New Copper Road - 7/6/12

Haha, three Copper Roads in six days! Don't get used to that. The next one isn't scheduled to show up for a week, and then we're back to the weekly/whenever I can think of a gag updating. But, hey, this was has been sitting around for two months, waiting for its time to shine! *snicker*

Vote to see it!

More mental sabotage!

This day was over before it started, thanks to my bored, meandering brain. Yes, I was derailed by a dream! LAME!

Yesterday I woke up refreshed and ready to kick life's ass! And I totally did. BAM! Today... I woke up after a dream of the perils of air travel. Not cool, brain!

Oh, this dream had everything: The waiting, the tension and the mishaps. I get through my lines, past security and board the plane. Once aboard, everything is uneasy and tense. The passengers are suspicious, nobody is friendly and the pilot is a jerk. Yeah, the pilot was hangin' with us. Dream logic! As we go on, the plane moves closer to the ground and starts swerving around. I am sick to my stomach and starting to freak out.

Eventually, the plane is right by the ground, going up and down hills. (Must have been San Francisco.) We went through an underpass and I wondered how we did that with the plane's wingspan. That's when it hit me. This was not the plane. This was a bus. I wasn't flying to my destination, I WAS STILL ON THE WAY TO THE AIRPORT!

Yes, the dream began again! This time, the tedium went up a notch. We had to stick with the bus. We had to follow the driver's instructions. And everything was still swerving wildly, making me pukey. So naturally we were forced to stop at McDonalds before making the flight!

This was an airport McDonalds, so it worked differently. We moved in one slow, somber line. Everything was blank faced and robotic. Instead of ordering off the menu, you pressed a button corresponding to various meals. This allowed the workers to instantly hand you the meal in one dull box. Payment was a swipe of the card and we were back on our way.

Of course, we were running late so tension was high. I looked up to the big airport board to see if I was going to make my flight. I was! And there was the schedule. Depart at (whatever time) and arrive at - wait, what? We were scheduled to CRASH. In TEXAS. Good of them to warn me. GET ME OUT!

And that is how I started my day. No momentum, lots of weariness. I'm only now starting to get motoring again. The night is young, and the ink is plentiful! The goal is to get some comics done to justify my existence. This boring dream post isn't helping keep the gods from hitting that delete button...

Hit the snooze button

Oooh, I made a biiiig mistake last night. I forgot to set my alarm. Decompression sleep ensued, complete with just about every anxiety dream one could have! Damn you, subconscious! Why must you hate me so? Anyway, oversleeping limited the amount of work I could do (not to mention motivation) and I never go around to making a nice sketch to share. Whoops.

I did however do lots of work! My webdesign binge has continued, with a FAQ demo now up. I also played around with reworking the archive page, but nothing great came of that. Website aside, I sketched out the remaining strips for this week, with inking hopefully to come later tonight.

What I didn't do was all the writing. That requires a clear and snappy mind, which I did not possess today. Fingers are crossed that I can get a chunk of it done tomorrow. Some of that stuff is time sensitive, as in "should have been done MONTHS AGO" - bah!

In the end, I may not have a scribble to show for it, but I turned what could have been a crappy day into something somewhat productive. Take the victories when you can!

D-d-d-drugs, they say, are made in California

"Why is the post title quoting Marilyn Manson?" you ask. Well, let me share the truly bizarre (and hilarious) line of dreams I had this morning...

This dream session came in two bursts. In the first, as I am wont to in dreams, I was walking a very long, narrow and dangerous bridge. At its peak, I got delayed due to a police investigation in front of me. There had been jumpers and they were fishing the people out of the water. Turns out this scary woman approached a learning disabled guy and convinced him to kill his brother. She then took him walking on the bridge and was going to get him to jump off, making it look like the brother acted alone and killed himself out of guilt. The LD guy freaked out and grabbed her as he fell, taking both down. Amazingly, both survived. The LD guy talked when they were rescued and the woman was going to jail. Way to suck at a plan, lady!

