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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

	2009.11.02  08.32 The Cylon Collective I had a dream that my town was just about to fall to the Cylons. The Cylons lived on Earth, you see, and took over bit by bit, expanding their territory. They would kill or assimilate us all, but they didn't have access to a gigantic nuclear arsenal or anything like that. Well, I found out somehow that they were interested in human history, and that they wanted this one old artifact. A glass sculpture. For some reason, I had this thing. I think that someone had looted it out of the museum during the war and it had come to me subsequently. Well, I saw this as an opportunity to save my town. So I strolled right into the Cylon base and allowed myself to be captured by them. They took me in to the base and had me speak to a spokesperson, played by Heather, this girl who works at Jerusalem Garden. I told them that I would show them where this artifact was if they spared my town. It was agreed, but they said that there was only one way that we could trust each other to uphold the deal: They would assimilate me into the Cylon collective. I was resistant, but I realized that I couldn't have hoped for much better. I figured that, in some way, I was sacrificing myself by coming here. At least they weren't killing me, and at least some part of what was me would live on. They grabbed me and walked me over to the assimilation platform. They told me that the process would entail me feeling two minutes of intense pleasure. Could be worse. They turned on the machine, and my consciousness grew to envelop all my Cylon bretheren, with warm, open, welcoming arms. This experience was beautiful. I couldn't believe that we had been so resistant to the assimilation. I cried out in pleasure, but then became embarassed, as I realized that all the other Cylons were aware of my behavior. They all went through the same process, after all, and here I was making a big deal about it. But it was okay. They understood. Somewhere, some Cylon was hearing the song "stars and stripes forever". I began to think of the words "be kind to your web-footed friends / for that duck might be somebody's mommy". A shudder of laughter erupted around the planet. It was amazing to experience. Normally, when I told a joke or something, there were maybe five people in the room that hear me. Here, I could instantaneously have nine million Cylons, all of them thinking about "be kind to your web-footed friends" at the same time. I was hooked. Some humans burst into the base, to save me. Machine guns and all. They grabbed my body off the assimilation machine. I would not have them destroy my newfound brotherhood, but these had been my friends, so I would not have them killed, either. I decided to shift my consciousness away from that body. It fell limp, like a puppet with its strings cut. My friends thought I was dead. I shifted my consciousness to pay more attention to the body of Heather, the one that had been functioning as a spokesperson to the humans, becuase the humans understood us so much better that way. I stood up and told everybody to lay down their weapons. We would leave this base and this town in peace. My friends were astonished by the Cylons' new behavior. Our intentions had always been pretty opaque to them, but they only new us as killers and monsters. Now we were just walking away from the fight. They had never seen us do anything like this before. Of course, the change was the assimilation of Ryan. That had, of course, changed Ryan's life and consciousness a very great deal. But the process works in both directions, and the Cylon consciousness was also altered by the addition of Ryan. We began to see things in a new way. Human individuality was something special and curious. There was one Cylon collective. We could just shift our consciousness around and cut bodies out and add new ones in. But because the humans had no collective consciousness, each one body contained an entire consciousness. The death of one human body would destroy an entire consciousness, and this was equivalent to the destruction of all of the nine million bodies in the Cylon collective. The destruction of souls was NOT what we wanted to be a part of. We have always wanted what was best for everything. We assimilated humans, because that would bring them into our glorious consciousness. Those who did not want this, we took to be malfunctioning units, and nothing was lost by the destruction of such a part. We were greatly saddened to learn that we had destroyed so many consciousnesses. The preservation of human life, and most particularly the beautiful consciousnesses that each contained. That was our new goal. The Cylon consciousness would not die with the death of any body. We suddenly felt a sense of panic that each time a person's body died, their soul was lost. We must dedicate ourselves to the preservation of each individual life. Now, the Cylons were adaptable, but the humans were not. For human souls to have a rich, fulfilling existence, the human must have a particular environment, with a particular type of human society. They must have self-determination. Therefore, we must allow human culture to persist. It is we who must adapt to it. We would integrate ourselves into it. We had the body of Ted Danson, who we had assimilated earlier. We understood that this body was known and trusted amongst humans. We used it to promote the idea of fitness. Aerobics. Exercise. This would help each human soul live for as long as possible, by preserving the body. It took the humans some time before they could understand that we were serious about this sudden change in policy. We had been fighting a war against them, killing them, taking over their cities. They could not understand -- we had been like a force of nature, bearing down upon them. Death would come, uncaring, and they did not know why. And suddenly, the force had stopped. Suddenly, arms were laid down and troops were withdrawn, and the orders came through -- "You will be allowed to go on living your lives in your way. But please, we urge all of you to get enough exercise. Have you considered spinning? Yoga? Pilates? We Cylons will close down our weapons factories and we will open up a chain of gymnasiums in each human city. They are free of charge. Please make use of them. Furthermore, it has come to our attention that, in five billion years, your sun will undergo changes that will cause this planet to become inhospitible to life. We will be working on this problem." People had never been so confused. You want a little glimpse into what came next? Well, the body of Heather, who had been the Cylon spokesperson during the war, got a job as a bank teller. We had, after all, decided that it would be important to integrate into human society, to provide them with the most enriching environment possible. Heather's boss was unreasonably harsh to Heather. Because the humans did not understand our ways, they thought of Heather as the leader of the war. The humans had a hard time understanding our change of policy. And they had a hard time understanding that Heather was no more the leader than the lips were the leader of a human body. The boss was having a conversation with Heather, and using harsh tones and language. We could not figure out why he would treat her so harshly. Slowly, we came to understand. This man was angry because he felt we had not been performing our duties well as the bank teller. Any time a person came to ask for money, we would give them what they asked for. It seemed reasonable to us, because this money seemed so important to human happiness. Why would these humans not allow one another to live up to the full potential of their lives? The Cylons lived as a collective -- almost a nation within a nation. We looked after what was best for the whole. Why did the humans not do this? Sometimes, we Cylons would act irresponsibly toward one or another of our bodies, but this did not increase the suffering of any souls. How could the humans be so cavalier about allowing the suffering of one another? Another man came and took Heather's body to a jail, and to a court room. A few other Cylon bodies had been arrested and were all waiting in the courtroom to be arraigned, as were some humans. While we awaited our turns to be arraigned, some other Cylons were reading up on human law, and becoming increasingly frustrated. Finally, we could take no more. All the cylons in the courtroom stood up and we had Heather speak again, with the voice of battle, interrupting the proceedings. "We cannot understand your human law. The body of law is too large, how can you expect a human to understand and know all of it? How can you hold them to live by all these laws when they cannot know or understand them? We declare this system to be an unfair affront to the necessary dignity of human life. We try to adapt to your society, but it would not be to the benefit of anybody for us to adapt to this." We attacked the guards (not so as to kill them, just so as to stop them from pursuing or subduing us). To our surprise, many of the human criminals joined us. We marched together to free the humans that were living non-enriching lives in the jails. The Cylons formed a formidible force in this action, but our numbers were bolstered by a large and growing number of humans, who felt that they had been forced to live degrading lives, and looked forward to freeing themselves of these unfair requirements. We had tried not to interfere in human affairs, but we could not stand by and allow this suffering. And that's how it went down. (Update: Removed accidentally-pasted-in text about the Alford plea which got on there while I was double-checking the meaning of the word "arraignment" on wikipedia). (Update 2: I was quite surprised tonight to find that glass sculpture that the Cylons were so interested in. It was sitting in my room right next to my alarm clock. Apparently, my subconscious pays more attention to the decorations in my room than my conscious mind does).

