Dream Theater

I had one of those crazy dreams last night. It was long and epic. The kind you sit back and watch even though you are the main character. Here’s the basic plotline:

I’m walking through an arid land when suddenly gun shots whiz by from both directions, there are guys hunched down behind hills shooting at each other, and they both think I’m on the other side. I spotted a dead guy and I reached down and picked up his machine gun and started running and shooting. I ended up in some trees, and I was running madly. Next thing I know, I’m captured and taken to a classic interrogation room with a bare light bulb on the ceiling. The interrogators are yelling and screaming at me, but I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I finally go berserk and beat the crap out of everyone. I leave with the machine gun and I’m walking through an unfamiliar urban area, and a dude walks up and starts giving me crap about carrying a machine gun, then he whips out a pistol and threatens me, so I killed him. I suddenly realized how obviously armed I was in the busy city, so I started running as fast as I could. I finally got to a weird swampy place and went into a shack. I turned on the TV and there was a news bulletin about me. “This man killed a bunch of guys, then beat up a bunch of guys, then killed another guy……stay vigilant…consider him armed and dangerous". So I went outside and buried the machine gun and took off. Then I was standing in a backyard with a big bamboo gazebo, where I called and made an appointment to get a haircut. Then I watched the police come calmly to get me as I felt a sense of peace knowing that I was gonna get a haircut before I went to prison.

It sounds pretty short, but in dream land it lasted hours, and a bunch of other crazy stuff happened that I can't remember.

Weird

War

The bosses went to some sort of “off-site” meeting of questionable validity today, and as they say, when the cats away, the mice will play. I was pelted with dozens of rubberbands in a matter of moments, which was very fun, but led to the opening up of a serious can of woop-ass……You see, I can hit a man running full speed in the ear hole with a rubberband given the opportunity, and I didn’t hesitate to do just that. The carnage was gruesome…… stretched and disfigured rubber bands lay limp and helpless one on top of the other. Bald heads and unshaven cheeks whelped up with the rosy glow of elastic impacts. After the battle, the sullen and bruised survivors paced the office……searching for the limp loops that littered the battlefield…….before the bosses returned.

Germs suck

Nothing makes a man feel as helpless as his feverish or vomiting children. You can say kind words, you can clean up lunch puddles, you can carefully place cozy blankets on their sleepy little bodies and give them medicine, but that’s about it. It’s not in our control, and I’m against it. Vote NO on sick children! Happily, the main event is over, and the kids are doing fine now.

Since last Thursday, my “boss” has also been sick, and I was put in the unfortunate position of having to deal with her crap as well as my own. It’s been crazy. I deal with stuff……lots of stuff. I take care of stuff, I talk to architects and customers about stuff and I help with stuff. My “boss” does the same thing but she also coordinates the people who do stuff. So I’ve had to add “beating people over the heads” to my usual stuff doing.

Weathermen suck

After a day full of winter weather warnings and alarmist banter, I woke up this morning expecting a winter wonderland………nothing. I didn’t even have to scrape the windshield….Dammit. Unlike most folks, I love winter. I like the cold. I like snow. I like long nights and thick socks, but this winter has been disappointing. We’ve had snow a few times, but never enough to make a snowman or an igloo, just enough to make mud when it melts. To make matters worse, all the veteran weather guys around here quit this year, and now all the channels have new guys who are competing to freak out the “hometown viewers” with pending weather catastrophes. They’re really pissing me off.
I’m ready for spring now.

