Accidentally defeating my non-enemies

So, I bike up this road and see a crossing snake. I'm usually very terrified of snakes, sometimes to the point of

an unreasonable fear. Although I have learned about them, I still shuck most rational thought when I see one.

Not this one I was riding up on. I recognized it to be one of the best types of snakes, the kingsnake.

First of all, it's name fits, as it eats other snakes. Especially the poisonous ones that could kill a human. So

after spotting the monarch of reptiles crossing the road, I stop to allow it's progress to the other side. I was

too late, my skidding tires had startled the slithering traveller into stopping on the asphalt as an approaching

jeep crested the hill.

I cringed as I heard the 'thud-thud'. Hopefully his soul left his six foot long body before rebounding to a ring

four foot above the tarmac.

I was saddened.

A song for my least hated enemy species:

"C'mon, Kingy"

 "go fast make it across!"

 "Don't be scared of me"

 "I'm sorry for your loss"

"Damn stinky jeep"

 "With your moldy cloth cover"

 "Go rot in a heap"

 "for killing my favorite enemy".

The Most Epic Dream I've Ever Remembered

Sometimes I don't remember my dreams at all. Usually, it's those days that someone else wakes me up with something to do or the alarm rouses me. If I don't lie there and go through my brain DVR, I'll lose it. So I bet I've had better dreams than the one I'm writing, but I've forgotten them. That said, I now give you:

                           Attack of the Hygiene Nanites


I'm standing against the wall in my sister's room. Everyone who's usually there is present. She's always striving to be the center of attention, and today it's no different. I see her with a silver tray in her lap. On the tray is a bag, containing white powder and a little booklet.

 "Sis, are you doing drugs?" I ask incredulously. I know she's not into that type of stuff, but she is very overweight and hasn't had any diets that work for her. Maybe she went to the drug that makes people skinny. I'm appalled to see this in her lap.

 "No. You haven't heard?" she asks me with a little laugh. She hands me the booklet when I tell her that I haven't 'heard' anything.

 Upon first inspection, the booklet seems to be a how-to instruction containing various information and pictures of what I can only discern as little robot-looking ticks.

 She raises the baggie over her head and starts explaining. "Hygiene nanites are tiny robotic cleaners that you disperse over your head.", she states as she upends the bag of nanites, letting  them fall to her blonde hair.

 "What kind of 'cleaning' do they do?" I ask while I watch the white powder seem to dissapear from her head.

"They process every dead skin cell from your body, from your scalp to the callouses on your feet." She points to her now smooth heel that was just days ago the most rugged part of anyone's foot that I had ever seen. "They even clean your teeth and deodorize all of your stinky bits.", she tells me while I'm standing there dropjawed.

 "But you take two showers a day! You are the cleanest person that I know, you don't need those nanites.", I say while putting my hands up in the air pointing at all of the dirtier individuals in the room.

 Trying to justify her purchase, she tells me, "Yes, but now I don't have to take those showers. I save time and money with these technological marvels.".

 She puts the bag down onto the tray as I just shake my head and sigh, wondering what this world is coming to.

 I'm now in a bar, watching the news on the corner television. I'm seeing what seems to be a zombie. The newscaster is explaining that the cause of the zombie infestation is due to the hygiene nanites battling the body's own micro-organisms.

"It seems to defend against the attacks from mites and creatures native to all humans, the little robots started replicating at such a rate that they cover the entire body in what looks to be decaying flesh.", the newscaster explained as the footage went into a zoomed view of a zombie, showing that what looked like gray skin falling off was just defeated robots falling from the battlefield.

 I'm now in a command center. The only other person in this huge room of controls and monitors is a very attractive female that I believe is my new significant other. She's asking me how I plan to rid the planet of the new zombie horde.

 "I've got to upload some spoiled lubricant to the satellite that feeds these creatures. Although they get their power from the passive voltage native to the human body, they've got to be properly lubed", I point out to her while pushing many buttons on this vast array of controls in front of me. After various controls have been messed with I look to the monitor area and see that the lube has been uploaded to the satellite.

 Now in a field, I'm surrounded by what seems to be an army of shambling zombies, shuffling their way to my untouched flesh. Within feet of them reaching me, I see all of the dead 'skin' sloughs off of them in layers, leaving them looking like the clean humans that they used to be. The zombie closest to me is my sister. I hug her in an embrace that spreads joy throughout the field.

 That's the most epic dream I've ever had. It almost had it all. I wasn't too keen on jumping around settings and timepoints, but I did not have control of this night feature. I liked this dream so much that I submitted it to my local metaphysics office to interpret. I wasn't as pleased with the interpretation as the interpreter was with my dream. He explained that it almost echoed the "Cowboy Bebop" movie, which I had never seen, and gave general outlines how the dream could parallel with my life.

 I've since become very adept at dream interpretation. I'm the best at my own dreams, okay at friend's dreams, and just so-so with stranger's dreams. This dream sent me on a real world chase to figure out what they mean and why we have such a variance in the complexity of dreams.

