the patterns of history

one time i had a dream that the easter bunny decided to start time travelling again.

maybe it was because they changed the clocks forward or maybe because he wanted to get things done before the busy season i don't know. he did say that he had recently gone to the future, and that it was very confusing. to get a better perspective on what he saw there, he said, he needed to go further back to see how the situations originated in the 13th century. i asked him if messing with the past would screw up the future. he told me that he never changes the past he simply observes it. if the events taking place make themselves especially familiar with him, they occasionally invite him to participate. however, he makes a concerted effort to maintain the established patterns and make no deviation from the appointed paths.

bubbles, my pet-fish, jumped into the conversation and interrupted the easter bunny. bubbles expounded his opinion that history is a material process unfolding in a dialectical manner through economical arrangements and class struggle. the easter bunny didn't mind being interrupted by bubbles, but he told him his attitudes were somewhat dated, and that they seemed vulgar. bubbles called the easter bunny a revisionist. not only that, he threatened to report the easter bunny to the seventh international, and to remove his party membership card.

this got the easter bunny worked up. he denounced bubbles emphatically, and launched into a great oration recalling the early days of class struggle, and how he alone stood against the screws in proclaiming the distribution of eggs to the masses! even while the proletariat was developing its proto-revolutionary status, the easter bunny had been hippity hopping!

comrades, cried the easter bunny, have you forgot the days on the barricades? where was this pet-fish when they gunned down our glorious patriots at the post office? where was his loyalty to our cause when these heroes spilt their blood in sacrifice for our homeland? was he marching down o'connell street or drilling on stephen's green? did he drop a hurley bat for for a rifle?

when they were writing limericks about free milk for the working men, where was our friendly fish? near? no! he never saw lough neagh nor the liffey on those mornings! had he gone abroad to fight in the service of our allies the austrian archdukes? or was he bellicose for the belgian right to their own chocolates? no!

the easter bunny then began to weep for all of his lost comrades. i asked him if it was very expensive to post a letter in the future, and he said that it wasn't. 

experimental mustards

one time i had a dream that, through experimentation, i invented several new types of mustard recipes, based on spices grown in the thousand islands of canada -and who doesn't love canada?

my pet-fish, bubbles, said that we live in an age of novelty. 

the unpleasant troll returns

one time i had a dream that my uncle cuthred discovered that the unpleasant troll had returned. it was around christmas time. the troll had seemingly disappeared into the woodwork, or better yet, uncle cuthred thought, moved on to another location.

however, that morning, when he was on his way to breakfast, uncle cuthred found the unwelcome troll sitting in the conservatory poking the hall boy with the his middle fingers. the hall boy did not particularly enjoy this, but was unable to make the troll stop.

uncle cuthred told the troll that he had hoped it had left permanently. the troll smiled and said that he had never left. he had been there for months, spending most of his days in the spear closet and wild nights in the kitchen. my pet fish bubbles said that he thinks that the troll is actually a kobold because he enjoyed the kitchens so much, but uncle cuthred always maintained, in his writings anyway, that it was a troll.

now, i may not be very expert on trolls and kobolds, or kitchens and closets, but i do know about mustard. uncle cuthred was very clear on how he rid himself of the troll (or kobold, s'il vous plaît, monsieur le poisson) and if anyone is willing to listen, with some modicum of patience, i shall explain his method. some might prefer, i suspect, that i engage in lengthy recollections of the troll's genealogy, or that, in the interest of verisimilitude, i tell you the measurements of it's foot size. there will no doubt be howls of complaint that i make no effort to explain how the troll came to this part of the world, thereby providing not only a minor troll saga but also a description of local geography in nauseating detail. and alas, i shall disappoint many that i do not provide the conversation of the troll in his original lingua dii inferi -or at least provide a table with the principal declensions of that tongue.

if there is one thing that all trolls universally despise, it is sore throats and muscle aches. it seems this troll who was haunting uncle cuthred had, on this particular morning, both of these conditions. apparently, the day before the trolls had held their annual "day of darkness" tug o'war contest. this troll had worn out his voice screaming and pulling in the competition. uncle cuthred, although in every respect a gentleman, was not going to let a situation where he had an advantage pass him by without making some effort to rid his household of this abominable creature.

uncle cuthred would have never considered himself a dickerer, but --because of his travels in the levant -- he had learned that the finer arts of the bargain are merely questions of elevated etiquette. accordingly, he knew how to act with both diplomacy and effectiveness, or rather he had learned that diplomacy is effectiveness (especially in the levant -- a lesson which bears some repeating on occasions where the conversation turns towards politicks and horse raising). so, i am sure that you will excuse him when he made the following proposal to the troll.

my uncle cuthred suggested that the troll might benefit from a poultice of mustard that would salve his sore limbs. he had an old family recipe for a very effective cataplasm. anyway, he offered to make a batch and give it to the troll, and also a dose of his sore throat remedy (made with mustard, honey, lemon juice, salt, and hot water), if the troll would be willing to end its in annoying haunting.

the troll agreed to the deal. they drank a glass of sore throat remedy to seal it and toast it. uncle cuthred personally went down to the kitchens and made up the plaster for the troll, who found it was, as uncle cuthred said, very effective.

i wish i could say this was the last the troll was seen or heard from, but it is not. he'd appear now and again. he was generally well behaved after this, but on occasions he'd fall back to his old habits. someone would have to remind him that he had promised not act annoyingly. he'd agree, compose himself, and apologize. typically he could be expected to act civilized after these little outbursts. it rarely happened around company which was a blessing, i suppose.

some people ask if my mustard is an old family recipe handed down for generations. uncle cuthred did leave his recipe for mustard in his journals. i've made it a few times, experimentally, but i don't think it is the most impressive -unless you have a troll infestation or a sore ankle.

