Watson and I have just returned from the pet store. Sometimes it seems I am only working to supply my dog habit. I picked up about 40 dollars worth of chew bones. It seems like a lot, but when I leave for work he's certain to chew up $40 worth of something, so I prefer springing for the dog bones. His most expensive chew toy to date has been my Nintendo DS. So in that outlook, I'm actually making money here.

This morning as I lay dreaming, I could swear I woke up to the sound and smell of the ocean. Perhaps an errant seagull had struck my window and flown away before I got my wits about me. But that explanation would just raise a slew of further questions.

I finished reading Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's a rollicking good time and is amazingly offensive towards Africans, women, and gorillas. The French receive some glowing praise.

Burroughs' views are fascinating to me. This is Racism with a capital R, and yet it is so different from the discrimination I observe today. While ignorant and offensive certainly, the stereotyping is almost devoid of malice. It's just the way he understands the world and is almost to be expected when people were so...far away from each other, I suppose. Today I imagine thinking abstractly is something of a given. The Gordian Knot is my preferred example for distinguishing kinds of thinking. There's a massive knot in the city of Gordium. Nobody can untie it. Alexander the Great comes by and just slices the thing in half. For the win.

So I think I can understand why these views were so tenacious at the time. What worries me now as I grow up is that we don't have that excuse anymore. People can learn about other cultures and beliefs and political systems without great effort. But they don't.

Something practical I learned from Tarzan: lassoing my prey. Tarzan was fond of climbing above his quarry and dropping a rope down over its neck. Then he would jump down and stab it or wrestle it or both. In my case I was attempting to bring in a frightened little dog from the exercise yard at work. Small dogs are tricky. They are extremely likely to bite out of fear. Being bitten by them is not pleasant and the injury often superficial, but that isn't the reason I try to be careful. My concern is that following a dog bite, any dog bite, certain protocol must be followed according to Arizona law. It usually doesn't end well for the dog.

This little dog was snarling and lunging as I approached it. I knew the dog; I had carried it out to the exercise yard in the first place. She had only been in the shelter a day and was still nervous about the whole thing. Having been outside for a bit, I think she developed a taste for it.

When she saw that her ferocious display was not causing me to run away in terror, she took the initiative and ran. She couldn't go far; it was a small side yard. There was an electrical utility meter, a waist-high faded green metal box, on a square of concrete next to the chain link fence. My little dog had wedged herself in the right angle formed between the fence and the box. In her little foxhole she could see me if I approached from either side. I considered rushing her, but in that narrow space her 15 pounds and four legs gave her the advantage over my 220 pounds of biped.

The dust kicked up from our merry chase glowed fiery red in the setting sunlight. I pondered my next approach as the dust settled lazily around me. The thin coat of sweat on my face felt gritty. The traffic noises of weary commuters almost drowned out the low growl from behind the utility box. I grinned. This was my concrete jungle.

I made a loop in the thin black nylon leash and I crawled onto the utility box. I peeked over the edge. The little white dog was growling fiercely at the spot she had last seen me. The very spot where I now wasn't. I took a moment to feel very clever. I dropped the loop neatly around her neck. The poor dog was utterly confused and it was a few seconds before she looked up and saw me grinning down at her. Like most people, she was not pleased.

I hopped down and gently tugged her out into the open. She squirmed and snapped. When this failed she became intent on gnawing through the leash. I picked her up, cradled her in my arms, and carried her inside.

When I was visiting Machu Picchu I wandered off from the tour group and found three small American-suburb style houses with no roofs. They were furnished with some simple furniture, but no beds. I told the guide but I never found that spot again.

That's a lie. I have never been to Machu Picchu. It was just a dream; how I knew it was Machu Picchu I do know. It was only when I looked up some pictures did I discover that the waking world's Machu Picchu does indeed have many ancient domiciles without roofs. (Rooves? Like hoof and hooves? Probably not, but why not?)

It seems I know much more about the world when I'm asleep than I do when I'm awake.

Cheebus, it's almost nine pm. But I still have so much to do. Need to finish the last half of my collection of Philip K. Dick short stories. Still have to listen to a podcast about Lovecraft. Oh, my laundry. I better do that now before I forget.

Done. Er, in the dryer.

I purchased Everything All The Time by Band of Horses and I still haven't listened to the whole thing while lying in the dark. Also Tegan and Sara The Con but I'll probably just dance around to that. In the dark, I guess? Does that still count as brooding? I hope so. Brooding requires practice and if I'm not careful I may end up going out and enjoying myself.

My bike is fixed. I've been meaning to ride that thing.

What else. I already made a strawberry-banana milkshake and discussed who holds the existing copyrights of Peter Pan with my sister.

What else. Play with the dog? Ongoing, technically. I usually read in bed, lying on my back holding the book up in the air. Despite being markedly out-of-shape, my arms and shoulders are still very strong and I credit this to my reading habits.

Watson and I play a sort of quick-draw game. He will jump on the bed and drop his Kong (the only toy that has survived for more than a month) onto the bed next to me. Then he waits. When I reach the end of a page I snap my hand down and try to grab the toy while he lunges for it. Watson usually reaches it first. He is closer to the toy and his level of concentration is well beyond mine. But sometimes I get it first. Sometimes we reach a draw, which is sort of a loss for me because I get bitten.



Something I was supposed to look up. Tick fever. That's it. A dog at work may have tick fever. He's an adult brown-and-white pointer mix and he's really sick. He's not eating or drinking much. I administered some subcutaneous fluids to him this morning. Usually, the fluids will make a large visible bubble under the skin that will slowly dissipate into the body. But not this guy. His body was sucking up the fluids as quickly as I could get them in. I worry about him.

