What am I trying to tell myself?

I’m awake very early from a strange dream I had. Wow. What a strange dream. I dreamed that I was at a family dinner of some kind. Maybe Christmas. We were all eating and everything seemed fine. My one uncle who is into gore started talking about stories about accidental deaths that involved blades. We were all grossed out, and some of us were telling him to stop, but he just kept going. This is normal for my uncle in real life, which makes the dream all the more freaky.

The next thing I know I’m outside with a bunch of us and someone’s cutting down a tree. This was a bit weird. The blade flies somehow and hits me. Somehow it slices away part of my skull and exposes all my organs. But miracle of miracles I’m still conscious. All I can say is, 911, 911! One of my uncles calls, and my gore-obsessed uncle, without apology just keeps telling horror stories. And there I am, still conscious, blood everywhere, and I can feel the blood, that’s the weird part. People are scurrying about, not sure what to do. All they can do is keep new people from getting close and sprayed with blood. Then my mom’s standing over me, completely silent. That’s when I know I’m real screwed if I didn’t know that already. She just stood there. I’m still able to talk and I’m like I hope all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can put humpty together again. She just stood there. She said in a completely calm voice, they can’t. It’s impossible. I protested, “But I’m not in pain and I’m still conscious. Wouldn’t I be dead already?” She said, “That is a surprise, but your heart is soon going to stop pumping blood to your brain and your brain can’t take the strain of being uncovered for so long. Try to be calm and relax and just let things happen as they may.” I try to take this all in. I get visions of instead of an ambulance arriving, an undertaker. I get visions of being locked in a coffin and buried alive. I get visions of being stitched together alive. Then I imagine that it’s going to be a closed casket funeral anyway, who would want to see this? I laugh and say, “Well I guess I do everything weird, even death.” Mom doesn’t laugh. Most people have left. There are just a few of us now. Mom and dad are sitting on either side of me, and the tree-cutting guy is lying in a heap in the corner sobbing. He’s just in total shock and no one’s helping him. I start to feel dizzy and my eyes start to close. I take a deep breath, smell the air, make one last attempt at a joke, touch mom and dad, try and absorb everything about the world that there is to take in. Suddenly there are too many things to appreciate…and then I wake up!

Boy I have never been so happy to be laying in my bed, not on some snow. How happy I am to see my head is whole and not in pieces. All I can say is, what the fuck? Is part of me saying I’m not appreciating things enough? I really hope this isn’t a premonition of some kind. Not that I believe in that crap, but woe. Is someone trying to tell me to live every day as if it were my last? Holy crap.

Well now that I don’t feel so frazzled, I think I’ll start getting things done. Nothing like a little death dream to get things moving.

McGreggor

A Scottish old timer is in Scotland, in a bar, talking to a young man. The old man says:

“Lad, look out there to the field. Do ya see that fence? Look how well it’s built. I built that fence stone by stone with me own two hands. I piled it for months. But do they call me McGreggor- the-Fence-Builder? Nooo..”

Then the old man gestured at the bar. “Look here at the bar. Do ya see how smooth and just it is? I planed that surface down by me own achin’ back. I carved that wood with me own hard labor, for eight days. But do they call me McGreggor-the- Bar-builder? Nooo…”

Then the old man points out the window. “Hey, Laddy, look out to sea. Do ya see that pier that stretches out as far as the eye can see? I built that pier with the sweat off me back. I nailed it board by board. But do they call me McGreggor-the- Pier-Builder? Nooo…”

Then the old man looks around nervously, trying to make sure no one is paying attention. He leans closer to the young man and says, “But ya fuck one goat…….”

Why, Daddy?

I heard something on the bus that just made me sad. I don’t even know if I can make this make sense to anyone else but myself, but I’ll try. I heard a little kid, maybe 6 or 7 sitting with someone who sounded like he was only in university, but I wasn’t sure, but the kid seemed to know him. They were talking, and the kid looked at a sticker on the bottom of his toy, and said, “Made in China. Wonder what it’s like in China.” At this point, the dude he was sitting with started into this big speal about how people in China work in horrible conditions and all the company ever cares about when getting them to work is about profits and the people are basically slaves. After a couple repetitions of “why?” the kid was silent for the rest of the bus ride. At least this is what I heard. Somebody please tell me why this little kid has to know that this sort of thing happens yet? And, does the guy really know that that toy was made in horrible conditions? Does he know for a fact that everyone in China works like slaves? Way to fill this kid’s head with your ideas of what it’s like in China. Holy wow the poor kid was not prepared for that reality, or this dude’s view of reality, bomb. Why don’t you just tell the poor little guy that there’s no Santa Claus, the easter bunny doesn’t exist and the tooth fairy is his mom. The hell with innocence and fantasy altogether.

Then I heard something about think about that the next time you play with your toys. Ok hold the pony. Somebody bought him those toys. If you did, then you’re real sick because you acknowledge those horrible working conditions, and then give that company more money. If you didn’t, how dare you turn him against his parents through his toys? Now he’ll go home and wonder about his parents. I’m all about opening somebody’s eyes, but like this? I guess this only happens in this hippy vegetarian city.