	2009.10.27  20.26 Radio Drama 2009 Once again, I tried to make a radio drama and play it on my Halloween installment of my show. Once again, I failed to make it spooky. Once again, however, it turned out good. Sarah Mullins was much help, starring as Mom and helping with the production. Debi Sabo played Jane. Gabe Anderson played Mr. Johnson, the Narrator, and the Announcer. Natalie Matuszac played Irene. BOOM. Here you go.

	2009.10.23  11.16 Carbon Nanotubes! I had a dream that I got a tattoo. But instead of using ink, they used carbon nanotubes and just tattooed a big square of it into my arm. They were clear, so it didn't look like I had a tattoo. But I had a device that looked like a label maker. I could load an image onto it and then wave it near the tattoo and it would change the image on the tattoo. So I could have whatever tattoo I wanted at any given time, or none at all!

	2009.10.07  11.51 Nightmare I had a nightmare the other night. I was an escaped slave, trying to make my way out of Louisiana. I was tailed by the cops. I couldn't use the road or the riverbank, and was instead running through all the ferns and undergrowth or whatever. Plants. Big leaves. I was getting all cut up. I passed through this one guy's land and I overheard him talking to the cops. The cops said that they were looking for a runaway slave, and he said they couldn't search his land without a warrant. Thanks, dude! A sympathizer, probably! But I passed through and onto this other guy's land who was NOT a sympathizer. They had a gallows there, and a poem hanging by the gallows indicated that you would definitely be hung on the gallows, and you'd probably be better off if you hung yourself there, because if they found you they would not be merciful. When I woke up, I decided that I was too hot. I opened the window and turned up the fan. Goodbye, Louisiana!