  

rachel plorantis

one time i had a dream that i heard rachel weeping over her children.

mind over matter

one time i had a dream that it was all a question of mind over matter.

bubbles told me to shut up and get back to practicing my piano lessons.

lacrimae rerum

one time i had a dream that i saw how even beauty fades - how nothing endures. 

experiments in dihydrogen monoxide

one time i had a dream that bubbles and i were being pursued by a creature that thrived on dihydrogen monoxide.

bubbles and i decided to do an experiment with this chemical. somehow, we managed to awaken an unpleasant manifestation. we were running for our lives when we ran into a master chef. she told us that she was quite experienced with these sort of beasties. she took out her knives set and turned to face the monster.

she turned the creature into a satisfying lunch.

you can borrow my hoe

one time i had a dream that my pet-fish, bubbles, kept offering to loan garden tools to ms. rathangan, a lady from my neighborhood, even though she didn't want them.

one afternoon in late december i was walking to my house. it was around twilight which comes early in that time of the year. people were turning on their xmas lights. ms. rathangan was in her drive way with her binoculars. she saw me coming and walked over. she writes books about falling stars.

she said that my pet fish bubbles is a bit of jerk. i nodded yes, and asked her if he was pestering her with the rhetoric of his end of the world cult. she said that her father had been a politician and was into that sort of thing, so she was used to that. she didn't mind it. she told me that bubbles kept offering to loan her gardening utensils.

bubbles, every time he saw her, would start a conversation. he'd tell her that if she wanted to borrow his rake she could, or if she needed a hoe, she could use his, or if she needed a hose, she could come over and borrow his. last week he put the wheelbarrow at her disposal. then, she said that he always calls her "meggers" instead of just meg, which is her name.

i said that maybe he likes her and wants to ask her on a date.

she giggled at that. she shook her head and said that it wasn't that. bubbles was kind enough, but she really didn't do much gardening in december, since the lawn was covered by snow and the ground was frozen. she just wanted to know if there was a reason why he specifically was obsessed with her lawn, or if he was like that with everyone. i told her that it wasn't just her.

when i asked bubbles about it, he said that he was just trying to be friendly. he asked, rhetorically, why everyone in this neighborhood was so touchy around the holidays.

i reminded him that all the tools he was offering to loan out are actually mine not his. he started to mumble about the evils of property. 

the learned men and women

one time i had a dream that a group of scholars contacted me regarding my uncle cuthred's theories on bablyonian archaeology. they wanted to know his opinion on a certain controversy that was in all of the newspapers.

i wrote back to them that uncle cuthred had been dead for quite some time. they said they would come over and check out his writings. in fact, he was well dead before i was born. i had inherited his books and papers, but they were fairly disorganized. the scholars told me that i needed to catalogue them in an orderly manner and arrange them in a coherent fashion before they could be studied. they seemed to loose interest when i told them they were in old wooden whiskey boxes in no particular order.

they told me i hadn't done a very good job of arranging them, and that i would never make it as an archivist or an archaeologist. i told them i mix mustard. they said that explains it. they called me an ignorant craftsman.

my pet fish bubbles was going to lay some working class theory on them from his cult when they announced that they were leaving. they suggested that i get cuthred's papers in order soon.

we're not ghosts

one time i had a dream that i was sailing on a ship that was guided by angels. they were good angels who got us safely to a harbor. we had got lost at sea during a storm off the coast of cape cod.

the angels appeared as soft lights and harps and voices singing. the captain had been washed overboard, so the cook took command of the ship. he told the sailors to follow the voices.

when we hit land we were in halifax, nova scotia. the voices turned to violins. when we told the people there our story, they thought we were ghosts.

Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen

one time i had a dream that i was in berlin in 1989 when the wall came down. 

bubbles didn't have much to say about this. 

bonneteau

one time i had a dream that i discovered the manifesto of the tree elves. they felt that they did not receive adequate attention.

my pet-fish, bubbles, told them that they should go on strike. they said they weren't sure how to do that. bubbles told them that since the weather was only a social construction, they should change it.

they laughed about that. they tried to explain the weather to bubbles by playing three card monte, or as they called it, find the lady. he had to guess what card they were thinking off, and where it was located.

they shuffled the 3 cards around on their little table. bubbles said that they were thinking of the ace of spades, and he pointed at one of the cards. the dealer elf turned it over, and it was the ace of spades.

all of the elves started giggling again. the dealer elf said very good, but he was thinking of the joker card, and that it was in my shirt pocket. i checked my pocket and, amazingly, it was. i didn't even know it. at first, bubbles accused me of being a shill, but when he read my body language, he could tell i was surprised.