The reason I was on the bridge, it seems, was to deliver a robot to the military. I got into a combat base and brought the codes for a Wall-E robot type. Turns out this was a defensive robot, which quickly identified a hostile situation and disarmed it. That means, of course, he disarmed US! I had to turn him off and turn the defenses back on, but it was too late. The enemy had used the lapse to break in. (Damn you, Wall-E!) It was my job to aim two guns manually and take out the enemy. This sucked, as enemies from each entrance had a clear shot to me. I took out one, had two bullets barely miss me, and was calling for backup when my brain decided it’d had enough.

(I woke up, took my meds, and went back to sleep to dream some more!)

Dream series two started with a dream where my grandmother was having a party at the townhouse I lived at from age 4 to 8. In this dream, I guess the whole family was rich and spoiled rotten. My mother and her boyfriend entered, both acting spoiled and snotty, and the boyfriend told a story about how terrible it was that he left his scotch back at the cabin. The women compared name brand serving dishes and catering services. (Note: This is about as opposite as you can get for them.) I was quickly pushed from the scene and told to amuse myself. I had a credit card, no supervision, no limit and lots of bought friends. It was time to go nuts and storm my former college campus!

On campus, I ran into Bill Clinton. (I assume he was giving a speech there and not trolling for some tail, but I can’t be sure.) He gave me permission to sleep with Chelsea, saying she needed the attention. I used the excuse on Mandy Moore (seriously? her?), who was playing a Chelsea-like role in a movie that just happened to be filming on campus. The dream got more meta as it devolved into a playful fight between her movie boyfriend, real life boyfriend, movie dad and Bill Clinton. When asked if it was weird to be fighting for someone who was playing his daughter, Clinton said he wasn’t even sure Chelsea was his. All those watching the scene were laughing at the ridiculousness of it.

After the Clinton thing, I joined a rag-tag group of people who were trying to sneak into my old Shepherd University dorm. There were ridiculous antics that would fit the screwball parody film this obviously was. (One guy started a war cry, and kept going so long we had to muffle him. He may have died, since we forgot to un-muffle him. No one cared and we dumped him in the street.) I managed to blow the plan by talking within earshot of the person at the dorm desk. This would have been fine, but then everyone in the group spoke up and argued about the best way to get into this dorm. Each dorm had a different trick and some couldn’t remember which trick matched what. By the end, the entire team exposed itself by talking, so the plan was dashed while we could regroup. I went off to chat with a conspirator and an overweight woman followed us. When she found out it wasn’t about the assault, she joked about doing twice her daily exercise for nothing. She was a good sport and she introduced me to THE TRIPLETS! They were not even identical – also, they were about 60. Dammit!

Plan failed, I walked to the college library, where I heard my friend Courtney talking over the speaker system, giving a soul-crushing speech about the futility of life. It was hilariously thorough, and delivered in the tone of a mother reading her child a bedtime story. I went in to talk to her and found her casually deadpanning into a mic. She decided to talk me up a bit, which surprised me. I was told that what I did put me above the level of amateur and I deserved the promotion. This great skill: Arranging Chrispmas lights into patterns.

I managed to arrange a city scene, which promptly faded into the real setting. I was on a ridge overlooking the city, with some maintenance building on the ridge with me. It was something government-related, but I’m not sure what. I watched a plane fly by and drop some banners, which were caught by the wind and blown over my head. They were army recruitment banners, saying the military would pay for your college education. The last banner hit a flock of birds and came in too low. It crashed into a security guard’s vehicle, which was driven by Marilyn Manson. As he got out, pissed off over getting struck, a eagle holding a Navy banner flew overhead. It dropped the banner on a guy dressed as an angel, who was ALSO promoting the military. (I must assume the marines, as they do love to die in combat.) I went up to Manson, who was still upset, and we joked about calling it in: “Sir, we’ve been attacked! The US Military hit two people with recruitment banners. One was dressed as an angel. One was Marilyn Manson. Both were working for the government at the time -- OH FORGET IT!”

And that was just what I can remember. The question is… can I make art to go with this?

