A wicked dream and a wicked burn

Everyone dreams every time. Some people just don't often remember, and some hardly ever do, prompting them to believe they do not dream. But they do.

Probably because of this weird summer cold I recently came down with and how I decided to go ahead and assume that it was the onset of Captain Trips, which was the apocalyptic strain of influenza from The Stand, I had a dream last night that was a mix of the book (version of The Stand), the movie version, Life After People, and I Shouldn't Be Alive.

I don't remember much of the beginning, but it eventually became apparent as I was getting off an airplane with a group of other people and walking through a huge, deserted airport, that most of the people on earth were gone. There weren't tons of bodies around, but everything looked to have been abandoned suddenly. Forks stuck in pieces of cake, knocked over trash cans, etc. We wandered outside and were talking about how it must have been the flu that everyone was suddenly coming down with a week ago. Outside was a jungle beach type area with pure white sand and a heavy network of vines serving as the ground near the beach's edge. We walked through the jungle and saw a snake attacking a dog's tail, which naturally offended all of our good senses, so we taunted the snake, which released the dog, turned into a dog itself, and leaped at me. Luckily I had a back pack to knock it out of the air with. This was far and away the most satisfying part of the dream. For some reason, I've always wanted to slam a flying, snarling wolf dog out of the air with something heavy. When we finally reached the end of the jungle, we came out on the beach. Tall, elegant skyscrapers could be seen on the far end; they were white and shaped like Sydney Opera House pieces. Plants were growing unchecked from all their windows, and suddenly I had a helicopter's view of the city, and everything was like that. Cars parked at crazy angles in the street, fire hydrants toppled over and spraying freely, and thick ivy growing through the tops of nearly every building. And the sky was so ridiculously, beautifully blue, which somehow added creepy points to the whole scenario. Then the scene faded to night, and I was out by some mermaid statues contemplating the future of the human race. As far as anyone knew, we were the only survivors of the plague. My boss from work came up to me and explained that we could eat as much as we wanted, because somehow our food supplies never went down, no matter how much we ate. It seemed to make sense to us both, since the only way we could have survived the plague was to have been chosen by God, that our food would also be powered by God and be endless. Then some people who were apparently my friends from before the plague came up and my boss left, and we were walking. And weirdly, my dream self managed to rattle off this giant monologue about what dangers might soon visit us. It was something like...

"There could be more survivors in other parts of the world, or even nearby. They're probably scattered and disorganized, and they might believe they're the only ones left, just like we did. They might trickle in slowly and join us, or they might form their own communities. The problem is that two communities that are large enough to lay claim to the same thing could eventually emerge. And even though we're all humans and have miraculously survived the end of the human world, fossil fuels or some body of water could prove more important in everyone's immediate minds, and there could be war. And since everyone is dead and all the measures of security that were previously enforced are now abandoned, all of mankind's most deadly weapons are just lying around, waiting to be picked back up again. Nuclear bombs could be lying ten feet below the ground, free for the taking, with no one to raise a hand in protest."

As our leader was passing out horribly fitted t-shirts so we'd all recognize one another, I was trying to trade the one I got with the one that had been given to Mya from Just Shoot Me, who also happened to be in the movie version of The Stand. Suddenly I realized that she was looking really good. And then we all looked around and realized that, in fact, everyone was somehow looking much more attractive than before. And it wasn't an "I'm drunk, you look hot all of a sudden" kind of thing, it was a much more legitimate "everyone actually does look leaner, more cleaned up, more bright-eyed and better dressed" type of thing. It seemed to dawn on everybody at the same time that this was probably to encourage us to mate and repopulate the world (and while this would surely be a bonus points part of the dream to many, it creeped me and everyone else on the beach the fuck out). So we took some awesome boats out on the water back to our jungle camp, and they kept scraping against the bottoms of the ivy-owned skyscrapers. This was somehow a tragedy to me, and I cried uncontrollably. When we finally got back into the jungle, there was a repeat of the dog scene (much to my excitement).

Then I woke up.

Total dream length: all night. Total dream estimated length during dream: three days.

TL;DR It was an awesome dream.

In other news: some wiener peeled the registration stickers off my license plate. You know, those '08, '09 things. I noticed yesterday when I was walking back to my car that there was a bright orange sliver of the '07 one laid over what remained of the '06 one. Neither of which, I feel I should mention, is the currently required '09 one. So now unless it's suddenly 2006 again, I'm not even legally allowed to drive to the DMV to get new ones. What a sick, unprovoked burn. It's a good thing I don't have any kids, because I would for sure be grounding them out of spite right now if I did.

