ultranow

when a jewish android dreams of charles nelson reilly

ever since charles nelson reilly died, the world is not enough.  so i had this dream see.  i'm in a college classroom and charles, i mean mr. nelson reilly, is a special guest because it's a theater related class and he is (was in real life but is in the dream) a theater g-ddess.  after his presentation, he and i are milling around this table full of crappy snacks and he's talking to me like he's met me before which i just go with even though i don't remember it and he says there's a guy i know in london who would be perfect for you and i'm going to set you up with him in a month.  i'll fly you out and everything.

i knew mr. nelson reilly wouldn't live that long and i was torn between telling him he should set me up sooner because i selfishly wanted to meet that guy because madonna once asked me do you believe in love and i said yes really quick before she could say well i've got something to say about it and it goes something like this.  torn between telling him because knowing he was going to die in short order might ruin his remaining time.  torn between that and not telling him, which would mean i'd never get set up with the guy in london.

it's only after the fact of this dream that i realized what i should have said to mr. nelson reilly is that he specify in his will that i am to be set up with mr. so and so smart, funny, sensitive hunk on such and such a day in london.  so that didn't work out.

hey did you know that people say confidence and power are sexy?  i'm so screwed.

mystery kiss

i dreamt i was face to face with a blogger and he said "i've fallen for you...hard" and then he kissed me close up and i kissed back and it felt good and it lasted.  it's a real blogger here on the wild internet and it's a guy and he has his face pic on his blog.  is it you?  maybe it is.  because i know you read my blog.  beyond the implication that i spend too much time online, i have no idea what this means.  except that i want to kiss a guy who can write and has a brain and opinions and is handsome.  i have no idea what this means beyond that i deeply understand as of this week in the world that the only sex i want is boyfriend sex which isn't a stretch to conclude because it's not like i've been having non-boyfriend sex, it's just i haven't been having boyfriend sex.  and i don't want sex right away at all, not until i really know someone and have been myself with them so they know who i am and how to be with me that way and why to connect with me that way and what is possible that way and when is when we're ready and there would be a we that would be ready.  i've given up on so much already.  i take it all back.  i take all my give ups back.  i want it all.  give and get and share and be and love and know.  i'm going to try. again.

things that hurt

• dreaming that you're working in some big company that's in a tall building made of snow at the las vegas airport and you go on vacation for two years and when you come back they've given , kkk-er, holocaust revisionist, ex-presidential candidate, former member of louisiana state representative david duke the corner office and have a drug plan where they fill prescriptions but with bad information on the pill bottles because they're goal is to just make not keep people well so you're in the lunchroom and anderson cooper asks a pointed question about the drug plan and people are so upset he gets "disappeared" and then someone pulls a gun and everyone thinks it's fake but you know better so you run out of the lunchroom along with the only other person who takes the gun seriously who is this women with black naturally curly hair and she goes to the side office and says you can join her in hiding but you say that's a bad place to hide because it has no back way out and she agrees so we go running up the stairs and find a room with a chess set and haylie duff and the woman with the perm says if people come after us we should go up these shingles that are part of a side staircase and then up into an attic room because there's a back way out from there and just as she says that haylie screams "the press!" so we all run as planned except you don't bother climbing up the shingles you just jump across a pool of water to get to where the stairs continue so you're a few steps ahead of haylie and perm woman but we all get behind a curtain that goes into the attic and it's dark and we don't know where to go when suddenly a guy the perm woman calls professor is there and he is wearing a bright green sweater and baggy black sleep pants and we tell him that people are after us and he picks up a dozen glass bottles on a glass bottle holder and drops them out the window to the pavement below and they explode with noise and those after us are no longer after us because they heard the noise and went to investigate thinking we fell out the window and exploded like glass or whatever they thought but we still don't know how to get out and the professor says we don't have to right away and you think he likes haylie and perm woman more than you even though you're cuter because you've been working out lately and had that long vacation to rest up so you shuffle around in the dim room which came into view better after time and had black floors and walls and metal scrollwork and a red velvet movie theater behind a curtain and you wondered what was playing and what professor did for a living and if haylie duff would have beaten you at chess and whatever happened to anderson cooper but then you woke up.

