How to escape from Al Queda in three easy steps … If you don’t eff it up (UPDATED)

I dreamed the other day that I was outside Paris in an abandoned bunker that was presently being used by Al Queda to hold their hostages.

And I was one of them.

Not one of the Al Queda members. The hostages. I was one of the hostages.

It was pretty frustrating to be abducted in the middle of my vacation in Paris. I mean COME ON I LOVE PARIS. I was probably following the Arago line and giving the Maison de Balzac another try. (Look at me acting like I know lesser-known things in Paris. Those are the only two things, I promise, that make me a Paris hipster. Everything else I did there was touristy.) But now I was sitting on a chair with a bunch of skinny, bearded guys with guns standing around me. Why the heck did Al Queda choose Paris?

They are masters of secrecy. …And they love crème brûlée.

In this dream, I was a little more adventurous than I probably am in real life. I was going through escape ideas in my head while I was sitting there. The walls of this abandoned bunker were open, so I figured that my first plan of escape would be to just make a break for it. I waited for the guards to turn around, and when they did, I bolted.

Or at least began to bolt.

This is actually how far I got before the guard turned back around.

[Foiled.]

I fell back into my chair and smiled to the guard as if nothing had happened. I’m thinking I looked something like when Calvin got caught acting like a dinosaur during class…

[This is the third Calvin & Hobbes reference in a row. LET’S KEEP THE BALL ROLLING, BABY!]

Then I remembered the phone in my pocket. I’ll text my parents, I decided. Slowly I slid my phone out of my pocket and tried to find my parents’ number on my touch screen. Lately, my phone’s touch screen has been acting up, so it took awhile, but I kept my eyes on the prize. However, I probably should have kept my eyes on the guard because all of a sudden this went down:

GUARD: HEY!! What are you doing?

ME: Nothing! Nothing. I promise. I was just looking at my phone, which doesn’t. Have. International. Texting. Anyway. *Dangit!*

GUARD: Okay, then. Back to sitting, hostage.

ME: Thanks.

[When I told my mom about this dream, she said, “WHAT THE HECK COULD WE HAVE DONE TO HELP YOU?” Hopefully ALL YOU CAN, Mother. Jeez.]

We (and by “we,” I mean the Al Queda guards, the other hostages, and yours truly) then went on a fieldtrip across the street.  As we approached the street, a non-Al Queda car drove by. Now’s my chance, I thought, and I took the summer sausage in my pocket and threw it into its open window. 

I then realized, Dangit, I should have scratched something into the summer sausage, like “HELP AL-QUEDA” or something. No, I couldn’t have done that. Maybe something like “HELP! AL-QUEDA HAS KIDNAPPED ME.” Aw, I probably couldn’t have written that in time. Now those people are just wondering why some kid threw a summer sausage into their car. DANGIT.

And then I woke up.

And don’t ask me why I had a summer sausage in my pocket in the first place.



UPDATE: One of my faithful follower(s) spurred an interesting conversation about the meaning of the sausage in my pocket. (Wow, I thought that last phrase wouldn't sound dirty. SO WRONG.) My hypothesis was this, for which she immediately requested a t-shirt design...

You're welcome.

UPDATE: My Little Experiment

Okay, so the “Celebrity Names in the Title“ thing didn’t work. I was actually a little surprised. I was even more surprised the Google didn’t blacklist me for keyword spamming. That would have SUCKED.

I mean, why would someone whose entire existence is dedicated to gaining more followers and ultimately reaching Blogvana by receiving Blog of Note or something RISK ALL OF THAT BY SPAMMING HIS TITLE?

I walk a thin line.

(That last sentence is the tough way of saying “I had no idea that blacklisting was even a word until a friend of mine told me about it.”)

I don’t even know what I would do if I was blacklisted. It would probably begin with me updating the Faceplace and the Tweetybox multiple times with panicky messages like,

“DON’T WORRY, MY BLOG STILL EXISTS. YOU JUST CAN’T SEARCH IT RIGHT NOW. FURTHER BULLETINS AS EVENTS WARRANT.”*

Or something like,

“AAAUGHH MY BLOG HAS BEEN BLACKLISTED, BUT I PROMISE I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING BAD. IT WAS A MISTAKE. DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO UNDO SOMETHING LIKE THIS?? YOU CAN STILL VISIT IT AT brian-schroeder.blogspot.com!!”**

And everyone on Facebook would probably read it and say, “He has a blog?”

After much Googling, deliberating, and drinking worrying, I would probably decide that it would be best to fashion a sincere, handwritten letter to the people at Google. 

(click to enlargigate.)

Something like that. The good news is, Popcorn Day is in the clear, even though my experiment failed. People must just really like that Scrabble post. Bizarre. 

*Wow. That's the second time I've referenced Calvin and Hobbes in my recent posts.
**Yep. I just linked to my own blog within my blog. It has the same infinite effect that looking into two facing mirrors does.