the elves had a good laugh at bubbles's expense, but they refused to take his money. bubbles was especially annoyed by that refusal, and tried to get them to go three out of five. they said the game was over, and that if this was canada, they could get put in jail even just for playing for fun.

do you have a staring problem?

one time i had a dream that couldn't get the red elves to stop staring at me.

it was vachement annoying.

bubbles, my pet fish, said that these sort of luminous events assemble and dissipate, especially in thunderstorms, and it is best to not let them disturb me.

i told him that i was trying to avoid maple trees, because that's where they like to congregate.

bubbles said that i was a paranoid little freak.

grandmother moon

one time i had a dream that the moon was my grandmother.

my pet fish bubbles said that she controls the tides.

the space migration

one time i had a dream that a woman president of the united states personally wrote the calculations for the space migration 50 years before it went into effect.

bubbles said that they call it "the interstellar railroad".

i told him that it's more like a maglev than a railroad. 

the serial killer

one time i had a dream that there was a serial killer on the loose.

the original musician

one time i had a dream that i was listening to a series of lectures on tape about the origins of music. 

bubbles said that they were actually mp3 podcasts. 

i responded that music was originally recorded on cassette tapes.   

the student

one time i had a dream that i was back in school. it was exam season and all the halls were filled with rows of chairs and desks. the students were in a furry of cramming, and study notes were being exchanged with the frenzy of the stock market trading floor. people were going wild.

it wasn't a nightmare, but it wasn't fun either. i had to prep for my exam in italian, but i couldn't remember any of the words. i kept looking at my dante, but nothing legible appeared on the page. it seemed like random syllables that vaguely resembled words.

when i sat to write the exam, i discovered that it was a test about mustard.

 i aced it, of course.

crop circles

one time i had a dream that i met the being in charge of crop circles.

i asked him why he made them.

he shrugged his shoulders and told me that it's a job, just like any other.

the earthquake

one time i had a dream that my body odor was so powerful that it caused an earthquake.

i had been hiking in the adirondacks the week before the quake. i climbed several mountains, but did not complete my goal of climbing all 46 of them. on my way down mount marcy, i stopped for a rest. everybody was eating chocolate fudge at the john's brook lodge.

when i got to port henry, bubbles said that i stunk. we were going to have lunch together but he said the smell was so offensive that he didn't want to bother seeing me. he was going to vist the lake monster, champ, at the court of poseiden. the sea god has a summer residence in lake champlain, i guess. while i was at ticonderoga, i decided to climb mount defiance. when i got to the top, all of the people having lunch under the pavilion threw me nasty looks and got in their cars and drove off. it was a delicious view from the top. it was green and yellow.

apparently, according to bubbles, the smell of my body odor wafted down the hill into lake champlain. it was carried underwater to the court of poseidon. when the court attendants smelled my body odor everyone started to feel nauseous. poseidon, himself, started to cough and thought he was going to throw up, because i smelled so bad. he got very angry and caused an earthquake by throwing his trident. the trident was about the size of a fork. it wasn't a huge earthquake, but enough to let everyone know i smelled.

when i got home, i took a shower. bubbles told me that poseidon had given him a message to deliver to me. it said when i wash up, i'd better use soap.

the mummy

one time i had a dream that i was there when the mummy got examined.

bubbles and i had been captured by pirates off the horn of africa. we had gone on vacation. we went to socotra to escape from the tourists. we visited the famous caves and hit the beach at qlinsia. it was pretty fun and relaxing. on our way home we stopped at shibam to see the sky scrapers and to chew the qat. while we were sailing out of samhah, our boat was attacked by pirates.

the pirates climbed aboard and took us prisoner. the sea was very blue. they began to sail back to their base at the horn, when they noticed a nearby boat flying a danish flag. they approached the boat and boarded her. the danes on the ship held up their hands and looked scared. there were 14 of them, and they all had big beards. they put the danes on the boat and went back to their head-quarters. they made us wear blindfolds so that we couldn't tell where we were going.

when we got to the base, they put us in a jail cell with iron bars. there was a guy in the cell who was asleep on a bunk. bubbles asked the pirates what they were going to do with us. they told us we were being held for ransom. while they were waiting for the ransom to arrive, they were going to feed us stolen recipes and make us watch bootlegged movies. this made bubbles furious because he considered himself something of a film star, and resented that the actors weren't making money on the videos we had to watch.

that night, the prisoner in who was sleeping in the cell that afternoon woke everyone up. the danes started to laugh, but, in a whisper he told them to stop. he thanked them for coming to rescue him, and asked what the escape plan was. they explained to bubbles and i that they were no ordinary danes. they were vikings. they had come to rescue one of their companions who had been a prisoner. they deliberately let themselves be captured so they could find their man.

they started making alot of noise banging on the iron bars and shouting. the guard came down the hall and told them to shut up. some how they grabbed him, stole his keys, and took hold of his rifle. they unlocked the door and we were on the run. the pirates chased after us. we got on board a speed boat and took off. the pirates chased us, and seemed near to catching us. the leader of the vikings said we should blow up the boat and swim for shore.

bubbles jumped out of his bowl and into the sea. they set the ship on fire and let it float out in the ocean. the engine exploded and the gasoline fire lit up the sky. the pirates were very surprised.