show off turn on

you ever have insomnia because you're out of the good prescription painkillers the dentist let you have after your bum wisdom tooth was extracted and it still hurts several days later and it's so so hot and you can't sleep which is what insomnia is called so you stare out your window in the middle of the pre-dawn night early morning wee hours and you stare and you stare and nothing is happening but you know if you can't sleep you're supposed to get out of bed for a few minutes and then try again so you do get out of bed and you stare and stare out of the window and scan the windows of the across the street apartment building for any activity for anyone sharing the same non-somnia and you see a light flip on and you see a man masturbating in full view of potentially one other person only which is to say me and he's masturbating and on a higher floor than me but still just across the street and you wonder what his buzzer number is on the intercom and maybe you could invite yourself up to witness the boldness and you watch and you watch and he masturbates and masturbates and the light goes off and you go to sleep and wake up too early way too early and have no idea if what you witnessed actually happened or was strictly a dream and if it was a dream if it was your dream or the dream of the man who dreamed of masturbating in his open window for all to see and didn't really do it but dreamt of it only but it was still witnessed.  his light was on.  he has a penis.  he touched it.  he moved it.  i saw more detail than was probable unless i have binocular eyes but pain does strange things and the supernatural does strange things.  it happened and it didn't happen.  so has that ever happened and not happened to you in the middle of the early morning night pre-dawn nothingness existence?  yeah, me neither.

sheets of death

despite the calms forté (homeopathic sleep helper) and herbal tea (herbal tea) and cosby rerun (vanessa loses a history paper and it turns up in the freezer), i could barely get to sleep last night.  and when i did i experienced one of those waking nightmares that goes on and on until i was finally able to fully get up and put a mental stop to it.  i was trapped in bed with an evil person from my past.  not evil just in this dream.  evil in real life and with a starring role in my dream.  it was morning.  the sheets were white and i was bunched up in them, struggling to get them below my chin so i could breath.  the evil person kept pushing the sheets over my head and pinning my arms.  there were layers and layers of sheets.  it was so hot i knew i would pass out any second.

this person should have helped me survive but instead kept trying to smother me with gentle movements bunching the sheets around my head.  i could see the sunlight through the white sheets.  i was so sleepy but had to fight to stay awake so i wouldn't die.  i was struggling to stay conscious.  which probably explains why it was difficult to fully fall asleep.  i bet if i had let myself get smothered in the dream i would have slept soundly.  but then there's the whole die in your dream die in real life thing and i didn't want to risk it.  i'm not ready to die.  at least not until season 2 of fame comes out on dvd.  and even after that, i've got things to do.

oprah is somewhere in this post because oprah is everywhere

it feels good to give up on my dreams.  and by dreams i mean those that i've had for myself that aren't what i really want but are instead what i think i should want.  for example, writing a one act play to try to get into a festival.  i've written a couple of one acts before which i knew in advance would be produced because it was for a community group i was a part of.  they were decent and packed the house every night and everything but really i'm not a playwright and i don't want to be a playwright but i thought i should try to be a playwright because i deep down am one and have just simply not been trying but really it's not my dream.  it's a pretend dream.  and that's exactly why it feels good to give up on it.

fashion oprah

as oprah's best friend i was helping her with a show.  i was the male gayle king, and just as lesbian.  this one took place in cubbyholes under a bridge above a stream.  there were shoes and shoe models stuffed into these cubbyholes and it was my job to pull them out so oprah could interview them.  so i would say things like "oh, there's another one jammed in there" and then oprah would ask her "who are you wearing?"  after the model finished describing her shoes and the unseen studio audience would oooh and aaah, the couture would drop with a plunk into the stream.  each had only one shoe, so it wasn't a fashion show, unless fashion shows consist of carrying one shoe down the runway.

one of the models, a woman in silver body paint and silver cape, asks me if there was a runway show and i said probably not but if there were it would be 15 minutes long at most.  after the models were all tugged from the cubbyholes, we all sat at the stream bank on an elevated concrete slab.  the silver cape woman jumped in the drink and oprah warned her to be careful not to mess up her makeup.  then during commercial break oprah put out there that maybe we should have a full fashion show.  i immediately received an e-mail from the silver model angry that i put the 15 minute time constraint on the fashion show.  i e-mailed her back that this was a standard length of couture shows.  this e-mail exchange occured without the use of computers.

