Butt birth: it’s the new hot rage.

I can’t believe I’m about to post this dream. A few advance apologies are in order: If you’re a girl who once found me attractive but will never be able to get this image out of your head, I’m sorry in advance. If you’re the pastor or another one of my coworkers from church who I just added on Facebook and you thought you’d check out what my blog is all about, I’m sorry in advance. I would even recommend reading some of my older stories first; I usually write about much more wholesome things, like here or here or here. If you're one of my normal readers, or my one Canadian reader, no apologies. We're tight now; I can tell you anything. 

I’ve found that the weirdness of the dreams I have is directly correlated to the unhealthiness of the food I ate the day before. I once tested this with an evil concoction of Doritos and some spicy glop that resulted in a dream I never want to redream. 

For the following strange and semi-inappropriate beauty of a dream, I had eaten Big Mac Pizza (yes, pizza with all the fixings of a Big Mac), cheesy popcorn, and five or six fun size Twix bars. I don’t usually eat this way, and apparently not only my body but my mind freaked out about it. 

[At least my brain is watching out for me this time, as opposed to THAT OTHER TIME.]

The dream began with me laying on my side on a hospital bed. I wasn’t sure at the time why I was there, but the fact that a doctor and my best friend were in the room with me made me feel a bit better.

DOCTOR: How are you feeling, Brian?

ME: Oh, I’m doing fine. I kind of feel like I have to go to the bathroom tho–WHOAA!!

Suddenly something humongous shot out of my butt. It didn’t hurt, but I knew it was huge. What is going on? I wondered, still not sure why I was there in the first place. And then I heard it: a baby crying. Of course. I was the surrogate father of one of my best friend’s twins, and his girlfriend was in the other room going through excruciating normal birth with the other one. I was happy that birthing a baby through my butt didn’t hurt as much. 

DOCTOR: So, do you want to cut the cord?

ME: Oh...no, that’s too weird. I don’t even want to think about it.

DOCTOR: Are you sure? A lot of new fathers find it to be a special moment. 

ME: Gross. That’s just not going to happen. I’m not going to cut my butt cord.

DOCTOR: Really? It won’t hurt...

ME: Couldn’t you just do it? You’re the doctor, so you should be okay with this kind of thing.

DOCTOR: No, you should do it. It’s your butt.

ME: But I don’t want to. Seriously, the baby’s not even really mine. Just cut the butt cord so I can stop thinking about it existing down there. It makes me all twitchy.

DOCTOR: Trust me, I wish it didn’t exist either. Here’s the scissors. Cut your butt cord and we can all go home. 

ME: My GOD why do you have to be such a baby about this? You could get a better angle anyway. You’re getting paid to cut my butt cord; guess how much I’m getting paid to poop out a baby? NOTHING. I’m doing it out of the kindness of my butt heart. JUST CUT THE DAMN BUTT CORD SO I CAN PUT SOME PANTS ON. 

And so he did. I didn’t appreciate the grimace on his face or the way he only used two of his fingers to use the scissors, and stretched out the other fingers as if they themselves were avoiding the task as well. 

At this point the dream fast-forwarded a few months and I was carrying the baby in my arms, the one I had birthed, and it was talking to me in full sentences. It would only do this to me, because he and I had a special bond that can only come from a butt birth. 

And then I woke up. 

Now on to less disgusting things.

Dreambomb, or 50 Word Dreams, or Expectations smashed all up in my face/grill.

Here and there I'll have a dream that is too complicated to tweet and not vivid enough to dedicate a whole blog post to. I know what you’re thinking: “BRIAN THAT SUCKS I’M SO SORRY.”  It’s okay, reader, it’s okay. I’ve created an innovative solution. It’s called The 50-Word Dream and I’ve done like four of them, so they're a pretty big deal. Here’s the latest installment, with each dream written in exactly fifty words, entitled “Expectations smashed all up in my face/grill.” 