we bobbed up and down in the tide. the vikings joked that at least there were no sea monsters to contend with. they said that we would have to travel by land, but i didn't have a fish bowl to take bubbles with us. the vikings told us that as we traveled north, we would move further back in time. bubbles and i agreed that he should swim the red sea, and we would roundez-vous in cairo in 1909. we said our farewells and bubbles began his long and solitary voyage over the whale road.

the vikings  said they could navigate by the stars. we swam to land and came ashore at djibouti. it was morning. we needed to find a place to stay and get some sleep. we found lodgings with a group of poets who were leaving the next morning for khartoum in 1884. they agreed to hire the vikings as their body guards.

we traveled over land, while bubbles, presumably, was swimming north in the red sea. we arrived in khartoom too late for the poets, who nevertheless, arrived unscathed. they thanked the cohort of scandinavians and composed a victory song in their honor. the danes seemed to adore this, and thought the best way to celebrate the poets was to share a large quantity of aquavit with the locals. the landlord of the house we were staying in was a very strict teetotaler and it caused a bit of a scrape for the danes.

we traveled northward, finally securing a barge to travel along the nile. it made for a delightful trip back. as we saw all of the sights along the way. we mainly avoided crocodiles, but we did encounter a rather embarrassing delay when the progress of our boat was temporarily held up by a group of hippopotami that occupied the river. we attempted every method of relocation, but they seemed unfazed by us. eventually, one of the vikings imitated the sound of fresh ripe grass that they liked to eat. he stood on the shore and called to them. the hippos became quite excited and started to chase after him. the river was clear, and he managed to return to the barge.

we made it to cairo in 1909. the vikings were going to continue northward. they said judging by the distance to denmark, they would arrive home near to their own time in around the year one thousand. i thanked them for their assistance, and decided i should try to find bubbles.

i wandered around the streets of cairo. i was uncertain whether bubbles had made it there yet or if he was in the right year. they didn't have cell phones in 1909, so i couldn't call him. i soon found suitable bachelor's accommodations that morning, which provided for most of my needs. while i was wandering around i found a coffee shop where the men were sitting around playing backgammon and discussing the newspapers. i made the acquaintance of an american gentleman, professor brown, who told me that he had arrangements to purchase a mummy for a museum in albany, ny.

when i told professor brown about the house in albany, we started talking about all the places in town. apparently, he wasn't familiar with all of them, but of others certainly he was. we chatted about state street, pearl street, and washington park. finally he came round to talking about egyptology. i was going to mention my uncle cuthred's theories about babylonian archeology, but professor brown mentioned he had heard rumors about an amazing fish who could best the greatest players in cairo at backgammon.

i knew that i had found bubbles.

prof. brown said that he was hoping to see the fish but he had an appointment that afternoon to inspect the mummy. he said he could always come back tomorrow, because the fish had been there every afternoon for the last month. he was a regular.

prof. brown asked me if i'd like to accompany him to view the mummy. he said it could be an interesting situation, and likely not one i had witnessed before - mummy purchase negotiations. i was excited, and agreed to tag along. the professor asked the mummy man to unwrap it so he could be sure that it was a legitimate mummy, and not a fake. then he offered to buy an additional mummy. he said he had to make arrangements with albany for more funding, however. the professor and i exchanged contact information in cairo and in albany, so we could meet up again. he told me which ship he was taking back to new york, if i was interested in having company on the trip home.

the next day, i went to the cafe where i met the professor. as i expected, bubbles was there cleaning up at backgammon. he had an highly ornamental bowl, with a brass stand and elaborate sea-horse designs in the fixtures. the bowl was crystal and was hand painted in an art nouveau style. he had a couple of tough looking fellows, he later told me they were his body guards, carry him around. he asked me what took me so long to get there. he was happy to see me.

i told bubbles about my plans to get back to albany, but i didn't know how to get to our time. he said it would be better to be in albany than cairo, even though he was enjoying himself, and we would work out the time thing later. i asked him if he was swimming or if he was traveling on the ship with prof. brown, the mummies, and myself. bubbles said he didn't fancy the whale road this time, and he intended to travel in style. it seems he made a small fortune at the bazaars in cairo.

and so, we sailed back to america. back to albany and our own hudson river. still, i wasn't sure how we were going to find our way back to the 21st century.

text messages in new york

one time i had a dream that i met emma, the cousin of mathilde, who is the fiancée of my cousin harold. emma was going to be the maid of honneur at their wedding. she speaks english with a slight accent.

she was in new york for the summer working for french television. emma was on the production crew of a documentary team that was making a film about how new yorkers used telephones. the documentary had 5 episodes and was going to be aired over the course of one week back in france. most new yorkers would never see it.

the episode that was her specialty was the one on text messages. it was going to air on a thursday evening. she was conducting interviews to discover in what cultural practices new yorkers used text, and what their attitudes towards texts were. emma said that she wanted to explore and explain how french people and new yorkers used texts in different ways. 

some of what she was filming was candid shots of people texting on the streets of new york city, but a great deal of it was people just talking about text messaging. she had several questions that she used as prompts, but mostly, she wanted people to speak at length and tell stories. most of them were just people on the street who were willing to talk about it, from all age groups, all national backgrounds, all classes. she wanted the documentary to be very multicultural and democratic - as this is how she perceived new york.

