I'd been struggling for months to come up with something of merit to add to this thing, something truly worthy of inclusion in a "Chuds"-related project, something that could say "this is something I typed" and "I am very bored" all in the same breath.
And then a few weeks ago I was reminded of a few memorable dreams I'd had, dreams so compelling and bizarre that I felt obliged to recount them in excruciating detail to all of my friends--leaving no banal factoid un...unrecounted? Is that a word? Anyway, I thought since these are, sadly, some of the defining stories of my recent life, I would post them up (one at a time) and let you decide--FACT OR FICTION?
Dream Log #1:
Its Mexican New Year's Eve again, which takes place in the Fall, and is known primarily for its beloved and extremely dangerous "Fireworks in the Streets" celebration. Our family home has been transplanted, I'm assuming by wide-load truck, from upstate New York to a spot in a suburban Mexican neighborhood (the name of the city isn't revealed until later). In the kitchen my (wait, no, the city isn't revealed at all, I'm sorry.) entire family is sitting down to the traditional New Year's Eve meal, which I don't remember, but could well have been Fondu since that actually was the traditional New Year's Eve dinner in my family for a number of years, up until maybe 1995, when it either became too much work or we realized it was no longer 1974. We hear the pops and whistles of the celebration outside as we eat, and when we're done, my mom asks me to take the garbage out. As I walk out our back door towards our dumpster, I see a man sprinting through our yard (which we had moved along with our house), screaming in pain, with part of his clothing on fire--no doubt a victim of the often reckless fireworks displays that mark the passing of one Mexican year into another. It should be pointed out that only the truly daring venture out into the night on Mexican New Year's--its well-known as a celebration not unlike the Running of the Bulls, where the possibility of terrible bodily harm or even DEATH is both very real and part of the charm, which is, in a way, retarded. I was taking quite a risk even bringing the garbage out, and I knew this, and after seeing the screaming man go running through our yard, I hustled to the dumpster.
But when I reached the dumpster, I froze. Inside it, on top of a few days worth of white plastic garbage bags, was a baby--but not just any baby. It was a fat, Asian baby (similar to the extremely obese children you might see on syndicated talk show, who are fed only McDonald's and donuts by their adoring parents) with a head the size of a watermelon, wearing nothing but a giant baby's diaper. Thinking I was looking at a dead, abandoned mutant-child, I started to feel sick and panicky. But then the baby moved, and I quickly realized that he (somehow I knew it was a boy) was not only NOT dead, but was actually very healthy and in good spirits, considering he was lying in not only his own filth, but my entire families'. I'm not saying my family craps in the garbage, I'm just saying there were a couple levels of nastiness where he was laying. I dropped the bag I was holding and picked up the baby, and almost immediately dropped him on the ground--which was a series of interlocking stones--and directly on his watermelon head. I felt REALLY bad about this, but it apparently had no effect on him, and he, again, seemed to be in good spirits. So I picked him up again and brought him inside, figuring that while he may be impervious to garbage and head trauma, I didn't want to take any chances with errant fireworks.
As soon as I brought him inside, he began blabbering in a foreign language, which I immediately recognized as Japanese, a language I can neither understand nor differentiate from other Asian languages. He kept rambling, and as he did, I understood our primary dilemma: What are we going to call this giant Asian child? According to my logic, the name should be decided by asking him, in English, a series of questions. The first word or phrase he uttered, that I could understand, would thereby become his official name. I asked him what he would like to eat, to which he responded with an uninterrupted stream of gibberish that ended with what clearly sounded like "COCOA PUFF!!" We were all astonished, and after hearing this, I asked astonishedly, "COCOA PUFF??", to which he responded, "COCOA PUFF!!" I then declared, "That settles it! You will be called COCOA PUFF!"
It was soon time to go to sleep, and it was decided that Cocoa Puff would sleep in my room. Not owning a crib, we had to improvise a bed for him. I figured the best and safest thing to do was to have him sleep on the couch in my room, and to stick him between two of the cushions, my rationale being that if he was placed securely betwen two cushions and didn't move too much in his sleep, there was little, if any, chance he would fall out of the couch. Of course, I didn't take into account that I had, only minutes earlier, dropped him head-first onto solid rock and that it hadn't phased him at all. We could have had him sleep on one of the slanted areas of the roof, and his big, Asian, watermelon head could well have protected him. But the couch-cushion idea won out, and I went to sleep secure in the knowledge that Cocoa Puff would be just fine.
Still, I woke in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, convinced that the couch cushions were not nearly safe enough, and that he was in great danger. I flipped the light on and ran across the room to the couch--only to find that Cocoa Puff had disappeared. In his place sat a single quarter, a small piece of American currency totalling 25 cents. I ran through every explanation I could think of. Had someone stolen him and felt a very slight tinge of guilt? Had we been visited by a Giant-Asian-Baby-Orphan Fairy? Was this entire thing just a hitherto unknown and very complex part of the Mexcian New Year celebration? And then I remembered something very important, and I felt like a complete idiot for not realizing it sooner. Cocoa Puff has THE POWER TO TURN INTO A QUARTER! When Cocoa Puff so desired, he could transform into a quarter, and could easily be distinguished from other quarters by the presence of his likeness on the "tails" side in place of the standard eagle or one of the recent "50 states" designs. I breathed a sigh of relief, and turned the quarter over to its "tails" side to say goodnight to Cocoa Puff.
I gasped in horror as the under-side of the quarter revealed nothing but the standard eagle design. My mind raced. This quarter was NOT a large Asian baby transformed. This quarter was BULLSHIT. I turned to my dresser, upon which I kept a massive and scattered change collection, and realized Cocoa Puff could be any one of the hundreds of quarters I had accumulated and done nothing with over the years. I desperately rummaged through the coins, and cried out "COCOA PUFF?! COCOA PUFF?!", hoping he might hear me and quickly transform back.
And then I woke up.
-matt
I'd been struggling for months to come up with something of merit to add to this thing, something truly worthy of inclusion in a "Chuds"-related project, something that could say "this is something I typed" and "I am very bored" all in the same breath.
So last night at 3 in the morning we start hearing banging in the apartment. The whole freakin place is shaking so we're pretty freaked then we see a guy walk past our cars and look in so we called the police. We're not fuckin around. A half hour goes by and the cops finally show up. Apparently this guy is living downstairs with his girlfriend or whoever she is. He said he had some stuff inside and needed to get in. So the whole time this fuckin banging is going on it's his dumb ass BREAKIN DOWN THE FUCKIN DOOR. Nice. What a drunk piece of garbage. The officer actually asked him if his mother ever had any kids that lived. The officer informed me that this guy had a warrant out for his arrest, so he went to jail. I found out today that his bail was supposed to be 25,000 dollars. The girl he lives with said she wasn't gonna pay it but who knows i don't want his dumb ass around here anymore. fuck it.