Ten things you should definitely try to get ahold of

Today's post will be less about me and more about stuff that legitimately rocks. Some of it might not be for everybody, but that's okay, because chances are you aren't everybody anyway.

10. Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Season 1
Are You Afraid of the Dark was a tremendously great show. Not only did it teach us the value of mortal terror when we were children, but these days it hits the spot like no other when you're in the mood for some inadvertent humor from the ever-deep well of terrible '90s hairstyles and super baggy shirts. Are You Afraid of the Dark Season 1 can be found on YouTube, provided you know which episode you're looking for.

9. Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar
Not only does this short Flash game combine at least four of the most awesome things on planet Earth (that being dinosaurs, robots, flying, and roaring), but it does so with a hilarious soundtrack and a strangely satisfying intro video. Highly recommended, especially since it's free to play and to love. Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar can be found here.

8. Middle Cyclone, by Neko Case
Neko Case is the co-front (wo)man of The New Pornographers, and also has about a billion albums from her solo career, which is more alt country than indie rock but still somehow manages to rule (for more on this phenomenon, consult bands like Jenny Lewis and She & Him). "This Tornado Loves You," the first track, is especially dece. Way more dece than Pat Benatar, and that's saying something. "Middle Cyclone" can be stolen off the internet in any number of creative ways or bought in an actual store.

7. Gak
Not sure if Gak even still exists, or how one could come across it even if it did, but it's too great not to be mentioned. Once I wrapped Gak around my cat's tail back when he was only a kitten, and my mom had to shave the tail to get the Gak out.

6. Super Metroid
Super Metroid is Super Dece. Basically, you're an ass-kicking female robotron named Samus whose main goal in life is to kill every animal that ever existed. You run around shooting blobs of slime and blasting doors open with missiles, and every so often you have to jump over lava or solve little puzzles. As far as SNES games go, it's one of the better ones. Super Metroid can be downloaded from www.vimm.net or bought on Ebay.

5. From Dusk Till Dawn
I still haven't picked my jaw up off the floor from the first time I saw this intentionally awesomely bad trans-genre Tarantino project, and I think it still stands as one of the most hilarious and most strangely satisfying super violent movies ever made. I won't spoil anything about the plot, because it's 900 times funnier if you go into it without knowing a single thing about it, but I will say that it's as just about as close to perfect as any movie could ever come. From Dusk Till Dawn can be downloaded from any number of sites or rented at Family Video from the two for a dollar section.

4. My Maudlin Career, by Camera Obscura
Many bands do the "I am sad, but sound very happy" thing with a fair amount of success, but Camera Obscura are masters of the art. Tracy Ann Campbell and friends came out with this record yesterday (April 21st, for the record) and I've had it on repeat between classes and Are You Afraid of the Dark viewing sessions. I think it's a pretty solid one-up on their last album, "Let's Get Out Of This Country," which was also great, and again I get a perfect mental picture of a slasher movie set in a high school from the 1950s. Argyle socks and everything. "My Maudlin Career" can be bought in a store or downloaded just like any other CD.

3. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
Although you are reading this right now, it is possible that you do not like to read. And while that's perfectly acceptable, the fact remains that this would prevent you from ever reading this book, which is only like 100 pages long and could be said to be a pretty profound part of American literary culture. It originally appeared as two short stories in the New Yorker, for chrissakes! It was the last book the man ever wrote! I plan to name my future dog after Zooey! Franny and Zooey can be gotten from any library worth its salt and probably found someplace on the innanet as well.

2. Crank 2
It's rare that a bad movie spawns a sequel that takes extreme (and by that I mean XTREME!!!!) advantage of the original's badness. Crank 2 is that movie. Although it did seem a little like they were trying to channel the spirit of Kill Bill by casting David Carradine, interjecting quirky typographic design into random scenes, and occasionally featuring bizarre flash backs reminscent of Beatrix Kiddo calling out, "Present!" in her 3rd grade classroom, it was still a pretty damn hilarious and dece movie. And I won't even go into the absurdly stupid (but somehow very compelling) plot that follows Chev Chelios as he clobbers an infinity of badguys in order to get his stolen heart back. It scores a solid 3 Pat Benatars out of 4, at least. Crank 2 can be seen in theaters or probably downloaded.

