At some point during the three hours of sleep I got last night, I dreamed that I'd totally forgotten about that pet turtle I purchased exactly 20 days ago and, as a result, had forgotten to feed it. I envisioned myself hurrying to its terrarium, finding it dead, and resurrecting it with a single scrap of wet lettuce and a few magic words. But when I found it dead, placed that scrap of wet lettuce before its tiny mouth, and said the incantation from my imagination, nothing happened. The turtle was dead. But then I picked it up and thought it might make a good action figure of sorts, so I ran a google search for information about how to perform reptile taxidermy at home. Then I woke up. Or, rather, I came to my senses, since I found myself standing over the computer staring at list of search results for "self taxidermy reptile".

As I made my way to the bathroom, though, I kept thinking that something about the dream seemed very real to me. At length, I convinced myself that I hadn't purchased a small turtle, but something about that damned turtle looked too familiar. No, it wasn't a Ninja Turtle, though I did consider that possibility. Then, in the shower, it hit me.

It was fucking Squirtle.

Ugh, I am exhausted.

I was pretty anxious about doing it, which is why I waited until now, but I actually found the experience to be fairly painless! And assuming it gets approved and everything went well, I should be getting a nice return in the neighborhood of $700! Which will come in handy since I recently handed in my 2-week notice at the bookstore. No, I haven't heard any good news from the company I interviewed with a couple of weeks ago, but I finally decided that I'd had enough of being treated like shit day in and day out for minimal wages while in the employ of a company that obviously doesn't appreciate its workers. Anyway, more on that later. (more...)

At one point or another -- I don't exactly remember when, and honestly I'm not even sure if I ever had these dreams (at least in a non-nested sense) to begin with -- I dreamed on two separate occasions that I participated in some rather strange adventures with witches and, in the second dream, even descended into Hell to sit and chat with devils (but not the Devil). Assuming I even had them, I remember exceedingly little about these dreams, but interestingly enough they're recurring points of discussion in other dreams -- which leads me to believe that I possibly dreamed them within a dream, for that would explain their strong presence beyond the veil of consciousness. I seem to remember them slightly better there, too, though I couldn't tell you if my recollection of them is consistent from dream to dream because I never remember these details when I rise. (more...)

...or more like a weird movie I was watching in the dream. I have lots of dreams in which I'm watching strange movies. I used to have dreams in which I was reading weird books, but I like the movie dreams better because when I woke up I'd remember that I was reading a weird book and I could sort of remember what the story was about, but anytime I tried to recall the image of the page itself the words were all blurry and/or never made sense, like this one dream I had in which I was reading this really strange epic poem but when I tried to visualize the page it was just one line printed over and over and over again and I'm sure the poem had different lines in my dream! Anyway... (more...)

The thirteenth Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash is up! You may get a chuckle or two out of it. More holiday goodness is on the way! We've still got two more Gumby shorts to review, you know.

In other news, yeah, I'm still feeling ill. Woke up around 9AM this morning, felt like hell, took some store brand Nyquil, drank some water and microwaved V8, and then went back to sleep and didn't rise again until roughly 3PM. I hadn't planned on sleeping so damned late, but I guess I needed the rest. I feel a little better now. (more...)