LO2

After a run-in with two people I didn't particularly want to see at Common Grounds, one of whom seemed particularly interested in inviting me to a costume party this Friday in celebration of something I can’t remember now, I go to Treff's alone to drink. Bill Cosby, my friend Gloria, and my old friend Chris, who we called Jesus Chris arrive. Bill Cosby has hair like Wolfman Jack. Jesus and Bill play Ping-Pong on a very small table. Bill doesn’t seem to like me, and keeps trying to make sneaky side serves on the teeny table, while giving me the stink eye. All of the sudden, everyone leaves. I find approx. 600 dollars in a bootleg Simpsons DVD case near one of the TVs, which are equipped with DVD players, but interestingly enough, only fake buttons that don't actually work. I fiddle about with the cash, and one of the Treff’s employees sees me with it. He wants a cut, and I don't want to give him much. All of the other bartenders enter, so I duck into the bathroom with the cash, which is now equipped with two showers that seem designed for a particular type of handicapped person. I try to cut the money up to hand off a little to the first bartender, but they all enter before I can finish. I get nervous and bolt. Treff’s is now in a high rise, with lots of windows, so I look up as I exit to see if they're watching me. I get in my car and drive off (not my car). There’s a wreck in the road, and a cop is waving people over to a detour, while lying on the ground and rolling around violently to indicate something. I figure out that he was rolling to indicate that I was supposed to veer even more to the right when I see the large crane picking up granite slabs and lifting them high above me. I zoom under the crane and turn out of the way, but there's another crane, so I detour again, only to find myself pulling into the driveway at my home in Mississippi, where my sister is laughing and telling me that my father, who seems in good spirits as well while walking around outside in his boxers, is going to build a deck. I go inside with my dad to have coffee and talk. I wake up. 

I dreamt that playing cards and women were directly connected in some way.

Then, about a hour after I woke up, I came to the realization that Kenny Rogers' song "The Gambler" is actually about women...

"You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run..."

Interesting thing is that it took me another hour to make a connection between the dream and the Kenny Rogers epiphany.

Note: I should start a "sleepyblog." put a PC right by the bed and put all my half awake thoughts (blurry-eyed spelling mistakes and all) into something for all the world to see. Possibly fun, probably a very bad idea.

Odd British woman that sold pretzels in the mall wanted the PDA "With the Jamaican sounding name." Of course, I didn't work in the store we were in, but that didn't seem to matter, as she seemed to be quite impressed with my knowledge of PDAs (which, for the record, isn't that great out of the dream world).

I've forgotten most of it, but it mostly involved scientists at NASA putting George Burns in a space suit.

I'm coming out of the bathroom at Treff's (a local bar), which now apparently exits into Scruffy Murphy's (another local bar). Jeff, this guy I know (He was the only member of his immediate family not to be on the most current season of PBS's Colonial House. That's true, not the dream) tells me that he has a gift for me, and hands me a head. It's a maroon colored wicker bust (but it's more like the top 2/3 of a head) set around a plastic mold (of the original head?) with the word "Austin" imprinted in the gray plastic of the mold that forms the bottom of the sculpture. Figuring that this was a good time to leave the bar, I head for Common Grounds (a local coffee shop, where I happen to be typing this entry) to get some coffee and peruse the deeper meaning of wicker life models. My rumination time is cut short when I discover that Victoria Beckham (aka Her Hotness Posh Spice) is sitting alone in a near empty Commons, having some tea. Naturally, I want to flirt with the wife of one of the most famous soccer players in the world, so I begin to head on over (God knows what I would say). Unfortunately, Jill (the owner of the coffeehouse) stops me halfway and insists that I go to the back room of the shop and keep an eye on Nick Nolte (who, surprisingly, did not arrive with Victoria) to make sure that he doesn't break anything. My pleas to hit on my second favorite spice (Geri Halliwell, aka Ginger Spice, has been at number one since she went solo. Have you seen her lately? Rowr!) went unheard, and I was forced to supervise a surprisingly placid Mr. Nolte. I didn't even get free coffee out of it.