	2009.09.19  09.19 Red and Blue I had a dream that I lived in a society that was tightly controlled by a strict hierarchy. It was necessary for our survival, which was effected on meager resources. I was a part of "red team". I was taught from birth to fight "blue team" for control of their resources. Likewise, they were taught to fight us. Our lives consisted of warfare. We lived in a small, confined area, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. The only thing that was more deeply trained into us than our fight with blue team was the proscription against approaching the fence. Why? Zombies! The world had been overrun by zombies, and inside the fence were the only living humans. That's why things were so tough for us. But one day, I was on a raid against blue team. I was part of a jeep team, each with mounted machine guns, and we were supposed to give cover for our infantry. The jeeps set out, but I turned mine. I didn't want to die in gunfire. I had had enough of our society and its warlike ways. I started driving my jeep towards the fence! I didn't care what I would meet there, I only wanted to get away. My radio, of course, came alive with exhortations to stop, to turn around, to rejoin the fight. I ignored the radio. Both sides of the battle agreed that my escape was of more urgency than the fight. Both red and blue team set out in pursuit. So great was my crime that I was not to be taken prisoner. They had no hope of reform for me. If somebody was so lost as to break society's #1 rule and approach the fence, then they were clearly lost to all of society's rules. I clearly was of no use to the hierarchy, and could never be trusted again under any circumstances. My approach to the fence was a danger to everybody, not just red team. So both armies united to kill me. But I had a good head start. I drove like crazy, taking huge risks and nearly turning my jeep over, just to stay one step ahead of the pursuing armies. I had no idea what I would do when I reached the fence, but it didn't matter to me. I had made my decision, and there was no turning back. Finally, I had run out of room. I was at the fence. The armies would catch up with me. I wheeled around and brought my machine guns to bear. I would stay alive as long as I could. I began to fire on my pursuers. They began to fire on me. But quickly, their fire died off. They had all stopped, and were staring and gawking behind me, even to the point that I was shooting them down with impunity. My panic subsided and I felt safe enough that I wouldn't be shot, that I decided to look behind me and see what it was that they saw. A thriving industrial society on the other side of the fence! Not a dead wasteland filled with roaming zombies. A factory, a busy road. Live humans! Everything we fought and died for was a lie. Red team, blue team, the struggle for survival. The hierarchy. None of it was necessary. It was an absurd comedy. We threw down our weapons and tore through the fence and walked through to rejoin the rest of the human race.

	2009.09.19  09.02 The Cambrian Explosion! I had a dream that there was a girl I often saw sitting on a park bench at lunch time. I knew that she often saw me, and one day I decided to sit next to her and talk to her. She was a grad student, it turned out. I wanted to impress her. It so happened that I had a piece of impressive information: Early on in Earth's history, a comet came and hit the Earth. It was this comet that seeded the Earth with life. Furthermore, what hit the Earth was only a piece of the comet which broke off. The rest of the comet slingshotted around the Earth and went on to hit Mars. It was this comet which destroyed the nascent life on Mars, making Mars evermore inhospitible to life. What makes this knowledge all the more impressive is how I came about it: I was on that comet. I had been alive billions of years. I had spend most of the time since that crash living on Mars, unaware that life had evolved on Earth and I needn't have been so lonely. It was only recently that I had discovered life on Earth and endeavored to go live among it. So, I thought that this information might impress the girl, but I was concerned that it might instead make her think that I was crazy. Eventually, I decided that it might be better to save this for a later meeting. Afterword: This has nothing to do with the Cambrian explosion.

	2009.09.15  10.24 Death Row I had a dream that I was on death row for a crime I *obviously* didn't commit! I was to be executed at 8am on the following morning. They let me out to have a last night on Earth. I discovered a little-known law: If I could collect 100 signatures on a petition, I could get my sentence commuted to life imprisonment. I was like "100 signatures in 24 hours? NO PROBLEM! I easily know that many people." My parents had picked me up from the jail, so I told them to collect signatures from the neighbors and stuff while I went to the co-ops. I had a hard time finding 100 people! Also, my parents were apparently having a hard time with the neighbors. They were suspicious of letting a convicted whatever-I-had-supposedly-done not face justice. They signed, but my mom had obviously cashed in quite a bit of favor to get them to do so. After I found all the people I could, I started kind of running around at random. I found some Christian groups on the Diag that were handing out ice cream and talking about Jesus. I convinced them that Jesus wouldn't want people put to death, so they signed. Finally, my parents and I compiled our lists. 105 signatures. If there were no repeats, and they were all valid, I could live. Not a large enough margin for my tastes. And not enough time! I sent my mom to the governor's office while my dad and sister drove me to jail. I hoped that my mom could get the paper turned in in time. At the jail, while we were walking up to it, there was a sudden rush of flame, as though igniting previously-spilled gasoline. It went in a straight line toward the jail, climbing the wall, and finally exploding dramatically when it got to where my cell had been, on the 8th floor. I looked over. My sister had obviously planned this as a jailbreak, so as to leave nothing to chance. But I didn't want my whole family to have to live as fugitives, so I decided that no-one could know that my sister had planted that. Hopefully we could play it off as an accident. I decided to try to help put out the fire. Perhaps I could get time taken off of my sentence (if the petition went through), and I also hoped to plant evidence that the fire and explosion were an accident. Finally, my mom arrived. "Mom! Mom! Did you get the petition turned in at the governor's office? Did they accept it?" "Nope," my mom said, pausing dramatically. "Instead, we got the death penalty repealed!" And everybody lived happily ever after, or in jail for a long time, respectively.

