The Desert Mermaid

Aaagh. Never fall asleep just after reading one of Slacktivist's Left Behind posts. I was having weird Nicolae Carpathia dreams all night.

Props to my subconscious, though, for casting Tommy Wiseau in the role of Carpathia. It's truly genius casting. Suddenly the weirdass inflection and tone for Carpathia's dialogue makes perfect sense.

Well, I want to entertain y'all with my adventures, but frankly so far convalescence has been pretty boring, unless you count the constant stream of bloodcurdling nightmares whenever I do manage to fall asleep. Not sure if that's still leftover anesthetic, the painkillers, some effect of The Healing Process, or just my good old Fukitol dreams ramping it up to 11, but it's making sleep difficult.* The most exciting things to happen while I've been awake are that a fruit finally started forming on my Westward, Ho! pumpkin vine and I managed to put together some irregular verbs for my OGYAFE conlang.

ME: *while French music plays over dinner* I feel bad for saying this, but I really find French aesthetically displeasing.
MOM: I did get that vibe from you.
ME: But French isn't all bad! It gave me a great idea to use in a conlang!
MOM: And what is that?
ME: It will mean nothing to you.
MOM: Try me.
ME: I've decided to cliticize the pronouns in the daughter language!
MOM: ... That does, in fact, mean nothing to me at all.

Other than that it's been video games, audio books, and walking around the garden. When I feel really energetic I'll work on the doll display. I even missed the wildly successful launch of Salt Lake Comic Con--not that this is a real loss to me, as the very idea of a con stresses me out at the best of times.** So life's not very exciting, but then, I guess that's the whole idea.


*And I could do without the nightmares' intensely frustrating relatives, the anxiety dreams where Something Unpleasant has happened--anything from all my dolls falling into gross swampwater to car crashes to accidental murder--and I am thinking, "Wait, this can't be happening! It's got to be a dream!" and then I realize that if it's a dream then I can control it and so I keep trying to turn back time or teleport away from the mess or magic things better and it doesn't work and I'm like "Well, shit, maybe it's NOT a dream!" and I am completely bummed out because that means everything is RUINED.

**My sister was after me to go because they somehow convinced William Fucking Shatner to make an appearance and I should say hi. This is not a good enough reason for me. William Fucking Shatner is like the Joker. He is an awesome character, but I really want him to stay inside the TV, thanks all the same.

Last night's dream was set in a spooky (but surprisingly well-lit) hotel in the snowy woods, where I was discussing the production of a reality show about fancy restaurants with a committee comprising Penn & Teller and the Doobie Brothers.

I defy anyone to come up with a weirder combination than that.

I also hate those nights where you THINK you're lying there awake all night, but it turns out you were asleep.

At least, I am pretty sure that I was only dreaming I was awake. Either that, or there sure were a lot of Muppets in my room last night.

Had a bunch of terrifying nightmares last night. Most of ’em were your standard Watchin’ Too Many Horror Movies types, like the big scary spaceship full of mutant monsters and spacesuits doing like they did in that Doctor Who episode with the man-eating shadows, and also for some reason a bear. Not, like, a mutant bear, either—just your basic run-of-the-mill bear. At least he was on our side.

Anyway, that was rough, but at least we had both Hikaru Sulu and Han Solo there to work out the mess. The really scary dream was the one that was basically Dawn of the Dead, only instead of a shopping mall, it was the Liberry, and instead of zombies, it was crabby patrons who REALLY HAD TO USE THE COMPUTER. The whole dream was spent running to an estimated eight thousand ports of entry to try to lock them, screaming “We’re CLOSED, motherfuckers!”, and threatening to call the police while they kept wedging their feet in the doors and chanting “GAMES. GAAAAAMES.” I found myself wondering if I’d ever see my family again.

The best horror stories are those that could actually happen, after all.


(Incidentally, I made a discovery about that a few weeks ago: as soon as a patron comes up and bitches that the First-Come, First-Served policy for computer use should change to Grownups Get First Bid Because They Are Important, I bristle. Yeah, I make endless fun of the kids who come in to use their two daily computer turns for a round of Lego Dudes Wandering Around, or Pin The Dresses On The Sparkleponies, or other such items of business, but hey, it’s important to them. Plus, kids have homework sometimes—and grownups are just as guilty of so-called “timewasting.” Don’t knock the noisy little Flash-playing hard-swearing twerps.)

I'll say one thing for being sick: it leads to some SPECTACULAR dreams. Crazy Dream Europe has GREAT gift shops, amazing nonEuclidean scenery, and of course car chases with the Joker.

Also, the Manos: The Hands of Fate MST is excellent for when you're too sick to think but don't want to sleep all 24 hours. It's like soothing nature sounds. Soothing, badly dubbed, sleazy nature sounds.

