Not With A Bang But A Quiver

Last night, in my dreams, the end of the world was nigh. Because, like, there was some sort of earthquake that affected whole world or something.

It was strange, because some municipalities must have been more devastated than others. The one I was living in - I assume it was somewhere in Minnesota - was relatively unharmed; still, we all had a feeling of dread.

With dread in my heart, I was trying to back out of a driveway in a gigantic SUV. The driveway sat to the right of a large house that Jeff, his sister, some other dude, potentially others, and myself were either living or squatting in. It was dark, and I accidentally hit a garbage can with the back bumper.

The police were there immediately, asking me questions about "my house" on the porch. See, they weren't there because I knocked over the trashcan with poor driving - they were there because a neighbor had complained about the smell of rotting eggs coming from the backyard. I explained to them that it was not my house, that I was from Kansas, went to graduate school in Minnesota, and it was somebody else's house. That seemed to be enough information to excuse me entirely from the matter. I suppose it's a good sign that, in a time of impending doom, law enforcement had enough resources available to send out a pair of officers to deal with a smell complaint. It's somewhat of an indictment against the system, though, that these two didn't see anything wrong with a group of youngsters squatting in a house that was actually owned by some dude who left eggs to rot in his backyard. I mean, for all those cops knew, we had the homeowner's dead body locked in the pantry. I suppose the more seasoned policemen were busy responding to the earthquake disaster thingy.

How would we get water? Oh, nevermind, I just turned on the tap and there was water. But what about food? Yes, we seemed troubled about our food supply - especially concerned was Some Other Dude, who suggested we go hunt for food. Naturally, we made our way to some sort of public hunting area. As I suspected, we were too late - the place was all out of animals to hunt. The trip wasn't a total bust, though - there was a dog track next door. The track was odd. Most tracks are shaped like…tracks - they've got long, straight stretches connected by gradual curves. [I just wrote a sentence explaining what a track looks like. Jesus.] This track was barely oblong, so the dogs had to slow down a lot to make the turns; when they slowed down, they stood on their hind legs, carefully walking around the bend as if the aforementioned men in blue had ordered them to complete a sobriety test. Run. Decelerate. Walk on hind legs. Dash. Decelerate. Walk on hind legs. The dog that was dyed pinkish purple won. Its owner was ecstatic - perhaps the victory meant the owner could afford to buy food now, or perhaps a victory meant the dog would be not be eaten. In any case, I thought it was odd that people would throw money away gambling in the post-earthquake world.

Oh yeah - a few doors down from our place lived a preacher that looked and talked precisely like a Sandlot era James Earl Jones.

That's the only part of the dream that makes sense - I watched the first 30 minutes of Star Wars right before bed.