Bizarre dreams

I had the weirdest dreams last night.

The first was that Omaha sent me downstairs to find the hunting rifle. There was no reason given, it was just something I was asked to do. So I looked in the utility closet, which is full of ancient stuff-- old air filters, racks of boxes of holiday gear, old television hardware, a pile of unfinished sewing packages. First, I found a LaserTag pistol, and then the LaserTag rifle. (We have original, first edition World of Wonder LaserTag rifles, back when they were built to last forever. One has a sticker, "shuttle component," given to me by a college girl I knew whose summer job was vehicle rehab at Cape Canaveral. She's also the one who helped me lose a purity point very, very few have ever lost. Gorgeous undersized redhead. Enthusiasm of a bonobo. She owned a waterbed.)

Anyway, the dream: I never did find it. I found a weird AirSoft rifle, which I think is a kind of BB gun, this in poorly-done camoflage, brand new, but with a weird poofy stock. I never did find the hunting rifle, but that may be because we don't own one.

I also dreamed that I was trying to park my car, but the brakes wouldn't hold on a hill. The car was bigger than the one I own, and bright blue, more like a pickup truck. I had a moped in the back, but it must have been a weird moped made by Dean Kamen or something because it couldn't fall over.

I parked the truck, and took out the moped, at which point the truck started to slide down the hill. It hit another car, gently, and pushed it out into the road. I looked to see if anyone noticed, then jumped into the truck and put it back up the hill and pulled harder on the parking brake. I looked back to see the moped sliding down the hill. I can after it and caught it, only to look up and now see the truck, again, rolling slowly and gently down the hill, pushing two vehicles with its prow. Then I woke up.

Super weird.

I don't know if I can write this...

I started writing a story this morning, before work, that got me thinking: can you successfully write a story that completely defies the values you believe in, and mean it?

To give you the heads-up, my lead character, Michael Montreve, is an American who shares two of my strongest values. First, that a commitment to the Jeffersonian notions of sovereign freedom and democracy are tantamount, and that the concepts of noble versus commoner and sole citizenship based on blood or soil are decadent, corrupting, and inhumane. Secondly, that the universe does not and cannot act with either malice or charity. It does not care about us. There is no supernatural out there acting for or against our best interests, and that ultimately all of the universe is amenable to analysis and human understanding.

In order to be true to the story that popped into my head last night, Michael will have to be adamant about these two values-- and will ultimately have to reject them. He will have to accept that he is both tied to his grandmother's land in ways he cannot understand, and that there are forces in the universe greater than his reason.

Huh. 1000 words in and already having doubts. An interesting exercise, no matter what.

Dismantling the Treehouse

Achievement Unlocked - Framed

Some people, those who have visited us but also those who have seen older photos, might recall that we had one hell of a kid's fortress in our back yard. It was nearly two stories tall, with an upper deck and a hidden inner deck. It lacked all of the safety equipment that any well-meaning modern helicopter parent might expect, and for seven to ten year olds, it was awesome.

Sadly, neither of the girls is of an age to appreciate it. Kouryou-chan still loves the swingset, but the fort has long since started to decay. The upper deck had become a haven for spiders and wasps. There were at least two nests in there, one for wasps and one for hornets. The roof, an unprotected sheet of plywood, had disintegrated after years of abuse. A tree limb had crashed into it last year, leaving a gaping hole.

So this past weekend I cheerfully took my Gordon Freeman-approved wrecking bar and went to work. Whoever built this thing clearly intended for it to last forever, because it was a serious effort to take apart. It was held together with many more nails than were necessary, and it sometimes took a wedge-and-sledge approach to drive two piece far enough apart to get the wrecking bar in there. But eventually I raised the roof and knocked out the walls before dismantling the upper frame.

I succeeded in jamming a knuckle, scraping my arm, and cutting one finger while working on it. As if that weren't enough, as I was walking away from it I stepped on a piece of wood, lost my balance, and fell over, wrenching my right ankle. (For those who remember, this is the other ankle from the one I broke last year.) I am now dutifully wearing the ankle brace I got last year to make sure that I don't wrench it further and do more damage, thus making my rehab longer, and my summer less fun.

JP Morgan tells it like it is: we screwed the middle class, and we're running out of room to continu

Mark Celembast, Chief Investment Officer at JP Morgan, says:

S&P 500 profit margins increased by ~1.3% from 2000 to 2007. There are a lot of moving parts in the margin equation, but as shown, reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement in margins. This trend has continued; as we have shown several times over the last two years, US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP.

[JP Morgan's Eye On The Market for the week of July 7, Twilight of the Gods]