we met several times over the course of the summer - when i was in new york city (mostly in manhattan) - for lunch. we went to the big museum for an afternoon.

all summer, emma said she wanted to visit albany to see the museum of science fiction, and visit the hippies of woodstock, but wasn't sure if she had time. one wednesday she sent me a text saying that she, the camera-man, martin, and his girlfriend were on their way to woodstock. i called her back to tell her that i was on a mustard mix for a party for government officials in watertown, but that bubbles would show them around.

bubbles said he could show them a few things but he was in a high stakes online chess tournament and had to get back to that. they said it was nice to meet him. he took them to the village green and tinker street. they decided to have lunch at one of the restaurants, and bubbles said he had to get back to work. so they wandered around town on their own. i'm not really sure what they did. when i asked they joked around in french and i didn't understand all of the words in part because of the personalized slang they invented for the woodstock stuff and secondly because they spoke quickly and interrupted each other to be funny.

the next day i arrived back, and we went to albany. we went to the museum of science fiction and the concert down by the river. martin thought that was the best part of his trip to america. i suggested that they spend friday at the dutchess county fair, but they said they wanted to make a boat ride on the hudson. so they went down to docks in kingston and tried to get people to take them aboard. i told them this probably wasn't a good idea, but they found two families from quebec on a yacht who were delighted to have them for the afternoon. martin's girlfriend, justine, said they had excellent bbq in the american style. they spent the weekend going to the mansions of rich people in dutchess county. on monday morning they packed up their gear, and headed back to the city. emma kissed me on the cheek and said they were going back to france that week, but she would see me at the wedding.

she was super-cool, cute, and very funny.

wedding music

one time i had a dream that i had to audition bands for my cousin harold's wedding. one of my favorites was "mad arlecchino and his olde tyme azteck band."

they wore outrageous costumes. harold didn't think they would be suitable for the wedding, but his fiancée, mathilde, loved them. so did her cousin emma.

my pet-fish, bubbles, was annoyed that i didn't pick him to be the dj at their wedding. i told bubbles that he was invited as a guest, not as a servant. this cheered him up a great deal.

new money

one time, i had a dream the treasury department re-designed the fifty dollar bill to decrease the amount of snide dough being passed around.

my pet-fish, bubbles, asked me if i'd loan him one of the new bills - so he could buy some pineapples for a cake he was baking.

the interior design

one time i had a dream that bubbles, my pet-fish, decided to re-decorate the place while i was away at vacation.

when i got home, i was very unhappy with the color scheme, furniture, and carpet that he had chosen. bubbles told me that he personally didn't select this combination. he said that he hired two interior designers to fix up the place. i totally hated their design. bubbles, however, said it was very retro.

at least they didn't ruin my mustard facility.

the monk

one time i had a dream that, as part of the wedding preparations, i had to meet with arnoulf, one of the brothers of mathilde (my cousin harold's fiancée), to discuss various concerns --both spiritual and temporal -- because he's a monk.

my pet-fish, bubbles, said he isn't just a monk - he's the abbot.

the big museum

one time i had a dream that, by the recommendation of a noted authority, my work got added to the big museum as an instillation.

it was a performance piece. i caned chairs and took breaks to eat macaroni and cheese.

don't worry, it was organic macaroni and vegan cheese.

the kind ones

one time i had a dream that the summer fairies who can fight infections made a visit to my county.

they were most welcome, and were greeted with great festivity and hospitality.

go fly a kite

one time i had a dream that there was a festival to celebrate electricity. there were all kinds of hand cranks at the festival.

i was going to tell people about my uncle cuthred's theory, about the bagdad battery, but i was enjoying the kite flying too much. they're good for creating wind energy.

the rock star

one time i had a dream that i got to meet my favorite rock star from the 1980s.

he still had that hair-do.

the sophistocates

one time i had a dream that i wrote and published books under a pseudonym. i got to hang out with some artists and writers who were very profound. we talked at sophisticated parties.

my novels explored, through a vigorous and experimental use of language, the role of intellectual experiences in the wake of the collapse of modernified urban involutions, and a commencement of  the rejuvenation of the self in the metropolitan dissolution. in this way, i commented on the resilience of the perennial -- without denying the consequences of altered expectations and new technology -- in these books. further, they explored why the role of women is necessary, and how inherited power-structures are influential in generational perceptions. the books were mainly about people getting married.

not all of them were about weddings and courtships, naturally. a few were about people traveling to locales involving poor people, beaches, and insular politics.

my pet-fish bubbles said that these were the among the worst books ever written. he said he didn't understand why people read this kind of trash. he said i should be writing about autarky, metabolic rift, and the nature-culture divide. also, he said my novels should be more meta-fictional and de-modernised. 

i told bubbles he knew nothing about art or fiction, and that's why he wasn't invited to our exclusive and highly stimulating parties.

the chemical heiroglyphics

one time i had a dream that scientists were able to locate extra-terrestrial communications devices in the bacterial hyper-structures of human gut flora. they had to use a steam powered microscope to discover this.

my pet-fish, bubbles, said that they are really called indigenous microbiota. he's a stickler for accuracy.  i'm not sure what the extra-terrestrials called them. maybe organic space-texts.