	2009.09.02  09.23 Do-Nation I had a dream that I had a briefcase full of cash. It was all the money that had been donated to the Work Gallery that year. (in my dream, the Work Gallery was a nonprofit organization, not a University dept). I was supposed to bring the cash down to the gallery for some reason. I dropped off the money and got a receipt. OR SO I THOUGHT! It turns out that I had accidentally dropped off the briefcase at "See", the eyeglasses store, a few doors down from the Work Gallery. I realized that the next morning, when I got a very angry call from the Work Gallery. "Uh oh", I thought. "How am I going to make this up to them?" Well, it turns out that the "receipt" that they gave me was actually stock. It turns out that I had bought a large amount of stock in See. Furthermore, upon the news of the huge windfall, the stock prices had shot up! NO PROBLEM! I just sell the stock and give the money to the Work Gallery. This is what I did. It ended up that I was able to drop off much more money than I originally would have. And then the next day, I was arrested for insider trading. Whoops!

	2009.08.31  11.53 WWII I had a dream that I was a spy in WWII. Before I was a spy, I was a professional wrestler in the German wing of the WWE. And I stayed as a professional wrestler after the war started and after I was a spy. Pro wrestling was kind of underground at the time, but the people loved it, so it didn't get shut down. So, I was scouting out where in Germany would be the best place for the yanks to drop their newly-developed atomic bombs. I delivered this information to my contacts by talking on a cell phone during a wrestling match. So there I was, getting tagged in and out, getting whacked in the back of the head with a plywood board, clotheslining people, and so forth. And all the while, I was gabbing "Okay, so thirteen miles from this spot, there's an outpost. Some high-ranking generals are going to be there in three days. There's a supply depot near these railroad tracks. Hang on," and then I would drop-kick my opponent.

	2009.08.24  16.10 Shipwreck I had a dream last night that, when I was five, my parents took me and my sister on a cruise. On the cruise, we had a big shipwreck. The ship sank. My sister very nearly died, but they found her and brought her onto our lifeboat. Over the next few years of my life, a few things didn't make much sense. My sister, who I was once close to, was much more distant. Furthermore, I found it strange that she used to be older than me and was now younger than me. Also, I seemed to remember a few times when people told me that she had died on the boat. And finally, when I was sixteen, I pieced it all together. She *had* died on the boat. I had become so delusional in my insistence that this had not happened that my parents found it easier to simply have another child and tell me that this was my sister.

	2009.08.12  11.23 Labor Dispute I had a dream that I was trying to go to a cool rock and roll show, but I kept hearing, across the way, a bunch of yelling and big machines. Bulldozers were pushing lots of stuff into a big pit. Lots of people were cheering about it. I went over and talked to them, to see what was going on. They were all waiters who worked at cottege inn. They said that the boss finally sealed a deal to outsource the company to India. He was going to shut down all the stores in America and open them up over there. Everybody was fired. So they were grabbing all the stuff that was inside the store, and pushing it into this big pit, that they intended to burn. Well, this sounded like fun, so I joined them. I ran through the store, breaking windows and grabbing things. But a couple things, I decided to keep for myself. There was a collection of novelty violins. They weren't made to sound very good, but they had shapes carved and painted onto them. I took the Che Guevara violin. I also found a transformers toy that you could turn on and it was a real robot that could walk around and understand English. It couldn't speak English, but it could respond to you with body language.

	2009.07.24  23.35 Special Private School I had a dream that I went to interview for a fancy private high school (I was younger in this dream). I went to the lobby to wait for the people to come interview me. But the lobby just felt so stuffy! Everything was fancy, with this fancy-looking furniture and all these old leather-bound books and stuff. I sat there eating cheez-its and drinking soda, and I was like "Uh! There's no way I'd ever fit in here," so I left. A couple weeks later, I'd had a change of heart, so I came back to check the school out again. Strangely, my box of cheez-its was still there. I was like "dude, you'd think that a place this stuffy would've cleaned more often than this. Unless... Maybe they're not really this stuffy after all..." They came and took me for my tour of the school. It turns out that, indeed, that's just what they show the parents. Behind the door, it's non-stop zombie dance parties! That's right. Zombie kids and regular kids, partying side-by-side! One of the kids even taught me a spell. z42tof42 -- to turn zombie (z) to flesh (f). It was temporary. One interesting thing: Even though these zombies pretty much acted like regular people, their parents still mourned their loss. They were like "It's been so sad ever since Emily died." Of course, Emily didn't much appreciate it when her parents acted that way. That's why all the zombie kids liked being here so much. Well, I was at a zombie pool party. There was a little pool and an awesome DJ setup and stuff. Suddenly, I noticed that all the electric cords for the DJ equipment had fallen in the water. Oh noes! I realized that if anybody got in the pool, they'd be electrocuted. I shouted, "Hey, don't get in the pool!" but nobody heard me because the DJ music was so loud. I yelled a few times, with no effect. A kid was about to get in the pool. So I thought quick. Maybe, if I reversed those letters... "f42toz42!" I shouted. It turned all the flesh (f) people in the room into zombies (z)! Zombies can get electrocuted just fine. I saved the day.

