Five Years Before

y guess is it was a blog post recapping Warren Buffett's letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway that planted the seed for the dream that has me up at such an obnoxious hour. His letter mentioned some things he wished his company had not done, and some things it should have done even more.

So following logically from that, I had a dream that took me back five years (of course it is the dream world, where I know it is five years, though I didn't look at a newspaper or ask someone who the President is or any of that cliché time traveler stuff). Aside from knowing I was five years in the past, the only things I remember in the dream are warning an English major that the economy/job market is going to have a downturn, and while it is always a bad time to be an English major, this is like the worst time ever. And a young, thin, bearded, Paul Giamatti was the friend/teacher? of this star-crossed student. The other part of the dream was me and Paris Hilton and her mother shopping in some boutique for Paris' 21st Birthday. I was sort of their personal assistant, and was the only one of the three who had small enough bills to tip the boutique assistant for the free bottle service to sample, in two ounce plastic cups, a fine Champagne we'd gotten in a two pack, (Classy, I know. The two pack was two Champagne bottles in a decorative pink paper gift bag).

My take away from the dream is that I wouldn't change anything. In the dream, I remember thinking, I don't need to tell myself to do anything to change his future. Now that I'm awake, there are some things I'd like to tell my past self, but nothing more than exercise more, Christ hasn't come in five years, and maybe some strategic relationship advise, nothing big.

How about you? Are there some things you wish you could tell yourself five years ago that would change your current life?

The drop cap is from Jessica Hische.

Gary Wright 2

So Monday night I watched Planet Rock, which did a profile on the Foo Fighters, on Fuse TV. My friend Brian has been leaving me nice comments on MySpace recently, including invitations to visit him again in West Lafayette. Last week I made my first Thanksgiving dinner. Last night with Klaralyn, we were chatting about her dream, and she was also telling me how I should try to assimilate Cary Grant's style and meet a girl in a bar as such. I think I've laid the subconscious matrix for the dream I had, so here goes.

I was driving on the Interstate and with the vehicle in front of me another car pulled up to them two times while a woman got out of one vehicle and into the vehicle with her presumed beau. So there were two guys in the car in front of me and twice did women climb out of a van type car to get into the car with their mates. Whoever I was driving with, I was trying to explain how stupid it was that they were doing this and that they should have just met at the same exit with the other vehicle and made a much safer transition. Also, at least twice, I saw the drummer from the Foo Fighters, Taylor Hawkins, on a Ninja/crotch rocket type motorcycle. Most of the time I saw him on his bike, traffic wasn't going anywhere, and he was leaning forward, flat on his bike looking over at me. I would wave and call out his name, but I didn't get much response from him.

After I reached my destination, I was welcomed into the hotel room that Casey, Gretchen, Mindy, Brian, and I had. We weren't ready to go out, so we put in a movie, something that the girls enjoyed. While we were watching the movie, I was sitting next to Brian, and we were like really good buddies. It was a hockey movie with Richard Gere and Rob Lowe. I had managed to be in the movie as well and spent most of my scenes reprimanding Richard Gere. After losing interest in the movie, the five of us decided to go out, so Mindy gave me back my cell phone which she had apparently taken the liberty to take from me and turn off during our movie viewing (I don't actually own a cell phone). I had a text message from someone, sorry I can't remember what it said. I am sure it wasn't from Taylor Hawkins, whom I did see a third time on our way to the night time establishment.

At various times throughout the dream, I would visualize people separating into cubic squares. I think it had something to do with worrying about whether I had made enough turkey for the cubic volume of my guests. Which brings us to the last part of my dream, I was a Thanksgiving meal hosted by our associate accountant at AdventSource, Cassi, who used to be a student worker in my area. Mike from the Production department was also there. She brought out the turkey and was struggling greatly to carve it. She got pretty frustrated, so I offered to help her with it. It was an all dark meat turkey. I guess my dream ended with me offering some turkey to Mike.

So what does it all mean?

Best. Offering Call. Ever.

So in my dream I was at Alumni Weekend at DAA and was in the sanctuary between sabbath school and the main church service during a sound check on the stage. At some point, a very energetic yet misguided soul of a woman took the cue of some conference official and made an offering appeal, though there weren't twenty people in the audience yet. This is what I can remember:

You can transubstantiate yourselves into Hercules and shoot your eyes with heroin, which is much more painful that just giving a little extra.

But it was said much more haltingly. She was trying to be enthusiastic, but the words, and ideas for that matter, weren't coming to her quickly enough to support such fervor.

Bad Things

So I took a nap this evening for a couple hours, and it ended in a not great dream.