anyway, they used the communications between the bacteria, through a quorum sensing mechanism that detected homoserine lactones and indicated their presence by producing visible light (sort of like smoke detectors sound an audible alarm, i guess), to send chemical messages to the planet earth. they figured that eventually some sort of intelligent beings would be able to decode them as chemical hieroglyphics. the scientists needed the steam powered microscope to detect the lights.

the problem was, after the scientists discovered them, they didn't know how to write back to the aliens.

cricket

one time i had a dream that my friend from australia taught me how to play cricket.

we didn't have a proper cricket set, so we used brooms for bats and a few poles as a wicket. my friend said that at home he'd drink a big mug of victoria milk when he'd play cricket. i told him we could have a soy latte if he liked. he said it's not exactly the same thing.

the berry pickers

one time, i had a dream that it was considered high fashion to go berry picking. everyone went out in the country in droves not just to pick, but -- more importantly -- to be seen picking, berries.

the important people in society all put on a show of returning back to the land and being in touch with nature because they picked berries. it was considered a manifestation of people's sensitive nature and awareness of social conscience to pick berries. people started to wear berry picking aprons and carry wicker baskets all the time. they brought them to situations where it used to be considered unnecessary, or actually unacceptable, like corporate board-rooms, the movies, and the library. everyone was bragging about the specialty jams they were contemplating, and i even got caught up in the fad by making my own berry flavored mustard.

unexpectedly, the leader of the local grump brigade, barton nichols, was spotted picking blueberries along the side of sawkill road. he never went in for fads. when my pet fish, bubbles, mentioned this to him, nichols denied it. he said that bubbles must have been mistaken, because he paid five cents per berry when he bought them at the grocery. bubbles said that was pretty expensive, but nichols said that he got a mail in rebate on them.

about 3 weeks after the trend began, it was over. mainly, this was because they had run out of berries to pick. this was weird because everyone had told me that it was sustainable agriculture or something. however, a new fad for being socially aware (called listening to rock and roll music) came into prominence, and berry picking went out of style. it was considered old fashioned and gauche.

bubbles said he was going to sculpt a verse electronica mix to lament the passing of the berry season.

the one and only mr and mrs loops

one time i had a dream that i knew a wolf who liked to parade around in a chicken suit and cluck. he told us that his name was mr. loops and that he was a respectable figure in the town.

loops prided himself on the fitness of his chicken suit and the fine quality of the feathers. he wanted to be spoken to in a deferential tone. he wasn't like other canines, he claimed. he had his wolves den decorated with chicken wire and corn. he often worried about the price of eggs. he'd talk about eggs very loudly around the town with the hopes that people would over hear him and assume he was a very high class wolf.

loops got very angry if you didn't call him "mister." loops said it was very disrespectful if you didn't call him by that form of address. proper manners were very important to him.

loops also demanded that his wife be referred to as "mrs. loops" to underline how important she was. everyone must make a recognition of that loops said. bubbles took him aside and told him, confidentially, that it's hard to respect someone in a chicken suit.

loops didn't like that.

he started to cluck more than usual and shake. he said that mrs. loops would be very unhappy when she heard that.

bubbles said she could go lay an egg.     

the xmas moose

one time i had a dream that i had a dream that i was at the north pole during summer. it was light all day or it never got dark - depending upon your perspective.

while i was there i got to see the elusive christmas moose. he was busy handing out brown paper bags filled with cash so we didn't have a chance to speak in great detail.

he seemed surprised to see me at there, you know the out of context thing. generally, when we see each other, we cross paths in nyc. he said hello, but was too involved in his work to talk at length. he had people depending on him that needed stuff.

trick or treat

one time i had a dream that after halloween was over, people still continued to wear their masks until christmas.

after a while, i stopped thinking of people as who they were, but instead just as the mask they wore. we all did. people were happy that they got to be another identity for like in a game. the first few days of all saints and all souls was fun. people played little jokes, and revealed secrets to each other that they normally wouldn't say. this was because no-one knew who they were and because it was part of the extended halloween. only, after a while, they started to get confused. they started doing dangerous and destructive things, because they thought they were the halloween character and not their own personality.

at armistice day bubbles, my pet-fish, became very concerned. people were starting to become dangerous to themselves. they gave up on the idea of the city as a place of civilization.  in the country, people stopped working the land. every one was pulling injurious pranks in the rural areas and deliberately vicious acts in the city. worst of all they took off their boots in public and made other people smell the foot odor. these were noxious gasses that caused great illness and death.

at st. martin's day, bubbles went around telling people that they were only wearing masks. they were not the characters the masks represented, and that they needed to stop confusing the two. people liked their costumes and the masks too much. no-one listened. they kept having smelly feet. people died from the fumes.

at thanksgiving people ate until they puked and never considered how lucky they were to be blessed with plenty. things were becoming more dangerous and more violent. people stopped caring about one another, and only cared about the identity of the costumes. bubbles told them they should take off their masks and remember themselves. no-one listened. more people died.

at the first sunday of advent people decided not to dress things in purple. they didn't care about the arrival of christmas or the solstice. they said there would be no more holidays in the future, it would be halloween forever. they had crossed the veil between night and day. it would be night forever, and they would be characters forever. bubbles told them that these were only masks they were wearing and that they should take them off. no one listened. people did dangerous things to themselves without regard for the consequences -especially exposing their foot smells. more people were slaughtered.

