I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been sick, but I’ve been having some weird goddamn dreams lately. I haven’t had a fever, nor have I huffed any industrial solvents, but my latest adventures in the Dreamtime have been pretty odd. I have singled out two as particularly bizarre.

In the first dream, I was owner/manager of some kind of privately held fire station in Mexico. Why Mexico, and how did I know it was in Mexico? I don’t know. There was a swell old-timey fire engine in the garage, and the station itself was gaily painted, and perched right above a shimmering beachfront. It seemed very pleasant. The next thing I knew, I was walking from the station onto a vacant lot in the middle of a bustling city, marveling at a parade of freaks who were also walking on to the vacant lot. Men in diapers, people dressed as if for some kind of gothic Mardi Gras, and other completely deviant modes of dress that I cannot now recall. While I goggled at them, an ornate green double-decker bus drove up onto the lot, driven by an old, gray man wearing an old-fashioned train conductor’s cap (I suppose his hat wasn’t out of place, given the vehicle he was driving).

True to the labile nature of dreams , I was suddenly in a room inside the bus, watching a sales pitch for books of some sort, conducted by someone I once knew in high school and haven’t seen for years. To my right, Ron Jeremy sat next to me, making cynical quips about some unremembered topic, which I found highly amusing, though I can’t recollect any of them. Ron’s apparently a pretty funny guy, even if it is disturbing, in retrospect, to sit next to a shirtless Hedgehog at a book fair. I suppose I might have learned more from the Porn King if my alarm hadn’t woken me up before I could ask him anything.

I began the following night’s dream by sitting at a café table with a companion who was, according to the curious "pre-established backstory" such dreams often have, a friend of mine, though I’m sure I’d never seen him before or since. We were having a conversation of some forbidden, political sort that was overheard, much to the anger of local ZANU-PF thugs, and they started chasing us through fields and ditches. As is the way with such dreams, I realized I was nearly naked in the bargain. I hate that. Especially when I don’t have any shoes on. That really pisses me off.

So anyway, I’m unshod, and chased by a small mob of angry Zimbabweans, and decide to hide out above a circular stairway in a round tower constructed of terra cotta and stucco, in the Spanish style. Things seemed good, and the goons didn’t find me, but then, to my dismay, a policewoman started up the stairs. I held my breath as she walked beneath me, unawares. It was then that I realized I was holding what I would describe as a mass of fettucine alfredo in my hands. Even in my dream, I asked myself, "what the hell?"

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to hold onto a wad of cooked noodles, much less noodles covered in a savory cheese sauce, but it ain’t easy, friend, let me tell you. Despite my best efforts, I dropped some of the accursed noodles right onto the cop.

The red-haired, good-looking cop. I normally have a marked distaste for redheads, and have no earthly idea what sinister plan the ZANU-PF hatches by employing white women as police officers, but said officers are apparently possessed of a marked lenity, so I followed her smiling face up the tower stairs into the shower. I still bore the telltale pasta in my hands, but just as the adventure was about to blossom into a lascivious frisson, my kids ran into the room and started jumping on the bed.

Damn kids.