~When I was 4 or 5 and still living with my grandmother, I used to sleep in a full sized bed which was pushed against a wall in one corner of the room.  Every night as I waited for sleep to find me, the streetlight would illuminate the room and I would lay there on my side staring at the top of a nail which was feintly discernible under the paint.  And as I would lay there looking at that nail, I would find myself incredibly focused and overcome with the feeling that I was shrinking smaller and smaller until I was so tiny I was insignificant and I remember this overwhelming sense of panic that I might be lost forever and not find my way back to regular size.

~ I also remember when the movie THE REINCARNATION OF AUDREY ROSE came out and I learned what reincarnation meant.  From that moment on, I had an intense fear of death.  What if reincarnation was real and you were born over and over, each time to different people (and wouldn’t you have to be since everyone you loved wouldn’t die at the same time as you?) and what if in some of those lives you were abused or tortured or murdered or worst of all wound up in Russia where they made you join the army?  (Even back then I knew I was different and the thought of being forced to be in the military and use a gun was enough to send me under the bed with a pillow and blanket for a “de-stress nap.”)  Most disturbing of all to me was wondering what if you could remember either the people you loved or the feeling of having loved someone but being unable to recall their name or find them and spent the rest of your life with this huge empty spot inside you.  Just typing this has me thinking about heading back under the bed for some mental health time.

~ When I was maybe 5 or 6, I stepped on a rusty nail and ran it in the bottom of my foot.  Because my mother worked nights, my grandmother  decided it could wait until the next day for me to get a tetanus shot.  In the meantime, she went on and on about how she hoped I didn’t get lockjaw.  Of course, being a child and not knowing about all the exotic and horrific diseases that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life, I asked what lockjaw was.  My grandmother explained that it was a disease where your jawbones sort of fused together so tightly that the doctors couldn’t break them apart and you couldn’t even get a straw between your teeth so all you could do was wait until you starved to death to die.  For the next 8 years, lockjaw was my greatest health related fear…until I was 15 and read CUJO by Stephen King. Thanks to that book, rabies became number one with a bullet on my short list of diseases I was certain I was contracting in one way or another at least 3 times a day.   

Okay, my latest weird dream starts out with The Fella and I driving along when my cell phone rings.  It’s Ryan, telling me that he is purging his phone directory and if I have no intention of calling him in the next 24 hours, he’s going to delete me.  I tell him that I honestly have no intention of calling him anytime in the near future.

Then suddenly I’m in a hospital emergency room and there are soot covered college students everywhere, obviously the victims of a fire.  The Fella wanders over to the vending machine to get some snacks and then plops down in the waiting area while I find myself seated beside Ryan who is telling me about his college age boyfriend, Patrick, that he really wants me to meet.

The Fella keeps eating and pointing at his watch and nodding at the door while Ryan takes a pill he says makes him groggy.  He swallows it and within seconds he is slurring his words and his eyelids are drooping. 

“I want you to meet Patrick,” Ryan says, getting up and leading me to an ER cubicle.  When we get to the curtain, I realize I have on women’s flip-flops and go back to find my own shoes.  I change into them and turn to go back to meet Patrick, but Ryan is coming toward me crying.

“He’s dead,” Ryan sobs.

“Well then there’s nothing else we can do here,” The Fella says pulling me toward the door.

Ryan sits down sobbing and I tell The Fella to go pull the car around and I’ll be right out.

I try to comfort Ryan, but he’s really out of it at this point and tells me he wants me to come meet Patrick.  We go into the cubicle and he pulls back the sheet covering the body to reveal a body burned all the way the bone.

That’s when I woke up.

Interpretations, anyone?

I had a very strange dream last night.

In it, Lola and I were competing on THE AMAZING RACE. Apparently the leg of the race we were on required us to race to one of several vans parked at the mall and drive from Sears to Macy’s.

A distance of about 150 yards.

After parking the van by the clue flag, we had to race over to a grassy area we had to participate in a road block in which Lola had to paint my forearms with butter and coat them in bread crumbs before I rode a bike through a maze consisting of 3 turns and then jumped into a shallow mud puddle.