at the christmas eve bubbles came to me and told me this was only a dream. i needed to wake up, he said, otherwise all of these people would end up killing themselves. he was quite serious and terribly worried. i told him that we had to wait until morning to see what would happen. if i woke up then, all of the people might be trapped in their masks, and the dead people would never return to life.

i hung my stocking at the chimney, and i went to bed that night. i had a dream within the dream. it was of summer time at the north pole with the christmas moose. i woke up inside the main dream the next morning.

in the main dream, when i got up, it was christmas. everyone took off their masks, the dead people came back to life, and everyone went back to being who they actually are.

my pet fish bubbles said that this holiday is an example of the folk culture being commodified and exploited for the benefit of a powerful and wealthy minority. halloween was merely a plot by the ruling class to get people to consume more bon-bons.

i asked bubbles if he ever thought anything was fun.

inter-dimensional television

one time i had a dream that i got hooked up to inter-dimensional television. it didn't just record in sound and color, but in infrared and gamma rays too. it made i.d. shows more flashy than our ordinary television, i guess. but it didn't matter, because even though my tv could broadcast at those wavelengths, i didn't have the proper sense organs to perceive the waves. it also broadcasted in extra-dimesions besides the ones covered by regular tv. not only did i get broadcasts in length, width, height, time, and cyber-space, i also got funky dimensions like the ones in particle mechanics. so there were shows with added boson symmetries and the 4 forces. there were shows with open tachyons but they were mainly for downloading on to fancy telephones.

so what if i didn't get to see all the extra-effects? bubbles said said that he could hear some of the lower and higher pitches that i couldn't and see some color shades that were invisble or faded to me. bubbles said they had extra music effects in the other pitches and textual messages that enhanced the shows in the deeper colors. they weren't subtitles, and they seemed like random verse, but if you thought about them, you could see a weirdly clever connection. bubbles said it's like watching a 3-d movie without the glasses. however, i think it would be more accurate to describe it as hearing the sound on regular tv, but not seeing the pictures. you can get a pretty good idea of what's going on, but you also know that you're definitely missing out on something.

my favorite show was a comedy that made fun of milieu control. it was on at 2 in the morning, so i had to stay up late to watch it. after a while, i got to know the stars of the other dimension. looking at their constellation of characters was sort of fascinating. you could tell who were the more skilled actors and who always played the same type of character due to limited ability or lousy connections. it was possible that although they looked and sounded the same, in the extra-dimensional stuff their performances might have been widely varied. they could have been sending off all kinds of communications that i didn't have the sense or intellect to percieve or comprehend. i didn't really have anyone to talk to about the shows, except my pet fish, bubbles. i tried to get people interested in interdimensional tv, but they didn't seem to care. it can be lonely when you've got an inter-dimensional mind in a 4-d world.

bubbles complained that they only got 59 channels in the other dimension.

celestial flowers

one time i had a dream that one of my neighbors grew flowers so high that they expanded into celestial events.

people from all around the neighborhood came to her yard to view the gardens. they were highly cultivated. some of them brought their telescopes to make a more efficient and accurate observation. the conversations were quite elevated. at first, it was very cool because everyone enjoyed the bright colors and patterns of the flowers as they exploded into new worlds. every night, we'd bring our folding chairs, and my neighbor would come outside with lemon-aide.

about half-way through the summer things changed however. the guy that lived next-door to her started to complain about the crowds of people and all of the traffic. he went to the local government and investigated the zoning laws. he found out that it is illegal to grow very tall plants in our neighborhood. he got up at 4 a.m. . he measured the flowers, before anyone was awake, with a ruler. he found out they were taller than 8 inches, and, technically illegal. that afternoon, he badgered the lady with the flowers, about cutting them down, for about 2 hours.

she didn't cut them down. he called the local constabulary. they told him this was more in the jurisdiction of the public safety committee.  he decided to complain at the next weekly meeting. the committee resolved to set up a board of governors to form a sub-committee to over-see a board of inquiry which would have the authority to make an investigation of the matter. the sub-committee would then report their findings to the board of governors of the sub-comittee who would, in turn, make a recommendation to the committee on possible paths of action, if any action was either required or suggested. however, allocations for funding this sub-committee and the investigation would have to be taken up with the finance committee. they didn't meet until next tuesday.

the whole matter was resolved when the local gang of deer decided to take a little lunch of the flowers. so people stopped their evening congregations in her yard. most of the people were going to go on vacation in august anyway. but it was good to have a small amount of neighborhood camaraderie for a few weeks.

my pet-fish, bubbles, said that it was cool because we now have glowing fauna in our neighborhood. when they tramp through the trees in back of our house, they light up the woods. it looks very magical.

no photos allowed

one time i had a dream that i made a visit to the big museum and tried to take a photo of a well known painting of a pique-nique. the museum people weren't thrilled about this "mechanical reproduction" stuff. they didn't throw me out, but they told me i'd have to stop taking pictures.

bubbles said "taking pictures" means stealing paintings and that they should have told me to stop making photographs.

