Living in the Scoot Utopia

Last night I had a dream that took place on August 2, 2007. I was having lunch with a couple of my friends (Ken and Nik) and I remembered seeing a trailer for a flick opening on August 17. "That movie is going to be perfect for Bad Movie Night," I said. We definitely need to hit that one up for our last Bad Movie Night before bowling resumes."

"Umm, Scoot?" Ken asked, "you're aware we're not going to be able to see that movie, right?"

"Why not?" I asked.

"Umm... because we're all going to be dead in less than two weeks."

I didn't know what they were talking about, so I asked them to explain. They explained that the world was under seige by aliens and that in 10 days they would arrive and take away all of the water and begin physically toruring every person on Earth. After about 3-4 days of intense torture, they were then going to kill us all by fileting us open.

"Surely that won't happen," I said, "surely our government will figure out some way to stop it."

"The government has done all they can," Nik said. "Their negotiations are the only reason the attack hasn't already started, they were able to buy us all 2 more weeks to live. But that's it."

"I'm not buying it," I said.

"Google it," they both said. "It's all over the web, it's all anyone's been talking about. Where have you been?"

I decided not to Google it, prefering to hold steadfast to my hope that they were just trying to scare me. I wanted to keep my blidssful ignorance. But as the days passed I became filled with more dread and more terror.

Eventually, though, I realized that two weeks had passed and nothing had happened yet. So I called up Ken and asked him, "We're still alive... what the hell?"

"I don't know," he said. "We were all supposed to have been dead by now, just like Tom Cruise and John Travolta predicted."

[long pause]

"Wait a minute," I said. "You had me all worked up and accepted as fact something that a couple of Scientologists predicted????"

"Well, yeah," he said, "it was pretty convincing, even the government was taking action on it."

"Don't you realize that those two put out that same end-of-the-world prediction every year so that when it eventually does happen, whether it's 5, 50, or 5 billion years from now they can still claim credit for predicting it?" I asked, incredulously.

"Ummm... uh.... they do?"

"God you guys are dumb," I said. "Guess what, you get to live."

------------

Though we all lived, I'm still a little creeped out that the dream was set in the future and came with an approximate date range for some sort of disaster.

Posted by ScooterJ at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night I had a dream in which all the guys at work under 25 formed a little clique and snubbed the rest of us. They were being obnoxious jerks -- loud, rude, and just plain annoying. (Nothing at all like they are in real life.)

I had gone to the gym over lunch like I often do. When I returned, my boss angrily called me into her office and accused me of destroying the jack-o-lantern that our office manager had spend hours carving. "She's at her desk in tears," she told me. I insisted that it was not me and told her if it was anyone in the office it was that clique of the young ones. "Their brains are still forming," I said, "They are still too young to empathize with other people and realize the actions they think are funny can actually cause very hurt feelings." My boss continued to insist that I did it, though.

I woke up and I lay there in bed relieved that it was just a dream. I then rolled over and saw my wife sitting on the edge of the bed looking at me.

"I'm leaving you," she said angrily... then threw a lamp against the wall, shattering it, before storming out the door.

"What the hell?" I thought, "I'm not married!"

Suddenly I woke up from that nightmare and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

But then I noticed that my room seemed awfully bright, so I looked at my clock. 11:30am.

"SHIT!" I screamed, "I'm way late for work!"

I bolted out of bed and ran out to the living room, where I found my friend Ken asleep on the couch. He roused as I tore into the room.

"Oh shit!" he said, "I forgot I was supposed to wake you, I'm sorry!"

I called work to tell them that I was on my way, but was told not to bother coming in, that I had been fired.

Holy shit.

My heart racing, I awoke from that nightmare to find that it was 5:50am and I still have plenty of time to get ready for work.

A dream within a dream within a dream. Jesus H. Christ, what a night!

Posted by ScooterJ at 06:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night I had a dream that left me left me feeling <sarcasm>oh so chipper and cheery</sarcasm> this morning.

