Back to England

I'm in a rickety cottage in the English countryside, marveling at how small the rooms are and how they have such different knick-knacks from those you'd find in an American house. The bedrooms contain no people (people seem to be gathered in the common areas of the house), but I sneak through them quietly, opening cabinets and peering at souvenirs on shelves. I note that everyone has a tiny black and white television in his bedroom (I seem to be in the house inhabited by a group of males), and one guy even has a collection of these weird small discs that play music in these tiny plastic music players. I kind of remember something like this back in the states several years ago, but it never really caught on.

A truck rumbles by on the dusty road just outside the window and I think to myself, I wonder if I lived here, if the thin walls would drive me crazy.

Back in the living room, Phil is there with a group of guys I don't know — presumably the people who live in the house. They don't seem British, but perhaps like American ex-pats. I say something to one of them and he insults me and laughs. I defend myself weakly.

Then we're in Phil's crappy car driving on a grassy hillside. The boys are talking about a car sale coming up, and how they're going to check it out. It finally sinks in that I am living in a whole new country now, and not just a whole new country, but a whole new universe.

The operation

I am in a hospital, alone but surrounded by familiar people, and I am there to have an operation to fix ... something. I keep wondering why my parents or friends or someone isn't there with me. I'm called back but leave my bag in the front room, and have to request it once I get to the back waiting area. The nurses are skeptical that the bag is mine. They request ID with my name on it to match with any ID in the bag. They go to retrieve the bag but take so long that I suspect something bigger is happening.

I amuse myself by farting around in the back waiting area, where it's seemingly empty. On a counter nearby is a giant tub of multi-colored pills of all shapes and sizes, some as big as those nasty orange marshmallow peanut-shaped things my grandmother used to eat all the time. I chuckle to myself that I will be taking the bucket home with me after the surgery. In an instant I am trying to take a photo of the pill bucket for my daily picture. I'm worried that I'll get in trouble for photographing the giant, unprotected bucket of painkillers.

The the paparazzi show up. There are maybe eight of them, including a blonde reporter with a microphone and a dude with a giant light he sticks in my face. And big cameras they shove toward me. I sit down, sure that they're trying to humiliate me, and put my head down as far as possible, taking care to not speak at all. If I don't say anything, they can't use but the most brief clip on the news or whatever they're planning to use the footage for.

It takes a while and some creative footwork, but I finally evade them with the help of some burly dancing men who are apparently starring in an impromptu musical all around me. They gather in droves around the back entrance to the clinic and, with coordinated creative flourishes, erect a big sign over the door that says "Blogger Entrance" to distract the media into thinking that's where I'll be heading. I am grateful for their assistance, but still wondering what the fuck is taking so long with my upcoming surgery. I just want to get it over with.

There's a bit more, but it would be unwise to post it here.

Hungry Like New York

I'm in a huge house with several women, including New York/Tiffany from Flavor of Love. We're being filmed and it's obviously for a reality show but I don't know if it is indeed FoL or not. It's very stormy, early morning. New York comes in, wearing a Gucci-logo printed raincoat and swearing a lot about how we'd better not tell anyone that she's coming home drunk in the wee hours. She shoves me on her way to her bedroom. There are injured animals everywhere. I'm trying to follow a cat whose right front paw is bleeding, and I get distracted by Brandon and Luke, who are in the kitchen trying to make me breakfast. I start helping them. We're gathering ingredients, and we hear a low growl. An enormous, slinking black wolf is in the kitchen with us. We all jump up on the counters. The wolf is trying to jump up (why can't he?) and has his front paws on the counter in front of me. I try to punch his face but I'm afraid I'll fall, so I have Brandon hold on to one of my hands while I try to punch with the other, which doesn't work. Luke jumps off the counter and onto the wolf. He grasps the wolf's head and pulls its jaw all the way back, breaking it. Suddenly Luke has a gun and he shoots the suffering wolf as I wake up. I'm so disturbed by the jaw-breaking scene that I wake up crying.

Ummm, yeah

I'm walking through a biodome ruled by penguins. I have to make water, so I find a restroom. I'm comfortably snug in my little stall until a penguin attempts to stick its head under the divider and spy on me while I pee.