"It was magical." (aka. Creative Material Backup)

Henceforth I shall call it CMB. I truly believe that it is to blame for the mess which you are about to read.

Long ago, there was a large island in the South Pacific called The Dale. On this island lived a mad scientist and his two apprentices. There, in total isolation from the rest of humanity, these three individuals conducted bizarre experiments on marine life. Their lab was built full of huge glass tanks, aerators, greenhouses, and of course a microbrewery because, let's face it... Fish and beer just go together.

At this point you may be wondering, "Which of the three is our beloved writer and heroine in this dream?" Well sadly, I am not the mad scientist. That role is currently being played by Saul Rubinek. I am his young and attractive female apprentice. The male apprentice is a nondescript man in his early to mid 30's and ultimately unimportant as he is about to die in a horrible accident involving a catheter and a sponge.

Outside the greenhouse, there was an impressive thunderstorm building. I should have known right then that something bad was about to happen. Saul had told me and the other guy to go inspect one of the tanks which was developing an algae problem. So here there we perched on the metal rigging over a 30,000 gallon fish tank arguing about who gets to dive in and do the dirty work when an earthquake hits.

No, I don't know why he had a catheter feeding down into his lungs. Who am I to question my subconscious? All I know is that he fell into the tank and the tube wrapped around his neck and killed him. Before I knew what was happening, blood started flowing up through the catheter and into the water. The sponges that were living inside the tank started to move and grow at an alarming rate. In the mean time, the island had broken free of its earthly bonds and was swiftly floating toward the coast of Australia.

I high tail it out of the greenhouse in search of Saul to tell him what happened to Mr. Red Shirt and, of course, to warn him about the mutant sponges. He is nowhere to be found. What's a girl to do? Fortunately I have friends -- lots of them.

First things first, I fly to the mainland where a bunch of my old waitress friends are working at a Denny's. (Yes, I can fly. I can always fly. I am Eli Kinsley, after all.) I quickly explain the situation and enlist them to help me fight the mutant sponge monsters. They happily abandon their little black aprons and pots of stale coffee to follow me into battle. On my way out of the restaurant a customer and fan offers me some fried mozzarella cheese. Yum! Now I can fight on a full stomach.

Next stop is some random nightclub in Sidney where I pick up my old buddy Frank and his son Jerreth. Jerreth is all grown up now and it just so turns out that he is a powerful mage, too. Woot! Frank then phones a bunch of his groupie friends and they join my army to fight the mutants. Great! It pays to know people who know people.

My last task before heading to the battlefield is to find Bleis because I'm certain that he'll want a piece of the action. I fly the two of us to the vast field of dried and cracked orange clay where my army is facing off against the largest and smartest of the giant mutant sponges.

Let me just pause here to impress upon you that this thing is huge. It is roughly 30 feet tall and probably 20 feet wide at the base. It is a mass of writhing sponge tentacles. If Cthulhu mated with a loofah, this is what their offspring would look like. It's terrifying... just sayin'.

Okay, so we're facing off with this massive spongey monstrosity when several bolts of electricity fly at us out of nowhere. "That's not right! Sponges can't be mages," I tell myself. Then I shout for my army to fall back and fly straight at the beast. This may seem like a dumb idea to you, dear reader, but I assure you that it made perfect sense at the time.

So I'm hovering over the monster now. I look down into the middle of it and what do I see? Well, first off there are towels. Lots of them and downy soft by their appearance. Why are there towels? How should I know? But there they are all twisted up like a person would ring out a washcloth after using it only these are full-size bath towels. I guess to a giant sponge monster, full-size bath towel = washcloth. (Hey, I told you the tank had been dirty. Maybe it decided to take a bath before rampaging across Australia.) But that's not the truly weird part.

Reclining in the middle of the sponge-tentacle-towel conglomerate is none other than Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider. Noooooow the lighting makes sense! At any rate, I convince him that he should be fighting the sponge beast, not helping it. How do I do this? I'd love to believe that it had nothing to do with the fact that I'm a powerful mage and he's a magic-addicted Blood Elf -- that it had everything to do with my irresistible charm and good looks. (It was the magic.) But that's not important! All that matters is that Kael turns on the sponge beast and with a battle cry of "I hate towels!" he starts hacking it to pieces with his great glowing green Felsword.

