Blahg

3 December 2008

I usually don't get into writing about my dreams on this site, the dream about world domination being a notable exception. Writing about dreams, after all, is veering into deeply "personal" territory, even though this is my "personal" Web site.

But last night's dream was so weird and so quasi-vivid, I've gotta share.

Apparently I was on a trip, I'm assuming somewhere California-ish. I know I was on a trip because I was - at one point - in a rush to catch my flight.

But that part winds up taking a back seat to some other stuff. I was having dinner with a girl (oooh! a girl!) and while we were dining one of her friends joined us (also a girl - a threesome?!).

Hold on. It's not like that. This friend picked up the tab for both of us and I felt a smidge guilty about her paying for my meal since I'm a total stranger. However, I only had about $12 in my wallet. Hey now, I live an almost cashless life; virtually everything gets charged in order to ring up the points. And I pay the bill in full every month because paying interest sucks butt.

Anyway, I needed to figure out a way to covertly go to an ATM and get cash in order to pay her back, but I was on a tight deadline in order to scooch out to the airport.

And that's when things get weird. NO. My having dinner with a couple ladies is not entirely weird, for all the wiseacres out there.

For some reason, I wind up in a grocery store. Why? I just ate! But I'm picking out pieces from open packages, basically making some kind of sandwich, and I pour out a cup of milk.

Then I leave. I don't pay for this on-the-fly deli. It's that cash issue again.

So I leave, but I come right back and explain my situation.

This clerk tells me I should talk to this guy standing next to him. It's Jack Black.

Yeah! Awesome! But why Jack Black? I love the guy; he's one of my favorite rockers/actors/comedians. But why is he working in a grocery store? Did he get fired from that record shop he was working in in High Fidelity?

I try to explain all the muckety-muck to Jack, but Jack is oblivious to every word I utter and he escorts me right over to this other counter and he shows me all these powder-blue-and-white articles of clothing. The terrycloth baseball caps were particularly odd, but I grabbed a baby-sized one (why? I have no babies!) and... then I find myself in a Jack Black autograph line and he autographs the cap.

Or something like that. That's when things got a little confusing. The next thing I know, I'm looking at a newspaper with a big ol' Jack Black sticker on the front page, wondering where the autograph is.

And that's where the dream ended, leaving me hanging.

My only explanation: I'm kung pooped. I'm Blacked out. Yeah, last week I spent an enormous amount of time pouring over the Kung Fu Panda / Secrets of the Furious Five DVD set, the Kung Fu Panda Blu-ray, and the Tropic Thunder Blu-ray, all of which arrived for review well past their street dates.

Even now, I have Cee-Lo Green's uninspired cover of Kung Fu Fighting running on auto-replay through my mind. And the joke about Fart Club from the Rain of Madness mockumentary is also loitering around my synapses for some bizarre reason.

Just thought I'd share.

1 December 2008

Over the weekend CNN briefly reported on a new recorded message that surfaced from Ayman al-Zawahiri. I'm pretty sure it was al-Zawahiri, but the story didn't get a lot of airtime in light of the tragedies in Mumbai (the terrorist attack) and Long Island (the morons who trampled a security guard to death at a Walmart on Black Friday).

Anyway, al-Zawahiri claimed Americans could solve their financial crisis by turning to Islam.

I see.

I'd like to ask him how he reconciles that notion with the fact that so many of his followers suffer from a more extreme financial crisis: abject poverty and a complete lack of a sense of having a future.

Al-Zawahiri is a guy with nine lives. Reports of his death have been frequent all year and, yes, greatly exaggerated. But hopefully he's at the tail end of his ninth right now.

On a somewhat related note, I saw a movie called Slingshot Hip Hop during the Starz Denver Film Festival. It's a documentary about Palestinian hip hop artists and it puts a spotlight on some really stunning circumstances that face young Palestinians.

They can spend an entire day waiting at a checkpoint while simply trying to travel a distance of 15 miles and at one point it's noted that the conditions so many Palestinians have to live under causes them to hate their lives. Even so, some of these kids are finding a release via hip hop and they recognize the arts are a more effective tool to get their message across than resorting to violence. As it is succinctly put in the documentary, violence begets violence.

Quite a bit can be learned from that movie and I'll try to get a full review posted soon.

In the meantime, there's one underlying message: Coexist.

Killing the people you don't agree with and who don't share your belief system won't take you down the path to eternal glory.

Newer   |   Older