I was driving a rental car that was not dissimilar to a BMW Z. It was white. Wendy, Angela, and Kyle were in the car with me, so you can imagine it was a bit crowded. We had gotten out of a rest stop and Wendy got into a white BMW Z and put in my key and the car started up, but I was somehow able to identify that it wasn't the car we had rented. I think at this point I took the key from her and we got into the right car, but the mistaken car was still running. (Here is where you need to start suspending disbelief.) So I get out onto the freeway and both cars are running and moving, but the mistaken driverless car is going in the other direction. The freeway itself is straight out of hell with clovers and left turn exits galore, and the traffic is so intense that you have to keep driving very fast with no space or time to change lanes. The end effect being that you are just trying to survive. Meanwhile I know that everything I'm doing in my car is happening to another car that I can only sometimes see, as the freeway mix master has many levels that allow you to see traffic below you, and you're always turning around so you see traffic going both directions. This adds great consternation to me because I'm just sure I'm causing all sorts of wrecks with the driverless car. Also, the whole time I'm driving, my kind friends are reminding me what a poor driver I am and how fortunate I am that I haven't been pulled over yet. Eventually, traffic slows down at like a toll and then Kyle wants me to lower the convertible top, but that wasn't working either, so I woke up and ended that very silly dream.

Gary Wright

Back in time my dreams did take me.

The first part of my dream I was staying in a spare bed in someone else's rental cottage and had to ask each day if they space for me to stay in the spare bed in the cottage they were renting out to someone else. The cottage had cats in it. This part of the dream also had Paul McCartney and John Lennon and John Lennon's young son, but not actually Sean or Julian. The son and I were from the future in the dream so we both new about John being shot and there was a moment in the dream when the four of us were in a car and the son and I were deliberating how to tell John, but I think the son had already told him or something.

There was a part in my dream where I felt like I was in Central Park in New York and at the Strawberry Fields Forever thing, because a lot of people were standing in circles around stuff taking pictures, but I didn't actually see the "Imagine" mosiac, or whatever.


The last part of my dream I was going to space for some reason and at the end of my dream but the beginning of my arrival at my space destination I met Joe Montana. This dream I was also going to the past with my present knowledge. Joe was moonlighting as a worker on the space shuttle/ship and was standing by the door with another worker like a flight attendant, during the flight. At the end of the flight, during which I was standing closest to the door, I noticed who he was and gave him a knowing pat on the shoulder. Then I asked which year it was, 1983, and feeling I had acquired some kind of visual assent from Joe that it was okay I reveal who he was, I said loudly enough for everyone to hear, "Hey, you're Joe Montana; I'm Daniel Murauskas." and shook his hand. He then said, "It's nice to meet you Dan Morerewski." I then spent the next three attempts at my name working with him on the pronounciation of it, ensuring he called me Daniel too.

After Joe and I got my name down pat, I let him and the other worker on the ship know that one of my uncles was an alternate on the Olympic team in Greco-Roman wrestling (which was true, as my Uncle Dennis was an alternate for the 1984 team). Worker number 2 asked how much he weighed and what weight class he wrestled in. I said he wrestled in the 220 pound class and weighed about 220 or 221. He said, "He'd better lose that weight so that he doesn't get disqualified." I then proceeded to parse out that it really wasn't that bad and calculated out to him having to lose like an ounce each month, which he could do as easily as shaving different parts of his body. After a space trip to our destination that lasted about as long as these two conversations, we arrived and I saw both of my twin uncles in their teen years, but closer to Freshmen than Senior age. This was an anomaly because they would have been older in '83, but I guess that is how dreams go. Then the dream ended.

Commentary:

So I'm pretty much a dick, first for giving a man who had won the Super Bowl two seasons previously and would win another a year later a hard time about pronouncing my name correctly. Maybe his timid role on Saturday Night Live made me think I could be such a tough with him. Secondly, I'm a dick for jerking around with John Lennon about whether to tell him how to he would die. Finally, I wasn't too nice to worker number 2 either about my uncle cutting weight. These celebrities in my dream are pretty fun though. I could get used to it.

Thursday Morning 3AM

My dream epiphany of the day is that The Simpsons and The Sopranos start their show in essentially the same way with the patriarch driving home from a day of work through their respective communities. Amazing, I know.

In other news, it isn't a good habit to bed down after 4 in the morning. I acquired this habit this past week between Christmas and New Year's Day. Culminating with my 11:30 rising on Sunday not ending til 10:40ish on Monday. The problem is going back to a sleep schedule that includes you waking up and attending work before noon. It was fine last week because while AdventSource was open, we weren't answering the phones to take orders, so I just had to process orders from the web. Now, however, the phones are back up, and I'm still on the same schedule, which is complicating when I try to break out of it by going to bed at 11:30 and wake up at 3. My other bit of advice: Share sparkling wine.