Slam Books

Hey...... remember back in Junior High when there were always slam books going around. You'd sign your name and get a number at the beginning, then you'd answer all the questions and put your number by the answer. It was always crap like "Whats your favorite band, whats your favorite TV show, Who do you like, Who do you wanna punch in the face" and crap like that. Those were funny. I wonder if kids still do that. I think I'll make one now, and pass it around the office..........nahhhhhh

Secretville

I “own” some wilderness, and that’s about as cool as it gets. It’s a bit diagonal, and it’s hard to get to, but its always there, and I like it. Around these parts they call it a hollow (holler). Maybe I'll build a secret fort, or a treetop village, or an underground city ………………....

the gates of hell

As the band arrived for practice last night, Jeremiah informed us that there was an evil 6-toed cat presently occupying the studio. We lugged our equipment in, and started setting up. When I leaned over the couch to plug my amp into the wall outlet, I saw the cute kitty cat huddled into a fluffy ball. I struggled to maneuver the plug into the poorly lit outlet behind the couch, when suddenly, the fluffy kitty hurled its crazy body towards my fumbling arm. His mouth was open unnaturally wide, like a cobra striking with its jaw unhinged, its claws were extended, and it emitted an ungodly scream. The cat, (we’ll call it Satan) stopped short, then turned around and bolted like a demon through the labyrinth formed by various pieces of furniture and equipment to find a new hiding place. He did…. and for a while, we forgot about the cat. A few minutes later, we heard a new sound. It was like the squealing hinges on the gates of hell. As the gates opened wider, the painful sounds of eternal damnation overtook the squeal of the un-oiled hinges, and chills ran up our spines. It was Satan, he was behind the guitar amp now. Satan had entered the studio in a cat-carrier, and Jeremiah decided that perhaps Satan would be more comfortable and less threatening if he took him to a quieter place, via the cat-carrier. He approached Satan, and the gates of hell were thrown wide open. Satans wings unfurled as he took flight. He ran under, over, and through everything in the room leaving a pentagram of fury and cat-hair in his wake. Jeremiah finally got his hands on Satan, who dug his teeth and claws as deep as possible into Jeremiahs mortal flesh. He chewed and scratched and attempted to kill Jeremiah with all his might. But Jeremiah would not be beaten. Finally, he was banished to the cat-carrier, and removed from the studio. Jeremiah returned with streams of blood running down his hands and arms, and skin flapping from his hands and fingers. He cleaned his bloody wounds, and sat down to gather his wits.

Satans master then entered the room, angry as hell, because Jeremiah was “mean” to Satan….. Jeremiah banished him too……….

Her new CD

My 1st grade princess has always had her own tastes in music, and I’ve always encouraged that. When she was real little, I would download the songs that I heard her singing, and set them up on the computer so she could listen to them whenever she wanted. I’m pretty sure she thinks that “Dad listens to weird music”, but she seems to respect that about me. She spends a lot more time in the car with Mom, and she likes lots of Moms music. This weekend I finally made her a CD of her favorites, and she’s been playing it over and over again. Here’s a list of some of her favorite songs.

Superhero-Garrison Star
Allstar-Smashmouth
Long Black Veil-Dave Matthews Band
Dancing Queen-Abba
Song 42-Blur
There She Goes-Sixpence None the Richer
Walking on Sunshine-Katrina and the Waves
Rhiannon-Fleetwood Mac
Rocky Raccoon-The Beatles
Rhinestone Cowboy-Glenn Campbell
Hazy Shade of Winter-The Bangles
Wild Honey Pie-The Beatles
Ring My Bell-Anita Ward
Wild World-Cat Stevens

I imagine that as she get older, her tastes will narrow and become focused on something that I think is total crap. Today, however, I am impressed by the variation in styles represented by these songs, and by the innocent, untarnished glee she exudes while twirling in whirling circles as she sings along with her new CD.

The Super Bowl

Bored by the pop mediocrity of the halftime show, I averted my eyes and started yammering. In the middle of my exuberant diatribe, I witnessed, in slow motion, the jaws of my guests drop as they lifted their arms with forefingers extended. Unbeknownst to me, they were pointing to the boob of Janet Jackson. The next few minutes were dominated by vigorous debates about the boob, the unveiling of the boob, the glistening shimmer that adorned the boob, etc. I, however, was unable to participate in the debates, having witnessed only the reactions to the boob, and not the boob itself.

I had hoped the panthers would win the game, too bad they kept going for the 2-point conversions.