Clot or not

I have very little facial hair today. I shaved it off yesterday afternoon in an attempt to make a good impression at my job interview. It was a mistake I made just moments before leaving for the interview. Fifteen minutes after cutting and nicking myself various times, I was pulling into the office building still bleeding from the side of my face. I used my right hand to shake hands, and to give my resume to the lady. My left was busy holding tissue up to my face. The whole interview went about as well as I could have possibly expected when considering that my face spent the entire twenty minutes bleeding into a wad of toilet paper in my hand, which I kept tight against my cheek as though I were trying to hold my face together. I've read several of those "Things To Not Do In An Interview" lists. I think bleeding was one of them. For some reason, bleeding into tissue paper kind of puts you off your guard for those tough interview questions. Also, next time you are in an interview with your hand on your face to keep in the blood, don't pull the tissue away to see if you are still bleeding or not. Cuz you are, and now you're making a scene of it.




I stopped bleeding about an hour or so after getting home. Nice going, face. Way to ruin it for the rest of me. No one's going to hire you if you bleed on them. It's considered "unprofessional."

What dreams may come

So there I was, just now, trying to get past the turnstile near the guard, when I realized that I couldn't go in with food and drink. I turned to finish it off before going in. Another guard, young, tried to snatch it from me and throw it away. I told him I wanted to finish off the drink first. He asked me if I was trying to pull one over on him. I said no. But he was right. The cup was empty. What was I trying to pull? So I took it over to the trash where another kid threw in a whole cupcake tray with cupcakes still in them. Maybe they were smashed and without frosting, and they were a little tougher than normal, but throw them away? So I reached in to the bin and worked one out of the tray to enjoy before going through that turnstile. It's not often that I get to eat anything in my dreams. Usually the sight or thought of something wonderful is enough to wake me up (sadly). But this cupcake wasn't good enough to do that. But it did leave me with black cupcake all over my fingers, which I was working on quite contently, when our neighbor friend Ian came running toward us from the other side of the gate. He ran through the turnstile and whizzed by us, telling us to run, because the cops were coming. As though filling some bizarre quota, the cops were always coming around in large groups looking for kids to arrest. To pick on was more like it. Anyone who got picked up during one of these raids was severely beaten by these cops before being taken to spend the night in the jail. The setting was in the early 1900s. I could tell because everything was sepia-colored.

So we ran. I got about ten steps when I caught up to Richard. He was holding back, trying to find me. What a good brother. We took off. He knew a way back so we took it, each running along the edge of a large gutter filled with water, a sort of drainage tunnel that ran through the park and came close to where we lived. But I was running on the opposite side of the gutter from Rich. I should have followed more closely. Cop cars were now lining the street up ahead. Some cops were chasing down kids. Others were waiting by their cars for kids to run by. Kids like me. Richard's side of the open drainage tunnel was too far for the cops to bother. They would never catch Richard anyway. Not in that or any other dream. He always seems to be okay. I couldn't turn around because of the cops on our tail, but running forward just took me past a nearby set of police cars. And they definitely saw me. And I definitely don't run fast in my dreams. And that was when I thought to myself, "Self, you are faster than this, by at least a little bit. Is this situation not dire enough for you? Or are you perhaps dreaming? If you are dreaming, it is possibly unnecessary to get beaten down by these cops."

So I forced myself awake. Forced awakening is my only well-developed subconscious superpower. I have been different superheroes before, but I have yet to hone their skills. When I was the Pan (at least twice now), I could hover just out of reach of Captain Hook and his pirates. But I couldn't ever get comfortably high enough. It took a great deal of mental concentration to just stay afloat, as though I were low on pixie dust. I guess I don't make a very good fairy boy. When I was invisible Super-Batman, I could fly much higher and faster than before, but I kept crashing into things and needing to hold on to things that I flew by to help direct by flight path. And people could see me anyway, because almost everyone else had super powers in that dream, too. Except the orphan kids I took those lollipops to. They thought I was great.

So I wish that I could completely control my dreams. That would be fun, though they would never turn out so creative. As it is, I have only learned to bring my subconscious self to an omniscient enough state to hit the abort button on the subliminal process, screeching all rapid eye movement to a halt and jolting me awake, sometimes violently, like a crash landing. I guess that makes me like the Launchpad McQuack of the dream world.

What spawns in my pons

I already told a few friends about my dream the night before last. I dreamed I was chosen (the day of) to go and compete in doubles tennis at 7:00 PM for the Olympics. Doubles tennis. No one knew about it ahead of time, and I hadn't expected it at all. I hadn't even played in years. And there I was, four hours before the match, expected to go and play in the Olympics. Good thing it was doubles; it was a little less stressful that way. I thought briefly about going and practicing my serve a little bit before the big match. Or just warming up my swing. But I didn't. In fact, it didn't take long to just convince myself not to go. So I skipped the whole thing. Later in the dream I talked to a friend who had been there at the match. She said she was surprised when it was supposed to start and they called for me. "They called your name two times," she said, "but you weren't there."

Well maybe if they had given me more notice.