Joyful Boxing Day

So, we, myself, Marcy, Wendy, and Wanda, celebrated Christmas today at 1. Last night, a late addition to our Italian Christmas bill of fare came up as my sister and I were talking about what we were missing: a vegetable. Lasagna, check. Risotto, check. Dessert, check. Apertif, check. Vegetable, no check. So today, (and from this point on I toot the horn that is my own for a bit) I put a couple smaller butternut squash into the oven for an hour to roast while I took a nap, on the account that I woke at 6 AM for some heretofore unknown reason. When I awoke from my nap, I removed the meat of the squash from the skin and added (now I pause here so you can get a pen and paper) a quarter cup of brown sugar (Why does it taste so good?), two tablespoons of butter, two dashes of cinnamon, and one dash of nutmeg. Mash it all up and you have an unequivocal success. My figgy pudding was a hit too. Warmed, my rice pudding, with freshly ground cardamom, would be better. It stiffen'd a bit too much after the cooking and chilling; served fresh, it could be really great.

Last night I had a dream where I had to kill with my hands either a small dog or cat that also happened to be a zombie. Let's just say they don't die easily.

Fact of the day: Les Schtroumpfs is French for The Smurfs.

A Dozen Chicks Were in My Pants Last Night

Literally. In my dreams.

I had a dream that I was in a grocery store and the eggs were old. [How old were they?] They were so old they were hatching into chicks. And for some reason we were trying to gather them all, but I had to shake them out of my pants. At least in my dream world they were a nice fuzzy tickly and not all beaks and claws.

The second half of the dream included more small tactile animals, a rodent, I think a gerbil, because it had a tail but wasn't too rat like, there was a parti-colored coat, pied if you will. This took place in my DAA dream location, like DAA but not. In a space like the north side of the basement library. It was a competition between groups of people. I didn't realise til the end that it was a competition to see who could eliminate the most gerbils in a given time. There wasn't any blood though which probably threw me off. The probable winner and feature of my dream was a group that had a conveyor belt with a vacuum tube with four blades that joined to open and close the tube. Very efficient. Take that Martin Luther King Jr.

(Listening to The Avalanche, Sufjan Steven's latest release, recorded during Come On Feel the Illinoise.)

Jeremy Birge

O' Connor Monte Cristo, Zombie Ukrainian, Todd Rundgren, Gander, Letters to be written, Rick Ocasek, Stephen Colbert, Bucket, "my brother's kids," Dave Grohl dental work. As you can see, I have a lot to get through. Settle in.

As Nat X would say,"It is now 4:49 in the AM." I woke up at 3, and then after dreaming for a while (don't eat half a Monte Cristo before bed) about DAA and a bunch of people from the class behind me like Mike Hellman, Leslie Weidell, Seth Clark, and James Schumacher (recent MySpace addition), I know where it began, which is saying a lot because much, as you can see, has followed.

After my dream, I realized how much I don't trust Leslie Weidell, diabetic PK mountain-biking hottie that he is. I don't trust him because he, and by extension the rest of those enrolled at DAA in 1998, betrayed me in that year's Student Association elections. At one point, I was the only candidate for Spiritual Vice-President. Then after the deadline for submission of petition to become a candidate, the SA officers of that year allowed Leslie Weidell to join the race. They had to do this because the previous year Jeremy Birge, Sgt. at Arms for that administration, was allowed to join the race after the deadline the previous year. That year, many agreed this was a good thing because I don't think we liked who he was running against (I think it was Dusty Kirschmann, ask Scott for clarification). In hindsight, I guess I was also loathed like Dusty. Back to the election, Scott said that it was between the guy who prayed in guy's dorm worship and the guy who exposed himself during it. So I lost the election. In the previous year's annual, Pastor Gary (Burns) wrote: Daniel, You have great potential as a spiritual leader. Leadership is not limited to an office. It's a full-time-who-you-are thing. God Bless! PG I agree with him, but mandate from the people sure does help. In the year of the election his comment included: Sometimes your agenda and God's agenda get a little confused. Allow God to give direction. Give him permission to do His work in your life, and you will be glad.

I guess this was the beginning of my disillusionment with spirituality and religion. I know I was a stupid 17 year old kid, but it happens. Part of the reason for the impact this event had on me is that I've always associated community and religion. This is the only reason I go to church now (when I actually go), for the community. So when the community rejected me as a spiritual leader, it was difficult.

