Sweet dreams are made of these...

My dreams sometimes play out like miniseries; every night all week I'll have a continuation of some thread or another, of the previous night's dream. Once at That Anonymous College I dreamed for a week straight about Satan trying to kill me in my sleep. Everynight, true to miniseries's form, was more frightenening and, dare I say, thrilling. This week, however, I've been plagued rather pleasantly, not with demons and death, but gardens. That's right; I've been having garden-themed dreams and I couldn't be more delighted. Lush green gardens, secret gardens, neatly manicured Buddhist gardens, overflowing jungly English gardens. I smell the flowers, I hear the hum of the insects, I seek refuge from the imaginary beating sun under twisting vines and stooping sunflowers. Giggly streams wind around my feet and tadpoles dart past my toes. It's fantastic. Some of the dreams have plots to fill out the scene, but what's really lovely is waking up amidst the demise of summer but blissfully, if momentarily unaware, because I awake each morning from visions of perfect, idyllic gardens, forever immune to the swirling autumn winds just beyond my window.

Hello, My Name is_______

Ok so I want to spice up my routine & I found a great way, but this only works if your job involves name tags. Be a different name every few days. Even if it's not a real name. For example, if your name tag accidentally loses letters or rearranges to form exciting new words or, if you've got the grapes, word fragments. Today I was "ie" and yesterday I was "icer." I've been Matt a few times; once I was even Department Manager, but I felt silly & took it off after twenty minutes.

#$*&@%!!!

I am so f***ing pissed off! Everytime I try to do my promised follow-up post I get f***ing booted off the f***ing internet. F***ing hours wasted. Except, I guess, writing practice for my book. And patience practice for my soul. Ok, maybe it's a blessing. Or whatever. Hmph.

Donny & Gareth doing missionary work in Kenya:
Wild Boyz meets Save the Children.

The Fun Parent

"I'm a slovenly liberal and he's a fastidious conservative."
"I smell a sit-com!"
-Family Guy
Ok, so as I was commenting on Clara's blog, I decided to make this theme a blog of my own: Wanna know the difference between a conservative and a liberal? Examine the meanings of the words themselves: liberal means generous; conservative means, well, if you wanna say stingy, I wouldn't go that far, but you get it. It's self-evident that liberality is a nicer idea than conservation. Giving things away to the poor, to the needy, to the deserving- wouldn't life be great if it were like a giant birthday party where everyone gave and no one lacked freedom, material basics, or fellowship? Yes. Yes it would be. But it's not in the notion of government, especially a minimalist government like America's, to give willy-nilly. Two reasons (at least) that govt. "charity" is a bad, impractical idea.
1) Too much overhead. Waste. You pay a dollar in taxes and by the time it's processed it's 80 cents (gotta pay the IRS!). Then it goes to Congress. There goes another 40 cents, etc etc, until it goes into paving the damned road and it's only 4 1/2 cents.
2) Taxpayers have no way to direct their "charity" money if the guvmint has the fianl say. For example, condoms in public schools.
The truth is that liberality has no place in guvmint. Charity comes from an indiviual and must go, if not directly to the beggar in the street, at least to a low-overhead group, secular or religious, who distribute your money themselves. It counts as virtue for NO ONE if you give money to the poor b/c it's raped out of your paycheck. You don't get any brownie points b/c you were forced, the guvmint don't get any brownie points cuz they the guvmint, and the poor people begin to see their welfare as a right instead of what it ought to be, charity.
More on this next post, including an explanation of my title.

We'll start my blog with a poll. If you could either fly or be invisible, which would you be? Defend your answer. Few people are romantic enough to choose flying, so, those of you who do will have a special place in my heart. No pressure though. Sure, there's no end to the practicality of being invisible, but if movies have taught me anything, it's that the people who try to have it all end up with nothing. But, to fly! That's just one thing! We've all had dreams of flapping and taking off like a bird or, like me, flapping and taking off like a helicopter, which sounds awkward, but was actually exhilarating. And people would crowd around me like -remember that 80s movie, The Boy Who Could Fly?- and they'd ask How do you do it? And, honestly, i didn't know how, except by pure will. People chased me in one dream through lush green fields and my feet couldn't carry me any further, so, as I approached a cliff, I just... flew. And I could always fly as long as I could hold my breath and believe in myself (oh man I wanted to avoid saying that, but I can't help my dreams). Anyway, that light-headed feeling as you ascend and the buoyancy of the air, invisible but holding you up, keeping you from death and at the same time giving you the most ecstatic happiness you've ever felt... I wouldn't trade that for all the cheating you can get away with if invisibile. And when you can fly, you have a kind of freedom and independence I can literally only dream about.