Big red button

Big red buttons must be pushed. And the pushing of the button is more important than the function connected to the button. The button doesn't even have to do anything. But you GOTTA push it. It was built to be pushed. Even if it does do something and that something is really negative, you gotta push it.

What big red button? I don't know, metaphorically speaking, I guess. Last night I was using a little program called Butler and looking at my Applications folder. From Butler you can launch groups of programs at the same time. I saw the option that said "Launch Group", in this case meaning, "Launch all eighty bijillion programs on your computer at the same time." This would usually be a bad idea. And no one had a gun to my head or anything, and yet I had to do it. I was thinking, "This is a bad idea. Heh heh. Button. Launch Programs."

So I clicked the button. About a hundred and twenty applications immediately started fighting for attention on the Dock, and my computer couldn't decide what to do first, so it did everything, for about forty seconds. Then it didn't do anything at all anymore. I had to do a power shutdown on the computer. It was a bad idea.
My attention span has failed me, and the convention of writing a little more and finishing off this blog as a complete thought no longer merits the mental effort required.

Also, National Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day was like two days ago, and we all missed it. So let's each of us take a moment out of consideration for our favorite respective pirates...

That's all for today.

A bunch of bull

I spent most of last night trying to escape from hostile Germany with my older brother. It wasn't hostile at first, so we were there just visiting. We were driving near the beach in a little black jalopy heading in one direction when omniscience told me we needed to go the other way since Germany all of a sudden wasn't going to let anyone out of the country and we would probably be executed. I was in the middle of telling this to Richard when he used our handgun to shoot down a German zeppelin flying about a mile behind us which—since he was also driving the car at the time—was pretty decent shooting. He only fired one shot. Those zeppelins blow up pretty fast as it turns out.

We drove until we reached some thick shrubbery that covered an entire field, and we decided to get out and inch our way through the foliage rather than try our luck in the more noticeable vehicle. We and several other Americans in the same situation made our way to the foot of an enormous wall. It was actually a huge mountain with stairways and rooms and whole buildings carved in and around and through the thing. Some called it the Wall. Others called it Mount Doom. It had hundreds of paths all through it, but if we navigated it successfully we could make our way out of Germany to safety. We went up some ramps and stairs that led clockwise around the structure, passing several entrances and hallways leading into the mountain. Around a corner, we came across a German guard who came over to check us out. Luckily, one of our group was able to throw him to the ground and stun him. We used the guard's own shoelaces to tie his fingers together. We thought that was the most effective thing to do there.

We ran into other troubles outside the structure and found ourselves being led through tunnels by a handful of guards that had captured us. It seemed like a bad idea to remain captured, so I lost the group as quick as I could, knowing Richard could take care of himself. I stumbled through empty halls and important buildings and even some residential areas, where I was once mistaken by some old women for their young, mute niece. It helped that they weren't expecting me to say anything back to them. I don't speak German.

During all this there was a sort of guard in disguise tailing me. He finally caught up with me when I was passing through a church whose congregation was in the middle of singing hymns. I was standing near several churchgoers, pretending to be one of them, when the guard approached me. I was pretty sure he wanted to kill me when he said, "I can't wait to terminate you." But before he could do that, he needed to take me to Istanbul, which is apparently where they were taking the other Americans as well. I asked if I could stay for the rest of the church meetings first, which of course he agreed to. However, church soon got pretty weird when everyone stood near a small round room or container, looking through its windows at the large gilded statue inside. It was a massive bull which stood on its back legs in a human-esque stance. It was very decorative. The congregation was repeating some song, and the lyrics seemed to consist only of the word "Istanbul."

People ask me why I don't get much done during the day. It's because my dreams keep me very busy at night and I need a break. I remember at one point, in a separate dream, I was stabbed and pushed down a large snowy hilly, which mostly just hurt my feelings, since it was a friend who did it. Later, the dreamed changed and I was in a kiddy playground, the McDonald's type with the netting and plastic ball bins. I noticed a truly enormous tarantula inside, so I left the playground. Just in time, too, since they closed it off behind me and wouldn't let anyone else out who was still inside.
 

And I don't even do drugs.

Me and Feeny

We are now in the second week of the semester, so I am about a week and a half behind in my classes. Not too bad.

I have a good teacher for Spanish 448R. I know he is a good teacher because the whole class applauded him when he walked in the room the first day. They know him from previous experience. I should know him from experience too, since I've already had him for 441. I guess four days of class that semester wasn't enough time for me to get to know him very well, but it looks like my classmates enjoyed the class. Since I didn't enjoy 441 or its lovely sister 451 very much last semester, I will be enjoying them again this semester with all new teachers. But one good teacher won't be enough. In fact, because of the pathetic nature of my recent academic performance, the department has seen fit to call in an expert, a professor of great renown whose competence and ability are superseded only by his sincere desires for the success of his young students. They've called in Mr. Feeny.

Mr. Feeny currently teaches Spanish 451, Survey of Hispanic Literature. You may be surprised to learn that his parents are actually native to Mexico. Though he likes for his students to refer to him as "Professor Russell Cluff," there is no mistaking the Feeny mustache or the twinkle in those little eyes.

It's gonna be a good semester.

me and Mr. Feeny discussing course materials after class