I had a dream, Joe & A Moment like This

"Speaking of ice cream trucks," 24 Fan says, "We downloaded ice cream truck music one day and piped it through the giant speakers on top of our humvee and drove up a mountain."
"That's pretty funny," another advocate for the program 24, who has been able to separate himself from 24 Fan by two feet of space and through expressing an intense curiosity into the various methods one person could employ in killing another person,(popsicle sticks take a special type of commitment)says, "what happened?"
"We got chased by a lot of fat Afghanis," 24 Fan says.
"Why do you have a humvee with giant speakers?" I ask.
"Oh, I'm in Psychological Operations for the Army," 24 Fan tells me, "We disperse pamphlets and what not, but most of what we do is news by truck or radio."
"So propaganda?"
"I put down on my resumé that I have experience in public relations."
"Isn't that the same thing?" I kind-of ask, "Either way, you're selling these guys something."
24 Fan turns away. Popsicle Stick glares at me. Any second he will turn to 24 Fan and resume their conversation about Keifer Sutherland and Chuck Norris. They will stipulate that the outcome of Sutherland vs. Norris will doubtlessly be determined by popular vote. Before that can happen though, Popsicle wants me to realize that everyone is staring at me the way he is, except they have plastic forks.
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My parents want me to lose weight. They tell me this as I clean a chicken skeleton of its deep-fried flesh. Tina Fey thinks I've lost weight since the last time she's seen me. She asks me what I'm doing. I suggest that the key is portion control. Instead of making my own mac n' cheese, I just make Kraft's.
"Oh, I love Kraft Mac n' Cheese," Tina tells me, "I'm always doctoring it up though."
"Mmm, me too," I shout, "Parmesean Cheese, the shredded kind not the grated. I don't even recognize grated as a product. It is persona nonfuckinggrata in my fridge. And Red Hot. Adds spice, not just heat."
"I like mine with a can of tuna," Tina says, "I don't know why there's even a market for tuna helper. Cheesy Mac and tuna fish is the shizzle."
My parents are eager to get back to the subject at hand. They point out the evils of processed food. We should all feel the shame. Our future malignant tumors will be orange and sharp cheddar flavored.
"Speaking of imminent death," my mother says, "we're worried about your heart, Elliot. You have too much weight on your chest."
"Yeah," Tina says, "So what do you do for fun?"
"I read. I read pretty much everywhere," I say, "I bathe and I read. I poop and I read. I spend a lot of time in the bathroom reading. Sometimes I try to cook and read and I've had moderate success, but it's not as easy as eating and reading. I like eating and reading."
"He does spend a lot of time in the bathroom," my mother says.
"Right. Have you ever tried reading on a treadmill?" Tina asks/suggests.
"I don't think I'd be very successful with that," I say. A rational person would suggest that as I gave cooking and reading a shot, maybe I should try jogging and reading.
Instead, Tina ran through a list of possible aerobic activities I could attempt while reading. None of them looked or sounded particularly promising.
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We are standing in a rainy alley, beating back evil with it's own tools. It's not going well. My comrades are being indiscriminately roasted by a pair of dragons. I am suddenly very alone and powerless. I have a really big sword, but it is clearly made of plastic. I know in my rational mind that my gigantic sword was perfectly functional mere minutes ago, but these ghouls defy my causal understanding of the world I am living in.
Cordelia Chase is there. She is shiny and real like the American Dream is shiny and real to Andrew Carnegie. She is not Cordelia Chase and subsequently Charisma Carpenter of Lifetime Original Movies and Playboy pictorials. This is the Cordelia Chase who would be Charisma Carpenter if "Phil Henderson," "God," and "the Architect of Homo Sapien Evolution" were all identical. She takes my plastic sword from me and I sit on the wet asphalt. Her extensive limbs entirely encase my thorax. I am alone and I tell her so. She asks what happened to my wife by saying "I thought you were married."
"She's gone now," I say, "It's over."
She tells me it's okay.
It's okay.
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¹















I would totally support a wealth-redistributing situation just like this is if I didn't suspect that the U.S. Government, via the Library of Congress, has infinitely deeper metaphorical pockets than I or anyone will ever have.
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¹Image is, once again, courtesy of xkcd.com.

8 minute post on why I'll never be a poet.

I'm rearranging the apartment now: Desk stays in big room, bed moves there too, Wingbacks and TV move to small room, where the closet is. Bookcase moves with chairs, even though it's across the room. Not now. Everything that's going has been compressed together so I can move the bed in. I keep telling myself one table has to stay with the bed, but I can't figure out which one. It makes sense to leave the table that's in the old bedroom there, it'll fit over the bookcase I'll have a new dimension of books, but the other table goes with the chairs. I think of them as a unit. The only alternative I imagine, other than placing the chairs back-to-winged-back (Drama!) is buying a new table for the chairs or my bedside. It hasn't even occurred to me that I could move, like, the drawer that's next to my desk until now, or you know, something like that. Maybe fix that table I found. Modules and obsessions. Eight minutes.

"The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." -Come on, you know this one

"There is a town in North Ontario." I must stop reading now & listen. "My apologies, Mr. Young," the waiter says, "the artist prefers to sit with Mr. Cave." Ten O'Clock in the here and now is head-submersion time. Under water I can hear the better world. Mr. & Mrs. Dickson-Parham question the outline for the dog's pre-dinner walking procedure. "Helpless. Helpless. Helpless." What a smug bastard! A picture (black and white, of course) of his "genius grant" face printed on that cheery yellow cover over top of a you know "verdant" or something sun. I'm sure it was the publisher's decision. Indy's cat head comes into the periphery of tiles, "A supposedly fun thing i'll never do again," a green-and-bleach-white floral print shower curtain. For a minute I am in a poorly constructed wet cell with just two bars and reaching ears like fingers that mean I listen to the words "Everybody's got a room/Everybody's got a room" while air drying.