Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

The people across the street live in what I call the junk house. Their yard is littered with garbage and broken things. This morning, I was amazed to see a man cleaning up. He was picking things up and sticking them in a garbage bag. At one point, he got something sticky on his hand. He kept wiping it on his pants, then finally gave up and licked it off.

....

The night before last, I dreamed I was buffering happiness.

Sometimes I love my subconscious.

.....

I've been continuing on my burpee challenge. Today is day 69. Some days are harder than others, but I've yet to miss a day. Though I'm not done, I call this experiment a success. About three or four months ago, I hated burpees. The thought of them filled me with a serious case of the oh-nos. But now they're no big thing.

Yesterday, on my FaceBook wall, I ran a little experiment. I put up this graphic:



By my cut-off time of 10:45 pm (I wanted to go to bed at a decent hour), I'd gotten 213 likes. I spread them out in groups of 10 throughout the day, on top of my 68 burpees, and guess what? Like the burpees, it was no big thing.

I'm not even sore today, which surprises me. I guess I've levelled up again.

A few peanut gallery strangers showed up on my FaceBook wall and gave commentary. One expressed doubt that I'd go through with it. I can't help but wonder why he would think this, especially of someone he doesn't know at all. Maybe it's because he's projecting. Maybe because he wouldn't do it, he assumes the same of others. I find that peculiar and sad.

One other stranger showed up and said that people encouraging me to do push-ups was taking away from attention on world hunger. Time spent clicking "like" on my image was ostensibly taking away from clicking on the click-to-give-a-dollar charities.

Riiiight.

I'm a man, and I have a handsome, blond brother who looks like a cross between Alexander Skarsgård (Eric, from True Blood) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister, from Game of Thrones). I harbour an intense lust for my brother, and I am determined to seduce him. He eventually gives in, but something terrible happens, and his penis gets cut off before we can consummate our eros for one another. You would think such a traumatic event would be memorable, but I cannot recall how his penis came to be cut off from his body.

Distraught, I clutch his severed member in my hands, and then stuff it down my pants pocket. It gradually cools and shrinks in my pocket, but for a while, it is warm and comforting held tightly against my thigh.

Then I wake up.

I decide I want to race knightky, so we go looking for brontosauruses to ride. We choose our mounts and sit up on their backs. I give mine a kick, but she doesn't really feel it and keeps grazing. Kyle's isn't going anywhere really fast, either. I yell at mine to giddy-up, and her head suddenly veers toward me at high speed on its enormous snaky neck. I barely dodge out of the way, and then she starts to lumber along, all while that horrid "California Girls" song plays over and over.

I don't know what I was dreaming, but I woke up with a jolt while yelping in fear at something. I'm pretty tired today. I guess adrenaline boosts in the middle of the night undo any rest you would normally get.

My bad foot has started acting up again this week, for the first time in months. I think it's because I wore my Doc Martin Mary-Janes all weekend when I did a lot of walking. They're very heavy, and I think my bad foot can't handle heavy shoes for a prolonged period of time anymore. I hope it's feeling better really soon. I have dance performances coming up, and don't want to be gimpy.

I want to learn how to weave a rag rug and to felt. I have so much gorgeous fabric, I think I could make a beautiful rug.

Well, it's time to go to the dentist. Again. Hopefully there will be no earthquake, this time.

I'm walking along a road when I notice a paperback novel lying on a side path. I go over to pick it up. It's "Of Mice and Men." I look further down the path and see more books, so curious, I walk over to see what they are.

A gate closes behind me, and it is suddenly night. The next book I pick up is "Little Women." I still see more. I bend down to pick up another, and a shuriken comes whizzing toward me, nicking my arm. I throw myself behind a rock for cover, and a couple more throwing stars come whirling out of the air at me.

I wait a bit, gather up the weapons, and look around. I realize the books were the bait for a trap. I'm being hunted. I can see a woman stalking the hills, looking for me. I wait until she has passed behind a rock, and make a run for it, diving into a little gully.

I just miss a snare. The area is booby-trapped. Every now and then, I see more books. They are all literary classics. "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Catcher in the Rye," "Heart of Darkness," "Wuthering Heights," etc. I resist the temptation to pick them up. The woman is now throwing small bombs at me. I run and dive for cover again, and wake up.

I'm sitting in my chair when movement outside my window makes me look. It's a large turkey vulture, floating on the air currents, wings spread wide. It seems to hover right outside my window, which I find thrilling, because it means I can study the bird at leisure. It suddenly veers toward the building, and lands on the window sill above me.

It poops on my window sill, then flies away.

I walk out of my room. I'm in a different apartment, but it's still home. I walk by a bedroom and could swear I saw the vulture inside the room. I peek inside, and yes, the bird is walking around in there. I'm all excited. I have a pet vulture!

I go into the kitchen to see what I might have to feed it. All the meat is in the freezer, and I think I'll have to defrost some in the microwave. The bird walks in, and just like a dog, starts wriggling and wagging its tail in pleasure. I pat it on the head, and then realize I'd accidentally left a couple of raw steaks out on top of the microwave for a couple of days.

Since vultures like rotting meat, I pick them up and toss them to the bird. It starts tearing into one of them and I wake up.

I dreamed I was making out with Neil Gaiman. It was very awkward, and he had terrible skin. I escaped him by waking up.

WTF?

I have absolutely no idea where that came from.

A small, incredibly detailed, and low-hanging black cloud with strange wisps appeared in the sky above me. It moved quickly, and I ran through the apartment, from one room to the next, watching it through the windows. And as I watched, a long column descended from it into a beautiful, black tornado. The column was striped, bulged in entasis, and the top of it ended in an Ionic capital.

I stared at it in awe, this black tornado that was also a fine example of classical Greek archaeology, scared to blink in case it should disappear.

Then f00dave came home, breaking my concentration. When I looked back, the tornado was dissipating into a long, thin brown wisp. And then it vanished and I woke up.

Life lesson: Don't wear a thong under camo shorts while doing squats. You'll get a chafed bum.

Dream: I'm standing near the front of a bus on a highway when I notice the clouds are growing funnels. A tornado touches down close to me, then dissipates as suddenly as it appeared. Then another tornado whooshes past. Oncoming traffic swerves to avoid it. The tornado is dragging along a huge yellow tractor. I can see the slumped driver staring at me with his dead eyes as the cyclone passes by me. And I wake up.

The world is filled with androids who look like they are made from the same plastic as Barbie dolls. Until now, they've gotten along just fine with humans, but something has made them change. They have begun to murder humans. They are devouring them, swarming on them like zombies or piranhas and tearing the flesh off with their teeth and their hands.

But one thing slows them down: a small boy, no older than eight years old. Very few humans are left, now. Kathryn and I have been chased by androids into a large complex, and I see the little boy. He leads us to a closet and hides us inside. Then we hear him speaking with the androids and it becomes apparent that he is seen as a god by the androids. They will listen to him -- to an extent.

He leads us outside the complex, the impassive androids flanking us all the way. Then the androids begun to walk ahead of him, towards Kathryn and me. Blood from their last victim splatters them. We start to run, and they speed up.

Sirens blare from all around, and I wake up to fire trucks driving by.