the angels of jazz

one time i had a dream that my pet fish, bubbles, summoned the angels of jazz.

the universal spider king

one time i had a dream that i got to meet the universal spider king who creates the web that unites the world.

he said that the secret is in the spinning.

shipwrecked!

one time, i had a dream that my neighbor told me about being shipwrecked and alone, on an island in the pacific, during the second world war.

he claimed that he survived on beer and pretzels brought to him by people from outerspace.
he was rescued by the royal navy. when the british sailors came ashore, they drank all the beer together. then, he danced a hornpipe.

my pet-fish, bubbles, got into a tizzy about this. he said that it was actually called the british pacific fleet, and they were made up of commonwealth navies under american command.
bubbles said they were probably australians that rescued him, but our neighbor, bellini, couldn't tell the difference.

i told bubbles that it must have been the english since they used a viking style ship.

so we decided to ask arturo bellini, our neighbor. he told us that he was in the army not the navy. he also told us that he was in the european theater, not the war in the pacific. he told us that he spent most of the war years involved with experiments in time travel, not aliens.

his wife said that it really didn't matter because he wasn't that great of a dancer anyway.

spring ahead

one time i had a dream that i forgot to move the clock an hour forward for daylight savings. it was too bad because i missed the birth of venus on the waves at dawn.

avogadro's number

one time, i had a dream that i got to hear an accordion player who could turn lead into gold with his polkas.

my pet fish, bubbles, said that it was lucky for me that my ears didn't turn into gold - like in the story of midas. i told him that midas turned his daughter into gold, not himself.

then, bubbles called me a stupid donkey.

bird dance

one time i had a dream that i was invited to attend the bird dance. i also got to meet the lady that does the choreography for them. she said the feathers were an important part of the design.  

royal drama

one time, i had a dream that i went to the theatre. the play was about a king who was threatened by elements within his own court. there were lots of plots and tricks between the different factions against him. ultimately, he was betrayed by the royal baboon.

at the beginning of the play the king was benevolent. he was shown defending the people from poisonous serpents and many worms in the air. he distributed tax revenue to the various ministers so they could run the country well. he was always filling the cups of his vassals. he gave out many rings to his lords. that was a good king.

yet as each of his ministers and warlords became more honored they became more devious and treacherous. in order to counter the arrogance and impunity of the nobles, the king became unyielding and tyrannical.

in his effort to hold on to power he did terrible things. the king put three dissenting nature poets on a ship at sea, during a storm, and sank it. they were young men, and known to be very talented. each of the poets sang about a different element in nature: earth, fire, and water. none of them sang about air because all songs are composed of wind and are carried by the breeze.

the fire poet was famous for a poem about bees making honey, and bears coming out of their caves to eat it. the longing of the bears, even in the silent depths of hibernation, for the honey that the bees were making was like the burning of a fire, he said.
the earth poet was famous for a poem about the roots of pine trees spread out in the frozen mud, and curving around stones, after the last dusting of snow in late winter.
the water poet liked to write about the cycles of evaporation and rain, but he  hadn't written a masterpiece yet.

the king engineered the murder of these poets because he dreamt that they opposed the marriage of his daughter to a powerful warlord who would strengthen his grip on the throne. the royal astrologer told the king to execute them, and picked a day in the future, that would have a storm, to send them on a journey.

the play showed showed the poets walking through the town, down the street, to the pier. in the storm, with the rain and wind, they said good bye to everyone. they set sail, and they knew this would be the end of their lives. they were very frightened during the storm, but the water poet sang about the beauty of the waves that engulfed them, and they met their deaths with honor. the king's daughter committed suicide, out of shame, since they were innocent. that was the water poet's masterpiece. it was a great and powerful song, but it didn't calm the seas.

this scene was the revelation that the king had turned from using force to maintain necessary order, and became a despot who used violence to hold on to personal power.

by the end of the play he was alone, isolated, and hunted. his arrogance, inability to distinguish threats from blamelessness, and his ironfisted tactics, all lead, avoidably, to his demise.

i though this was a good play. however, bubbles said that the ending was unrealistic because baboons can't talk. we both agreed that the music was really spectacular.  

les plaques d'or

one time, i had a dream that i was commissioned to do mustard for 100 golden dishes by a rich guy and his wife - but i got lost in the forest on my way to the job.

bubbles, my pet fish, said the best way to get out of a forest is to swim, so i did. the stream led to the river, and the river flowed out to the sea. i walked along the edge of the beach and found the rich guy and his wife. they were relaxing in the sun.

they told me that they didn't want mustard anymore, and asked if i knew about banana catsup. i told them i don't.

thought correction

one time, i had a dream that while peeking in the attic, i found one of the old posters that they used to have to control people's minds. it was fairly common for people to get hoodwinked back then.

they used to make people think the craziest things in the old days. they used to make people think that space was filled with luminiferous aether, that ontology recapitulates phylogeny, and that phlogiston eats fire.

my pet fish, bubbles, said it's a good thing that we live in the future and can't get brain-washed anymore.