Presenting: The paint sketch of “Model City” – a painting based on looking out on my former city of lights! (Canvas is 48"x30")




Edit: Here's a shot of Model City, step two:

Life is but a dream

Ahh, but there are several types of dreams! One, always a favorite, is the stress dream in which YOU CAN'T WIN! No matter what you do, your brain changes the rules to screw you over. One of my most common involves me driving in a highway and taking the wrong exit, only to be stuck in an series of increasingly difficult roads that always lead me further and further away from the path I desire. The common ending for these has me carrying my car on my back as I gingerly walk across a shaky rope bridge over a chasm. One I had recently involved a Batman-obsessed gremlin thing that was a pushover. I beat it up and outsmarted it time and again, but it was always right around the corner to attack again. The dream ended when I thought I had it trapped in my grandparents' house (Mom's side) only to realize too late that they had installed a pet door. With a, "well, that's the end of me," sigh, I woke up. Another fun version ends with thousands of airplanes falling from the sky until one finally hits me.

The above sketch is a fairly good indicator of the past 24 hours. On one side, we have the quiet and reserved Yvette Nutley. On the other, a tempting and shiny meat cleaver. A truer emotional self-portrait has never been done!

Let's recap the fun!

-After sleeping through my alarm and moving like a drunk snail all morning, I arrive at my grandparents' house (mom's side) a few hours late. This is not a problem for me, since they didn't believe I was coming. Such faith they have in me! I try to explain webcomics to them, then explain over and over why the one painting they like of mine wasn't on my website. It's my poinsettia painting that has been sitting at my grandparents' house (dad's side) for the past month.

- Grandma (mom's side), with whom I am supposed to be spending quality as she has terminal cancer and all, says she is tired and goes back to read and watch TV. She feels perfectly healthy, so she's in no rush to do that creepy family time stuff. Most of my interaction with her was checking her math while she balanced her checkbook (she got it right) and turning down the beer she offered. Most of my time was spent chatting with my aunt (mom's side) as we "watched" a basketball game.

- Then I got a call. My grandmother (dad's side) wanted to know where I was. Now, I had told my aunt (dad's side) that I wouldn't arrive until after 9pm. I was told by my mother that grandma (dad's side) said it was perfectly fine if I showed up late at night. When I showed up at my grandparents' house (dad's side) at 9:30, I found out neither relative had told HER when to expect me. I was in trouble.

- The reason I didn't spend the night at my grandparents' house (mom's side) is because I have daily internet obligations! I need five minutes of internet time to upload the day's Precocious strip, and the only wifi I can steal is around my grandparents' house (dad's side).

- When I arrived at the grandparents' (dad's side) house I was greeting with the strange image of my grandmother (you know by now) eating cold Chef Boy-Ar-Dee from a can. Things also smelled funny, but at the time I chalked it up to the can (chef's side). After taking great care to keep their pipes from freezing during the recent cold weather, the pipes chose to rust themselves into oblivion instead. The kitchen was out of commission, the heat was out and the plumbers had a bit of trial and error before finding the problem.

- Thinking the leaky pipe was in one place (the wrong side) they knocked some holes in the downstairs ceiling. Though that hole came the distinct smell of dead mouse. Oh great. That explains it. (It's mostly dissipated by now, but that was not fun coming into the fresh kill zone.)

- I was tired from a day in which nothing had gone right. Grandma (still dad's side) was the same. We talked ourselves into a stupor and then adjourned for the night. It was time to do my update.

- THE INTERNET IS DEAD! I tried every fix I could, even though Windows (Satan's side) told me again and again that the problem wasn't on my end. The person from which I was stealing wifi was currently without internet - and I was up shit's creek until that person realized there was a problem.

- As midnight grew closer, I became increasingly distressed. I had it all planned out! I abandoned my grandparents (mom's side) just so I could be covered for the update! I couldn't do any other work because I was checking the connection every 10 minutes until 3am or so. I missed my update time and I hated myself for it.

- Feeling helpless, I decided to try sketching. Guess what I had forgotten to bring! If you guessed MY DAMN PENCIL, you know me too well. Fortunately, I had brought lead refills, so my no-copy red pencil was sacrificed to the alter of "I can't scan red!" That is one problem solved, everything else in the world still wrong.

- I could not sleep. Not only was my mind still panicking and waking me over and over to check the connection, but it was FREAKIN' COLD! I had just escaped a house where I was forced to run the space heater all day to keep feeling in my hands, and now busted heat put me in the same position.