the search for signs of signs

so i really wanted signs today.  visual auditory hyperbolic unsubtle extreme metaphors of the world telling me what to do.  all i got was:

lady says "hi" while her hand blocks her mouth and part of her chin.  we're at a street corner waiting for the walk sign.  since her face is part blocked i feel the need to say "i don't know who you are" in case i'm supposed to know.  she says "i just threw a tantrum in my lawyer's office".  i say "so you want to say hi to ground yourself?"  she says "yes, i just wanted to be nice again".  i say "okay, you're nice."  i don't say "okay, you're nice, now back the fuck up."

after fantasizing about being a nutritionist/personal trainer seeing tacky green and white apex supplement protein shake mixes (i.e. big tubs of workout goo) in the window of a gym.

someone who look exactly like i will two years from now carrying a sign that says exactly what he did with his life when he was where i'm at now, down to the minute detail, while skipping rope and drinking near beer, and the sign said "retro '90s is so '87.  be who you are when you will be who you are."

but no signs.

schizophrenic resolutions

i will work out and become rick dinihanian which would make me a 50+ top selling playgirl model with steel gray hair doing sensuous bedding print ads in my spare time.  this would age me two decades into refinement and wealth and a steve martinish face/fitness mannequin body.

i won't work out because if i did people would objectify me by saying such things as "you have a body i want to touch and look at it and touch again and look at while i touch and then make you soup not from scratch but from a can that has the word organic on it because you are organic".  this type of objectification would be sincerely devastating because i don't want someone to want me more than i want myself as in appreciate me more than i appreciate myself value me more than i value myself love me more than i love myself.  i know that when a man leaves someone seeing me as he sees me has left.  his eyes have left and that used to hurt because then nobody would be seeing me that way until the next man arrived and saw me that way which i can only imagine is good and lovely.  i would cry and understand that he was gone and so was happiness.  yet now i know that i need to value myself in all those ways and not look to a man to complete me to make me to see me so i haven't looked to a man for that.  i haven't looked to a man for anything in a long time.  so by comparison my not seeing myself in those valuable ways doesn't seem to be a problem.  i'm not looking for a man to complete me so it doesn't matter that i don't complete myself.

it does matter that i don't complete myself.  it matters that i would try to.  when i work out i breathe and am the jewish jock of all time.  mark spitz.  sandy koufax.  goldberg.  i ran an 8 minute mile in junior high.  i was last.  but first in the 50 yard dash.  first in the 100 yard dash.  by the time everything switched to meters i was still and silent and invisible.  i was first in the standing broad jump.  point a to point b when point b is entirely visible.  marked on a cracking yellow gym mat set outside on the grass during junior high olympics.  i got a ribbon.  red white or blue.  which was best i don't remember but i got the best color.  it was blue yes blue.  went in the file cabinet with my report cards and progress reports.  i always got excellents in everything.  but once i got needs improvement and i was devastated.  needing improvement is failure.

if there's nothing wrong with the universe there must be something wrong with me

which is the opposite of what beverly crusher said on star trek when unbeknownst to her she was caught in a static warp bubble and what she thought was the universe was collapsing around her and everyone was disappearing until she was all alone and the universe was smaller than the enterprise and shrinking to nothing and the hallways were turning to grayish pink mist so she had to jump into the disturbance of light and air she thought was what was making people disappear but it was really her son and the traveler alien trying to rescue her with a pathway to the correct universe she had come from. so she said to herself once the last other person was gone "if there's nothing wrong with me there must be something wrong with the universe" which enabled her to risk racing from the bridge to engineering and jumping into the vortex and end up being rescued. the rules of the incorrect universe had been determined by her thoughts at the exact moment she was trapped in the static warp bubble which was her reflecting on the statement an older scientist had made which is everyone leaves and disappears from your life eventually.

but in my case, there is actually something wrong with how i'm seeing the universe i'm in, which essentially makes it as if i'm in a static warp shell of my own negative mind/experiences/thoughts. and i can escape this flat empty universe by creating and leaping into the vortex. by making and going into the rabbit hole. by trusting. by wanting. by testing. by changing my perception. by seeing and naming realities. by seeing and naming unrealities. the ways i view and experience and participate in the world do not need to be static. life does not need to be how it's always been. it cannot be. it can be new. it can be confusing. it can be a grayish pink mess. it can be beautiful. it can be ugly. it can be ecstatic. it can be everything.

