Concerning a strange dream I had recently.

Inspirational Quote Of The Day: "I'm drinkin' hot tea bitch. Feel me." -Dwayne Michael Carter

OK, I'm doing this post even though I know nobody gives a shit about anyone else's dreams because they're impossible to relate to, owing to their being an experience only one person will have, once, ever. But whatever. Here's what happened during my 3 hour nap today. First, I had a short dream that I don't recall entirely, I only remember that it involved Michael James Spaulding and Lucas Axel Hilding Granholm. I also know what this dream was Part 1 to the Part 2 of the segment I remember well.

Part 2 begins on a snowy street in downtown Bemidji, Minnesota, in my mother's 1999 Chrysler 300M. I am riding shotgun and my friend Noah Burke is sitting in the back seat. I am not sure what we are driving around for. Conversation begins with my mother, saying "Noah, can I borrow your gun?" He immediately produces a Glock 17 from his jacket, then says "How did you know I have a gun?" My mother seizes it from him and immediately starts cursing. She is probably mad at Noah for having a gun and carrying it around. She hands the gun to me, and I accept it, feeling it in my hand and all that. It has several strange buttons on it that I've never seen before, and instead of having an internal hammer that can't be seen, it has a strange sort of dial on the top. I attribute these strange fixtures to my dreams not being good at accuracy. I wonder idly if the safety is on, then remember that Glocks have internal safeties. My mother begins driving quite erraticly, probably because of her emotional state of being mad at Noah. I decide to press one of the mysterious buttons on the gun. Neon lights all over the pistol's frame begin flashing. A warning mode of some sort, meant to say "HEY I HAVE A GUN?" Perhaps. I discern from this that it also has a laser sight.

I am whipped into a fairly thick forest. Up ahead through the forest is a strange, run-down looking house. My mother is there too. She is holding a small metal rod of some variety. I still have the gun. She informs me that the woods ahead have a fallen barbed wire fence in them, and I should avoid tripping over it. Then she moves in a diagonal fashion into the woods. Clearly she intends to move in zig-zag. It's very dark and I'm not too keen on tripping over that fence, so I decide to turn my gun's laser sight on. It doesn't provide much illumination. I notice then that my mother has moved significantly through the woods, so I start running after her, the dot of the laser sight bobbing on the ground ahead of me. I decide it's probably a good idea to learn to aim with the laser sight, because I still have no idea what we're doing. I aim the gun in front of me, while running. The dot moves wildly, but I get the idea of where to point it. Then I meet the fence. My pants get caught on it, but I don't fall. After detaching myself from the fence, I follow my mother out of the woods. We are going into this house, it seems. She takes a side or back entrance, I'm not sure, but we come to some stairs, whereupon I notice that the house looks even worse on the inside than outside. Holes in the walls, spray paint, broken glass, the usual amenities of run-down houses. It's well-lit though, a relief. My mother and I continue up the stairs, my mother brandishing the metal rod. Eventually we come to a landing on the stairs. Two very dirty, hairy men stand there. They both have trowels. I aim the gun at one of them, clearly putting the laser dot over his forehead, and instruct them to put down the trowels. They look confused at first, then slowly put the little shovels on the ground. I am surprised about how calm and authoritative I was, considering these men could have been threatening my mother with trowels, although I still have no idea what we're doing here. My mother speaks. "You are not having your party tomorrow night." One of the two men, who is balding on top with ratty hair hanging down from the back and sides of his head, a skullet, still holding his hands on the back of his head, says "There's no party tonight." My mom knows that, she's concerned about the party tomorrow night. I decide to emphasise her point by gesticulating with the gun. He consents to throwing no sort of party, and at this point our job is apparently done. I've discerned that these men are probably squatters, and that there are probably a lot more of them, considering the side of the house, perhaps enough to have a whole party.

A montage, images flashing by with great speed, of hundreds of squatters inhabiting a skyscraper, some without shirts, most balding, some skinny, some overweight. The exterior of the skyscraper reveals that it is in some city where it snows significantly, and I somehow know that it is Bemidji, even though there are presently no skyscrapers there.