- I end up sleeping through TWO alarms and oversleeping an hour. I am not remotely rested and I feel sick because of it. Oh well, at least this place has the best shower in the world! See, at home something has gone wrong. At the 10 minute mark, the hot water is gone. This had not been a problem before. Showers (home side) had been reduced to trying to ration hot water long enough to clean AND relax me. (If unrationed, it would never reach 10 minutes.) This means showers had become stressful and ALWAYS ended in cold frustration and disappointment. GUESS WHAT! Two minutes into this shower (grandparents dad's side) I had shut off the cold completely and was taking all hot I could. I finally had to bail, cold and miserable.

By now I am starting to wonder if I have died and ended up in Purgatory. No matter where I go, the same problems follow me. I can't get warm. When I do momentarily reach warmth, overheating immediately follows and I have to freeze again. No matter how long I sleep, I cannot get any rest. This has been going on for days. No matter what I do, I cannot get on the internet. I can't properly taste food. Feelings in general have become confusing. Seriously, since when have I been so succeptible to cold? It's getting worse every day and I don't know why! It's a minor disaster wherever I turn, and I am starting to suspect nothing will ever go right again. Around the 10th time I managed to connect to a wireless network from the nauseating IHOP only to have it fail to connect to the internet, I was certain I was a ghost. It's not just recent events, you see, but the past two months have been unrelenting in thrusting negativity on me. Is this like the Sixth Sense scene where I am lamenting how I am ignored by people I thought were friends, only to realize they moved on because I was, yanno, dead? Is this why I can not sleep for a day, sleep an entire day, quit eating for a while, eat like a pig another time, work hard, do nothing and generally turn my life into one crazy variable experience.... and yet the result is always the same. I feel the same no matter what I do. I weight the same no matter what I eat. This is not something mortals do. I am dead. I've been dead for a while. I'm dead and the afterlife SERIOUSLY SUCKS! Fuck me.

And then we rush home from the IHOP (after two hours of awkward and horrible-tasting misery) because we have doctors appointments. We don't stop by the library (which offers free wifi) because of this. Aha! Once again the solution is twisted away from me! This is a dream or death! I am certain!

Once home, I find the wifi person finally remembered to plug his modem back in. I do my comic update 14 hours late. I have no email, no comments, probably no chance in readership... and when I call my grandparents (mom's side) with an offer to come visit, they tell me not to bother since they didn't expect me to come over anyway. Even though we had all discussed it the day before.

No matter what happens, it all stays the same. WHY DOES THE SAME HAVE TO SUCK SO MUCH!?

Life in grayscale

Today the goal was the colorize the next four strips (they go live starting Monday) and possibly get the other two for next week done as well. If not the next two, I could work on some promo pics for the website. I had plans!

Today I woke up feeling great - for the first time all week. I even had a dream of minor complexity! In the past week of fatigue, my brain couldn't muster anything memorable in the few moments of unconsciousness I achieved. The dream was fairly uneventful, and most of it was promptly forgotten in the way all dreams are, but at least I had one.

The part I remember involved my family moving into a new house. The neighborhood was newly built, with not all houses completed and grass just beginning to cover the dirt. After waking, I got the impression that it was in Georgia - possibly based on the few memories I have of the house Dana's family had down there. The family and some friends were gathered in the family room watching some program, which later turned into a ridiculous Lost/Battlestar Galactica/sit-com mash up. There was a crisis: Food. Some of us had eaten earlier in the dream (I was one, and I think we ate in a mall food court) and some were starving. Well, this being a new house, we had very little to offer. The best I could find was some crappy frozen pizza, and I felt bad about preparing it. Instead of making the pizza for the few who were hungry, I asked the group if they would be ready to eat a slice or two if I had pizza delivered. Everyone was noncommital, so I decided to go ahead and order pizza. Only problem: I was new in town and didn't know the number to call. No one else did either, so the result is one minor thing turning into a the most boring clusterfuck ever. It was not a great dream, but there was something that I overlooked initially: My dad was there.

Shortly after my dad died, I had a dream in which I was sitting with him in the back of a theater. He told me that if I ever needed him, he would be there for me. Since then, in times of stress and worry, he would show up in me dream. It was always very casual - just everyday normalcy, He was just there in boring family scenes. Only after waking would I realize that is not normal. When he appears in my dreams, it means something is wrong - even if I haven't realized it yet.

