No — not the camera!!

I am taking a picture of my grandmother and noticing that the autofocus is being a little bitchy. So I switch to manual and zoom in and try to focus on her face. But it still looks blurry and weird. As soon as I press the shutter, I hear this sickening metallic pop — like a spring has exploded inside a small tin can — and I look down to see that my beloved camera has blown out like a popcorn bag — its sides bulging and revealing the parts inside that should stay hidden.

I wince and cradle the thing to the ground, taking special care — and instructing everyone around me eager to get all grabby with the trainwreck of a camera — to not touch the sensor, as if it's even remotely salvageable.

The sight of my camera in such a state launches me into guilty panic mode. Panic because I LOVE THIS CAMERA and guilt because I feel like I probably did something stupid to cause its implosion. My dad is there and, being the one who financed the thing to begin with, he instantly (and this is not what Real World Dad would have done) gets gruff and makes it clear that I'm on my own when it comes to paying for the repairs.

My mind spins as I realize there is no way I can afford a new camera or even the repairs on this one (as if it can be repaired). Phil and I run around some asphalt parking lot between strip-mall stores and restaurants, looking for my car so we can track down the paperwork that came with the camera. I realize with a sick feeling in my gut that I never filled out the warranty card. So I run around with a bleak vision of the apocalypse in my head. I flit past a table of sorority girls in some restaurant and dump water on them. And again when I pass back by. One of them follows me and pours water on me. So I respond (sillily) by tossing my glass of red wine on her velour sweatsuit-clad ass.

None of those things brought my camera back, though. Only forcing myself to wake up ended my terror.

I have a new job.
When people ask me what I do, I tell him, "I'm a specter into other people's lives...kind of like Jennifer Love Hewitt on The Ghost Whisperer."
"I'll be home for Christmas when they pay for some goddamn vacay time," I say, rather blase.
My first job assignment is travelling back into the 1960s and reclaiming the fists of justice for a 5-year-old who was urinated upon by his physical education teacher.
"Honey, what he did to you was wrong. And I'm going to right that wrong."
I can't recall what I did to exact justice. It probably involved a golden shower of some sort.

I'm showering with the cute hetero intern from Rolling Stone. His pubes are splendid. They're all bushy tailed and neatly plucked, his adorable eyebrows arching upward as I soap my balls. The downside is that the shower is emitting toxic chemicals and we're soon bespotted in chemical burns. Our skin gradually turns into a bloody landscape of gaping holes and pockmarked grayish pus. We look like rejects from a Cesar Romero pic.
"See what happens when you have the homosex," my Repub aunt says, "your pecker nearly burns off for Jesus."

I'm interviewing George W. Bush for Satan's Journal. But upon hearing that it's a mag for fags and that the interviewer plans to milk his balls, porkpie isn't having any of it.
"Well, it's not like you're immune to false pretenses. Your entire career has been based on false pretenses," I mutter to myself in reference to porkpie.
Even though I'm interviewing George Bush for Satan's Journal, I'm in the offices of Pus Weekly. And the Secret Service isn't amused that I claimed press cred with Christianity Today, either.
"Shitballs," I tell the Secret Service agent, "you could've tapped my ass long ago, but instead, you just assumed I wrote for Christianity Today. What kind of bullshit is that?"
My immediate boss at Pus keeps making flirty glances at the Secret Service agent, too. This unravels me.
"Nina, he's a Republican! Curb your vaginal impulses," I tell her.