dream!
the flip side of reality
sunday, april 29, 2007
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saturday, april 28, 2007
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friday, april 27, 2007
how to be an inventor
Dreams about the cat, lost out at night. All for not; he's fine.
I drive by Urban Ore with a friend from Mexico. We are looking for a metal supply company and he is amazed that U.O. is so vast. He says it's like a similar place in Mexico, but that one is so expensive.
He really likes the idea of my job and is wondering what sort of schooling he'd have to get to get to be an "inventor". I told him to not worry about getting an engineering degree... that he should just start as an apprentice or intern... companies don't care about education, I told him, they care about making money, so as long as you're legal they're hire you. Big slipup-- I forgot that my friend in fact ISN'T legal and an uncomfortable silence descends on our conversation.
thursday, april 26, 2007
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shopping for stainless mesh?
wednesday, april 25, 2007
the prime minister of china calculates gravity
Wendy and I are at home and we meet a guy who has an office in a shed behind one of the cottages here. He spends a lot of time here but doesn't live here, and we rarely see him because he works hard.
Though a caucasian American, he is the "prime minister" of China! The Chinese government has employed him to also study gravity, and he spends most of his long work days using computers to solve complex gravity problems. He has a master plan for China, which is to move the entire nation. !!! I am bewildered by this, where would you move a billion people? India? Where would the Indians go? Whether he's worked out that bit or not, the first part of his plan is to gradually get the population to move from the country into the cities, where they'll be more concentrated, and less attached to the land.
This brings to mind an interesting line of philosophical thought which I don't have time to explore since I gotta get to work in ten minutes. But it has to do with various ways a nation feels like a nation. When we explain on maps, it's all about where a group of people live, and how they feel like a certain area of land belongs to them, quite separate from the unique culture and commonality of a group of people, except in a few rare cases where the culture is still totally integrated with the geography, like perhaps mountain people of Bhutan? Or island nations?
In the second part of my dream, I'm in traffic school or some other sort of legal punishment. In a group of people, facing a day of exercises and discussions, they need one volunteer to work on spreadsheets all day and organize inmate data. I quickly volunteer for that, since I'm not in the mood to be social with these people. I am more than qualified, and she grants me the task. I feel a little guilty afterward since another guy, as it turns out, wanted that job too, and Reuben is qualified as well. But it's not guilty enough to give up my fortunate position. Imagine, looking forward to spreadsheets all day!
tuesday, april 24, 2007
spineless hippies
I'm in a room, looks like my front bedroom from 3248 Casa Bonita Drive, where I lived in high school, arranging the furniture. Stereo placement gets top priority. Should we leave the room mostly empty and clean or add many fun things, like a little table in the middle, and tapestries?
I get a phone call from a woman who wants to buy a car and needs a ride to El Cajon the next day. I'm not sure how she got my number, maybe I had placed a rideshare ad of some sort on Craig's List? She tells me that she's 23 and talks for ten minutes about her life and why she needs a car etc. Could I please help her out? She has some really good leads so it'll be easy. She seems like a lovely friendly person who would be fun to drive around, but really I can't skip a day of work to spend a morning with a stranger. Besides, there seems to be this single-girl-putting-herself-out-there air and really I'm not available.
At an anti-Bush protest somewhere that Wendy went to. I seem to be watching this dream through a time window from a point after it happened, as if I'm looking back into the past. Huge crowds throng into this building, and outside are machine-gun nests with soldiers there to protect the masses. But as soon as circling government helicopters train their laser gun sights and loudspeakers on the guards, they lay down their guns and put their hands in the air, declaring that they are peaceful and don't mean to attack. Spineless hippies, the helicopter troops must be thinking, that was easy.
monday, april 23, 2007
too many puppies
I live in a house with a few others. We start off babysitting one cat (Conan, Danika's cat we house in real life), and somehow we end up with a dozen or so, due to the benevolence of one housemate. Then the word gets out, and when we think we can handle no more pets, somebody leaves (abandons) a dozen more critters on our doorstep-- half of them kittens and the other half puppies. Though unbearably cute, there is no way we can keep them.