I'm out on the town, and for some reason, I decide to go to the underpass by the 5th street intersection. For some reason, the angled segments under the highway had seating, like a theatre. The traffic lights are running out of sync, so people are narrowly avoiding traffic accidents, while the seated crowd looks on, unconcerned. A van hits a sports car, at which point I say that we should call 911 or something. No one else seems interested in calling anyone. I call 911, then go down to the intersection to try and prevent another accident. The police arrive, handcuff me, and let me know that I'm going to jail for trying to help. Then I wake up.

Man, I can't even find good cops in my dreams.

I’m at a party of some sort. I’m out of cigarettes, so I buy a carton off this middle eastern vending cart guy. They’re odd cigarettes, the carton packaging reminiscent of both British and Indian culture, as if the maker came about in pre-Ghandi India, an investment of a Raj. I open the carton, and there are a multitude of different sized packs, exterior wrappers, etc. This carton is hard to navigate.

I keep digging through the carton, opening different packs. Some are empty aside from paper filler, some have normal looking smokes, one package is cylindrical with many very narrow cigarettes inside. I pull on box from the carton, and it is wrapped in what I originally think is plastic, but I now discover is actually plastic sandwich bags with no small amount of cash in them. I now have odd cigs and a happy amount of cash.

I don’t know if someone explained it to me or if I remembered some bit of trivia, but it comes to me that this is normal. This cigarette company randomly puts cash in its cartons as a thank you to its customers. I just get a really good carton.

I want to tell some of my friends, but they’re all heading towards the windows outside of one of the rooms at the party. I follow. There are big windows in this room, so the view from outside is unobstructed, aside from the outdoor crowd in front of me, clamoring to see. The room is filled with lesbians. The funny thing is, virtually every one of the women weren’t doing anything to indicate that, I just know. Two of the women, however, are indicating all over the place. In a somewhat cinematic array of moves, these two women (while fully clothed) are kissing, touching, and flinging themselves passionately around the room from surface to surface, while the indoor lesbians cheer them on and the outdoor heterosexuals do the same. This keeps everyone’s interest for a few minutes.

Afterwards, I start to walk around to the front of the house, as do many others, to investigate the commotion that is rising out front. There are literally thousands of lesbians in the street and parking lot in front of the house (once again, I just know.), having something akin to a lesbian pride parade in the middle of the night. This keeps our attention for a while.

Then the black men show up. A large group of African-Americans, numbering as many as the lesbians, begin to approach the house. This is not a happy group. Although first instinct would be to link the activity to a million man march type of ideal, this group does not have the look of peaceful, yet serious, demonstrators approaching Washington. This group has some anger. This group looks like a photonegative of a Klan march, without the robes.

Interestingly enough, the lesbians seemed to be expecting it. They quietly, if unhappily, leave the area, not dawdling, not running either, just leaving efficiently. It’s as if this is a frequent occurrence, and everyone’s doing what had long ago been set down as the best thing, considering the circumstances.

The group of men arrive, but by now the lesbians are all gone. The men look quite let down, and begin to disperse, very slowly and with angry and displeased expressions.

Time to call it a night, I think to myself. Oddly enough, it turns out that I’m not only part of the party, I’m a cop, and I’m here with several other cops to keep an eye on the evening’s trouble between the two groups. Once again, it feels like a frequent occurrence. The other officers and I take a moment to relax, then begin to head home.

I’m walking to my car, and I’m talking with two other cops on the way to their cars. The feeling is very mid 90’s cop show. I’m telling them about my good luck with the money in the cigarette cartons, and they are half happy with me, half pissed that it didn’t happen to them. We approach our cars, and I freak out a little. If I’m a cop that just got out of a near violent situation unharmed, just won some cash, bragged about it to my friends, and I’m in a cop show, I do NOT want to start my car. My car will blow up. There is a bomb in my car.

