NIGHTTIME FIGHT CLUB

Last night saw a bunch of weirdly confrontational dreams that I'm not sure how to interpret, if they even need to be.

- Matt Fraction and I are rival English professors. Fraction has written a play about John Malkovich, and he and I sit across a desk from each other in one of our offices and trade slit-eyed verbal barbs for an indeterminate amount of time.

- I'm at a private school, and somebody says something that causes me to knock him to the floor. I then proceed to beat the everliving shit out of him (a lot of elbow drops and kicking), but oddly, he doesn't fight back. As I'm being hauled away by the other students, I yell "I wish I had a truck and some chain -- I'd drag you facedown for a hundred miles!" What in the hell did this kid say to me? I don't remember.

I assure you that my time in the waking world is far less fraught with aggression.

SHEPADOODLE

SHEPADOODLE

SHEPADOODLE

SHEPADOODLE

ALWAYS WITH THE NEW INFORMATION

How is it that I'm over 25 years old and I'm still finding out about dog breeds that I had no idea existed? Don't you think that being around for this long would've meant I'd heard of basically every animal ever by now? NOT SO. Behold the Pumi. And here's an article on good ol' Wikipedia.

How about that.

FICTIONFACT

Did somebody tell me that you need to drink ten (10) glasses of water a day as part of a real, actual conversation I had this weekend, or did this discussion take place in a dream I had? I can no longer remember.

In case you're wondering whether or not my line between the dreamworld and the real world is blurring, I can say that I'm nearly 100% certain that the part of my weekend memories that involved disappearing girls and green-skinned barbarians was not, in fact, based on real world events.

REALLY: NO THANKS, BRAIN

Another one of those weird self-destructive moments I know I've talked about before:* I removed a dying AA battery from a wall clock, and for just a moment, I had the strange and inexplicable urge to swallow it like a pill. What in the unholy jimjam was that all about, honestly.

* You know, that thing that sometimes happens where you'll be standing at the edge of a cliff or a tall building and just for a second wonder idly what it'd be like to fall off?

THE PRICE OF MYSPACE IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE

MySpace tech dudes: Your phishing detection algorithms need some work. I'm just trying to leave comments on my friends' profiles. I'm not sure how that counts as "suspicious activity" today; it's a thing I've done before. I'm tired of verifying and changing my password, though, so I guess I'll come back to you later. Or just abandon you for Facebook.

You heard me

NOW HEAR THIS

Let it be known that I am person who is utterly unopposed to most forms of Public Displays of Affection, or PDA for short. Yes, you heard it here!

Hold hands!
Hug!
Kiss each other, why not!
Lean against each other while in line for something!

Do these things! Without fear of arrest or economic sanction from me and my blog! That's right! I said it!

Everything else, though? Think about it first, okay?

I leave you with the equally excellent news that Keepon is back, although some may say he never left our hearts in the first place.

AND WE'RE ALL UNWILLING WITNESSES

Consider a couple, a man and a woman who are either in love or high on something. The man languidly reaches out and caresses the back of the woman's head, entwining his fingers in her hair. The woman reaches out and strokes the man's head, and he leans into it like a puppy with a simpering smile. The man and the woman both reach out, clutching each others' forearms, and kiss for about a minute.

Did this take place:

- In a private place such as the living room of a house
- In a booth in a dimly-lit restaurant
- Across the aisle of an airplane in mid-flight*

(Hint: The italicized item is the correct one.)

Attention too-much-PDA couples: What the fuck is wrong with you. The first place on that list is the only location suitable for pulling that bullshit. Otherwise, you are cramming our eyeballs full of your two-person "We Luv, Luv, Luv Each Other So Very Mostly Much We Are Lost In Our Own Precious Little World, And The Rest Of You Can Fuck Right Off" show. I had an aisle seat right behind these two jackasses, and even though I had a TV built into the seat in front of me playing Die Hard 2, this was literally impossible not to notice. I was hoping to catch some sleep on the flight back from New York (one of my best pals from high school got married, it was lovely), but I think sheer annoyance kept me up long after the Couple of the Year quit fondling each other across the airplane aisle. Across the fucking aisle! How hard would it have been to ask one of the people sitting next to them to trade seats, if they can't keep their god damn hands off each other for five hours? Then at least they'd only be irritating the third person in their seating row, instead of everyone behind them.