the security guard said that actually, taking photographs of the paintings was a form of stealing. personally, he didn't care if i took a photo. it was a nice piece, he told us, one of his favorites. however, the painting belonged to a rich old lady who loaned it permanently to the museum. part of the loan agreement was that
 no-one could take photographs of the art work. he said that it was his job to patrol the room. if it was up to him, i would be able to take all the photos i'd like.

bubbles said that the rich old lady had acquired her wealth, and hence the painting, through primitive accumulation. making a photo of the painting exploded the fetishization of canvas, and therefore constituted an act of working class resistance.

i told them that it really didn't matter because i forgot to put film in the camera that day anyway.

the poet of the dragons

one time i had a dream that i met a poet who knew the secret properties of etymologies and the origins of the dragon songs.

he knew the way that words twisted their sounds and meaning over time. they changed and took on new resonances and moved  differently in the caverns of people's mouths. he knew how words are treasures. he knew how dangerous it is to them to be confined in guarded piles. they should be allowed to circulate freely among the people, no matter how worn or damaged they become in the handling. he knew that transactions of words were inevitable, and therefore it was foolish to insist that they adhere to only the one form of one time. he told us that to understand language was to understand that words coalesce and bleed at times just as much as they display immiscibility. we were cautioned that we would amputate reality from our minds if we denied this, or struggled against it.

bubbles, my pet-fish, however, said this was loony. bubbles claimed that words were merely a mechanism of social control. in order for the proletariat to take command of the world, bubbles claimed, it must first make itself the master of bourgeois grammars, and institute - not merely a new vocabulary- but a new system of verbal structure where meaning could not be manipulated for the purposes of class deception.  

bubbles said that all poetry is inherently political and that any verse that doesn't address the method of production is counter-revolutionary, and hence dangerous.

i told bubbles that the quasi-mystical ravings of his end of the world cult didn't scare me.

angelic waves of pasta

one time i had a dream that i was there when marco polo had the recipe for pasta revealed to him.

marco said that pasta is actually 4000 years old, but it was new to him. i asked him what the original version was like. he told me it was like maccheroncini.

bubbles said that pasta is fun. his favorite types are rotelle and fiori.

la spiaggia di nettuno

one time i had a dream that bubbles landed a part in a film. he was in a movie where he played the night dj at a cosmic dance festival down by the coast.

he got to appear in the big party scene, and also had a few lines in several other places through out the movie. at one point, he gives the hero a piece of advice that is crucial to the ending of the film.

he said while they were filming the party scene there were cameos by several important people, like the patriarch archbishop, and he got to eat kulfi (because he's not a vegan. i know, shame on him) for free. bubbles enjoyed the experience immensely, and loved being on the beach. he told me he couldn't wait to go back to make another movie.

they made two formats for the film and one was in 3d, but i only got to see the 2d one. 

but i'm innocent!

one time, i had a dream that i was a witness to a crime, and that i had to be interrogated by the chief of police - even though he knew  i was innocent.

i got to sit in the police room with the two way mirrors. they got the under-commissioner to help the chief by playing tiggy-chasey and shove-groate.

they asked me why i was at the bank that day, since most people do their banking via telephone. i told them i needed to buy a roll of quarters to use in the parking-meters. the under-commisioner said this was a lie, because the parking-meters only take dimes, nickles. and pennies. i responded that they take quarters and liberty dollars.

the under-commissioner jumped up out of his seat! he shouted "what do you know about lady liberty?" i must have looked shocked because he immediately pressed "you're part of the big heist, aren't you? this proves it." the chief tried to calm him down. he rubbed him, gently, on the back, and handed him a coffee. the under-commissioner sat back down.

then, it was the chief's turn. he was very calm, and relaxed, like this was a routine question. in fact, he acted like he didn't care at all, since they had already busted the thieves. the chief said to me "we're concerned with the theft of copper. you didn't buy any pennies that day? why didn't you you need copper? that's what we want to know."

i told him that the only coppers i knew were the two in front of me. the under-commissioner smashed his fist down on the table, and all of the coins got re-arranged.

when i had relieved them of all their pocket-change at shove-groate, they decided to write up an affidavit for me to sign, indicating that i could certify, as an eye-witness, that the "dirtbags" in question were the robbers.

the under-commissioner told me he'd better not find my car parked at an expired meter or he would personally write me a ticket. i told him, that thanks to him, that wouldn't be a problem. he leered at me angrily, and flared his nostrils, but the chief laughed. i think the under-commissioner was unhappy about loosing at shove-groate, even though he beat both me and the chief at tiggey-chasey. 

let me give you my card

one time, i had a dream that bubbles, my pet-fish, decided that he needed to print some new business cards for me. 

the big heist

one time, i had a dream that a famous gang of criminals were trying to hold their most outrageous heist ever. they started out by taking a piss on the statue of liberty enlightening the world in an attempt to steal it. they thought that everyone would be distracted by their public urination. the plan worked, and they stole lady liberty.

these crooks weren't going to hold it for ransom, or steal it as a stunt for charity or even national pride. they just wanted it for their private collection. fortunately, it was recovered, because they couldn't figure out how to dim her torch and it was visible at night,  and it was returned to its rightful place.

the country held a big bbq to celebrate, but it was vegan, so i had a tofu hot dog.