– The sewing machine is the broke, which leaves Daja with half a winter shirt and no jammies. Since it’s Pajama Time here at the doll display,* this is a bit of a bummer. At least she gets to hang out with Tris, who also has no pajamas yet. Maybe I can say they’re off at some late night movie for some sisterly bonding time. At least Daja has a new pair of pants, though!

– Yesterday , for some reason, I was tremendously out of sorts at work. In one case this became a literal thing, since I sorted half a cartful of DVDs and then went off to help another person check stuff in. When I got back to the cart I found my manager had unsorted it in order to find something. So I had to re-sort it, then shelve DVDs, which I really hate because my cartful of DVDs tends to collect browsing patrons like seagulls around a garbage barge. I politely tell them they can look at the DVDs after I shelve them because otherwise I get buried, so they wind up hovering around behind me watching me shelve. It’s obnoxious as hell.

Also, while I was doing that the same manager went and shelved the fiction cart I had queued up. I was looking forward to doing the fiction. Nobody ever chases me around to browse that cart. It only made me poutier.

– I think I managed to give myself cellulitis in my heel—there’s a knob on it like a giant callus, but it hurts like when you poke one of those deep zits when I stand on it. My best guess is I got too excited while trimming calluses.

I’ve been walking on tiptoes for two days when I’m barefoot; for some reason my shoes distribute the weight so it’s not on the thing. According to WebMD, I am going to die a horrible death alone and afraid, secure in the knowledge that nobody loves me, unless I go see a doctor YESTERDAY JEEZUS CHRIST WHY AM I STILL AT THE COMPUTER WASTING PRECIOUS SECONDS.

It already feels better, though, so perhaps, just perhaps, WebMD is exaggerating just slightly. Imagine that.

– I had a whole mess of crazy dreams and night sweats last night, even though I took my Fukitol. Mostly they were the usual fare, although there was also some dude called “Gary” who kept popping up through the dreams and delivering non-sequiturs, to which I replied “Shut up, Gary” and went back to whatever I was doing.

– One of the dreams involved shopping for art supplies, which I am going to do because I got me a paycheck, but these art supplies were all ridiculously expensive. Like, a length of copper jewelry wire was $63,485. Seems I’ve added to my repertoire of Dreams With Really Obvious Meanings.

– Goddamn, y'all, Peet's 2009 Holiday Breakfast Blend is one terrific tea. I am going to make myself a strong cup and give my hands a break to go read for a while. Perhaps later when my hands are less fatiguey and spongey from typing up Doctors!, I will tell you about these books, because they're quite good!.


*It was also Pajama Time last summer for a little while, but that was a fluke; late January is official Pajama Time.

Last night's dream was that I was the White House press secretary, and I had to stand up before a group of reporters and deny rumors that Michelle Obama dons a cape and unitard and fights crime all night.

Naturally, nobody believed me.

You know, I was just considering mentioning a dream I had a couple of days ago, when XKCD comes out with this.

It’s pretty much all you need to see to get where I was coming from, anyway.

So, as of the last few days, I am totally off the Fukitol for now!

That’s right. I am no longer taking it at all. And ye gods, is it pissed. I just had another spectacular succession of dreams last night—back-to-school dreams, driving dreams, space travel, and everyone’s favorite recurring dream motif, the Joker.

Only this time, he wasn’t getting control of things he should never get control of.* No, tonight it was all about him wondering what to get Batman for his birthday.** After a long time spent agonizing, it finally occurred to him that what Batman really wants is Gotham’s criminals off the streets—so, ever-helpful, the Joker busted into the middle of one of Two-Face’s bank jobs, foiled it, trussed Harv up, gift-wrapped him, and stuffed him into the back of the Jokermobile. He wanted to deliver him to Batman’s front porch, but he didn’t actually know where that was, so instead he drove his somewhat surly present (“Sorry, Harv”) up to some random boys’ prep school and started indiscriminately slaughtering everyone there to get Batman’s attention.

Unfortunately, the dream segued into some boring new School Anxiety sequence before Batman could show up, so I never found out what happened. But I have to admit, I’m sorta intrigued now. If only my subconscious knew how to end stories, this would have been one of the coolest dreams ever.

And yes, feel free to come up with an ending if you want.


*It’s gotten so we’ve started a list.  To which we need to add "tattoo ink manufacturers."  That was not a good day for the redshirts in my head.

**Not actually as farfetched as it sounds if you take into account my theory that the Joker actually considers Bats his best friend. Come on, it makes sense for the way he talks about Bats, how he's always trying to play with him to the point where he drops all his other supervillain pals, and how he does give him presents at Christmas. More farfetched, however, is the idea that he’d know when Bats’ birthday is. Perhaps I was mistaken and it was, like, the anniversary of the time Batman scared him into that big vat of Chemicals. WHICH HE DOES IN FACT CELEBRATE.