So that covers the feelings I got from my dream. After I woke up, I thought about what I could do with my time, seeins as I had the whole morning ahead of me. One of my options was to write a letter. I haven't written in a while, so I thought I might open with Todd Rundgren's "Hello, it's me. I've thought about us for a long, long time." Todd has been in my mind for a while since he was put on Stephen Colbert's "On Notice" board by Rick Ocasek (Rick was on the show as a resident limnologist because in a music video he, like Jesus, walked on water. Colbert put The Journal of Paleolimnology on notice because of an article proposing that Christ walked on a chunk of ice in the Sea of Galilee, and gave Rick the option to put someone up there too.) I realize why he was Ocasek's choice. I was also wondering why two ds. This got me thinking of other Todds and Todd Flanders came to mind, from the Simpsons. "Hens love roosters. Geese love ganders. Everyone else loves Ned Flanders." This ditty was the first time I realized that a gander was not a group of geese, which I figured it was since people say "What is good for the goose is good for the gander." when they mean what is good for one is good for all.

One more ramble. This morning as I sat down to the computer, I saw the lid to my honey bear on the computer desk. As I took it back to its home, I saw my honey bear all messy on the kitchen counter. SERGEY!!! is responsible for this. He came home tired from watching the boiler. I guess he wasn't too tired to make a mess he didn't clean up. Silly zombie Ukranian. As Billy Bob Thornton said in Tombstone, "It's like playin' with my brother's kids."

PS In the Foo Fighters video "Best of You," Dave Grohl, lead singer and former drummer of Nirvana, sings into a microphone with a majority of the video a close up of this. I wonder if the premium shots of his teeth allow him to write-off for taxes his dental work.

What's Up Doc?

I had a dream. I had a dream that one day I was at a church and at that church was a bunch of people I knew. It was a packed church. Bryant and Ceri even had to sit on pews on the platform; weird though was that those pews still faced the front of the church like all the other pews. In this dream, I rose up at the back of the church in the center aisle because everyone was gathered for me. I felt like I was at my wedding, but when I got to the dais the administrant was the only one up there.

He had a name tag that said Charles Carpenter, something like that. Then he started talking to the congregation like a pastor does before baptising someone. He asked the congregation if it was alright if he just talked to me, and proceeded to say how my committment was interesting considering the similarities between Christ and Bugs Bunny and how there are a lot of Jungian archetypes in Bugs. This was weird but more weird was the fact that in my dream I was making sense of it. So take that Martin Luther King Jr..

Needless to say, this morning didn't happen like the past couple. I think my dream had something to do with eating at Ivanna Cone last night at 10 pm. Rootbeer, Pistachio, and Cinnamon. Today sometime I'll try my homemade pumpkin ice cream I made with my new Cuisinart 2 qt. Ice Cream Maker.

The Stinger

I just had a horrible nightmare. It is now 4:51 in the AM, and Nat X is nowhere to be found.

Mind you, this is a dream so things are messed up and complicated. I'll try to distill the nightmare part for everyone. In my dream, I thought I was going to be playing basketball, for some reason with Michael Covarrubias, and others to make a team. But before I got to the facility, I decided I didn't want to play. This feeling got even stronger when I got to the facility and found out that it was a Special Olympics event. This competition had an odd arrangement where the buddies and the participants didn't play a game of basketball but moreso did a skills competition. I was late, and when I was walking into the main gym from the facility I was asked by some administrator lady if I was normal (there might have been signs in the area saying it was an able bodied entrance/registration or something). I said yes, and we both had a chuckle because we knew we were the exceptions at the event--here is where the psychological torment comes--we were minority and inferior exceptions.

Once I got into the gym, I was immediately thrust into a skills comp where our regional team was shooting the ball from the side, within the basketball key. I made my first shot, but then there was this girl behind me (I don't know if she was a Special participant or not) who affected my shot because when I went above my head with the shot she would hit it with her hands, i guess because she was just having so much fun, flailing and whatnot. By the way, Frank Martinez was the helper at our basket and he kept on giving me advice while I was shooting and missing. That's kinda the end.

Now for a breakdown of the torment, I was so frustrated because I couldn't complete what should be such a normal function, and I was doing worse than a bunch of handicapped people. The thing is I probably did just as well at the basketball thing as I normally would have, but when I was compared to the Special Olympic participants, I paled. I compare it to a dishwashing competition. Everyone can wash dishes, right? Now step into a situation where you are competing with a bunch of mentally retarded people who have been practicing at dishwashing, and are therefore really good at it--at least better than anyone who hasn't been practicing. So a normal person, me, who hasn't been practicing is blown out of the water in this competition, making them inferiour (I'm going british) by losing. It sounds a little silly right now but this was a really traumatic feeling for me. I think what made it so humiliating was not that I was doing worse than the handicapable, but their presence and my perception of their abilities, castrated my own self-worth when I attempted any task, menial as it was.

It is now 5:20 in the AM, and I thank you for listening to my nightmare. Sweet Dreams