Amen, the thunderbolt in the dark void....

[Cacophony]

Wow. Those apocalyptic dreams are always terrifyingly sorrowful. Yeah... something always seems to go wrong at the end of the world. Speaking of the end of the world, here's a dream I had last night: I'm in some sort of department store. You know, the kind equipped with hideously fashionable clothing of all kinds. I'm working there and looking through some garments hanging on a display rack. I notice there are miniature black holes in the tags. I take a closer look and see that there are definitely black holes there. If I put my finger close enough to touch it, I am sure that I will be sucked into a vortex of nothingness. I go to the back of the store where, apparently all of us workers live. There are beds and showers, except the decor is very dungeon-esque. I get a phone call from a man who says he's from Alabama and I need to meet with him right away. I leave immediately and meet him on a crowded street. I'd never seen him before, however I immediately know who he is. He's very tall, maybe 25 years old and is wearing a cowboy hat. "Yeah, I love Alabama," he starts out, "It's a good place to get away from everything, you know?" "Sure," I say. "Well, you know the Alabama I speak of, correct?" I give him a confused look. "Here," he begins again, "let's get in my car and I'll show you." We get into a sleek looking convertible and immediately take off. The car rises off the ground and soon we are rocketing through the solar system. Apparently there's a planet named Alabama. We land on a dusty looking road. There are quaint old-timey houses scattered about here and there. We approach a very grand looking one with a white picket fence. Everyone walks out of their houses at immediately the same moment to check their mail. Everyone is very upset because the government has sent them letters that says they owe money. Apparently their government knew I would be there. Instead of sending me a bill I got a giant back of money. Confused, I begin taking handfuls of the money and scattering it about all over the streets. Little children begin flocking to the ground and grabbing up the money that I am dropping. I empty the last of it onto the ground, glad to be rid of it. I turn and go back towards the house. An older woman greets me and my Alabamian friend (In other news, Alabamian is a real word, spell checker doesn't underline it). I need to get a password to enter the house. I call up my friend T and ask him for his password which he begrudgingly gives to me after a while of hounding him for it (the password escapes me). We went upstairs and there was this very beautiful girl who put her arms around the Alabamian guy. He shrugged away from her and she looked as if she were going to burst into tears. "This is your first time away from Earth?" He asks me, amused. "Yeah," I reply. "Well, let me show you this other place." "Okay." So again, we take off in his car down this highway of flying cars. This planet doesn't seem to be round. It's completely flat, like a disc and you can just drive right off the edge of it. We go to this place on this other planet by the ocean. I can fly on this planet. We watch as all of the waste from the universe gets compacted into little squares and repackaged into I-don't-know-what. I remember hovering around this chain linked fence trying to figure out what was going on down there. I think I woke up around here.

[Baron Samedi]

WOW! So epic! I want to go to Alabama! That dude sounds kind of like a prick though...

[Cacophony]

I was with these two kids I used to hang out with when I was in high school. B and N. B said to me, "Chloe we should like totally get matching tattoo's." "Yeah," N said, "I'm a tattoo artist now. Just pick out what you want and I'll put it on you." "I have to think about it," I told them... secretly deciding that I didn't want a tattoo but would try to be nice. The next thing I know I'm by myself in my room getting up out of bed. I looked at my right arm and there's this horribly huge tattoo spanning from my neck to my wrist. It's of this huge fat dude having sex with this really huge woman. It's a cartoon caricature in black ink outline. "Oh my god!" I started screaming and freaking out. I paced around my room getting really upset that this was going to be on my arm for the rest of my life. Finally, I came to the conclusion that I should go visit my tattoo artist because he would know what to do. I go over to the tattoo shop and he is there. I run to him and say, "Look what happened to me! Can you help?" "Goodness," he said in his thick swedish accent, "I think we can fix it. I'll have to do completely new sleeves. We should figure out what to do." "Thanks so much," I said. "Alright so what I want to do is make you radioactive. I mean, I want to tattoo yourself onto your arm of you as a radioactive woman fighting the humans." "Oh," I said, "but I don't really want to have a tattoo on me that doesn't hold a lot of meaning - you know? I mean, I don't feel very radioactive and I've never been radioactive before." "Well, you know a lot of people these days are radioactive. Even I am. Here, let's take a little trip together and maybe you'll find that it's the perfect tattoo for you." So we ended up driving to New York. The traffic was so bad that people were getting out of their cars and killing themselves. Seriously. We get to this log cabin place... All of these zombies kept filing out of these doors and we kept having to fight them off. Apparently radioactive is slang for Vampire.

[Baron Samedi]

Oh my god. That is so insane! I love it! I am just speechless.

[Cacophony]

Er, I had a dream that I became lucid in. I was at work and realized I was lucid and decided it was my chance to completely trash the place. I also kind of burned it to the ground for good measure. I did a lot of reality checks to ensure that I was actually dreaming. As I was walking away from my burning work place a man approached me and offered me a job at McDonalds. I was semi-lucid at this point but still really involved in the current dream. I decided I would take the job just to get the employees to revolt. McDonalds was like... this dungeon place. It was really creepy. I got everyone to quit and got the boss put in jail for malpractice after he tried to lock me in the basement for getting the employees to riot in the streets.