The dream itself was way too long and complicated for me to go into the full detail of it, but the ending is what set the tone for my day so far. All of my friends and I had gotten together for what we knew would be our final lunch together. After sharing some laughs it was time to say our goodbyes, we were all heading to different cities and knew we'd never see each other again.

The last three people I said goodbye to were Seth, Nik, and Ken. As I walked back to get my belongings, the dream suddenly flashed forward over the next few decades. And in a scene right out of the series finale of Six Feet Under, I watched everyone I know die throughout the years.

Fortunately at this point my subconscious replaced everyone with characters froim various TV shows to soften the blow.

What a dreary morning.

Posted by ScooterJ at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday night after the fireworks I had a dream about an alien "invasion" of sorts.

A mid-sized flying saucer landed in Berkely Riverfront Park. The alien ambassadors excited the craft and proceeded to City Hall where the conducted a trade negotiation.

The talks let to the following deal:

The aliens gave us the technology to cure cancer. In exchange, Dave Winslow (the owner of Winslow's City Market BBQ) was to provide the aliens with his recipe for rib rub under tight security.

"It may seem to you that this trade is heavily imbalanced in your favor", said one of the aliens, "But you must understand... we really, really like BBQ."

The ship then took off with its delicious cargo, while we could now start curing cancer.

So, cholesterol-laden smoked deliciousness saves lives.

Posted by ScooterJ at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As many of you who know me are aware, I suffer from frequent (nightly) nightmares and remember nearly all of my dreams in vivid detail. Most of my nightmares involve one of three things:

• I have committed murder and am about to be caught.
• A tornado is coming and no one will believe me.
• I am trapped in an elevator that is malfunctioning.

The elevator nightmare is my most common. In fact, with only a handful of exceptions, I have had a nightmare involving a malfunctioning elevator every night for at least the past 15 years, probably longer.

Last night was not one of the exceptions.

I was on the elevator in the building I live in and got off on what I thought was my floor. However I first noticed that the hallsways had all been redone with oak panels and when I got to where my apartment should be there was instead a doctor's office. That was when I realized I had gotten off on the wrong floor.

I re-boarded the elevator, which now had about 3 or 4 other prople on it, and it started going up.

The elevator climbed, and climbed, and climbed. As it kept on climbing, we quickly realized that not only had it failed to stop on the floors it was supposed to, it had now gone several floors beyond the actual height of the building we were in and was still continuing to climb. The other passengers began to panic and one of them asked what the hell was going on.

"Oh, the usual," I said. "This happens every time I board an elevator. It'll keep climbing and climbing until it slams into the top of the shaft. Then it will stop, pause for a moment, and then we will plummet to our deaths."

They didn't believe me.

But sure enough, a moment later, the elevator jarred to a stop as it hit the top of the shaft. The car was motionless for a moment as we all glanced at each other nervously. Then the free-fall began, and the other occupants started screaming in terror.

"Don't worry," I said, matter-of-factly. "Like I said, this happens to me every time. The trick is to just make sure you wake up before we hit bottom."

With that, and a little struggle, I slowly opened my eyes and awoke just as I heard the car smash into the bottom of the shaft.

And people wonder why I seem to be so tired every day.

Posted by ScooterJ at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

About 2 weeks ago I had a dream that the Chinatown Market at 3rd & Grand caught fire, burned, and collapsed.

About 1 week ago I had a dream that on my first day on the job at a nuclear power plant I connected a line to the wrong place, leading later to an explosion that destroyed most of Missouri.

Three nights ago I had a dream that a rocket launched from Lee's Summit exploded over downtown Kansas City. Then a few more followed. There was no fireball or shock wave, just loud booms.

Two nights ago I had a dream that TriGen, located right across the street from the aforementioned Chinatown Market, exploded -- knocking out power to all of downtown KC.

So in two weeks time that's 3 dreams about explosions, 2 dreams about accidents at power plants, and 2 dreams involving some sort of disaster at 3rd & Grand.

Creepy.

If it happens, I swear that other than predicting it I had nothing to do with it!

Posted by ScooterJ at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)