I was headbutted by a mastiff yesterday. I was bending down to give him an oral de-worming treatment and he was jumping up to lick my face. Our heads are about the same size so it was almost an equal transfer of energy, like those little silver balls in a Newton's Cradle. Click.

So away I go to read and do those other things. Laundry should be dry by now. All my REI clothing dries very quickly.



Sometimes I feel like an empty suit laid out on a bed.

I woke up last night to find ants amassing in the kitchen so I dumped acid all around. Which is how I solve most of my problems.

Ender is ill and I am home watching him. He has a fever and he threw up a little but I suspect that's because he ate an entire bowl of popcorn. We've all done it.

Now he's passed out on the couch. It pleases me that he already has life pretty much figured out.

Have you ever been up all night drinking and then the next morning to discover that you've invited a bunch of people to be friends on Facebook?

Someday in the future, the world will be divided into two mega-corporation-nation-states: Lance-Corp and Ostrich-Abuv. These two massive entities control all of the Earth's resources and have decided that we, the consumer, will only need two things. Lances and flying ostriches.

There are some by-products. The Lance-Corp factories spew molten effluence. Behind your local Ostrich-Abuv is a pile of bad eggs, some of which will hatch into pterodactyls.

An entrepreneur from the past will awaken from cryogenic sleep into this world of fire and feathers. He (or she) will get a loan and purchase a flying ostrich and lance. Whatever is left over she will use to buy some clones. She will take to the skies and bring down both mega-corporations by killing them all in true capitalistic fashion.

At least that's how I think it will happen.



* * * *

I've been working a lot more at the animal shelter. Sometimes I take care of the cats and sometimes I take care of the dogs. I like them both. I have a stronger rapport with the dogs since I'm a big goofy idiot that likes water and will eat anything. Also I drool.

The cats tend to be more dignified. Felines have a cool, collected demeanor and grace of movement that I aspire to but am confident I will never achieve. They're also a lot pointier. Cats can't seriously injure me. Hmm...maybe if they went for the eyes. I've been bitten once so far but I felt bad for the cat because it bit my knuckle and its mouth was stuck on it like a little kid trying to eat a caramel apple. I have big knuckles. And sometimes they are covered in caramel.

My cats are my little tigers. Fierce, but incredibly vulnerable.

* * * * *

After a while, most of my Pandora stations begin to sound roughly the same.

Borges taught me that when undertaking any difficult task, it is best to imagine myself as having already have done it. I think he referred to it as imposing the future upon oneself. "Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures."

If the path is not fixed, a person can become lost among the forks, strolling down paths of a time not quite their own. This is not a literal thing, except as it occurs in a mind. The absent-minded, dreamers, artists, and the mad are resisting the Now. It is untenable; the Now demands much.

I think about good ideas and bad ideas and how, at first, they can indistinguishable. When the chosen course reaches its resolution, then we can sit back and say "Well that was a bad idea."

Supposedly making an attempt is always a good idea.

Sleep will find me soon. That is the proper time to explore the other forks. See what could have happened. Dreams are not prophetic. People have believed them so on occasions when the paths do not seem to differ. But they always differ, although it is not apparent. Every dream is of the way the Now didn't happen.

Difficult tasks lie ahead. So I will sleep and dream and prepare myself as best I can. I will push away fear because fear is not useful. I'm always afraid of the wrong thing anyway.

I knew Jenny Hanover a long time ago. We were young, or at least young enough that I didn't immediately think she was completely mad. Her hobby, as she put it, was "shadow walking." This slightly ominous name was her term for lucid dreaming, or being aware of dreaming while dreaming. That's how I understood it at first. Since her disappearance, I haven't been able to understand much of anything. All I can do is try to organize the events by the order in which they occurred and keep looking for a pattern; those cause-and-effect moments that let me convince myself I have any control over what happens to me.

And maybe learn enough to keep me out of the insane asylum.

Jenny explained to me that experienced shadow walkers (her term, sometimes just "walkers") mostly spend their sleeping hours dreaming like everyone else. Shadow walking is a controlled process that requires careful preparation and should never be attempted alone.

"Like scuba diving?"

"Not like scuba diving," Jenny snapped. "You can die scuba diving. If something goes wrong after we've crossed the shadows we'll just end up back here." She set her backpack on the floor of my bedroom and began placing its contents in a row.

"Well I feel a lot better," I smiled, leaning across the doorway with my arms crossed. I was trying to look cool. Having a girl stay the night in my apartment was a rare thing in itself, and her backpack full of unusual objects was both intriguing and frightening. I recalled urban myths about stolen kidneys and began to wish I had made my roommate Phil stay in tonight. Then my socks slid on the hardwood floor and I fell backwards into the hallway.

"Ow."

Jenny didn't look up. "Still not cool."

* * * *

I just finished reading China Mieville's The City and The City. There are no unicorns in it. Despite this glaring omission, it is still an intriguing noir tale of a city with unusual borders.

It is dangerous for me to read crime noir. In my head I start referring to women as "dames" and whiskey and cigarettes seem like part of a complete breakfast. The world outside seems full of mystery and sinister plots and unicorns. Maybe not unicorns. Not the nice ones, anyway. Everyone is up to something. Scheming. Brooding. Whinnying ominously.

But after that book I read The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick. Now I'm more worried about giant protozoan spores falling from space, and also of gaining the ability to see the future. This book was written well before Alan Moore's Watchmen, which also has a character who can see the future but cannot change it. Hmm...Slaughterhouse 5, too. These guys are just piling up.

So I don't want to be able to see into the future. I would only misuse the power, like predict a person's movements and make them step into a pie every time they are on their way to a formal event.

Time to start learning how to make pies.