	2009.06.09  09.44 Ireland I had a dream that I went on a week-long program to Ireland. When I got there, I was surprised to discover that the people of Ireland still lived in the indigenous Celtic way. I don't know why this is not something that's widely known. However, they still spoke English. Anyway, the week-long program turned out to be sitting in a hotel all week listening to people talk to us about Ireland. Not Irish people, of course. Americans and British people. Then we left. I was pretty pissed off that they didn't get us out to see the people and the culture. I was complaining to some of the other people in the program. They said "What? Why didn't you just skip some of the workshops? That's what you're supposed to do." *Doh!*

	2009.06.09  09.43 Heroin, holy shit! I had a dream last night that my dad revealed to me why my mom had been so grumpy lately: She'd been on heroin! She'd been using heroin with Jason Voss! In real life, I have no evidence that either person has ever used heroin. Furthermore, I have no evidence in real life that my mom has even been grumpy! Yeesh.

	2009.05.26  06.36 Holy Mountain Last night I watched the ridiculous film "Holy Mountain". It's from the berry berry psychedelic 70s, so you better believe that it's got nekkid ladies next to a bunch of random ironic and/or critical religious symbolism. Anywho, I had a dream last night that was inspired by that movie. Mine was better, of course. In my dream, I joined an elite group of people from the different planets in our solar system on a quest to the edge of the solar system to find the ultimate power over the universe. (In the movie, an elite group of evil people who embodied different astrological meanings of the different planets joined each other on a quest to the top of the holy mountain to find the ultimate power of immortality). We all cast off the things that made us elite. We were going to have to master the civilizations of each of the different planets, and rise through the ranks there, starting from nothing. We had to rise far enough to secure passage to the next planet. There was me, Willow, this giant guy (like 8 feet tall) from Jupiter, Luba (the only fictional person with a name), this one guy who was played by Jake Gyllenhaal, and a few people who never really established their individuality. We visited a couple of planets that had some challenges. I don't really remember what they were, but I had the impression that it happened. I think there was a computer problem on one of the planets and I fixed it. Then we came to this one planet where everybody just kind of farmed and laid around. It was pretty dang easy to farm there, so they just set their crops in the ground and then lied in the sun until the crops were ready. In some ways, it was kinda hard to rise through the ranks of that society, because they didn't really have a hierarchy. They didn't really interact very intensely outside their plots of land. It was mostly just isolated communities of people working their plots of land. There wasn't much reason to trade, because the land provided everything you could want. Man, we were havin' a dang good time, I'll tell you. The giant from Jupiter got ahold of a pennywhistle, and we listened and sometimes danced, and we just ate and had a good time. I was all "Hey, you guys. We're havin' a good time here. Why do we need all the power in the universe, when we can just hang out here with each other and have fun?" Luba was with me. Willow said he wasn't particularly wedded to the idea of finding the ultimate power over the universe, but he also didn't want to just stay here forever. Jake Gyllenhaal's character, however, was adamant that we continue on our quest. He was all about finding the ultimate power in the universe. Ultimately, the others won out, and we resumed our quest. The next planet we came to was Jupiter. The challenge we faced was that the economy there was terrible! Something about overpopulation. Rich people, we found out, could not get rich people jobs. If they did, they turned out to be actually worse off than middle-class people who got middle-class jobs. Even middle-class jobs were pretty hard to find. So we decided that the best way to make it through this planet was not to try to rise through the ranks, but to try to be middle class. We all searched the want ads. We all thought the giant would be the one to get a job first, because he was a native. But it was actually Luba who got a job first. She got some kind of an office job. She made enough to just barely support us. We had an apartment and food. None of the others of us ever got jobs, and we kinda got depressed and stopped looking. Fortunately, we eventually made enough for tickets off-planet, so we went on. The next planet we came to had an interesting culture: It was populated by a bunch of Godzillas, and the one who was in charge was whoever was the highest. They built these tall tall buildings, so that they could be higher than each other. Jake Gyllenhaal's character got an idea of how we could take over that society. We all got together and stood on each other's shoulders and stuff, and we wore a Godzilla costume. We somehow tricked people (Godzillas) into believing that we were a visiting dignitary from a foreign land. The leader of their society, who lived in the highest tower, came down to street level to formally greet us. At that time, Jake Gyllenhaal's character whacked the leader over the head with a frying pan and we booked it up the stairs. We won, and were thus the new leader. We ordered the guards to execute the old leader. At that time, we revealed that we were people and not Godzillas, but what were they going to do? We were up higher than them. So Jake Gyllenhaal's character sat up on top of the tower and watched what was going on down below. Unlike the previous leader, he didn't really care what happened to anybody else, as long as he was in charge. Every night, he had a lady brought up to him, and every morning he pushed her off the tower. The people (Godzillas) hated him. We started to hate him too, but he somehow got us all to fear him as our leader as well. We were fed up! Luba tried a tactic: She reminded him that we were on a quest for the ultimate power in the universe. She reminded him that as long as we stayed here, we were abandoning our quest. He replied that he did indeed have ultimate power. As a demonstration, he pushed last night's lady out the window. Luba saw that there was no reasoning with him, so she tried a desperate tactic. She went to the window and got the attention of all the subjects. The news, the passersby, everybody. They would pay attention to her pronouncements because she was, nominally, at least, a part of the oligarchy that was their leader. Once she had everybody's attention, she pulled out a sword and chopped her own head off. Her head fell from the tower. The people understood: We had ascended the tower as one. We were not, any of us separately, their leader. It was only as one that we were their leader. Because one of us was dead, that meant that the Godzilla that they had seen ascend the tower no longer existed. We were shattered and separate, and we were not their leader. One of our guards, who was a disciple of the original leader, pushed us down the stairs and became the new leader, to the cheers of the crowd. Well, we still had enough wealth to secure passage to the next planet. We were still very angry with Jake Gyllenhaal's character, and he felt great shame. He wasn't ashamed of being so evil. He was ashamed of temporarily abandoning his quest for ultimate power over the universe. He was ashamed that he had been tricked by all that false power. We discovered these feelings of his when we were waiting at the space-subway stop (it's a subway when it's on the planet, but it can and does fly through space). He had been acting ashamed, and we thought he had learned his lesson. When he revealed that he didn't think that anything he had done as leader was so very wrong, we knew that he would never learn his lesson, and that we could never trust him to wield the ultimate power over the universe, even if we found it. The giant from Jupiter (who loved Luba very much) ordered Jake Gyllenhaal's character to lay himself down on the train tracks and be crushed by the train. The giant played on his shame until he was able to convince Jake Gyllenhaal's character to lay himself on the tracks and be crushed. So we got on the train. Things were awkward and silent between us. I tried to strike up a conversation with Willow, but he was not in the mood to talk. Instead, I tried to strike up a conversation with a stranger on the train, who was going to the big university on whatever planet we were headed to next. I started to suspect that our next challenge was going to involve a university somehow. But then my alarm rang and I had to go to the radio station. I'll probably describe this dream on the air in fifteen minutes.

