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"Every Day Above Ground is a Good One"

However magnificently whimsical they are, those Six Feet Under Season 4 posters recently put up in Grand Central station must have some weird subliminal messages in them because I had two death-related dreams last night. In the first one, I attended the funeral of a friend (who I can't even recall now) with a bunch of other random people and struggled to find something to say in my eulogy. I don't remember if I ever did deliver the powerful, poignant speech I was crafting in my dream. It was all a blur, probably had something to do with all the drinks I had in my bartending class last night.

In my next dream, my sweater fell on to the train tracks while I was waiting for the subway, except I wasn't in a subway station. When I hopped into the muddy pit to retrieve the sweater, a train came roaring down the muddy tracks toward me. I grabbed the sweater and tried to outrun it but slipped and fell. I remember thinking, "so this is it, this is the end for me" before being run over. It was only the second dream I have ever had in which I died. The first time I dreamed my own death I was probably 13 or 14. In my dream I was fighting against an assassin. He killed me with a flying dagger. I still remember how I woke up thinking, "Holy shit, I can't believe I just died!"

I must say that getting run over by a train has to be one of the shittiest ways to die. It sucks for you, your parents and friends who can't even see you in one piece, the police officers who have to scrape the chunks of you off the tracks and platform, the passengers who have to wait for hours while the police collect you, the mortician(s) who have to clean the pieces of you up. It's just a big fucking hassle and waste of time for everyone involved. What kind of assholes would kill themselves by train? What a bunch of selfish bastards!

At the Movies

Saturday night I checked out "Saved" with Andy. I was a little apprehensive going into the movie because I had seen some mixed reviews, but then again it couldn't be that bad if it's making fun of fundamentalist Christians. Overall I found the movie pretty entertaining and very funny in certain parts. I would definitely recommend it.

However, I saw some awful trailers before the movie started. I guess "awful" is too a strong word. "Pointless" is more like it. There was a preview for a remake of "Shall We Dance," a mildly entertaining Japanese movie I saw several years ago about a white-collar professional who sought to distract himself from mid-life crisis by taking ballroom dancing lessons. It was followed by "Cinderella," a modern retelling of the classic fairy tale starring Hillary Duff created for the sole purpose of swindling the hard-earned allowances of that new buzz-worthy demographic known as "tweens." I couldn't help but vent to Andy, "Why do these movies exist?" The only redeeming trailer out of the lot was the one for "Fahrenheit 9/11." Check it out here. That last scene where Bush whacks a golf ball seconds after solemnly proclaiming the importance of the "War on Terror" is just priceless.

I saw one of the most amazing things ever while using the restroom before going into the theatre (I'm experimenting with the "Memento" narrative). As I was relieving myself, an African-American gentleman in a wheelchair pulled up to the urinal next to mine. I wondered what the guy would do next since he didn't seem to have anyone else helping him. Peering out the right corner of my eyes, I saw a steady, horizontal stream shooting into the urinal with laser precision. The man was almost a foot away from the urinal!! It was as if he had a fire hose in his pants. I just hope whoever gives him oral pleasure has enough sense to duck away at the right moment so she won't have a hole in her head like that one baddie in "Die Another Day," who had a burst of laser penetrate his head while he trying to kill Halle Berry.

Random Thoughts While Watching the Lakers/Pistons Game

Yet another sign of the impending Apocalypse: a teaser ad for a new ABC show called "Desperate Housewives." WTF???

Why is Nike even wasting time making shoes? They should just stick to marketing and advertising. The latest ad with Lance Armstrong is mind-blowingly artistic/gorgeous/powerful/brilliant. I wish I could take a snapshot of that scene where Lance charges out of the tunnel with the birds and hang it up on my wall. It's such an exquisite image that it literally takes my breath away. I also find the later scene in which the front wheel of the little boy's bike struggles to catch up to Lance's back wheel oddly moving. Even though I have seen the ad several times, I'm still awestruck every time it comes on.

Why is Tom Tolbert wearing that hideous minty-colored suit? Doesn't he know he's on national TV?

Down and Out in Paris and London

"For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry. When you have a hundred francs in the world you are liable to the most craven panics. When you have only three francs you are quite indifferent; for three francs will feed you till to-morrow, and you cannot think further than that. You are bored, but you are not afraid. You think vaguely, 'I shall be starving in a day or two --shocking, isn't it?' And then the mind wanders to other topics."

--George Orwell