I finally remembered a dream, well, nightmare

I took a brief nap the other day. I despertaly needed some rest and with it came a dream. A nightmare.

A squirrel laid on its back, gasping for air. Its last sounds a cross between crying and screeching; wheezing and screaming; dying and pleading.

Its typical chuckling sound was replaced by something other. Colder. Direr.

Its arms seemed elongated, almost grasping and clawing at its furry chest. The bushy tail obscured its legs. A tangle of fur and imagined bone.

Did I kill it? Was it hurt before I saw that image? Perhaps it fell from the tallest of trees, miscalculating a leap, or it slipped from a wire on a nearby telephone pole.

Blood was caked amid its short hairy belly. A sliver of light reflected as a pinpoint globe of pure white dotted the corners of its black eyes.

Was I supposed to kill it? Relieve it of its misery?

In an ultimate act of ignorance, I simply woke up. It still haunts me.

Ick, unadulterated capitalism and bugs

When it comes to consistency in updating this here blog, I think the adjective "spotty" best describes any sort of new entry I may make to a collection of my intermittent musings. Accept my apology, please. And leave comments (also please).

I'll post a drawing sometime next week, I promise. But let's just start with something that happened to me last night: I took a visit to Longwood Gardens in Kennet Square, Pennsylvania with my girlfriend. Did you know that a plant called dumbcane makes the ideal gift to give disliked and/or over-explanative coworkers? I mean, seriously, it makes a much better Mentha plant to create a high-quality Mojito with than mere mint. The conservatory and the topiaries were definite high points even though the word topiary does not automatically equate to giraffe and chimpanzee shaped shrubbery. That’s in ideal world, I guess.

Since I am reading George Ritzer’s McDonaldization of Society, it became my conversational safety net partly because its so interesting to think about how we, as a society, have become so undeniably “McDonaldized” (which is something that builds upon Weber’s concepts defining bureaucracy) not to mention the many little trivial bits of information such as the Ikea catalog being purported to be the world’s 2nd most published work behind the Bible. Or the story about Colonel Sander’s cussin’ up a storm in reference to what ultimately became of his wife’s once amazing recipe for gravy after he sold his restaurant to the god franchise (we all remember the “special blend of 11 herbs and spices” claim to fame that was a mouth-watering ad pitch of yesteryear. I wonder how amazing it tasted before it was watered down to make its production more efficient). The book has surpassed “Ed McMahon’s Barside Companion” as my most interesting bibliothecal purchase. Ever.

So afterwards, we took a trip to some “McDonaldized” shops to buy her cat a new water fountain. As we walked in the parking lot back to my car (sometime around 8 in the evening), what had to be the world’s largest flying insect I have yet to encounter unexpectedly attacked me. I felt almost like Tippi Hedron in "Birds" since it made a beeline to my chest and stayed there almost as if it were clinging on for dear life. Thank god it wasn’t my hair since it’d be hard to look impressive after screaming like a circa late 80’s teenage girl at a New Kids on the Block concert. Seriously, if it flew in my hair I would have screamed (high pitched and everything). That or cry.

My girlfriend was about to hit me with the item she had just bought (pure instinct) in an effort to shoo it away but thankfully she did not because it would have surely injured me more than the entire shock of being hit with a bug the size of Volkswagen.

And, no exaggeration, that body-building beetle was a big'un (I have no idea what it actually was, I just liked the alliterative effect just now). All I heard was the sound of a crumpling paper bag (its wings were that solid) right before it landed on me. In fact, my gut response was to say “What the fuck” and spin around to see who threw a discarded paper grocery bag at me. I had only noticed it peripherally before it decided to use my chest as a landing pad. My girlfriend had to use her hands to get it off since my swiping at it was about as ineffectual as George Bush at a MENSA meeting. For dear life it clung on, I tells ya. For dear life.

It took a few frenetic swipes to get rid of it, but once it left, we ran back to the car quickly and in stooped manner (so as not to invite more unforeseen insect attacks). Any lessons? Well, don’t wear shoes that are too tight or make fun of the morbidly obese. These illustrative examples have nothing to do with the aforementioned bug attacks but they are lessons nonetheless.