Today's Topic #1: A Holiday Song Promoting Things Both Larcenous and Unethical.

Have you ever really thought about the lyrics of "The 12 Days of Christmas"? It's pretty bizarre stuff. First of all, half of the gifts bequeathed by the narrator's True Love are birds (swans, partridges, turtle doves, etc). Everyone knows that pets make terrible presents. They require a lot of responsibility, and it's not fair to the animals in question if their owners turn out to be too flaky to take care of them. The other half of the gifts from the song are people. Actual people. Are we talking about human trafficking here? How do you think the eight maids a-milking feel about being purchased for some random chick's Christmas gift? They're not thrilled, I can tell you that much. In fact, the only proper gift in the whole song is the set of five golden rings. (Even that is rather questionable. I've always suspected the rings were stolen.)

Today's Topic #2: Zombies.

A few nights ago I had another dream about zombies. This time I was in an enormous house, and there were a bunch of other people with me. We had managed to contain the zombies within the upper and lower level of the house, but of course zombies can't just be content with what they have, so they were trying to break through to where we were. We set out to fight them, arming ourselves with items from the kitchen. I killed several zombies with a small paring knife and also with one of those little pokey things that holds your corn-on-the-cob (more effective than you'd think). The interesting thing is that this is the first time I have actually fought back against zombies in a dream. Typically, I catch one glimpse of those brain junkies lumbering toward me and immediately bolt in the other direction. I guess now that I'm pregnant the stakes are higher?

Today's Topic #3: Happy New Year.

Ahem. Happy New Year.

Somehow I was involved in a progressive battle between a group of superheroes and some various bad guys, including Nazis. I was helping the superheroes. Our side had the Hulk, but I didn't recognize any of the others. One of our battles took place inside a big church. At one point, the pews disappeared and a giant circular hole opened up, sort of like that hole Luke fell down after getting his hand chopped off in The Empire Strikes Back. This wasn't a problem for my comrades, however. They could all fly (or jump, in the case of the Hulk) up and down it. But I had to steer clear.

And the next night:

Someone gave me a Spider-Man Betsy-Wetsy doll. It was about twelve inches tall and was made of plastic. The Spidey-suit, which was made of fabric, had to be changed every time he wet himself.

(Note to the Reader: For the sake of authenticity, all dreams are transcribed directly from my dream journal. The writing is...shall we say...unpolished? Also, they make very little sense, but then I'm sure that'll be nothing new for this blog.)

I was placed under house arrest, along with about 30 other men and women. There were about 10 guards with us at all times. It was sort of like a reality show, but instead of one person leaving each week, one person was executed. We were all held in a big facility that had a huge dining hall with long wooden tables.

The first person to die came as a surprise to us. We had thought we were going to a musical performance of some sort, but when we got to our destination, there was only a medium-sized arena. Half-buried rings lined a path on either side and there was a large, round pedestal, onto which one of the captives (who looked like Cary Elwes) was placed. He was tied there somehow, and then the platform opened up into rings (like the device they used in Event Horizon to enter another dimension), and it started spinning and cut him to pieces. That was the point where we realized what was going on. I decided I needed to escape as soon as possible.

There was also a big carpeted room that functioned as sleeping quarters, as well as lockers on the side wall. Against the same wall, there was a door hidden behind a tapestry. When I opened the door, there were about 15 padded, quilted layers of fabric that I had to remove, hanging in front of the actual hiding place. It was small, about three feet high and wide by six feet long, but it had some sort of protective metal component in its walls that would guard a person from a nuclear attack. I contemplated using this as a hiding place, but it was so claustrophobic that I didn't want to hide out there. At least not yet. There was also the matter of smuggling in food and water. Apparently, I didn't think my death was imminent.

So I began being helpful when interacting with the guards, and pretty soon they were allowing me to hang out with them to play poker. I was also allowed to leave the holding area for short periods of time, usually to go to the vending machines.

One of the guards was always sending me out unattended. I remember thinking I could probably get him to let me go if I asked at the right moment. Anyway, on one of the outings I found a phone and was able to place a call to my parents, telling them to be outside the building in two hours to pick me up. (At this point, the area where we were being held had transformed into the Great Mall of the Plains.) So I went back to the group, where people were anxiously speculating about who was "next," and I started thinking up an excuse to leave again in two hours.

THE END

Neat, huh? This is what it's like in my head when I'm asleep. More dreams to come!