	2009.05.22  11.11 Plane Crash! Oh Noes! I had a dream that I was flying in a plane from LA to Detroit. En route, the plane crashed into another plane! Oh Noes! And god dang, the pilot was killed and everything. Fortunately, we had a very resourceful stewardess on board. She managed to crashland us near some train tracks. Then she deployed the landing gear and hitched the plane wreck to the next passing train. Not only did we all survive, but she was going to make sure we got home as well! It took a couple days, but we made it.

	2009.05.22  10.52 The Ostragoths I had a dream that I was a high-born patrician back in ancient Rome. I was still young - on the brink of manhood - and lived with my parents. My family, of course, kept Ostragoth slaves. This did not sit well with me. It was the Ostragoths that I spent time with. Our Ostragoth nanny raised us alongside her own Ostragoth children. My friends were Ostragoths, even though this was not supposed to be the case. But the decadence and cruelty of Roman society, I could not abide. I started attending some of the marches of the Gothic resistance. The police would beat them and disperse them, but they always left me alone, assuming I had just gotten caught up in the fray by being on the streets. This only increased my bitterness. One day, at one of these marches, I saw a reporter taking a photo of me (it's okay to be anachronistic, it's a dream). I saw that this would cause a scandal. I panicked and ran over and grabbed that reporter, grabbing his camera and beating him up. When I came to my senses, I realized that I couldn't live this double life any longer. I couldn't have the privileges of patricianship that I hated so much. So I decided to join the Ostragoths wholeheartedly, singing their songs of protest and showing my face with pride. I would have to start living with them, I knew. My sponsorship would bring a lot of notoriety to their cause, I knew. This was the start of a new life. For everybody. With that as a catalyst, the rebellion became more than just a series of sporadic marches and riots. It became an organized, military resistance that would eventually bring the empire down.

