Dave Short

I’m typing this thing on an original iMac keyboard, which means that ever seven or so characters I hit a wrong key because the damn thing is so small.

I believe that last night I had the weirdest dream I’ve ever had. It actually had some sort of plot for a while, until the Dream Randomizer™ in my brain decided to throw all that crap out the window.

It starts out on a desert island country with an opressive dictator. When I say desert, I mean desert. As far as I can remember, there is no water on the island whatsoever. So maybe its inhabitants collected rain water or something. And when I say dictator, I mean dictator. People who oppose his will are thrown into prison or are torched with gasoline. Seriously.

Surprisingly, I was not a character in this dream. It was a little short guy who, upon reflection, reminds me of Ziggy. So we’ll call him ‘Ziggy.’ All the people on the island were short and vaguely cartoon-character proportioned: you know, their heads were twice the size of normal heads.

Now Ziggy was a model citizen. But he was always thirsty. So he started digging in the sand one day. Pretty much randomly, since the entire island was basically a sandbox with houses on it. And an Exxon gas station. I remember that it was an Exxon station acutely. Anyway, after days of digging, he found a hose with running water. Yes! A hose. Just like that. Buried in the sand.

The protagonist of my Dali-esque dream

Now, for some strange reason, Ziggy had to be clandestine about his discovery. I’m guessin it’s because the dictator would have taken the water for himself. So Ziggy showed one or two of his friends and gave them drinks. He kept the hose secret and kept it safe.

Rumors began to spread about the water hose, and the dictator sent out guards to find the person who was so selfishly quenching the thirst of the populace. Ziggy decided to compose a Jack the Ripper-style letter to taunt the king, so he did so on one of those pieces of paper with the lines on which kidnergarteners learn to write. I am not making this up.

This is where the dream gets weird.

While he was going into the ocean to deliver it (apparently, it was a message in a bottle), he ran into a mermaid. Kind of like Ariel, but lacking the sea-shells, if you catch my drift (ooo! nice pun). She had black hair. She gave him a letter, then went off. This is a paraphrase of the letter:

Dear Desert Island Kingdom,

We are writing this to laugh at you. We live on the island across the ocean [how could they inhabit an island if they’re mermaids for God’s sake?!]. We don’t wear any clothes and have plenty of water and eat fruit all day long. So there!

Disheartened by this letter, Ziggy dropped it back into the ocean and went home.

The next day, the soldiers came and arrested him. Surprisingly, it was not for being the “Hose Bandit.” They pulled an Al Capone on him and got him for theft, building sand castles, and ‘eating cheese.’ I swear to God I am not making this up. To punish him, the dictator made him work in a gas station.

The last part of the dream, the only part I was in, was me coming in while the dictator (who I guess now was only the Exxon station’s manager) berated Ziggy. I asked if they had any custard doughnuts (a favorite of mine), and Ziggy pointed to one which was huge and covered with black frosting. The dream ended there. Sadly, I didn’t get to eat the doughnut in the dream.

So my Interpunk stickers came today: Screeching Weasel, The Riverdales, The Queers, and the Ramones. My guitar was also finished up today. I think I’m going to name it “Gwen”, after Peter Parker’s first love. It was, after all, my first guitar. Electric. My first guitar, my Yamaha acoustic, should be called “Liz” after Parker’s high school crush. Yes. I am a geek. For those readers who don’t know, my newest guitar, an Epiphone SG, is named “Mary Jane” after Spider-Man’s wife. Anyway, my guitar has tuners again so I can tune it without trouble. I also picked up Radiohead’s new album, Hail to the Thief, and a new set of strings. Know how much this cost me? $32, and with my $10 gift certificate from the Battle of the Bands that NWI won, it was only $22. I was afraid I’d plonk down over fifty bucks. Now I might even go to the Warped Tour. I need to call my buddy John and see what he’s doing; he usually goes.