neurological dryer lint

so last night my brain decided, hey, i should screw with justin tonight, really try to freak him out. thanks brain. nice work there.

dream 1 last night, i was camping in my parents' front yard. there was some snow on the ground, and me, my dad, steve bragg, his dad, and a girl i can't remember, were there, and we were grilling. but not just normal grilling - we had a huge sheet of metal (about 15" x 5") on some sawhorses, and on that was a bunch of charcoal, and on THAT was a large metal grate that had a bunch of meat cooking on it. i remember it, because somehow i managed to flip the entire thing over and it all went facedown into the yard. and then i tried to cover it up and fix it, and i started grabbing pieces of charcoal to put back on the grill and it didn't burn me. then when I couldn't figure it out, i ran into the giant black Caddy hearse parked in our driveway and locked the door. outside, people were having snowball fights, but then they all came up to the car and looked at me. then Robert DeNiro, dressed in black and wearing an eyepatch, came up to the door of the car and asked me to open it, because we had to leave. So i did, and everyone got in and i started driving, but i just made it up to the top of the drive before i lost control of the car, and then i woke up.

back asleep, here's dream 2. i can't believe i remember both of them.

i had just taken a psych test, and some people walked me out to a door to an enormous warehouse. i opened it and inside was a mall-looking place, with a bunch of people walking around everywhere. the guys that brought me there said 'good luck - your game is about to begin' and shut me inside. i knew that i was in some form of live alternate-reality game, where i had to figure out what the mystery was, my involvement, and solve it. there were a lot of others in there, too, playing their own game. but i had my own.

someone walked up to me and said "Hey man, get this: Hip Hip." and walked away. a clue! i looked around the weird mall-structure and saw a small camera shop called Island In The Sun Cameras. heh. that's my place. i headed over, and the sales guy inside came up and shook my hand and said 'we have your video camera waiting for you.' he handed me a small blue-and-white digicam, goofy looking, almost like a toy, and i turned it on. a video started playing of some weird alien creatures jumping around in the woods, and they were talking. they looked like pine cones. something had happened to them and i had to figure out what. i left the store and someone bumped into me and yelled at me - and walked away towards a shadowy corner of the mall where there was a doorway into a dark room, and there were a few people outside in a line, waiting for their turn to get in. i walked up and went to talk to one of the people working there, and... i woke up.

i was bummed, really, i was hoping to see where it all went.

so now that you're all freaked out and feeling uncomfortable, let's talk bengals. speaking of dreams :) is there any possible way we can beat pittsburgh on sunday? they're rather fearsome lately, taking down several undefeated teams and potential dynasties. can we stop the bus? has our defense improved enough in the past few weeks to even ask that question? can we put pressure on roethlisberger and get him to make mistakes like we did so well with testaverde and plummer? is there a way we can win this game? it's SO hard for me to not get that little surge of hope in me - one that has been crushed so many times in the past - and so i'm going to try to stay emotionally middle-of-the-road, hope for the best and expect the worst.

oh and i gotta agree with marvin: chad, shut the crap up, you make us look bad.

listening to: craig's brother - bad marriage