i am trying very hard to be gay

my throat is dry because i just tore apart an old ikea dresser that was taking up too much space in my life and apartment. tore it up because it was too heavy for me to lift all at once. and tore it up because i sometimes like tearing stuff up but not enough sometimes because i am a semi-horder. not stacks of old newspapers, but stacks of old life. i also gave away my too big for my apartment couch to a homeless teen center for their tv room. they were thankful and the white leather wipes up nice for those homeless teen spills.

i am trying very hard to be gay because i have not been lately. i did not see brokeback mountain, though i did appreciate the various parodies - spongeback mountain, back to the future mountain, lego brokeback mountain. i have not kissed a guy since a disasterously self-immolating non-one night stand - as in guy does his darndest to pick me up by making out with me for an hour real deep and nice but i don't go home with him because in my mind we were headed for an actual date on another day, which consisted of me calling him like i was the kid in midnight cowboy who wanted jon voigt to call him as in he'd thrown away my number and screened my call and whatever else he could do to ignore me forever because i blue balled him. so i don't go to bars now.

when nerds dream of electric cantaloupe

so i'm walking in my neighborhood and this other guy is walking and i realize i'm supposed to be teaching him how to flirt with men so on cue this third guy is there and he's handsome and friendly looking and wearing a jacket with those suede patches on the elbows like it's 1982 and all is right with the world. so i direct my protégé to start with the flirting and he says hello and what do you do and the guy says i'm a bankruptcy attorney and my protégé says that's nice and keeps walking but the new guy who is apparently french of some sort keeps walking but not with my protégé so i say to the french guy can you repeat yourself? say what you do for a living again? but he doesn't so i say i'll do the line myself. what do you do for a living? i'm a bankruptcy attorney. and then i brighten my face wide-eyed and open and say that's incredible because i'm bankrupt...emotionally!

burst! bubble! burst!

good paying job, solid credit, pennypincher (i.e. jewish - hey go with the stereotypes that work), long thick polish sausage (i.e. part polish - hey go with the stereotypes that work), but can't afford a condo. and i hate that i can't afford a condo, which is ridiculous to get so worked up over because there are people on charity commercials who don't have floors. there are people who say things like we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families and i'm kvetching over a condo or lack of condo.  but still kvetching is my right or privilege or lifestyle so whatever.

i would need scratch ticket size lottery winnings to even get close to affording something decent, unless the supposed bubble that is the seattle housing market bursts. and since everyone is saying it won't, then the only answer is for me to make it burst. what can i do to lower the property values of every condo in seattle?

no...pink...toilets

the thing is i did this before when i was thinking oh i'll go to school because i don't know what i want to be when i had just gotten out of school semi-recently. school is not the place to go when you don't know what you want to be. it's the place to go when you know exactly what you want to be and education is the only way to get there because it's so damn expensive. i was going to go back into school. and get money from places i didn't want to owe. and then i said to myself while walking back up the hill from work one night i don't want to go to school. and i realized i didn't have to and it felt good. so i didn't. which was fine because i sort of became something or was already something and didn't need to become anything.

so i just looked into the whole condo thing and i thought i have to do this because i don't want to rent forever and maybe i could get a roth ira if i save up but i can't live in a roth ira. so i met with some people and got the news. and it's bad. which is maybe maybe maybe i could scrape into the whole thing, get something tiny. but i want to do it right if i'm going to do it. no zero down. no 2 mortgages from the start. and no buying a new refrigerator if the one in the place breaks, which i realize is what i would have to do if it did because i would in a way own it. so just like i didn't have to go to school again and it was a relief to say so, i don't have to buy a condo right now or ever. it's too much. i can't even keep my apartment spotless. i can't even get myself to exercise enough or drink enough water or emote enough. i do fine where i'm at. i'm grateful for what i have. i don't have anyone to set me up with a nice and tidy down payment and closing costs and all that rigamarole. it's all me. and i'm not doing it now.

if i'm going to do it, it's going to be full on, 12 months of monthly payments in the rainy day bank. 1 mortgage not 2. and no...pink...toilets. which is the color of the toilet in the one condo i could maybe possibly afford right now, contingent on winning scratch tickets from the grocery store. if my refrigerator breaks in my rent-a-home, i know who to call and it's not my credit card company to increase my credit limit. it's my good old landlord. lord of the land. and i, humble serf, will give him orders. that's the way it should be. until i turn 40. then i better have a condo or i'm going to be seriously desperately pissed for 5 minutes.