	2009.05.13  10.30 Mars I had a dream that I was on Mars. I was part of the first human colony there. There were like 20 of us. Sam was there too! We had a pretty big building that we lived and worked in, conducting science and construction projects. There was also an orbiter that took pictures on interesting things on the planet's surface for us to go look at. One day, a picture came in that had us all scratching our heads. We couldn't tell exactly what it was, but with all those right angles and patches of color, it definitely looked man-made. "Is somebody else on Mars?" we asked. But no other country admitted to sending something up there, and that's something you'd brag about! So we went and checked it out. It was a goddamn pool table! What the hell was a goddamn pool table doing here on Mars??? We went back to the base and started talking excitedly about it. Sam started looking real sheepish. "I think it's time you met my mom," he said. Sam's mom came from around the corner. She appeared to be claymated. She was spunky. We tried to accept her presence, but Sam made it clear that questions like "How did you get here?" and "Why are you animated?" were going to be incredibly awkward to ask. We figured she would reveal these things in good time. We got a whole lot more curious when she exhibited an ability to walk around outside without a spacesuit. For example, to play pool with people. She developed a habit of sleeping in the airlock with the front door open. Then she started doing weird things. Apparently, she had magic powers to turn things into other things. She would turn useful things into useless things that amused her. She would magically teleport things around. One day, she turned one of our people into a potted plant. This finally gathered all the people together as an angry mob. They were going to figure out what the hell she was. She was going to answer some goddamn questions, goddamnit. The crowd armed themselves. I told them that this was a very bad idea. She has a demonstrated ability to magically do anything she wants. I thought it best not to antagonize her. But they didn't listen. The crowd confronted her. She didn't answer their questions. They opened fire. All of them vanished. Sam and I were left. Sam's "mom" revealed that she wasn't really Sam's mom. She had just been using her powers to make him think that. Instead, she was some sort of magic being (we still didn't get any specifics), and she goes around and finds new civilizations and destroys them. "Destroys them? Why?" It took her awhile to think about why. "For fun," she shrugged. "But we don't want to be destroyed," I said. "Yeah, I usually save a few people. Cuz that's also fun. You can be one of them if you want." "I'd certainly like that, but I think I'd like for nobody to get destroyed." "Okay, I'll not destroy your civilization if you can promise me that you'll never go into space ever again." "Well, I can promise that *I*'ll never go into space ever again. I can probably convince people not to go into space for a couple of decades. But what happens if we do eventually? People are very hard to control, in that way," I said. "Really?" she said. "Never mind, then. I'll just go ahead and destroy civilization." She snapped her fingers and I was on some earth-like planet with about 20 people. The only survivors. We tried to live on, but there were some divisions. Some people were trying to re-create the system of money. I argued that this was a big problem in the past and that it was unwise to try to recreate it. I said that I wasn't participating in it. There were arguments. One day, that claymated lady came back to check up on us. I begged her, if she could, to undestroy society. To bring back at least some of the people that had been destroyed. She listened to my pleas and then she said "ohhhhh, all right." She snapped her fingers and teleported us all somewhere. There were other people there. Another group, about the same size as us. We were surprised to see them, and they were surprised to see us. Each of us thought that we were the only surviving people from the destruction of the Earth. In fact, it turned out that she had just teleported us all to random places on Earth, in groups of 20, and told us that the Earth was destroyed and that we were the only survivors. She hadn't actually killed (that many) people. "What," she said. "You guys can't take a joke?"

	2009.04.13  09.00 Replicants I had a dream that I crashed my car. I was like "I'll go check that farm to see if someone can help me." Dude. Y'know what they grew on that farm? Women! They had cloning technology, and they would clone these ladies. They called the clones "replicants" and didn't treat them like people. They trained them for one job: To attract rich men to marry them. The idea is that then they could send money back to the farm. If they got too old without being married, they would be "terminated" and they would unfreeze the original and make a new batch of replicants from them. The ladies explained to me that there was no cameraderie between them. They were trained to compete with one another. Well, I helped a few of them escape. Normally, they would be watched, so even when they were off the farm, the farm would know where they lived and stuff, so they were never free. The ladies never anticipated that they would be free. But now, the farm didn't know where they were, and they were free. They decided to devote their lives to freeing other women who had met this fate. I helped them. They would track these men, the husbands, and they would kill them and free the women. They were very concerned with the idea that humans are difficult to kill. So you stabbed them, huh? You're sure he's dead? You're sure a doctor can't fix him up and he'll live? So they would only consider the job done if they chopped off his head AND drained his blood. I would help them by distracting the guy until they got in a good position to strike, and then I would help the woman escape. Sometimes, the rescued women would also join the cause. The police were baffled by the sudden rise in this type of killing. It seemed like the work of a serial killer, but how could one serial killer get in all these places?

	2009.04.10  01.30 Lotta Money I had a dream that there was this girl and her name was Lotta Money. That's all there was to it. No plot or action. Just Lotta Money.

	2009.04.08  13.29 Star WHAT?!? I had a dream that I convinced some friends of mine to act in a Star Trek fanfilm. We shot some scenes and stuff, and then I was ready to edit it all together. Someone saw me in the editing room and found out my terrible secret. I was not editing this footage into a Star WARS fanfilm. Everybody was so mad. "Hey, I agreed to act in a Star TREK film. Not some dorky Star Wars shit!" I knew that. That was why I perpetuated this lie.

