obfuscational hazard

Happy New Years Eve Money Keys! I wanted to be the first to welcome you to the last day of the year, and what better way to do that then talk about dreams! First, a story of the dream that woke me up this morning.

Scene: Dylan Marino is leaving his job at Dow for the final time. He has quit, and is embarking on a new adventure. Suddenly, we find our hero being trained as a cashier in a local Wal-Mart. He has prior experience in this area from a job years ago at Farmer Jack. His training will come back to him, and as the onslaught of customers envelopes his lane, he experiences a weird euphoria. A certain calmness and sensation of things envelopes him as he goes through the robotic motions of moving goods across the scanner. We now see a large woman approaching. She is not attractive, physically or otherwise. She has short brown hair, is zealously overweight, and is surprisingly tall (nearing the height of Dylan himself). She is sporting the Wal-Mart vest with a “manager” sticker on it, and is not happy. The dialog is lost, but she seems to be amazingly upset with our hero’s performance. Dylan makes wisecracks at the absurdity of the scenario, and she becomes angrier. She enters a heightened state of “laughing angry” as if she has never been talked back to by a lowly employee and finds the idea preposterous. Still laughing, and with a look of amazement, she walks away. Another employee approaches Dylan to tell him he has been fired.

Dylan, bewildered by the aforementioned, wanders the halls of “Wal-Mart”. These halls actually look like a combination of CMU and DOW’s halls. He finds himself in a large auditorium. The room is filled with people who all sense him entering, but ignore him. They seem to be ignoring out of fear, as if acknowledging him will incur some form of wrath. Dylan then sees security running down the hall. They are after him. Running as fast as he can, Dylan exits the building. Now in the parking lot, Dylan jumps into the air and flies away.

He flies high into the air. Midland turns into a mountainous countryside, covered in elegant pines and tall grasses. It is sunset. Dylan’s flight suddenly turns erratic, and he is unable to control himself. Now in a free fall toward a hillside, Dylan is helpless to do anything but watch his impending death. With a large impact, he hits the earth and rolls through the brush. There were multiple, but undocumented, injuries sustained, and he is unable to move. Time passes as he looks up toward the sun. There is no one around for miles. With what could only be described as true dread, he closes his eyes and waits…

That’s where I woke up. It is not often I’ve had the pleasure of being roused by my subconscious, so this whole thing struck a bit of a cord with me. It got me to think a little about dream theory in general, and if there may be more significance. As much as I dislike his work, I have to cite Freud’s dream theory as my personal belief for what is happening in my head. Basically, Freud believed dreams are formed out of the desire to fulfill certain wishes that are a preoccupation to us. The wishes have to be disguised as symbols, however, because our brains are stupid and want us to write long blog entries.

In the context of my current dream some things are obvious. My preoccupation with work is clearly taking it’s toll, as is my desire for change. Wal-Mart could be a symbol for fear of finding something worse out there. What’s more troubling, I may fail at this said worse case, and be left with nothing at all. This prompts me to leave entirely via flying. This flying segment is highly debatable though. I see it as another fear. I leave Midland, but then lose control over everything in my life and crash. By the end of the dream, I’ve lost everything, am alone, and have no options left.

If you can’t tell by my analysis, I didn’t like this dream. I’m glad I’ve got it written down though, as it may be very cool foreshadowing for future chapters. More to come Keys, but it’s late now, and I need to try this sleeping thing again. Let’s see what happens this time…

Good Evening Monkey Keys, lets talk about taking risks. By that I mean playing the board game Risk, possibly one of the greatest simulations of world conquest the unconquered world has ever given us.

Two nights ago I had the pleasure of sitting down to a good four hour game of Risk 2210, or “Future Risk” for those of us that can never remember the year cited on the game box. I’ll save you the anticipation, and tell you I lost. I lost pretty bad as a matter of fact, and I’d like to cite why so no Keys will make my mistake. Note the depicted map to better your understanding of what transpired.

I was sitting pretty in full command of all North America. Former Keys Habeck and Sarah held Africa/Australia and Europe respectively. Younger sibling Devin had South America. Asia was a mess, but when is it not. Devin and Habeck were locked in epic battle for the lead at this point, so I decided it was time to make my move and dethrone them both. On my turn I executed the dreaded triple axle, and invaded three completely separate points on the globe at the same time. The two most devastating invasions were done by sea (NOTE: In Future Risk, sea territories cannot be accessed without a Naval Commander. This often leaves these avenues open for surprise attacks via purchasing a Naval Commander suddenly and without provocation.) I purchased said Commander, and invaded Habeck from the north via the yellow water territories. I cut deep into the aboriginal homeland of northern Australia, and drove those Kangaroo Riders to the sea. With Habeck in disarray, I turned my attention to Devin. With two well placed attacks into the sunken red territory of New York and the blue water paradise New Poseidon, Devin also lay in shambles.