chicken soup ought to have a statute of limitations

when i was a kid i would lift up softball sized rocks hoping to see insects and spiders scurry away. i guess to remind myself that just because life is hidden doesn't mean it's not there. i'm sick today. hidden. hidden most days in one way or another. and despite the jewish stereotype i don't have a loving jewish mother pushing chicken soup on me. being sick means feeling trapped but i feel that way lots of times even when i'm not sick. it's just that i don't notice it so much. if some giant little kid lifts the rock up off my head, i won't scurry in the light of day. i'll stand up, stretch and live wide open. or maybe i won't wait. maybe i'll just push that rock up off me my damn self.

false romance

i've dreamed of walking into a bookstore, actually for this fantasy it would be a bookshoppe, and browsing in an intelligent, curious manner, while outfitted in mid to high fashion clothing at which point a similarly sartorially splendored gentleman strikes up a conversation, makes deep eye contact, and squirrels me away to a nearby coffee establishment for meaningful repartee, leading to an exchange of numbers and a future date which leads to love and commitment and butt babies.

today i was with my friend browsing the financial planning section of a bookstore, definitely not a bookshoppe, when a tall blondie who was already set up browsing the section struck up idle conversation with her, which for a moment i thought may have meant he was using her to get to me. he was wearing lots of brown, with lovely textures and patterns and shoes, and near as i could tell dressed left. we learned he was searching for a book on steps to take before you quit your job which either meant he was rich or at least stocked up financially for a few months or an idiot. it only took a few back and forths before his attention went completely to her, with the goal of helping her find a book on bouncing her credit back from bankruptcy.

champagne wishes and prostitute dreams

what does it mean that i dreamt i was a prostitute with an ex-boyfriend as my pimp? does it mean i am so sexually powerful commerce must take over my body? while i am reasonably sexually confident and proficient, sometimes startlingly so with the right person and in the right moment, i doubt it is to the point of being in demand as a whore. after all, i'm just like anyone else. i put on my panties one vagina at a time.

then does it mean i wish to escape back to a simpler time for me, the arsenio hall-esque idiotic innocence of the mid to late '90s - the era of said boyfriend? do i just not want to have to think about who i am and what i want? actually, that's it!

total nightmare

no i'm not talking about ashlee simpson, whose recent caught on video drunk escapade at a toronto mcdonalds has people atwitter at least for two more days.  i personally gain respect for someone who needs to be drunk to set foot in a mcdonalds.  i'm talking about a real nightmare which made me have to get up and turn the lights on and watch tv for a minute.  unfortunately a ron popeil infomercial for knives was the first thing that came on.  never go dull (how is that possible, ron?) carving knives are not relaxing after a nightmare featuring greedo (seen here as a halloween costume humping a fake han solo).  though pornography and flash tennis are relaxing.  keep that in mind.

basically i was a sherlock holmes/bounty hunter type supposed to go take out some creepy murderer greedo so i tracked him starting at the nordstrom fragrance department where i worked as a cover to a combination high end/low end consignment/pawn shop in the middle of the night and broke his hand off and pushed through his chest after getting past his psychic barriers which had prohibited me from using my strength and power and that was the end of it. so then me and the survivors went on a spaceship to start a celebratory vacation and on the roof of the spaceship i was waiting to take off and was feeling proud for being so psychically strong i killed the enemy and someone said "it's incredible the way you killed him by crushing his head" and i was about to say "how would you know that you couldn't see?" which was true because i was totally covering the creepy murderer (i was in a cape) and no one could have seen in detail exactly what i'd done to win even if they were right behind me.

and then sean hayes from "will & grace" says stonefaced "no he didn't.  he killed him by breaking his hand off and pushing through his chest. but what he didn't count on was at the last second i became a part of everyone." and then everyone got silent and stared at me with killer eyes and i realized i hadn't in fact won and the original greedo had possessed/injected his evil into everyone and was controlling them to kill me which was very demoralizing and of course terrifying and then sean hayes stands up with a see through mask in his hand with the open side going to my face, well the eyes and nose weren't see through but the mouth was and it was a clear bubble but with no airhole which was one of the murderer's tools and he gets up to kill me and everyone else gets closer to me and i forced myself awake because i read a book on lucid dreaming in the 1980s so when necessary i am able to recognize i'm dreaming and force myself awake.

what does all this mean? please comment.