Wherein Arlo Guthrie Fights a Bunch of Teenagers

Twice in the past couple of days, I've gone into a store or restaurant and heard that Arlo Guthrie song City of New Orleans. Isn't that FUCKED UP? Not really. No, not at all. But still, I think it's weird, because when I was a little kid I (for some reason) loved that song, but I haven't heard it in like two decades. And now, all of the sudden, I hear it twice in the span of a few days, including in a Dunkin' Donuts, which, if you ask me, is like the least likely place that you will ever hear an Arlo Guthrie song. My conclusion? These events = BAFFLING. Indeed.

Speaking of baffling, check out this dream I had the other night: I was going to the gym, but it was 10 miles away from my house. So, I did what any normal person would do: I ran there. I mean, what better way to warm up for a workout than by running for 10 miles? And, what better way to cool down from working out than running 10 more miles? It's just good fitness strategy. Anyways, when I got to the gym, I decided to take a quick detour before going in, so I stopped by the comic book store that was located right next to it. Because, you know, nothing helps your body deal with the shock of running several miles better than reading about Wolverine and/or the Avengers. As I was in the comic book store, looking for comics by Dave Sim (I specifically remember this detail, for some reason), I noticed that there were several teenage girls hanging around the store. Clearly, this was a dream. As if I needed any more proof of the dream-ness of these happenings, one of the teenage girls came up to me and told me that I was really hot and that she wanted to go out with me. What was it that attracted her to me? The copious amount of post-jog sweat that I was covered in? My personal odor, which resembled a used diaper on fire? The fact that I was clearly cool as shit because I was hanging out in a comic book store while wearing jogging shorts? Who knows? The point is, when she asked me out, I laughed in her face and said, "Sorry, I'm waaaay too old for you." (I said "way" as I just typed it, with the three extra A's--I know this because in dreamland you can, to an amazing degree, control how many vowels are in the words that you're speaking. Didn't you see that movie Altered States? I'm pretty sure that's what it was about.) As if to reinforce the fact that it was a dream, the girl didn't give up just because I initially rebuffed her advances. Rather, she asked me, "Well, how old are you?" To which I replied, "Somewhere between 30 and TOO OLD." Zing! Yeah, I told her. The dream pretty much ended there, and upon waking I discovered that this dream had caused a two-pronged attacking of depressination within me, due to the facts that (a) I turned down a hot lady's date request (in a comic book store, no less) for no good reason, and (b) there's no way my brain would ever be snappy enough to come up with a retort like "Somewhere between 30 and TOO OLD" in my waking life, but in my dream life it's throwing that shit around like Joe Montana in the Super Bowl.<---See that sorry-ass analogy right there? That's the best thing I could come up with, but if this had been a dream, the analogy would have been awesome. This proves the very point that I was trying to make in the first place. WEIRD. All of this leads me to one conclusion: it's nap time!