My friend and I were having lunch yesterday, and at some point he jokingly asked me if I'd be willing to kill an acquaintance of his for $1,000. A thousand dollars? I repeated, laughing. I don't think so. With something like murder, I explained, there's a whole spectrum of things to take into consideration. For one, I'd have to do tons of research, determine an appropriate method, and then carry off the deed itself without getting caught or implicating him. Not easy. Likely not cheap, either. Also, there's my personal squeamishness and my distate for violence, both of which would take a hefty sum of cash to overcome. A thousand dollars, indeed. I scoffed at the suggestion.

So we haggled for a while and finally arrived at an equitable compromise. I'd "take care of" his acquaintance if he would "take care of" someone in my life whose mortal coil was in dire need of shuffling. It'd be brilliant, just like in Strangers on a Train (minus the sloppy outcome, naturally). There would be very little to link us to the other's crime (except for the fact that we're friends, and people know we're friends, but that's a trivial matter, right?). So, having concluded our negotiations, I began to think of potential candidates for elimination.

This was when it occurred to me that I had a fundamental problem.

You see, there are plenty of people I dislike in this world. And there are a few more whom I wouldn't mind seeing incapacitated—drooling and comatose even—perhaps forced to listen to "Sing Along with Mitch" until their eyes bleed and their brains atrophy. But dead? That's something else entirely. Like diamonds, dead is forever. And not nearly as sexy.

So I racked my already overtaxed brain. Who would I want dead, if my friend and I were to carry out this Hitchcock-esque farce? Someone like Hitler, for sure. But he's dead already, and asking my friend to build a time machine for us would introduce unneeded complications to the plan. The victim would therefore have to be someone who is currently living. Easy enough—a few celebrities spring to mind right away. But then, for our plan to be truly balanced, I would have to choose someone from within my realm of friends and experience, not just an actress with big teeth or a jingoistic talk show host I've never met. Which brings us back to my core problem: I don't really have a personal Fortunato. There's no one I can think of whom I despise so greatly that I'd wish to see their stockinged foot jutting out of a wood chipper. It's embarrassing, really. I've always imagined myself as this edgy, vixenish ninja-in-training whose thirst for blood cannot be slaked. And now here I am, at the moment of truth, unable to conjure up enough negativity to warrant a single murder. Turns out, I'm kind of a hippie.

Sigh.

Needless to say, my friend and I called off our deal. I'm disappointed with myself, but this result shouldn't have surprised me. I really am disgustingly nice. I'm even nice in my sleep, as evidenced by a dream I had a few nights ago in which Patrick Bateman from American Psycho was sitting in my living room playing LPs on my record player. I knew he was a serial killer, but apparently, I was too polite to mention it.

...at least in my dreams.

I had a dream the other night that I was good friends with John Leguizamo. I've always been an admirer of his, ever since To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, where he played a feisty Latin crossdresser. (Also, his role as Tybalt was the One Decent Thing about that Romeo + Juliet movie a few years back.) His stand-up routines are some of the funniest I've seen. So you'd imagine he'd be a difficult guy to entertain.

You'd be wrong. In my dream, we were watching late-night zombie movies and laughing riotously about them over a bowl of Doritos. I kept making satirical, Mystery Science Theater-type comments, which he found to be wildly entertaining. I don't remember any of the specific content, but it must have been some of the most hilarious ad libbing in the history of comedy. (Prehistoric comedy, of course, consisted mostly of one caveman luring another caveman into a tarpit with promises of tangy, tasty, piping-hot woolly mammoth ribs.)

This dream was nearly as good as the one I mentioned in an earlier entry, in which I was telling jokes to Jon Stewart. Luckily, I still remember one of the jokes I told in that dream. I pointed out a window to where a man was throwing a canvas tarp over a bunch of pigeons, and I said, "anybody want a bag of birds?" Now, this is what some might call an esoteric joke—maybe a little too lofty for some people's tastes. But in my dream, Jon Stewart laughed so hard tears were streaming from his eyes. That's gold, Jerry. Gold!