Maybe I misheard the whole conversation, but that’s what I heard. Maybe I’m just jumping to conclusions. But I couldn’t believe that he was telling him all that. IT’s one thing if the kid brings it up first, but to do it that way. I don’t know. I just found it unsettling. Maybe I’m a wimp. But it won’t leave me alone. Maybe it will now. What does everybody think? Does this seem normal?

Roundtable Time

Survivor Series is tonight and that means only 1 thing. Actually it means quite a few things but for our purposes it means that it’s time again for some of the Salty Ham staff to make our predictions. And true to form, we’ve done exactly that. If you want to check them out,
click here.

Salty Ham will also have live coverage of the show so if you aren’t ordering it, thieving it or otherwise getting the results, come on over and get them from me. You can look in the wrestling news section for the ongoing report, then just keep refreshing the page to see the latest happenings posted just as fast as my own abilities and technology will allow.

Cereal Killer

No, I’m not an idiot. I really do mean that cereal. Let me explain. I saw something on the bus that just scared me. It shook me to the core and made me question once again the safety of riding those huge machines with people packed in them like sardines and no seatbelts. I was riding happily along on a relatively empty bus. It came time to switch buses, and there was some delay between when we pulled in and when I would change buses, so I started talking to the driver. As she talked, I heard, crunch. Apparently so did she, and it was as startling to her as me. When she looked down to investigate, she exclaimed, “The last driver of this bus had a bowl of Cherios! There are cherios on the floor under the driver’s seat!”

First, I tried to envision how one, either passenger or driver could manage to eat *anything* while riding the bus. Those things don’t have the world’s greatest suspension systems, and the drivers love the brakes. I’d imagine the only end result of eating on the bus would be decorating your clothes with your meal.

Then I tried to imagine how a driver of the bus would manage to eat. I didn’t ask whether there was milk on these cherios. If there was, yuck what a mess. Anyway, she said that you would in fact need two hands on the wheel, like I thought. So if the guy was driving technically properly, this guy would have to be bent over the cherios eating them like some kind of animal. But then he wouldn’t be watching where he was going.

Then I was very thankful that I wasn’t either walking on the street or riding the bus driven by our cherio fan. It seems like a deadly combination. Please bus driver dudes, eat your cherios at home!

Speaking Of Poems

I figured since we’re talking about love poems that now would be the perfect time for me to share my favourite one with all of you. No, it’s not a limerick and I suppose that in a technical sense it’s not even a love poem. Rather it’s a touching tail of lost love and the trials and tribulations that 1 man feels after losing the love of his life. It’s called Sometimes I Miss Her, and it goes like this.

I ran into my old girlfriend on the street the other day.
Then I backed up, and ran into her again.
But sometimes, I miss her.

Love Poetry

For some reason I got thinking about love poems the other day and I realized something. I’ve seen many love poems over the years, and a few of them were even meant for me. some of them are quick, simple and awful, some of them are long, complex, overly drawn out and awful. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten some really sweet ones and hopefully I’ll get a few more, but I find that a lot of the time the writer tries way too hard to get across in words what could easily be expressed in much simpler terms or better yet, with a kiss. But that’s not what I realized, I always knew that.

As I sat here pondering this issue I was struck by the realization that even though I’ve read many love poems, there’s 1 thing I’ve never seen, a love limerick. Why is that? Limericks are arguably the most accessible form of poetry in existence. They’re rigidly formulaic which makes them reasonably easy to put together and they’re not intimidating to the non-English literary set, a group to which I’m fairly sure I belong.

But after giving it considerable thought I think I’ve come up with the reason for the lack of love limericks. It boils down to 1 simple truth, that being that thinking them up is goddamn hard. Seriously, sit down and try it for a little while. It’s not as easy as I thought. Maybe it’s because I’m still a little bit sick and by the time I got to the third line my head was spinning, but it’s not as simple as it looks.

Feel free to prove me wrong, that would make me happy. I’ll keep trying to prove myself wrong too, because I honestly feel that the limerick is a vastly under-rated poetic art form that deserves far better than the beating it takes from the elite of the poetry world who are constantly trying to diminish it’s worth as a style in an attempt to prop up their own overly wordy non-rhyming brand of whatever the hell that stuff is. Let’s show them that the limerick and all of it’s greatness has a place, and a prominent one at that, in the world of writing. Together, we might just be able to do this.

Everything sucks today the second.

Yep, I’m an unoriginal copycat. So sue me. Well things don’t suck nearly as much in my life as they seem to in Steve’s, but I’m in a rather suckalicious mood, and I have a bit of time to spare, so here we go. Everything sucks for me cause I’m stuck at the school library until well after any sane person should be there. I have to meet with some people in that class that I’m o so fond of. Then I get to walk home in the frigid cold. I actually gave in and got out the winter coat, and the day I break out the winter coat, I’m never a happy camper. And I got a mark back from a class that I thought I was doing well in. Well Guess what, sparticus? Not only does everything suck, apparently so do I! Now all that’s left is to find out that I suck in French too. And I get to do that most likely in about, hmmm, an hour.

So is everybody’s day sucking, or just ours? I am very happy to not be feeling sick, and I did get to see a friend, so that was cool. I just hate hate hate the cold, and the fact that I probably won’t make it home until 9:30 or so. Ick. I should be happy it’s not snowing. Now that I’ve said that, I’ll get caught in horrible snow.

Well I should probably do something productive. Have a less sucky day everyone.