Dream #1

As one of the judges on American Idol (they’re just letting anyone do it now), I was pretty sure that Snooki was going to completely embarrass herself. But when she belted out “Oh Happy Day,” I found myself euphorically sobbing with Paula and the rest of the viewers at home.

[No lie, folks: I spent a half hour drawing Snooki as an orange bell pepper with a leopard-skin dress, but decided against it.]

Dream #2

The Humane Society salesperson promised that Gus, an orange kitten with six toes on each foot, was actually an angel sent by God to release a prophesy bathed in heavenly light on Christmas Eve. I adopted him because it seemed like a win-win situation. He ran away before Thanksgiving. 

Dream #3

As Harry Potter AGAIN, my friends and I hid from a monster. When I peeked through the blinds, I caught a glimpse of its hideous form: Priceline’s Big Deal. Only a magical chocolate milkshake could destroy him,  but the only friend who was predestined to drink it was lactose intolerant.

Dream #4

I was N64‘s Banjo-Kazooie and I was very busy. Leaping between tree stumps, I tossed pizza slices at a gargantuan blue bull to keep it from murdering me. The bull was increasingly satisfied, but the college theatre company that were using the tree stumps for their play weren’t. 

And that's what I've been dreaming. Seriously, this Harry Potter Unconscious Fetish needs to stop. I don't know why it keeps happening. However, I think if I started dreaming that I was Banjo-Kazooie all the time, we would have a bigger problem

This post is a fair warning to anyone who shares a living space with me

Remember when I wrote this post boasting about how I can, with the help of a few health supplements and some good old-fashioned chutzpa, reduce the duration of the common cold to only about two days? I still believe that if everyone took my anti-cold artillery list to heart, they would feel the same results. 

But here’s the deal, friends. Sometimes the common cold is tricky and will disguise its little bastard self as a really bad hangover. You’ll think that you’re merely hurting, and with some water and starchy foods, you’ll be fine in a matter of hours. But then you aren’t fine. The headache’s gone, but you find yourself one full day into the nasty arms of a gargantuan cold–and of course that means one full day behind in your usual battle plans and it’s virtually impossible to get back on the offensive. It’s kind of like, in Calvin & Hobbes, when Spaceman Spiff thinks he had parked his spacecraft on a strange planet but it’s...well here:

[Calvin & Hobbes is ALWAYS relevant.]

This happened to me and I’m now in my fourth day. The very reason I take such an aggressive stance against colds in the first place is because I’m so horribly pathetic when I’m ill. Like unnecessarily and inconsolably depressed. My social skills vanish entirely, and I just become insecure and mope around until it’s gone. 

One thing that may interest you, however, is that I occasionally sleepwalk when I’m sick. I think it has to do with the fact that I’m not sleeping well in the first place, and I forget whether I’m conscious or not. Last night my uncle (who I’m living with for the time being)  got to see this in full colors.  It was one in the morning and he was heading to bed, in the dark.

ME: [Throwing open the door] Chris!

CHRIS: Oh, hi Brian. I thought you were asleep.

ME: I finished my game! 

CHRIS: What game?

ME: Das sarros. 

CHRIS: Hang on. [turns on the hall light to see his crazy-eyed nephew beaming at him] 

CHRIS: You’re doing what now?

ME: Das. Das sarros.

CHRIS: Is that Spanish or German?

ME: It’s with my computer and ... It’s like... [mumble]

CHRIS: Okay...

ME: Here, I’ll do it again. [I run over in the darkness of my room, smack the top my old computer that’s sitting on a bookshelf, and turn back to him, smiling triumphantly.] I did it! 

CHRIS: Good job, Brian. Go back to bed.

ME: ‘kay. 

And I went back to bed. The strange thing is, I don’t think this qualifies as sleepwalking because I remember the whole thing. It’s just that I was talking about my dream world and the more I woke up, the more that world disappeared. 

You guys, this is such a freaking weird and hilarious aspect of my life that it simultaneously amuses and concerns me. And I’m totally okay with that.