1. Army men
Not the stupid video game series, I mean the actual toys. The little green plastic guys who were supposedly designed to be able to stand but never needed much help when it came to falling over. Army men are truly great. Not only are they literally hours and hours and hours of entertainment on their own, but they're entirely recyclable if you have an open fireplace at your disposal. Sometimes that's the most fun thing to do with them, actually. Army men earn a perfect score of 4 Pat Benatars out of 4, and the official Jack Lawrence seal of approval. Army men can be bought in creepy old toy stores, and as soon as the required technological leaps are made by the computer science nerds of the world, there will be a way to download them off the internet. You heard it here first.

Old stuff was the best stuff

Turntables. Spider-man. Sean Connery as James Bond. Game Boy. What do all these things have in common?

They're old, and they still melt face.

How come stuff has to constantly be updated? I mean, seriously, are there seriously that many improvements that truly, honestly needed to be made to the '60s-'90s? Rap rock improved neither rap nor rock, and, in fact, made both of them quite a bit worse. Virtual Boy was lame, and I heard it caused headaches or cancer or something like that. Stradivarius violins were the best ever, and those bad boys were from the 1700s. Zelda is still the best video game. The Beatles are still the best band. David Bowie is still the best person to cast for any role in any movie. Some things have gotten better, like medical technology, but that also indirectly leads to overpopulation, which is not as good as normalpopulation.

One of my professors told me last semester that he hates everyone's current fashion because it's just the '70s again, and since that's sort of true, I suppose there is a silver lining to new stuff--it's sometimes the old stuff. However, if we're going to be in the '70s, I want the full '70s. Big mutton chops. Bad wigs. Plaid suits. Plaid pants. Golf clubs as accessories. And when the '80s make their big comeback, which is already starting (evidence of this can be seen in current releases like Keane's "Perfect Symmetry" and the movie Watchmen), I hope everyone's hair puffs back up again. I was only four when the '80s ended, but that hair was hilariawesome. My mom had that hair. Big, permed curls that added a solid three inches to her height. Alright, so maybe the Garbage Pail Kids were the opposite of awesome (and in fact may have subtracted from the awesomeness of other, completely unrelated, things around them), but that was just one tiny part of the '80s. And they're easily canceled out by such dominant things as Regular Nintendo, the movie Labyrinth, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

If they ever invent time travel, I'm for sure going to spend the fortune it will have taken me my whole life to earn on a chance to relive the banning of slap bracelets and the theatrical release of Mortal Kombat.

I could sure go for a heart container right about now

This will probably reveal me as the total nerd that I usually pretend not to be, but man, if my day-to-day life was more like playing a Zelda game, I would get so much more done. I mean, yeah, I'd have to stop every few minutes to beat some skeleton ass and most of the doors I encountered probably wouldn't open until I shot some spiders down off the ceiling with my slingshot, but the sheer convenience of having a magic mirror shield or a hammer forged from a fire god's skull at my constant disposal would make nearly all of my dirty work go a whole lot smoother.

For instance, I just returned from the horrible university processes lab (where they keep the table saw). If you've read the post at the other end of that link, you'll know why I hate that place so much. Every morning that I wake up knowing I have to go in there to cut some wood or do some other stupid thing that involves unnecessarily complex and dangerous tools, I think, How much would it rock to be able to build this canvas stretcher myself, here, in my apartment, using something as natural and intuitive as a magical laser sword? The answer, I think, is "way too freakin' much." In fact, that must be why Master Swords and mystic ice rods aren't purchasable in all major retail outlets yet. That would just rule too much for anyone to wrap their mind around it, and everyone's work days would be so much more manageable that we'd all have time to take three or four naps throughout the day, which would make people with unsafe-to-nap-through careers, like ambulance drivers, super jealous.

Crossing the street would be another good one. I hate crossing streets. It seems like they're all empty until you get right up to the edge of the sidewalk, and suddenly the whole thing is full of miles of speeding cars from both directions. Why the hell are there so many people passing through this single road that separates my apartment from campus in Menomonie? This town can't have a population of more than 5000 or so, and yet there almost always seems to be an unlimited number of vehicles just dying to get in everyone's way. What would be so problematic about them setting up wooden posts for us to hookshot to on both sides of the street? It probably wouldn't even be that dangerous, especially after most people had completed the Water Temple and got the longshot, which was just like the hookshot but with a longer chain.

Plus, instead of having exams, we could just have battles with giant amoeboids or ghostly horsemen that have some silly gimmick that involves using the item we got that day to great effect. Man, Zelda is so dece.