey trap, I was lured in and immediately found I had slid irretrievably partway down the funnel. I had misjudged the pitch of those pleasantly placed red bricks. Though I didn't fall all the way down, there was a sense that I had fallen past the point where I could extricate myself. 

I didn't mind, though. Since I was there, I figured I may as well get that selfie. I snapped a bunch of pictures of the work in progress at the bottom of the chasm and felt satisfied enough with myself to just relax, as if I'd planned a picnic at just that spot. 

 

I awoke soon thereafter to my semi-swollen right eyelid and my giant weed harvest, both of which have been dominating my life of late. It is Saturday, however, and I have a guitar that must be played, coffee and cannabis to be dutifully consumed and breakfast to be made and lingered over whilst doing items one and two. Better get to it.

Warning to new or returning blog readers (sticky)

I needed to make this a permanent sticky post, so that it would be the first thing anyone sees when they visit here, a kind of a heads up of what to expect before stumbling across something willy-nilly. Also, I'd like to add that if something in here offends you or creeps you the fuck out, PLEASE talk to me about it, leave a comment or send me an email. I'd rather have a discussion than lose a friend over something I've said that may be incorrect or offensive. 

Here's the standard disclaimer:

Since this blog functions as a multi-purpose repository for anything and everything I might write down, it will from time to time contain highly opinionated and deeply personal items that readers may find objectionable. I myself find some of the things which have migrated through my consciousness and into my writings over the years to be objectionable and immature, if not outright obscene. 

For instance, I write down all my dreams, in as accurate detail as I can recollect. Some of these dreams include real life characters who might be friends or relatives. <gasp!> 

I will, on occasion, use it as a notebook, where I record events or impressions of things going on in my life. Often, I'll include stories of events that occurred in real life, along with descriptions of real people, and weave them into the dream narratives to give context or background. The overlap of real life stories and dream narration may occasionally cause confusion, and one may be left wondering if the event occurred in reality, in a dream or in some conflation of the two.

In the event that you are reading and stumble across your name, either in a dream journal entry or a real-life event that I have written about, just know this: I am relating the story because it -- you -- made an impression on me.

The dreams are totally out of my control, so I'll claim innocence of malfeasance on that. I can't choose the programming that my subconscious decides to entertain me with at night. 

As for real life accounts that may differ from your recollection, I can only say that I'm not an actual journalist. I'm a person writing about things from a creatively subjective viewpoint, and as such, I invoke artistic license frequently.

I hope to not offend anyone or give reason for upset, but it is likely that eventually, if you read long enough, you will find something to disagree strongly with. Although I really can't prevent that from happening in all instances, I don't go out of my way to insult or demean my friends and relatives.

But if seeing your name in print for some reason makes you feel litigious, please contact me, and I'll scrub all references to your name and replace them with a pseudonym. (But you and I will both know that it was you I was referring to.)

At this point, I don't believe there are enough people who read this blog, or care enough about my perception of them and how it might be documented in these written accounts, to warrant concern. Although it is technically a public blog, there is not much chance of it getting public attention. My two or three occasional readers have not chimed in and told me to knock it off with the name dropping and personal anecdotes...yet.

The reason I've written this long-winded introductory warning is because there was one person whom I directed here to show them something I'd written, and when they saw it, they freaked out, and now we're not friends. I hope that doesn't happen too often, but I'm likely to say more things in the future that have that potential, so be forewarned. I have a Tourette-like condition where I just blab out whatever is on my mind, and I'm sometimes not aware of the effect this might have on others.

That's it. This was just a cautionary word for those who have not yet been unlucky enough to find that they were the subject of one of my entries. My aim is not to offend, embarrass or hurt anyone's feelings, but I'm also not wanting to tip-toe around and self-censor at every turn. You understand...don't you? OK. Proceed at your own risk.

 

----

 

The reviews are in:

 

 

"Sick."

"A cringe-worthy embarrassment to sentient beings everywhere."

"When someone told him, 'I wish you would write a book,' it was clearly meant to shut him up and keep him from speaking these things out loud. 'I wish you could write a book...so I could burn it' is the complete thought there."

"Trash. Just a bunch of self-indulgent gobbledygook with a smattering of obscenity, told by an oafish boor who is unfit to punctuate preschool literature."

"Well, I liked it. I mean, some parts, that is. OK, I never really read it. It got kind of repetitive. And not enough sex." 

"He had me, then he lost me. Then I got curious and picked it up again, but I immediately wished hadn't. I regret every minute I spent in that dank cistern of horrors that attempts to pass itself off as a human brain."

 

All of the reviewers wished to remain anonymous. They were compensated for their reviews, although, not enough, apparently.

Alright, those are fictional reviews. I have to resort to that kind of thing because no one ever comments anymore. I think my one or two occasional readers are afraid I'll launch an all-out assault on them for critiquing my (for lack of a better word) work. Please, by all means, critique away. I'm waiting, fingers at the ready on my keyboard.