We began the leg of the race in the lead but somehow got lost on our way to Macy’s (which you can see from Sear’s), resulting in several teams overtaking our lead. Then Lola had trouble getting the bread crumbs to stick and I could not seem to make the turns in the proper manner which ultimately resulted in our being the last team to arrive at Hobby Lobby.

“He’s so moody when he doesn’t get his way, Phil,” Lola explained as I started sobbing about not wanting to be eliminated when there was so much more of the world to see.

I am so fucked up.

Hey guys!  My ADD is kicking in big time today plus I’ve got a lot to do to get ready for an extended weekend getaway with The Fella, so it’s another hot, steaming bowl of random thoughts…

~ Is anyone else rooting for AMAZING RACE’s marriage in crisis couple Ken and Tina to hurry up and be eliminated? I am the last person to advocate infidelity, but God help me if I don’t see why Ken strayed. (And I’m guessing he secretly loved getting to don those tights and compete in that Mexican wrestling roadblock — it was probably the first time he’s been allowed to wear something approximating pants in years.)

~ Speaking of reality show contestants, is there currently anyone more full of himself or cringe inducing than TOP DESIGN’s Eddie, he of the “I work for Martha Stewart” mantra?  And when he called iconic potter and TOP DESIGN judge Jonathon Adler an elf — Oh. My. God.  Please let this train wreck make it to the finale.

~ Maybe it’s The Fella or maybe I’m just finally growing up (at 42), but I find myself drifting more and more away from the Disney Princess pillowcases and instead toward matching sheet sets.  (When it comes to the extra pillows, however, the superhero pillowcases are here to stay since The Fella is mad about them as well.)

~ I keep having these weird dreams where I go to the bank (and the bookstore and the comic shop and the movies) naked and totally try to pretend I’m not.  What the fuck is that all about anyway?

~ In the new issue of ITALIAN VANITY FAIR, Angelina Jolie is quoted as saying “When we first met I already had a child. We didn’t live together and we adopted Zahara. Usually people fall in love and and everything revolves around people getting married. Children are an afterthought.” I think what she really meant was “When we first met I already had a child…and HE WAS MARRIED” and “Children are an afterthought…LIKE GETTING DIVORCED FROM BELOVED NATIONAL TREASURE JENNIFER ANISTON BEFORE YOU GET A GIRLFRIEND.”

~ I’ve recommended it before, but I’m going to do so again:  If you haven’t read THE WATCHMEN, get off your lazy ass and obtain a copy.  There’s a reason TIME MAGAZINE listed it among its 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present, calling it “A work of ruthless psychological realism, it’s a landmark in the graphic novel medium. It would be a masterpiece in any.”

~ Once again, I am having trouble commenting on blogs that are not WordPress.  Especially those ones that use Atom or Haloscan or whatnot.  Suffice it to say this is pissing me off greatly.

~ AC/DC has a new album.  And it’s available exclusively at Wal*mart.  Is it just me or is this the worst pairing since peanut butter and mayonaise?

~ And finally, just a reminder that time is running out to get your pumpkin pics to me for Carvathon 2008, as well as your questions for MAILBAG MONDAY and ASK MIA.  The latter has received nary a request for romantical type advice much to Miss Mia’s dismay.  Send them to dirk.mancuso@gmail.com with the appropriate topic in the subject line.  I shall look forward to an overflowing mailbox upon my return home.

Peace out and have a tres groovy weekend y’all!

So I’ve had this dream twice now and it’s kind of freaking me out.

It starts with me in an orange jumpsuit sitting in one of those interrogation type rooms at a police station and my mom comes in and I start begging her to call a lawyer for me and she says that I shouldn’t have been drinking and driving and I tell her that I only had one glass of wine and moved my car from my neighbors parking space to my parking space and she says I should’ve thought about things before I got behind the wheel and it was her civic duty to report someone breaking the law and then I start freaking out and she says 5 years will go really quick — it’s only 60 months — and then she leaves and that’s when I wake up.

Where are the dreams with all the hawt, hairy mens when you need ‘em?