After this dream, I just shrugged it off. The dream was SO inane, I was content to let it go. I did not learn my lesson. I was feeling good! I was energized and refreshed! I spent the first hour of waking calm and relaxed, content to compose whimsical stories in my head for the fun of it.

And then I got a phone call telling me my grandmother (mom's side) had a stroke. Mom came home, packed a bag and drove to the hospital to be by her mother's side. I had to stay here to take care of the animals. While typing this post I got the update call. It wasn't a stroke! It was a seizure brought on by two-to-eight malignant and inoperable brain tumors! Whoopee! If she survives this episode, she'll start hospice. They're not sure if it will be days, weeks or months right now, but an MRI later could tell us more. For those keeping score at home, that would be two grandparents on hospice and two with scary chronic health problems.

This is the second time in recent months that I woke up and declared to myself that it would be a good day. First time my cat died. This time the only grandparent we WEREN'T worrying about almost died - with the "almost" still in doubt, mind you. I know all of this is coincidence, but DAMN. If I was just a tad more egocentric, I'd believe I was the center of a universe that was extremely displeased with me.

Anyway, I'm trying to keep moving on with Precocious stuff. I finished inking the next four strips and sketched out the cast picture seen above. I may or may not use that for the website, but no matter what I won't be coloring it today. I scanned it and prepared it for coloring, but my efforts will be going to working on the strips. Whenever I color, I set up a layer of the gray I use to filter out leftover pencil marks when scanning. It gives me a background that shows any artifacts left behind. Since I wasn't going to color today, I just saved it with that background. I figure it fits the mood.

Ever see Panic Room?

How about Inside Man? Either way, I'm referencing a break-in movie featuring Jodi Foster being awesome.

The noises have changed today. The loud banging on the floor has ceased as the new floor is down. Replacing it is the sounds of sawing and drilling... which seems to be moving down through the floor, closer and close to breaking through my ceiling. IT'S LIKE THEY'RE CRAWLING THROUGH MY WALLS! Hello, paranoia, my old friend! Dude, I just got rid of Super Mouse - and I still jump at every little sound, thinking she's come back to kill me! THIS IS NOT HELPING!

This stuff can royally fuck up a sleeping pattern. I've been spending my mornings in a restless daze, trying to get some sleep in between break-in sessions. This can cause weird dreams. Today's dream involved me grinding my hips against Josh. Ok, that wasn't salacious as it sounds - I was trying to scoot in between Josh and Maddy (!) while visiting her in New York. It was fun times, even if it reminded me that I am so dull that *all* my friends are far more interesting than me.

Continuing the dream, Josh and I had our fun, then had to leave and drive home. On the way out of the building, we got stuck at a light as endless (and increasingly innocent-looking) pedestrians kept moving through the crosswalk and preventing us from our GOD-GIVEN RIGHT to take left turns. With Josh cursing at little children for blocking our way, I began to edge up to take my turn. Just when it looked like the kids were finally out of the way, one angry schoolmarm type stood right in front of us. Flipping us off. Seems our edging up on the kids upset her, so she decided to make a stand against us savages! We blew by her, running a red light, with her flicking us off all the way. Welcome to New York!

On the drive back, Josh told me he had stop at regular intervals at designated areas because his trucker's union had rules he had to follow. The dream ended as we wandered around a mini mall/lecture hall combo trying to find Josh's union office. You know, vivid and detailed dreams only happen every so often, and instead of hanging out with Alicia Witt and Mila Kunis playing "naked philosophical twister" I spent it DEALING WITH A GODDAMN TRUCKERS UNION! I don't care if your tits are bigger, Josh, it's just not the same!

Dreaming of black death

Yes, I did actually have a dream where I got infected with what I assume was the bubonic plague. Gee, I wonder why?



Mousie is still staying at Hotel Chrispy. For those wishing to view my little celebrity, time is running out. Since she's come back every time I released her in my yard, I'm going to do the old "drop off the dog at the county line and speed away" method this weekend. Would it be uncouth to show up for my volunteer session at Art at the Mill with a mouse in hand?