[Baron Samedi]

That is badass. I worked at McDonald's for 11 months. It was pure shite. I worked at Wal-Mart also when I was desperate for work. I think they fired me for saying we should unionize. I think someone ratted on me. Later on, for my sister's sweet 16, she asked me to think of something fun for her friends to do on her birthday. I gave her the idea of a video scavenger hunt. One of the tasks was to get a Wal-mart employee to say, "Wal-Mart is The Temple of Evil," on camera. All three teams acheived this task. I have to find some of your lucid dreams. They must be amazing.

[Cacophony]

There is this guy who won't stop following me around. I'm walking around town and he keeps singing to me and chattering up a storm. He also smells really horrible. As we pass people they keep plugging their noses and telling him to take a shower. He hands me a cd that he recorded for me. I see two of my friends, M and D. I make a dash and dive into their car. We're all relieved and laugh at the cd and throw it out the window. I have this random though that we should go to San Jose to see fireworks. I find a hotel room on the internet that is 35 dollars a night with a perfect view of the fireworks. We are all excited and take off to San Jose. We get to San Jose and I realize that I'm really thirsty. I tell them to go ahead without me and I was going to find a store and get something to drink. I found a store but it wasn't like a normal store. It was massive, there were rows after rows upon rows beneath rows inevitably following some more rows of the randomest items imaginable. There were very strange food items but I hadn't spotted a single drink. I kept getting side tracked and would stop to pick something up. Most of the things were written in what I perceived to be japanese or chinese, but were closer to hieroglyphics. I found a banana drink and went back outside. I was in a huge green field. D was with me and was chatting away about how the dog liked to follow him when he was driving. So when we were driving to San Jose the dog would tail behind, but it's important to make an extra effort to let it know when you're getting off on an exit because dogs aren't that smart and might not notice. I was really confused by this and told him that dogs should never go on the freeway by themselves. There was a huge bell and a star spinning like in... Mario. Okay okay, so this part of my dream I ran around collecting shine sprites like in Mario. The difference here is that my dream was way cooler than the game because it was very vivid and realistic and didn't come in crappy 3d graphics. After a while we found this group of students taking a class from... my grandma. She was teaching everyone how to garden. I picked up a hose and began watering these dead flowers. As soon as I put water on them they began to rise up and come back to life. They were beautiful vibrant shades of red and purple. I began walking around the garden and realized that there were computer screens in the ground. Just the screens, embedded in the soil. some of the screens held emails from lovers, others strange encrypted messages that I could not decipher. We were right next to the ocean, but there wasn't a whole lot of beach to speak of. It was beautiful and sunny. The grass was vibrant and green and I was surrounded by the most beautiful, surrealist flowers - something Dali would have painted had he been in the best mood of his life. A young asian boy ran up to me and grabbed my arm. He started pulling me towards the ocean. Everyone in the class was following us and it seems like hundreds had joined. A city misted into view and descended from the clouds. Steps appeared from the cliffs to the city and soon the ocean and beautiful green landscape had completely disolved behind me. The boy started yelling "strike, strike, strike!" And everyone behind me started chanting, "strike, strike, strike!" And then people began piling out of the shops and shouting, "strike, strike, strike!" "What are we striking against?" I was yelling. "Government," someone yelled, "we demand freedom!" 'I was pretty happy with this answer and joined in their chanting cries. Someone said something that made me laugh. He called some random guy on the street who was wearing a purple shirt, "Gurglepletz." In my laughter all the people around me disappeared. The angry mob behind me was gone and now there were maybe three or four bystanders staring at me curiously. I surveyed my surroundings for a moment. The ground beneath me was cobblestone and everyone looked to be dressed from the 1600's. I wandered into a store. It was the same store that I had been in before back in San Jose. There was a man behind a counter who was desperately trying to sell me something. He was making me smell this incense. I told him it smelled wonderful but I did not want it. "Oh yeah?" he said. "Yeah," I replied. "Wait 'til you see this!" He said with a huge grin. It was at this time that the man began fishing out huge metal contraptions that he fastened around his waist. They were metal swan wings that wrapped around your body that you could fit with thousands of incense sticks. "Now," he began, "there won't even be more abundant incense than the holidays!" At this point a girl came up to the counter attempting to buy a pair of my pants. They were some pants that were obviously mine because of where they were ripped in places and the paint that was covering them, paint that I had painted on them. "Sorry," the man said, "the computer says that your credit card is being used in Iowa and can't be used here. I would call your bank." "Iowa?! She yelled, "I've never even been to Iowa." I grabbed my pants and put them in my back pocket before hastily exiting the store. That's where things get blurry. I never did get to see those fire works.