I’m not sure if it was residual fever from the pneumonia, a bad reaction to my meds, or if it was the black pepper chicken I had for dinner, but I had a profoundly disturbing dream last night. Half a day later it is still with me — as well as some very intense emotions I experienced with it.  I feel weird even talking about it, but we all know I that’s what I do here…

The dream started with a dark headed woman and myself running down a dark country road. 2 men in a car were trying to run us down and eventually got out and began beating us with tire irons. The next thing I remember is waking up in a furniture store in broad daylight, being attended to by paramedics while customers milled about. My mother was standing over me chain-smoking, only it wasn’t Mama M — it was the chain-smoking ghost mom from PROVIDENCE. The paramedics kept apologizing for having to shave my beard off. They held up a mirror, showing me a split lip, blacked eyes, and a huge gash across my forehead. Then they explained that I would need to go to the hospital to have my surgery examined. When I asked what they were talking about, they pulled back the covers and pointed to my groin, which was shaved…and missing my penis. There was ragged flesh and a bunch of crude Frankenstein sutures everywhere. The dark headed woman was there and walked out crying. The next thing I know, it’s my real mom handing me a garbage bag to put over my head so no one knows who we are and then we are at Kay Jewelers where she’s telling me she is getting a diamond bracelet out of all this for all the embarrassment I’ve caused her.  Then I woke up.

Creepy, huh?

Today, two dreams for your perusal — one from my childhood and one from last night. What do they mean? Do they mean anything? And if so, what?!?!?!?

Dream #1: As longtime readers may recall, before my mother married shit for brains Old Boy she and I lived with my grandmother. At the time, I still hadn’t started school so I wasn’t too aware of the fact that most kids (at that time) lived in 2 parent households. In fact, I don’t even remember if I realized I should have a male parent to complete the set.

During the time we lived there, I used to have this recurring dream which I can still see as vividly as if I had just awoken from it. To get the full image, you have to first understand that my grandmother’s house was laid out rather strangely. Instead of a square-ish living room, she had a long rectangular one (which made it damn near impossible to rearrange furniture), with the kitchen located off one end and the bedrooms off the other.

In my dream, I would wake up and go the hallway, compelled to look into the living room. A low hanging fog covered the length of the floor and at the far end would be the figure of a man. I could not make out any features, just the lines of his dark form as illuminated by the dim light from the street lamps filtering through the pulled curtains, but somehow I know he is in his late 30s/early 40s. I would stand there, staring at him and he at me, neither of us speaking. I don’t know how, but I instinctively knew he held no ill will toward anyone in the house; he was there to see me. We never moved any closer to one another, and the dream never varied. I remember having this dream until I was about 10 and never again since then.

Dream #2: I’m making out with a man on my bed. It starts to get hot and heavy and we peel each other’s shirts off. That’s when I realize I am making out with Clive Owen.

So what do I say to get this smokin’ cinematic stud even more in the mood?

“You know, your skin isn’t that bad up close…and your mouth doesn’t look as tiny in person.”

Cue Clive putting his shirt back on and leaving.

(Yeah, I’m fucking Rico Suave even in my dream life.)

Let the dream interpretations begin…

…a really strange dream. (Yes, even for me — now pipe down back there!)

Before I launch into full disclosure, there are two things you need to keep in mind about me. One, I am pretty picky about who I fuck, and two, I am obsessed with fresh breath.

Okay, so in my dream I am packing a bag for Chicago and my mother comes in and hands me a pack of Listerine Citrus Burst breath strips.

“Thanks, mom,” I say, “but I already have some.”

“No,” she replies in a flat voice, “you need to use these.”

Then the dream jumps ahead and I’m at a bar having a drink. A cute guy comes up. I pull out the pack to pop a strip only to discover my mother has replaced the strips with razor blades.

WTF?

The next thing I know I am laying in bed and I feel a hand over my mouth. I turn my head and see this guy. He’s about 350 pounds with like 3 bristly black hairs on each shoulder and moles all over his body. Not brown moles, but the loose, hangy kind. Since he’s way bigger than me and his hand is over my mouth, I shrug a reluctant acquiescence. Just as he rolls on top of me and is about to get busy, I wake up.

Okay…what does it all mean?