We are outside the house now, about to leave, when many more squatters begin showing up. They have similarly strange appearances to the men inside, although some seem to be in costume. Two of them begin to approach my retreating mother and myself. One of the encroaching squatters is painted green, and his face has highly unconvincing zombie makeup. A strange appearance for a squatter. I don't recall what the other looked like. The faux-zombie approaches quicker, eventually getting close enough to touch me, and raises his hands. At nearly point-blank range, I shoot him four times, two in the torso, one in the heart and one in the head. He makes a sort of rapper-like "WHAT" hand motion, suggesting that the bullets don't phase him. However he seems to be growing weaker. Eventually he collapses into my arms. All the squatters are looking. I can't see my mother, and I am left wondering what she will think of this shooting. I'm not worried about the legal repercussions- HOMELESS SQUATTER ATTACKS MIDDLE-CLASS WHITE MALE, IS KILLED IN SELF-DEFENSE. But my mom is another story.

Cult of Personality

Last night, or more accurately early this morning, I had one of the strangest experiences of my entire life.

At approximately 1:50 AM I was brushing my teeth and also thinking about that song where the chorus goes "Cult of personalityyyyy." I didn't know whose song it was but I kind of wanted to listen to it, it had something of an interesting guitar riff, however I was just about to go to bed and didn't feel like going to the trouble of looking it up on Youtube and delaying my sleeping. So at about 1:55 I lay down on my bed, iPod in hand. I usually listen to music for a while before going to bed, it helps me go to sleep, music hath charm to soothe the savage breast. (Do I have a savage breast?) Anyhow, while scrolling through my library I noticed a band I didn't recognise, called Living Colour. I assumed it was just one of those artists I had one song by from a mixtape or something. I clicked on the unknown entry, and it revealed to me a song called Cult of Personality. At this point I was confused, maybe it was a different song or a remix or something. But I listened to it out of curiosity. Sure enough, it was that fucking song, the one I thought about while brushing my teeth. I had absolutely no recollection of when or how it got on my iPod. I am still almost certain I didn't put it there, or at least don't remember doing so. I immediately decided this needed further investigation.

The first hypothesis I formed was that I somehow had a mental connection to my iPod and could put songs on it by thinking about them. That would make no sense, but it would be cool. So I thought pretty hard about a different song I don't have on my iPod, Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen. I went to check but it wasn't there, so that hypothesis was defeated. My next idea was that God had something to do with this, putting some kind of Immaculate Song on my iPod, born without the original sin of me stealing it from the internet, because I needed to hear it so I could have a spiritual experience or some kind of conversion maybe. So I listened to it again for clues. The lyrics weren't particularly pertinent to my life or anything, they were just about how people get obsessed with celebrity, and I don't think I'm obsessed with any celebrities nor am I one myself. It wasn't even that good of a song. It's OK I guess, but 80s funk metal really isn't my kind of thing. Faith No More is better. So the God hypothesis was out too. This left but one explanation: Some kind of spectral manifestation. A ghost, a ghost with gay-ass taste in music. I decided today to check on Wikipedia to see if I could figure out anything about the band that would lead to a clue.

None of them are dead or anything. Most of them are still in bands. They are all black. The lead guitarist is from Britain, which explains why they use the British spelling of "colour." The album Cult of Personality is from was their debut album. It went double platinum. Good on them. Apparently they were discovered by Mick Jagger. None of this, however, explained the presence of their damn song on my iPod. I decided I need to take steps to contact one of the band members and see if they could tell me anything. Actually I just think it'd be fun to talk to someone kind of famous, but also ask them about this. Apparently Corey Glover, lead singer, still lives in New York. I looked in the white pages, turns out there are only two Corey Glovers in New York. Called one of them, who denied he was Corey Glover and I think I also woke him up. Oops. The other number was in Manhattan and I'm pretty sure he lives in Brooklyn. So then I looked up Vernon Reid, the guitarist, and I found his email. I sent him an email about this. He's got some explaining to do.