Dreamer in my dreams ...

After sleep visited last evening, I found my subconsciousness playing the same dirty trick on me that it has played on several occasions before.

It's a foreboding spring/summer day, and I'm outside doing something, though I'm never clear on what. To the east, I see funnel clouds forming, and then a tornado drops out of the sky and heads in my direction. I make my way to a shelter - in last night's dream, it was my house, but in the previous incarnation of the dream, it was the old Bedford mall, the west end of which had been converted into apartments or bomb shelters. I watch out the window, and tornadoes continue to drop out of the sky and skip past the house. Not, like, three or four tornadoes; the number was more in the neighborhood of 20 or 25, at the very least.

Since they're not doing damage to my environs, I decide to go back out to look the danger square in the face. I've since moved somewhere else, it's the same day, and I'm watching these big fluffy cumulus clouds morph into funnel clouds and fall out of the sky. Toward the end of the dream, the tornadoes would have a face in them that I didn't recognize, but they'd have a gigantic, booming voice that, had it been speaking at a normal volume, would have sounded like that of the automated voice on the weather radio.

It's good to have nice, rational, normal dreams.

***
For Christmas a couple of years ago, I bought my wife a dream dictionary. Talk about a downer; it seemed like every possible dream topic had some sort of negative connotation:

"Onions - When the dreamer dreams of onions, be forewarned of impending death by appendicitis, or of a future case of bursitis, or of the tax man coming to collect back taxes."
***

Isn't dream a funny word? dream dream dream

A life lived.

(See "The Doggy Hospice" post below for a fuller explanation.)

The inevitable took place some time during the day today; Benji hobbled toward the light and did not return. We buried him this evening at sunset; I did the honors of bagging him up, as I didn't necessarily want my wife to have to see him as he was, waterlogged and muddy and stiff. It's best that she remember his last days as a dog that seemed pretty happy here for the two months-plus that he graced our immediate lives.

Was it right for us to take him out of Mrs. Tamble's parents' house to live out the remainder of his days here? I don't know. On the one hand, I wasn't entirely comfortable with the thought of taking him out from his environment - he seemed to be suffering plenty as it was, and the shock of bringing him here probably wasn't a pleasant one. On the other hand, the dog was 19 or 20 years old and barely sentient. He spent the last of his days outside, in the fresh air (and, admittedly, the rain), and even managed to walk a little better than he did at my in-laws' house, where he would just drag himself along by the front paws.

Oh well. Right or wrong, it's done now. And I'd probably do it again in a second if asked. (Not by you, though. Don't get any ideas.)

There's a bathroom on the right (redux) ...

On the drive home from work today, the don't-call-it-an-iPod kicked up Mother Love Bone's "Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns." Great song, with one of the most underrated misheard lyrics of my generation: "And if you Megadeth, well rest your soul."

Ahhh, that's kind of a stretch, I suppose.

***
Andy Wood was one of those "beautiful, troubled souls" that you hear so much about after a person dies. Oddly enough, all of the young, sensitive, artsy-fartsy types that assumed room temperature at a young age had "beautiful, troubled souls." Really, it sounds kind of faggy.

For some reason today while listening to "Chloe Dancer," I started thinking about that, then my mind jumped to the question of what people would think about me when I die, however many days or years or decades from now it is.

"God, he was such a horse's ass, but he was a beautiful horse's ass," I can imagine at least one saying. And he'd be right, at least about the first half of it.

***

My stream-of-consciousness thought process then jumped from thoughts of death to the movie that some say defined my generation, Cameron Crowe's "Singles." It was a movie that I really enjoyed at the time, and a movie that I really can't relate to anymore.

It especially pains me to see it in the $5 rack at Wal-Mart.

Remembering the day that we remembered 9/11.

As we look back on the day that America recalled the attacks of September 11, 2001, it would serve us well to take an accounting of where we stand as a nation and as a people, what we've lost since that somber day earlier this week.

It seems like that it was just yesterday that America came to a standstill, pausing in remembrance of the deadliest terrorist attack to ever take place on American soil.

