jinkies!

quite the day we had today! started out with a strange dream, the details of which i can't quite recall. on the other hand, it inspired a potential meshing for the beginning of my 'scatter' short story. a man wakes up after a strange, incredibly lucid dream. he rolls over at the same moment as his lover, and their eyes meet: they shared the vision. it haunts them for the rest of the day, until they find images appearing. grafitti, etc, aroud the city... with images from their dreams. it creeps them out and then it begins happening again, on key-numbered days. finally they realize that they can anticipate these things and piece together the puzzles. they are hearing and seeing the wakings of the dreaming-god, the sleeping consciousness that has formed from the collective self-optimizations of the net. they realize that it is waking and that it will be cataclysmic. and they realize what they have to do -- they start blowing up nodes, one by one. They get rebuilt, of course... but they know it's what they have to do. they're saving the world, one little pulse at a time.

perhaps they're a couple drawn together by mutual purposelessness, in the wake of experimentation they were both a part of. but. no matter. on with the day!

robis headquarters -- the war room -- was all abuzz with preparations for the chamber of commerce luncheon. foamcore! color printouts of web sites! plumb cds playing! the atmosphere was one of controlled lunacy with a splattering of donuts. finally, at 11:20 we ran out of the house, late for the luncheon. tim carrying the foamcore display and me with 500 fortune cookies under my arm. piled into dave's lancer and peeled out of the parking spot down pershing. suddenly, a lumbering car made a wide turn out onto the street, almost entering our lane as it drove at us. "AAaaaaiiiieeeeeeee!" we all screamed, simultanously, as it passed us. driver's ed car!

the luncheon itself went well, and i somehow managed to get our table talking about international terrorism and franchising. the speaker was from district 200, explaining the need for a pantsload of new money for the schools, and i bit my cheek. must. look. pretty. and. shut. up. must. control. fist. of. death. aiieee!

all in all, a good deal. discussion on the way home involved velma's potential identity as the mastermind of the scooby mysteries. "Jeff, Tim! Think about it! She aaaalllways figured out who was behind it... She aaaallways pulled off the monster's mask... she was the one behind it all!" Tim and I gasped. "It's been there all the time, and we didn't even see it!"

in the news of the straaaaaange and surreaaaaal, the office was.. um.. interrupted again. someoen plowed a car into the front of the building and drove off. tim and i blinked and stared; apparently, the building has no front door now. boggle. blink blink. "You know, all that can happen now is a swamp monster haunting or something. This is nuts."

after getting home, dad and i ran out to do the car dealership and i practiced my unconcerned cool vibe. it works pretty darn well, actually! and i gave dad some tips.

"remember. we don't care. we know what we're looking for, and we've got a nice evening ahead of us. we can /stroll/." and it worked. we were not bothered. i stayed in control of the situation by, well, not really caring whether we found anything or not. it's amazing how much leverage not caring gives you. not 'looking serious' or 'being earnest...' simply wearing the metaphorical leather jacket of blase.

in the car lot, a pair of guys were busy stripping plates from new arrivals.

we headed to downtown wheaton to check out the infamous missing door of mysteriousness. we drove by and both did a double-take. "no freakin' /way/. it's... gone!" i had been expecting some hyperbole and all, but there it was -- the stairway up to the office, yawning open at the sidewalk sans door. two pains of the photography studio's window were replaced with plywood, and we stepeed into the stairway up.

"So, um... during the day the skylight is really nice..." I pointed out. Dad switched on the lights. Yup. IT was the office entrance alright.

"Wow," he said in disbelief.

We strolled around downtown and talked a lot and i managed to get out some choice words regarding my relationship with alison. it's amazing how difficult it is to verbalize words one has nurtured in silence on the screen; it's like coaxing a cat from the warmth of the house to the cold of a winter day -- the harsh world of the spoken. things that seemed profound, tinged with magic, on the screen and on paper... they seem trite and silly and shallow. but i managed it, and i think i'm better for it.

"so what principles do you have for a conversation like that?" dad asked sincerely. a year ago i would've rolled my eyes and thought him so annoying, for trying to 'be fatherly' in asking a question like that. tonight, i looked over and realized, he just wanted to know. he was searchingfor words for his questions too.

so i laughed. "no foul language? don't mention elvis? i don't know. if i had any idea what i wanted to say, that would sure help..."

he grinned. point taken. we watched the train pass, rattling the tracks and shaking the ground beneath us. windows flicked by and people passed us, not noticing two men on the side of the tracks watching them. "What did you see?" i asked him as we walked away, munching popcorn in the crisp air.

"people. one man was standing up, a woman reading a book, a few empty cars," dad replied, thinking that was what i was fishing for. i shook my head as we meandered around a manhole.

"no. that's what was there. what did you see?"

he paused. "the squeaking of the wheels as the train passed," he said. i tore open a pixie stick and poured it into my mouth. "they'll have to replace the bearings soon, because that means they're wearing out." he turned to me and i grinned victoriously as he continued. "They'd have to take it to the railyard for that..."

"who fixes those? whose job is it?"

"I don't know..." he thought. "they have mechanics for that, guys who fix the trains and keep them going."

"what's his life like? that guy who fixes them?"

dad turned to me and grinned under a streetlight. "I see what you mean."

we walked back to the car and i tossed a penny in the fountain with a flick of my wrist.