Anyway, as has become tradition, I did another mouse girl sketch. Check out that dynamic pose! She is not happy with her current situation.

It's time to declare Sundays non-canon

First: Here's the Roddy sketch I hinted at before. The expression is kinda blah, but I've been mindlessly crafting this sketch for two days now so I figured it deserved to be finished and posted.

Now, the ranting: What do you do when you've got massive momentum, have played all the hardest games on your schedule with great success, have not yet committed a turnover on offense and have one of the worst teams in history coming into your home stadium this week? If you're the Redskins, you MAKE MY SOUL HURT! I am too involved in football, man. This stuff can ruin my whole day.

Today was a "fuck it" day from the start. I had a dream in which I was visiting Andrew in some random place he was living while I was doing some cross-country trip, or something like that. Most notable: Dude had giant collection of candy! Wherever he was working used to sell candy but decided the demand wasn't high enough and let him take home the full candy rack. Dude was being sort of a dick in not letting me take all the candy I wanted. Listen, bro, if you have a bin of PEACH RINGS there will be no stopping me!

So I woke up with a a natural peach ring craving. Feeling like shit, and without any available drugs to go for a Hollywood style personal downfall, I decided to play the pitiful self-destructive role via food. I went back to Martins to grad my peach rings - in you FACE, Andrew! - and some TV dinners, since cooking for myself is a bitch due to my kitchen being gutted. As is is my habit, I hit up Chipotle for the scrumptious and waist-widening goodness. On the way I had to drive by two crosswalks. Each time the shopper decided to let me go instead, which is incorrect. The second time, I waved a woman through. She gestured for me to go, as she was waiting for her meandering child to get back to her. Naturally, the kid returned as soon as I went forward and dove into the crosswalk. Criminy. In line at Chipotle, a chattering couple in front of me really confused the staff, meaning their normally-efficient machine was working slightly off pace. I finished this up with an embarrassing verbal flub. Whatever, at least I had a "BURRITO!" and peach rings. Once home, self-destructive indulgences were a go!

THEY FOLDED MY BURRITO WRONG! This meant that when I got home I bit into my burrito to find a level of veggies, then a level of chicken, then a level of rice and finally a level of sour cream. Seriously, that's just cruel to a shut-in who is scared to leave his house like me. I may never leave home again after this disappointment.

Oh yeah... My "guaranteed fresh" peach rings were stale as well.

As I move to post this, I am about to lose my football consolation prize thanks to the Cardinals defense decided to take a nap with two minutes to go. There's still time for the Cowboys to lose, but today...

You know what, let's do a play by play:

-Dallas completes a long pass and clocks the ball with three seconds left just out of FG range.
-But wait! A Cardinal was INJURED AND UNABLE TO GET OFF THE FIELD! This means an offsides penalty by default!
-The Cardinals BLOCK THE KICK AND WIN THE GAME!
-But wait! The Cardinals coach called a time out to ice the kicker, blowing his own team's victory.
-The kick is good! Overtime!
-Cowboys win the coin toss, of course.
-Oh, and I just noticed the 49ers collapsed, giving the Eagles a win. Fuck.
-Back to the game: SACK! FUMBLE! Romo recovers, so fuck him.
-Romo throws to the receiver in the first row in the stands for a while, so they must punt.
-THE PUNT IS BLOCKED! TD! CARDINALS WIN!
-But wait! There's a penalty!
-It's on the... COWBOYS?! Holy shit. The win stands! FUCK YOU, DALLAS!

I still won't be happy until the Giants get destroyed by my Browns. (HA!) Hey, the game is on Monday, so today's fuckly nature might not affect it!

One more complaint: The makers of iTunes need to be raped with cacti in every orifice. The "upgrade" seems to have been designed to force PC uses to switch over by MAKING ITUNES NEXT TO USELESS!

Disrupting the food chain

Look what I caught! That doesn't look like the sketch at all!

Last night, after celebrating a glorious day of football (FINALLY), I settled into my bed to read a bit before falling into the cylon-powered sleep cycle. (Three Battlestar Galactica dreams so far - all of which either had me helping the cylons or discovering I was a cylon. My subconscious is a villain.) Around 1am, the rustling began again. How cute!