	2009.03.28  19.54 Like, fer sure! I had a dream that I lived in a mall. Not just a mall, but a whole world of mall! Everything everywhere was mall. I never saw the outside. I didn't know it existed. Everybody just walked around, shopping and working at the mall all the time. One day, me and my sister were walking around (my sister was played by a made-up person). We found something highly, highly strange. The Boundary! The mall was behind us and the Outside was ahead of us. Most people were so weirded out by the Boundary that they just averted their eyes and pretended they didn't see it. The mall placed a greeter there, to ease people's minds. But my sister and I were like, "Dude, let's check this out!" So we walked outside and we found the craziest stuff there. Sky, grass, clouds. People also lived there, but they lived in houses that were separated from one another. We got lost out there, because we were unaccustomed to finding our way around without mall directories and clear layouts. A nice old couple took us in and let us stay with them. They got us violin lessons. That was amazing! I'd never known that there was such a thing as creativity before. Creativity, it turned out, was the greatest. That and endeavor. We lived in this way for three months, but one day, the mall caught up with us! Apparently, it grows of its own accord. Holy schnikies! It swallowed up the small town we lived in. Suddenly, we were back in the mall. This we did not want. So we walked outside again. And immediately, the mall grew to engulf us again. The greeter strongly encouraged us not to leave the mall. Apparently, the mall had figured out that we wanted to escape, so it was doing the best it could to make sure we could not. We realized we would have to sneak out. So we went to the store that sells the little scooters, and pretended to be regular customers, just looking at the scooters. But suddenly, we jumped right on the scooter and powered it full-blast down the hall and right out of there! The mall attempted to catch up with us, but we were going too fast. We realized that we would have to hide from it for the rest of our lives. What ensued, I can only assume, was that each episode, we would come to a new town and face new challenges. We would have to come up with new ways to hide from the mall, and ideally, ways to hide the town itself from the mall. Always, though, we would have to tearfully and secretly depart from the people and connections we had made, to ensure the safety of their way of life.

	2009.02.23  13.56 The Death Star I had a dream that I was aboard the Death Star. In my dream, these things were true: the Death Star was intended to be "at sea" for many many many months at a time without shore leave; Not nearly all of its space was required for military operations; It was considered to be impregnable and completely safe. Therefore, soldiers were allowed to bring their families aboard, and there was a sizable civilian population aboard. There were schools and malls and homes. I was one of the people who had family in the army and lived with them on the Death Star. So was P'arry. One day, word was getting around that there was supposed to be a big battle that day. The civilians really weren't supposed to hear that type of stuff, but we always did. It didn't affect our lives that much. Inside the Death Star, you don't really feel any of the battles. You notice a generally above-normal level of activity, but not in any particular way you can put your finger on. On this day, P'arry and I had arranged a little classroom, with a computer lab and projectors. I was going to teach some people about Linux and stuff. There were about 10 people in my "class". Just as I was about to begin the class, we heard a rumbling, and felt a quaking. This did not usually happen. Even on days when there was a rumored to be a battle. I interrupted class and said "You guys, I think we ought to get out of here." Everybody was all "What? Why?" I explained that I didn't like the sound of that quake. People thought I was paranoid. P'arry gave a little ground: "How 'bout we just finish up this class, and then we'll go to the cafeteria and see if somebody has any bulletins on what's going on?" I was like "No, you guys. Seriously. Let's get out of here." Eventually, the intensity of my concern was enough to start to get some other people concerned. I told them we should get on a shuttle and get down to the planet. We could get a pizza there or something. I convinced them, and we headed for the shuttle bay. Apparently, we were in orbit above Coruscant. We took the shuttle down to the surface. It was there that we saw the large, looming Death Star above us, cracking apart. It painted the sky orange, as the sunlight was filtered through the raining debris. It was a bittersweet sight. On the one hand, I knew that this was a terrible thing, and that it should not exist. It was too destructive, and it was going to be used for evil. I was glad to see it go. On the other hand, I still had friends and family aboard. A lot of people died that day. I counted my blessings that I was not among them.

	2009.02.16  15.54 Heather Lynn I had a dream about Heather Lynn of the Capricorns (essentially renamed lately to Pure Magical Love). My favorite band evar. I had a dream that she moved into Lester house because she had a summer internship in Ann Arbor. I wanted to tell her about how I'm a big fan of her music and stuff, but I didn't want to weird her out. IT WAS A DILEMMA! In real life, I once traveled by train to see their show in Chicago, and then to see Andrew and Jae. I've got a picture of me with Heather Lynn, and she's all dressed up like a zombie. She probably wouldn't remember me, though, if she moved into Lester house. But she may remember me if I reminded her.

	2009.02.16  12.05 The Unknown Religion I had a dream that I was at what appeared to be a religious building. I had just checked it out because of the architecture. It had interesting architecture. Inside, I was like "Woah, this is a religious building. I wonder what religion this is? Hm." There was some sort of religious ceremony going on. I watched for a little while, trying to figure out what the ceremony was about. I figured it would help if I knew what religion this was. There were a couple of people dressed differently from everybody else. I decided that they were monks, and they were inducting new monks. Well. Apparently, my mom was there too, and she explained that this was a catholic church, and the strange ceremony I was witnessing was a communion. Huh. Veeeerrry interesting. Well, this seems like a dream full of catholic guilt, but that doesn't make sense. I've never been catholic and neither has my family at all. Oh well.