Afterward, me and Kael made out up against a big squishy chunk of dead sponge beast. (I'm sorry Bleis. I know you saw that, but don't worry. He means nothing to me and you know he only wants me for my mana.) "Did you enjoy that as much as I did?" Kael asks me just before I wake up. "It was magical," I tell him.

And YEAH! we saved Australia.
Note to self: lay off the video games / sci-fi channel.

Someone give this penguin some sushi.

Last night (technically this morning) I was sitting at a table at the sushi bistro where H and I work.  My first clue that something wasn't quite right was the scene on the street outside.  Somehow the entire restaurant had been transported to Japan.  Outside was the street in Tokyo where I'd once lived as a child.  That makes sense... right?
Right.

Next to me sat a little boy who looked like the child from The Grudge (American version) sans pasty purplish skin and creepy eyes.  I'm not sure if he would have made odd growling or clicking noises at me, because he never spoke.  A couple of times I glanced over at him.  He would look up at me, smile, then go back to eating his sushi.

Then a penguin flew into the door.  No, I mean she actually hit the glass of the door in a very cartoonish splat and hit hard enough to swing the door open.  Seemingly unfazed by her less than graceful landing, the penguin lady then waddled into the bistro, waved "Hello" to the owners with one flipper (of course they knew her) and came to join us at the table.  The penguin lady bowed to me, giving me a lovely view of the top of her lacey rose-patterned bonnet and introduced herself as Miss Pengu in a soft voice tinged with just a hint of a British accent.  I bowed back and introduced myself, then offered her a cushion to prop herself up a little higher in her chair.  Seemed like the right thing to do.  Nothing unusual here.

That was when I noticed all of the flying turquoise armadillidiidae zipping around the room.  I only noticed them at this point because when any of them flew too near to Miss Pengu, she fired a little red laser beam at it... out of her tail.  Every time she knocked one of the bugs out of the air, she got 10 points.  How do I know she got points?  Because the number 10 floated out of their little rolled up bodies each time the laser connected, of course.
No coins, though.

The last thing I remember thinking as the scene faded to white: "Someone please bring the nice penguin some sushi."

Bicycles, Storm Clouds, and... Vampires?

Had my conversation last night with H not been followed up by yet another really bizarre dream, you probably wouldn't be here reading this now.  But fate is a funny wench (assuming that you believe in her, that is) and so here we are.
Me typing.  You reading.

The setting for this dream was a long stretch of road, like the kind you expect to find in the Midwest US -- flat and straight with corn fields to either side and a big red barn off in the distance.  The sky was an odd shade of blue, and while I don't remember actually looking up in the dream, I know there were storm clouds gathering overhead.  The sun illuminated us from behind so it wasn't truly dark, yet, but you knew it was coming.

I and my two companions rode bicycles down this long expanse of corn field-bisecting road.  We flirted and joked with each other without a care in the world.  Why?  Because we were sexy vampires (though what we were doing outside during the day, I'm not really sure.)  "How do you stay in such good shape?" the handsome blonde vampire to my right asked in a mock interpretation of one of our enamoured victims.  "It's the iron," I told him.
We laughed.

We rode on until we reached the barn.  There the road dead ended into a T intersection.  There was another field on the far side of the perpendicular road there.  Behind the fence around that field stood some of the strangest goats I had ever seen.  Their coats matched the wood of the fence and by 'matched' I mean color and pattern.  One of them was wearing a t-shirt.  He stood up with his little hoofies on the top of the fence so we could read said shirt.  It was printed with a written account of some past hero (or antihero perhaps) who had discovered his lady had been stolen away while he was abroad.  The hero (antihero) returned home, slew the perpetrator and took back his lady.  Hey look!  It has a happy ending.  Thanks, Mister Goat.

Fortunately the phone rang before we had a chance to eat the goats.