When asked where he was the day that he remembered 9/11, a man who would only be identified as “RTF” said, “I was at work and had completely forgotten about the anniversary. Even though, in the days before Monday, I’d been glued to the television coverage of the events leading up to 9/11, it somehow slipped my mind that yesterday was the anniversary of the attacks. Then I overheard someone say, ‘Today’s the 9/11 anniversary,’ and I thought, ‘Yep, it is, isn’t it?’”

The day of rememberance for 9/11 gave pause to Central Park jogger Lorraine Florentino. ....

(etc. etc. for another 50,000 words)

Tomorrow - Part II of our series - Remembering the day that we remembered the day that we remembered 9/11 - What have we lost since that day that we recalled the worst terrorist attack in history?

Renee, there's some creepy guy, like, blogging about you?

Some thoughts on a positively autumn-like Thursday in September:

* Why am I listening to Goldfrapp? I don’t have an answer for that, but I love “Strict Machine,” which you may have heard on a cell phone commercial as well as the ads for the upcoming season of “Nip/Tuck.” Anyway, Goldfrapp. Sultry vocals, high energy, not completely soulless as I had originally thought on the first couple of listens. A lot of it is fairly damn hook-y and memorable, actually. "Strict Machine," in particular, has a highly infectious bass line and chorus. Yummy.

* I had a boss once in cable who called it “Nip and Tuck.”

* Life imitates satire: This AP article in the Indianapolis Star and this article from the Onion are really two sides of the same coin, aren’t they? If you remember nothing else I’ve taught you, you should remember that Randy Savage is the David Lee Roth of the wrestling world, and vice versa.

* I’ll probably end up doing a weekly Winless Watch for Indiana high school football at some point in the near future. Right now I just don’t have the time or wherewithal, due mostly to the fact that three weeks into the nine-week season, 62 teams – almost 20 percent of the football-playing schools in Indiana - are still winless, which is just too much for me to analyze and capsulize right now. However, a quick glance at the bottom of the Sagarin ratings and the esteemed John Harrell’s Indiana high school football page tells me that a team to watch is the mighty Edinburgh Lancers; through week three, the Lancers are averaging a mere 5 points a game while giving up 62. Whee!

I’ll do a full-on Winless Watch sometime after the season shakes out a little more and the 62 current winless teams is pared down to a more manageable 25 or so – the season-ending count usually averages around 16-20 winless teams a year - likely after week 6. I imagine we’ll still be talking about Edinburgh at that point, but till then, ponder this question: If you locked Edinburgh football and Cannelton basketball in a room, would someone win?

* One other thought about high school football, but not really.

The largest school in Indiana that does not play football is Scottsburg High School. The most recent IHSAA enrollment numbers (to determine which class a school falls into) puts the 718-student Scottsburg in the upper half of all IHSAA schools enrollment-wise, around 157th-largest out of 387 full-member IHSAA schools. But they don't play football! Even tiny Dugger plays football, and they can barely scrape together 11 for a team! This intrigued me somewhat, and I deigned to find out more.

Well, I got sidetracked when trying to learn more about why Scottsburg doesn't field a football team. (They discontinued the sport around the mid-80s, apparently, but I still can't find a reason why - but this distracts from the larger point at hand.)

On the page where I found out more about the history of Warrior athletics, a name jumped out at me. Renee Westmoreland was Indiana's Miss Basketball in 1989 and went on to Western Kentucky University, where she became one of the best players in Lady Topper history.

I recall seeing her picture in Garry Donna's Hoosier Basketball magazine around that time and getting all weak in the knees - her picture jumped out at me then just as her name did just now. I had a massive crush on the fair and demure Ms. Westmoreland, but I don't know if it was because she was a hot chick who played basketball well, or a basketball player who also happened to be smoking hot. If there was a World Wide Web back then, I probably would have created a fan site devoted to her. If I had a crappy post-punk or alt-rock band back then, I'd probably have had a song called "I Love You, Renee Westmoreland." (I was 15 when she was Miss Basketball, so it would have been innocent.)

Here's a picture of Renee, decked out in full basketball regalia with her Miss Basketball trophy. Yeah. Even her name was hot.

Anyway. Scottsburg? Football? What?