I do an about face and head back toward the building. I’m crossing a small grassy area in the parking lot when a large SUV type vehicle tears into the lot and drives up on the grassy area, multiple headlights blazing. I fall to the ground, stay still. It’s six or eight of the men from group earlier, and they all have big guns. They don’t seem to notice me, but are instead looking up and forward at something (I assumed one of the two other cops I was with before). They say something to each other that I don’t hear, but they seem exasperated, as if they missed their intended target. They rev up to drive away, but before they do, one of the men eyes me, unsurprised to see me there, pulls a pistol (a Colt .45 actually) and shoots me in the gut.

Things get a little hazy here. Time goes funny. I feel like people come to help me, but they apparently don’t, because I’m still there. My breathing is terribly shallow, but it seems to be working and I’m not in any pain. But I can’t seem to move. Time stays funny.

My sister calls. I guess I answer my cell phone, but I’m still on the grass, not moving, as far as I can tell. By now it’s morning. She says hi, wants to talk about nothing in particular. “I’ve been shot,” I say, but not really, because my mouth isn’t moving. It’s dry, the tongue is still and pressed forward and out a bit so the sides are poking out a bit between my teeth (like I would bite my tongue a little on both sides if I pressed down), and my jaw is locked open, my front teeth about a half inch opening in the front. You could feed me a grape in the space.

“I’ve been shot.” My sister doesn’t listen, she just talks as if I’m being a little unreasonable and silly. “I’ve been shot,” I say for the third time. She gets tired of the conversation, hangs up. With the click of the phone, everything goes black, hard black, like a TV going off, but for five senses. There’s nothing, and I hear myself say “Where Did Weather Go?” I’m genuinely upset.

I hear a voice say “Hey Lee Hey Lee Hey Lee.”

At this point, I woke the hell up, genuinely terrified. I have never heard anything like that voice in my life. The closest thing I can equate it to is that it’s what it would sound like if the Devil spoke to you through one of those voice box synthesizers that they give to people who’ve had their voice boxes removed.

I was awake at this point, but still in that terror haze that comes after a nightmare. I was genuinely concerned that I was dead. I wanted a cigarette very badly, but I was out, so I had to go to my car to get another pack, but I was scared to open the door and see nothing outside. I opened it nonetheless. The outside was still there, but everything was that funny pre-dawn color, so that didn’t help all that much. I got my cigarettes and went the hell back inside.

I lit up, took a drag, and realized that I hadn’t seen any people of moving cars outside. I decided that turning on the TV would help. It started on a channel that was blank, so that freaked me out a little, but I got to C-Span (I needed something that was live, tapes programming wasn’t gonna do it) and calmed down a little.

At this point, I’ve been up and writing for about a half an hour. The waning terror and the fact that I didn’t get enough sleep are urging me back toward the bed, but I might leave C-Span on for the comforting noise. The only concern at this point is that I haven’t seen another flesh and blood person yet, but I’ll go get some breakfast after I get back up and take care of that problem.

I honestly never want to hear that voice again, either in real life or in my dreams.

Jon Lovitz singing "I Will Survive" in an electric blue wetsuit at a giant Dinner Club/Waterpark, falls into the water, busts an underwater spotlight, and is promptly, and comically, killed.

I dreamt that I overslept, but upon waking, discovered myself in the 70s. Robin Williams, dressed as Mork, enters the room and says "I really tried to wake you, but you just wouldn't get up. Nanu-Nanu."

Apparently, it was the day before I was to marry Jill, the owner of Common Grounds, a coffeehouse I frequent. Mainly, I remember a lot of panic, worrying about how I would explain this new development to my girlfriend.

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Jessican and Ashlee Simpson, Eva Longoria, Kate Hudson, Pete Doherty, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, etc. are all having gelato in a swanky dessert place. They're all laughing hysterically at how they made billions after buying Us Weekly, In Touch magazine, OK Magazine, etc. and making all the stories about them.

Chilling.