It's interesting to note that both Johns are comedians, which makes my nocturnal grandstanding that much more presumptious and unlikely. But it also makes me wonder what other famous people named John I could be entertaining in my dreams if I put my subconscious mind to it. There's John Lithgow (whose funniest role to date was of that pseudo-British guy in Cliffhanger), and John Cleese would be the best audience ever. Sadly, it's too late for John Belushi, John Ritter, and Johnny Carson. But if the living-impaired are not to be excluded from the proceedings (and really, we're talking about dreams here, so why should they be?), then I could draw inspiration from any point in history. I bet I could make John Jay laugh. (Those Federalist Papers were a riot). And anyone who's ever had a college literature course will remember with fondness the comic stylings of John Milton. ("Justify the ways of God to men," my buttocks.)

Do you still doubt me, you who snicker at that "bag of birds" thing? I will have you know that my humor is wonderfully subtle—in this respect it is Andy Kaufman-esque—so that you may not even notice when I am unleashing my wit on the world. If such a miscommunication occurs, please be advised that I am just as funny as ever. It's that you're not funny enough to appreciate my humor. I mean, who is the Judge of Funny, anyway? Where does this judge sit, who pounds his gavel against a podium and declares, "Not Funny"?

The art in my office is terrible. I'm looking at a piece right now, and it's like a festival of mediocrity. It's all geometric shapes and muted colors, with bold stripes and wavy lines on the side to give it a sense of texture. It's the kind of design you might have seen on the $5 sweatshirt rack in the 80s. The one behind me is no better. More reds, maybe, and a hint of gold, with lots of intersecting half-circles. It reminds me just enough of a Chagall to piss me off.

This all leads me to believe that there was a challenge like the one in which Ghiberti and Brunelleschi competed to design the baptistry door in Florence, except that the prize of this contest was to populate every wall in every office building in America with abstract crap in identical frames. (This is not a derogatory statement about abstract art—I'd die of happiness if a Jackson Pollock or a Mondrian appeared on the wall outside my office—it's merely that the abstract paintings purchased by offices across the country are listless and completely devoid of energy. They are quiet, almost nihilist art, and it's as if they are saying that our passions and dreams and individual personalities don't matter a lick. And to your average corporation, of course, they don't.)

One thing I've discovered is that the higher profile a company is, the better the art will be. Likewise for the salaries. The executive floors and offices are chock full of delightful art and sculptures, because those at the executive level are encouraged to think creatively. But the cubie farms where most of us spend our days are littered with the most generic artistic backwash imaginable. We'd do better hiring graffiti artists to decorate our offices. At least there would be a sense of motion, of things being alive. It's as if The Powers That Be think that being faced with a Van Gogh while collating our meeting minutes will cause us to have some kind of magnificent breakdown. We'll begin to weep uncontrollably at the pathetic state of our lives, quit our jobs, and wander across the country Kerouac-style, hitching rides on box cars and learning to play the banjo. For some of us, that's exactly what would happen.

The only explanation for the pablum on the walls is that they don't really want you to look at it. It's supposed to be background stimuli to appease the right side of our brains and keep the environs from seeming too institutional, while at the same time not occupying too much of the left side that needs to stay focused on this year's ad revenues. Art is challenging, you see, and people who accept the challenge are hard to keep docile.

Am I being too conspiratorial to suggest that bad art is a tool of oppression for the majority of office workers today? That it is used to keep us in our place and numb our brains so that we don't start thinking we deserve better things? Take a look around, and see what you think. As Paul Gauguin said, "art is either plagiarism or revolution." Make mine revolution!

Dream #1: I was dancing with Johnny Ramone in the desert. Don't know why, but I was. Then I saw this Japanese skateboarder doing Old School kickflips and grinds on a nearby railing. For some reason, he was wearing a t-shirt from the musical, CATS. He was really good, so I stopped dancing and went over to get his autograph. As he turned toward me, his eyes turned yellow and lasers shot out of them. It was kind of scary, so I left without getting an autograph.

Dream #2: So apparently I was working for Tony Soprano. Just doing errands like picking up his dry cleaning and what-not. He was just in town for a visit, and he said he wanted my parents to show him around town. (Naturally, I had not told them what he did for a living.) He got in the back seat of my parents' car, and they drove off. I had more errands to run for Tony, so it wasn't until that evening that I had a chance to come by the house to pick him up. When I arrived, though, he wasn't there. My parents were reading in the living room, acting like nothing was wrong.

"Where's Tony?" I asked.

"Oh yeah," they said. "He was using a lot of foul language, so we made him get out of the car."

"What? Do you know who that was? WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!"

And then I woke up.