But what followed the rustling was a loud crash and scrambling. My cats had been downstairs earlier, but I thought I'd sent them all back up to the surface before shutting myself off for the night. Clearly, I was wrong. A certain black cat of destruction - the hunter in the house - was down here and had found some prey.

The mouse made a valiant effort and escaped three attacks. The fourth, however, caught her trying to cut across open area. I jumped out of bed to find the mouse bouncing towards cover (cute) only to have the cat circle around and swat her back. My arrival distracted the kitty long enough for the mouse to break for the unsure cover of the Mario Kart Wii Wheel box. As the cat waited on one side, I watched the mouse poke her head out from the other... right next to the bag holding the digital camera accessories. I slid the bag over slightly and lifted the box. The mouse had no choice but to jump in as the cat lunged. Mwa ha ha!

Mousie looked a bit worse for wear, but seemed to have suffered more psychological damage than physical. I let her go outside. Sure, she's likely already back in the house - but for now I HAVE DISRUPTED NATURAL ORDER! Sorry, kittie, but I'd much rather have a live mouse running around than a dead one with parts spread to places unknown.

This was in my dream...

OVEN FAMILY DANCE PARTY!

It's official: I've had a Precocious dream. It has finally taken over my life.

This experience was spawned by a morning of random, unfocused dreaming. Eventually, I ended up on my grandparents' (mom's side) deck for an Oven family picnic thing. I was Bud, naturally, and mostly I observed this strange Oven convergence. (Again: The Oven family is NEVER together!) Sydney (mom) was setting the table with typical (and lackluster) picnic sides. Joseph (dad) wandered out from the kitchen with a sad plate that featured cheap local pizza as the centerpiece. Casey (sis) was lounging in the corner, less than thrilled with dinner.

And then the music started! Sydney and Joseph started dancing to the groovy tunes of Garbage's "Why Do You Love Me?" (which, of course, was playing on iTunes at the time) while I watched in confusion. Sydney was jokingly mouthing some of the lyrics to Joseph, which is something inappropriate to do in front of one's children. (Although it's completely in-character for the Oven parents.)

"I think you're sleeping with a friend of mine. I have no proof, but I think that I'm right..."

For the song's finale, Casey joined in with the dancing. Face with my strange family cutting a move in front of me, I decided I needed to participate as well. I was not much of a dancer, so I mostly jumped up and down. Casey, picking on Bud like always, mocked my weak moves. "You dance like a construction site!"

I should explain that statement. An earlier dream, when I was still playing Chris, involved my asshole brother sustaining a neck injury at a construction site. He was so stupid, he refused medical assistance and was going about his life as always. I was very happy to know that one trip would likely kill him or paralyze him for life. It was like Christmas Eve! (For those hypothetical future readers who don't know my brother: Trust me, the world would greatly benefit from his death.) ANYWAY... The insult meant I had dance moves akin to a quadriplegic.

BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

The subconscious is one's worst critic

OR, how to start one's day in the most inauspicious way possible!

The culprit this time was a dream. Usually I have dreams of brain-numbing repetition or ones where I'm continuously hunting for candy. (Thanks, shameless sweet tooth!) When stress or gluttony dreams aren't in the rotation, it's usually mind torture in the form of anxiety dreams - where everything goes wrong for me. As noted before: My brain hates me.

In today's dream, I was shipped off the convention for people with personality disorders. The goal was to isolate us from society and teach us how to stop being drains on the world. My group was seemingly the worst of the lot. After all, our "invitations" were done in sinister black. The other defect groups had bright cheery colors linked to their disorders. Mine was black. Like, death and depressing black.

This awful group you see, was the COMPLAINERS! We were the cynics and sourpusses who lose their cool at the slightest irritant. We were mean, bitter and no fun to be around. If we didn't fix ourselves, we'd be doomed to a life of sad ostracism.

Proving the event organizer's point, I didn't take my invite well. I, well, COMPLAINED about being singled out as a bad person and admitted I felt persecuted because the black envelope let everyone else know (people who were just as dysfunctional as me - if not more so) that I was the worst of all! I was being avoided! The told me I didn't have to eat in the cafeteria with the rest of the nuts - I could help myself to candy in the guest room. (Yes, even in this dream I desperately needed a chocolate fix.)