Had I stopped here, I may well have achieved total victory in the turns to come. Neither foe had anticipated this attack, and neither had much to retaliate with. I had all of North America still, and would be getting massive reinforcements next turn. I was about to say I was finished when sole female opponent, Sarah, had the audacity to call me a yellow-bellied boot-shaking ninny (or something to that effect.) So, I executed a final frivolous attack into her territory in northern Russia, just to prove my manliness (I suspect many real wars were fought for similar reasons.) She fell without a fight.

Feeling macho and invincible, I fortified northern Australia, and the Mexican border. This sealed Devin and Habeck off from North America, and would give me some time to rebuild. Or so I thought…

Moments later, Sarah took command of her armies in Europe. Fueled by fury, she placed every reinforcement she had in Iceland and stormed my undefended Greenland border. I was powerless to such a surprise attack. Canada fell in seconds, and she pressed all the way to Michigan. Without the reinforcements for owning North America, I was unable to stop Devin’s press from the south. Soon I found myself exiled from my home country, and living on the lamb in northern Asia.

The moral here I think is don’t bite off more than you can chew… or maybe don’t make a girl angry… or don’t mess with the Russians… um… a bird in the hand? Well, point of fact, I guess I didn’t really learn anything from this. Ahh well, Risk anyone?

Monkey Keys, I know it’s a good song. This isn’t about Tom Petty though. Last night I had a lengthy conversation with a good friend of mine living in Los Angeles. He just moved there this year from our humble and not quite as psychopathic state of Michigan. For those ill informed Keys, I was actually born in this illegitimate hippie child of a state in a suburb of San Francisco called Antioch. Even though I only lived there the first four years of my life, and only have three (count ‘em three) tangible memories from the place, I don’t believe I ever fully acclimatized to Michigan. His immediate suggestion was that I pick up my things and move there.

This isn’t to say I necessarily want to pack a bag of food, jump a bus, and go… but I kind of do. I like the highly romanticized idea of leaving with nothing but my wit to save me, and going to a city where anything can happen. My more creative dreams, like publishing that novel or becoming an actor, would have a heightened sense of plausibility via proximity. Granted, this is akin to saying living in a tree increases my chances of learning how to fly, but one can always hope.

This naturally led me to start thinking about what it is that keeps me in Michigan. Heaven knows it isn’t my job. The beautiful scenery and weather aren’t exactly cutting it either. No, like with everything else in my life, I’m motivated most by the people. My family lives right by me now, and leaving them would not be easy. I have lots of friends here that I would have to bid adieu to. Basically, I’d lose my posse, and I would be alone.

Of course, this isn’t to say I want to stay here forever… but I kind of do. So what is it that finally leads a person to make a decision one way or the other? Well, I guess I’ll let you know when I decide.

Hey Monkey Keys. I wanted to talk about a horrible side effect of being human tonight. The problem stems from our ability as a species to perceive time. To be more specific; the problem of human beings having the ability to envision a future. We can collectively agree that, baring the invention of a time machine, the past is set in stone. The preset is an ongoing saga for everyone to partake in. The future, however, is a mess.

Humans find it easy to quantify the past though recorded history, and the present through what can be taken in with the senses. The quantification of the future comes in the form of planning. By making up fairytales about how we want time to unfold, we can actually prepare for what is to come. The problem is, this envisioned future is based only in our own minds. While it can be possible to use our limited resources as humans to drive a plan, the outcome is rarely how we envisioned it.

This has been my problem for awhile. The fairytales are just that. I dream about them and fear for characters and situations that have yet to pass. Often, I find myself agonizing over situations that haven’t presented themselves. I dream about an idea until it seems so obvious to me it will actually happen that I’m shocked when it inevitably doesn’t. When the fairytale is over all I’m left with is a present I wasn’t prepared for, and a longing for a new future that may never be.

Today, I write after what I believe to be the end of such a story. Like many before, it didn’t end the way I envisioned. Now I’m left saddened, bewildered and unsure of where to move next. If I know me though, it’ll start with another story. One page at a time, I’ll write out a new future based only in my mind. I can only hope when it’s published and I read it back, it’s everything I wanted.