I will further admit to you all that after getting off the plane, I saw the male half of this ridiculous couple bent over tying his shoes with his ass in the air, and the temptation to kick it as hard as I could was something I had to actively fight.

I have a bad case of the Dignities, I guess.

* Helpful diagram follows:

[s][s][w]___[m][s][s]
[s][s][j]___[s][s][s]

w = woman
m = man
j = me
s = other seats irrelevant to the story

MINOR LESSON #46

If you decide you've been blowing your nose a lot, and put something on it to help it stay moisturized, try using something other than Carmex. Carmex does that mentholated, camphorized(?) thing where it creates a nice cooling effect on the area to which it's applied, which is nice, except that when it's on your nostrils, this feeling makes you constantly think your nose is running when it actually isn't. Learn this information.

LIFE FORCE COCKTAIL

On my way back from the taco truck today there were some people handing out free bottles of some new fruit-based drink called Life Force.

Q: "Would you like a bottle of Life Force?"

A: "Only if I can get some Magic too, I need to cast Jump on myself to get over the lava pit hurr hurr cutting myself"

I have to say that this drink may not be entirely successful; I do feel curiously invigorated, but I'm not sure if it's the placebo effect or some sort of sugar rush I'm feeling from having poured 7up into it as soon as it was halfway down. I did this because it's got this weird undertaste to it, as though they ground up a bunch of multivitamin pills and tossed 'em in there. Maybe the two beverages are at war with each other in my stomach right now, as I type this.

Everything is possible!
All is permitted!

I WISH THE CITY HAD A GOOGLE CALENDAR

Mental wheels are beginning to turn around another match of Ultimate Team Cardboard Fortress Battle in mid-September. The question now is: Is there anything going on in mid-September at like a municipal level that I need to know about? Last time, I accidentally double-booked alongside Pride Weekend. It was still a great time, but I'd like to avoid doing that if at all possible this time around.

COMMON WORKPLACE ACCIDENT(?)

How many times have you done that thing where you're going into the bathroom at the exact same time someone else is coming out, and one of you almost knocks the other one out? I wonder if someone's tracking how many times that actually happens. The only solution I can think of would be to put a porthole in the door so you can see if anyone's coming, but my guess is that being able to look into a bathroom is not high on the list of requirements for a bathroom door.

ACCIO BOOK

Yeah, that's right, I said it

Can't unsay it

It just occurred to me that somebody I know in San Francisco must have bought the seventh Harry Potter book in the frenzy of its release, and read it, and now would like to lend it to me so that I can find out how everything ends. I have never bought one of these books because it seems like I can find a copy if I go to enough peoples' houses. Who among you is the one to whom I must speak?

HALF A SORE THROAT?

It hurts when I swallow, and I feel kind of crappy, but what's extra-weird about this is that when I feel the lymph nodes under my jaw, only one is swollen (the right one). Does this mean that only the right half of my body is aware that I'm getting a cold, or has the left half of my body already purged itself of microbial invaders?

YOU'RE NOT KIDDING ARE YOU

I try not to be one of those bloggers who comes across all "O God(dess), what fools these mortals be" while daintily waving a fan from my golden throne atop an ivory pedestal, but I stepped outside just now for a bit of fresh air and I saw a scruffy white kid with a guitar strapped to his back walk past me wearing a black t-shirt with this design on it:

[picture of a marijuana joint]
TOKE'N
WHITE
MALE

I don't even know what we're doing anymore. Like as a species.

ONEIROCINEMA

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks my dreams would make great movies.

In the latest one, I'm part of Earth's last line of defense against an invading alien force. In an auditorium meant for mission briefings, I use the giant gesture-activated video display to figure out a way to use a missile to send the girl I love off-planet to a safe location. Apparently it's deep in a cluster of "sparkle nebulae" that, onscreen, resemble cheerleading pompoms.

This doesn't even crack my dream list's top ten, if I ever have the time to look through all my old ones and rank them (which I don't).

AND JUST LIKE THAT

[whoof.wav] He was gone.

[orchestral_hit.mp3]

Which is to say that just as soon as I come back into town, I'm headed off-grid again and won't be back until Monday at the earliest. It's summer, and things keep happening during the summer for some reason.