The main reason I was upset was because they organization just didn't get it - there are two types of complainers: Zesty and bitter! I complain a lot, but I do it as a purge and I try to find some humor in it. I think running around proclaiming the sky the to be falling is FUNNY! My fellow black-labeled wretches were clearly on the bitter side. We had the old ladies who had nothing to do with their lives but yell at people for being noisy during their naps. We had TONS of repressed conservatives and Christian fundamentalists - who hate themselves because their values are so strict any deviation from them must make them horrible people, so they judge everyone else harsher in retribution. We had the general sad sacks who were so beaten down they'd lost their sense of humor. Basically, I was surrounded by BAD CONVERSATIONALISTS!

We had a private pool just for us sourpusses, but it was very unfriendly. The old ladies wouldn't get in the water for fear of getting their hair wet. The conservatives all inched dangerously close to each other in the hot tub, filled with sickening tension. The sourpusses would dog-paddle around by themselves. I was the only person to take a leap into the water and make a splash. The rest silently walked into the pool from the shallow area - doing all they could to be silent and keep the water calm. I splashed around and tried to get the people to play a game. No response. This was went I went off to complain about my "peers."

At least my brain was telling me I don't belong on that group. As the dream went on, it became clear I was the star of my crew. My fellow complainers - while still hating each other as much as themselves - all warmed to me and my charming ways. I had become a leader and I was fairly respected by everyone in the reject convention.

The next morning, I got a visit from Dana - who was wearing adorable jammies for some reason. Seems she was taken away too, as part of the "obsessive" camp. We happily chatted about sneaking off to get breakfast away from the rest of the wretches. Conversation then turned to the old lady in the bed beside mine. She was frustrated with inconsiderate people making too much noise as she slept. When Dana asked if I was causing problems - as I'm an insomniac and I toss and turn like mad - the old lady said I was the only one she liked. I was never a problem and I didn't make any noise to disturb her. It was a good self-esteem boost.

Eventually, I found some kin in the complainer group in two women. One was a pushy New Yorker whose tongue was sharp enough to disarm all those not tempered to absorb "New York charm." The other was a tall woman - well over six feet - with a loud voice and a pushy attitude. She seemed like the lawyer type. Together, we decided to write a letter to the organization explaining the two types of complainers. We might bitch and moan, but the others in the program are not our people. Line by line we laid out why they suck and why we are simply misunderstood. At one point, I sat back and wondered if what we were doing was too self-serving or something that would make us far more irritating in the organization's eyes than the wretches we found to be vastly inferior. The New Yorker could see it happening, but the other lady (who seemed less self-aware and probably wouldn't be in our group if there had been anyone else slightly worthy) got a bit self-righteous, claiming truth is truth.

At that point the dream trailed off and fell into the standard surrealism/stress dream stuff, such as me trying to reach the pool on the ground level from my floor and managing to end up hanging off a balcony a few stories up. This happens all the time in dreams, of course. Instead of going into the elevator, I ended up outside it and I had to strategically drop down floor by floor, getting me in tons of trouble for the disturbance. During this, another dream standard was at play: I was trying to travel with a gal (generic hottie) and no matter what I did, we'd be separated. I reached the pool and jumped in, only to find she had made it down with me... but forgot her suit. Once again, the pool symbolized isolation!

Overall, I think the meaning is fairly straightforward. The dream was more of a highlighter and exaggerator of stress than one hiding it in symbols. At least it was creative in handling it. I take it as failure when my brain only offers up cookie cutter dreams. Anytime I'm flying or my teeth/hair fall out, I wake up embarrassed for my brain.

Still, it's rather depressing to wake up after a dream where you are officially labeled a black-level asshole. Hey, maybe something reassuring could happen as soon as I wake up to make me feel better about myself.

I woke up to see a GIGANTIC FUCKING SPIDER on the ceiling directly above me. It waited until it was sure I saw it, before it scrambled into a vent. Thus, this arachnophobe now knows there is a GIGANTIC FUCKING SPIDER in my room that is just WAITING FOR ME!

There is no way this day can go well now.