 So, do you have any epic dreams? If you would like a general interpretation, let me know and I'll see what I can do in my free time.

Randoom Book Review: Hallucinating Arkansas

 Have you ever wanted to trip acid without the bad effects and without ingesting actual drugs?

 Then I suggest you read "Hallucinating Arkansas".

This collection of in your face poetry and soulful writings is authored by Tim Bowen.

 The title piece, "Hallucinating Arkansas", starts it off with a bang. Shocking imagery mixed with fluid lines pull you into page one and flings you through to seventy-two on an eventful trip not soon to be forgotten.

 Timothy Bowen employs different styles across the work. From the cryptic "Lad at the Fit Harvest", that looks at first glance to be a list of some sort, to a compelling scene involving a circus worker in "Our Clown", he shows his wide range as a wordsmith.

 Timothy's irreverent manner made dry subjects come alive with ultra-vivid detail. In "Future Headlines", his reporting from the future allows us insight to his mad genius, while still making us pee ourselves with laughter.

 Take seventy-two pages, wring them with sexual tension and emotion, throw them in a barrel of belly-aching laughs. Then soak those soul-heavy pages in IQ juice to reach 9000, and you still wouldn't have as entertaining of a read as Tim Bowen's "Hallucinating Arkansas"!

Read it here.
The Official Blog of Timothy Bowen can be found here.

Randoom Design: Custom Pillow

Feeling like 'rand'paging through the streets, I asked the universe a question today.

"What is it that I need to work on right now?". I delivered this without of the hint of expectation that grew inside me. This specific query is a rather frequent one to the Universe from little old me. If I prepare myself for the answer, it'll  happen.

 Today the answer was, "Fix your pillow situation.". Sounds silly, but to me, dreaming is serious business. While I'm sympathetic to those who need their 'beauty' sleep, I focus on the more mental/spiritual side of sleep. I've got to log rem hours in order to function.

 My last pillow was a microfiber retail nugget for sixty bucks. The thing was so cush that it would lull me to slumber like an army of crickets and cicadas beating out a slowing rhythm.

 When I moved in with my ex, her dog ate the pillow. Although it wasn't the point of the eventual break-up, I still resented her for not replacing my precious pillow. I held on to this resentment until I let it take hold of me and rot me from the inside out.

 Standing there after getting the answer from the universe, I got to work. I found a fluffy pillow with some embroidered letters on it. It was in the shape of a pretty big heart. I didn't really care for the looks, but it was filled with micro beads. I then took 2 medium sized book covers and stuffed the pillow inside those. Here is the final product:

 It's got lumps in just the right places, has a fuzzy spot for my cheek, and squishes with maximum bounce-back.

 The pillow is the transducer to the dream world.

 I spray mine with a pleasantly scented product before falling into the middle of the earth to sleep.

Part Three: Ghosts

 I used to get really freaked out at horror movies and ghost stories because I was sure they were the closest thing to reality one could get before actually seeing a ghost. That ended when I started having night terrors. They eclipsed everything I had watched in movies, tv, and the internet. The dreams would involve vampires, zombies, and lots and lots of gore. Not to mention storylines that closely tied me to the unwanted action unfolding in my REM's.

Dreams are the only place I can actually say that I've seen 'ghosts'. I know they were only figments of my imagination, but they were very real to me when they happened.

 The closest thing I've ever gotten to a sighting while awake was a few months ago. I had gone camping with some family members and took my camera. I ended up taking around one hundred pictures. Most of them ended up being of the campfire that we had made, just because I liked the effect I could create by moving my camera around while leaving the aperture open for a while. This amused me for hours that night. I would look back at the pictures and see images of flaming dragons, magma spewing horses, and hot as hell wood nymphs in them. I did this so much that the battery of my camera went dead on the first night.

 When I came home three nights later, I started uploading all of the pictures to my computer. After doing so, I began messing around with them in my favorite graphics editor. I started by taking a seemingly nondescript photo of my tent, which had a camper in the background. I then stacked a layer of a different picture of the fire over that one. I messed with the opacity some, then put another picture of smoke on top of that. After reducing the opacity on that one, I noticed something that looked creepy.

 I zoomed into the window of the camper in the background, and there he was. It was a figure of a man who looked to be in his fifties. He was fat, balding, and had beady eyes. Those eyes spoke of grave misdeeds. He was wearing overalls and was holding a dripping section of meat in his hands. He was grinning as if to say "Look what I've done!". I was freaked out, to say the least.

 I started looking at the individual layers to see if there was any such man in my shot. None. Just the camper window, flames, and smoke. I showed the people who were there at the time. They all saw it, except for one guy that refuses to see anything his mind won't allow him to. I think he saw it, but he was too proud to say it.

 Before I could save the work, the power went off. I've since tried to reproduce the effect, but have not been able to choose the same two photographs that I superimposed onto the camper window. I'm still working on it today, maybe I'll get the right ones and be able to post it here.

 To make sure you don't leave empty-handed, I'll post the picture I think most looks like a flaming bird drinking a bottle of magma-brew.

 Have you seen or heard any ghosts or spirits?