lastnite: a dream journal

My dreams break all sorts of international copyright laws

I went to Wal-Mart with Mom and Dad for clothes. I thought about getting a lemon yellow skort (shorts that have a front flap of fabric so they look like a skirt) for work, but decided against it. There was still a lot of winter merchandise around and I left once I found silver coats. I like silver coats, but I didn't really need one. So I found Mom and Dad in the men's section, and they had found a sale on silk shirts. Dad was getting a grey pinstripe shirt and Mom was fixated on a mauve silk shirt (the kind that seems to have two colors and changes in the light).

I was Kathleen's house, only it was set up differently. We were talking to each other on the phone even though we were in the same room: it's not like she even had gotten her dream warehouse yet and we were that far apart. Then we got into a fight about my shoddy work habits (which would be better if they needed to be, but I don't always have enough to keep me busy. Kathleen understands in real life.). "If you're so bored, why don't you refresh yourself on the latest brochure?" she demanded. I lost it, becoming the irrepressible combination of defensive and bitter: "Listen here. I do my job. I only goof off when my job is done. If I needed to refresh myself on the brochure, whatever you mean by that, I would do that before I started to goof off. But I don't have anything left to do that's related to my job, and that's the problem." Then I noticed she took down the Pedro Almodóvar poster (not of Almodóvar, but probably Laws of Desire or Dark Habits). Matt called me at Kathleen's house (Kathleen and I were still on the phone with one another) and so we all talked together. He started mentioning some show we needed to watch. Still on the phone with Kathleen, I sat down on the floor by her recliner and we watched TV.

Then we saw a very weird show on MTV. Two tarred and feathered men (obviously a reference to Sunday's episode of Jackass) ran all around their set, hopping on chairs, screaming, etc. They were acting like a combination between a Neanderthal and a three-year-old on speed. There was something mentioned about the Flaming Lips performing there next week. Then they showed a video that made me very happy: I have no idea what the song was, but all the characters were either from Pinwheel (the bunny with the telescope, Lulu, Molly the Mole), Sesame Street (Harry Monster, Big Bird, Cookie Monster), or McDonald's characters (Early Bird, Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar, and Mayor McCheese). I was so incredibly amused. I saw a short owl in glasses and asked Kathleen if it reminded her of Drew Carey. "Did Matt tell you this was on?" I asked her. She shook her head and said, "There's no copyright information. There should be."

I was in front of an old TG&Y, staring at three vending machines. One of them was certifiably broken, the other would eat dimes, and the last one had no sign indicating a problem. I needed to get some Almodóvar perfume for sixty cents, so I put six dimes in the one that was supposed to work. Only then, stupid me, did I bother to look and see if the vending machine had it. The way it had been filled, nothing could fall from the top rows because the second row from the bottom was so crammed with chips. They were weird chips too, with flavors like red wine vinegar, etc. The bottom row was the only one that could possibly fall out, and there was a bag of pretzels marked ten cents on the bag. I can't tell you how far back in time you'll have to go to get a "king size" bag of pretzels for ten cents. So I tried to get my money back and it didn't work. I then noticed two cans of Diet Coke on the ground around the legs of the vending machine. They were old and had started to get a patina finish around the opening for the can. I left them be.

Some newspaper reporters were talking about a family-run business. Everyone thought the two offspring would have it easy working for their father, but the brother-sister team agreed that it was worse: "Dad wrongly believes we're smart and he expects to do smart things."