October 26, 2009
When I rode in from the jousting tournament today, I had the strangest feeling that I wasn’t quite myself. Probably all the blows to the head, I figured, but what the fudge? Defeating the chartreuse knight wasn’t nearly as fun when my brain was swimming like a fish in a bowl. Calling for my faithful squire, I was rather surprised when he leaped out of his cowshed with fangs bared. Apparently, he’d become a vampire somewhere along the way. Good thing I had a broadsword and plenty of holy water on my person.
Of course, after dispatching him, I found myself back in my fighter plane, high above Nazi Germany. Bright tracer fire lit up the sky, churned from enormous guns on the ground. A buddy’s plane exploded alongside me. Poor Bud Crest! How would I tell his wives back home in Pennsyltucky? Suddenly, a flotilla of man o’ war sky monsters floated up from below, waving their mile-long tentacles. Every giant, menacing jellyfish was tattooed with a giant swastika atop their domed bodies. One of the tentacles reached up for me, shimmering in the sunlight. I could see the poisoned barbs, prickly and fatal…
Which was when I found myself in the buckboard wagon Out West, surrounded by screaming Indians. Flaming arrows flew in all directions. Missile-bearing eagles whipped through our haggard party, dropping their cargoes on top of my fellow pioneers. Heavy metal music blasted from somewhere nearby, guitars shredding as the chief of the tribe soared toward me, swinging a war club overhead. I wished I were somewhere else right away.
And I did get out of there promptly, but not necessarily to a better place. This time, I was seated at a big meeting table in the conference room at work. Someone was droning on and on about a software issue and configuration management, and I was about to fall asleep. Every time my eyes started to drift shut, I realized someone was staring at me from across the table. All I wanted to do was fall asleep for a while, but I knew that if I did, I’d get slammed. My lids flickered, my breathing deepened, I couldn’t help myself, couldn’t stop the sleep from taking me like an ocean undertow…but there they were, the eyes, all the eyes staring back at me…every pair of them as tired as mine, drifting shut just like mine…hoping for the slightest excitement to keep them awake. The kind of excitement that would come from catching someone else in the act and ratting them out to the team leader. Now this was all-out war, I tell you. See you soon.
