my nine is easy to load

In accordance with patterns and practice here at The Write-On, January 5th seems like the perfect time to generate the "my Christmas was fine how was yours?" post.

My travels took me on an intra-continental ellipse: West Coast to Gulf Coast to East Coast to Midwest and back again. I would also like to add that in the past 3.5 months, I have engaged in air travel no less than 8 times. It doesn't even phase me anymore, to the extent that I no longer require any sort of diversion or entertainment while I fly. I don't need a book, or my iPod, or a crossword puzzle. Sorta like C-3PO, I can sit in that horrid seat and zone out until the flight is over. Even on the long haul from Orange County to Houston, I just sit and stare off into the middle distance.

So it seems a pretty safe inference that all of this air travel is what inspired my dream.

In my dream, on I'm a large commercial airliner, packed full of people going hither and thither for the holidays. All of a sudden: Trouble! It seems that there is a tiny demon snowman terrorizing the aircraft. He is very small, and he is creeping to and fro amongst the carry-on baggage, spitting out little tiny snow fireballs. And it's up to me to find him!

But not just me. Me... and LL Cool J. And Ed Helms.

Unfortunately, LL Cool J was so upset by the demon snowman, that he wanted to open the emergency exit door and jump out. So before I could take care of the demon snowman, I had to convince LL Cool J that his life is worth living! and that he should stay on the plane and help Ed Helms and me find the demon snowman and throw him out of the emergency exit door instead.

Once Ladies Love Cool James pulled it together he was ready for action. Ed Helms, however, was useless. So Mr. Smith and I rifled through all the carry-on baggage until we found the demon snowman. He is very tiny. Like, 2 inches tall. And looka kinda like this:


But then the flight attendantess wouldn't let us open the emergency door, so we had to roll down a window to throw him out.

But here's the thing: I know that this is what would usually qualify as a quote-unquote weird dream. I get it, ok? I. Get it. Dreams should be all about falling and flying and make public speeches in the nude and walking into final exams you didn't study for. But sometimes dreams are weird, ok?

And every single person to whom I have recounted this dream has looked at me like I am a raving lunatic instead of just someone who tends to go overboard on italicizing things. I told Big Jer, I told Hawkgirl, I even told R7. And every last one of them responded with blank stares and some manner of bemused sidebar comment to no one in particular. Something like, "Ha. Hmm. That's a, uh, a dream."

Like I'm the first person in the history of upright, bipedal mammals to have a weird dream. I am not. One time I dreamed that I was a flamboyant Bavarian talk-show host being hunted by a local ice cream syndicate. People have that dream, ok? That is a normal dream. One time I dreamed that a He-Man action figure from my childhood was trying to find me so that he could steal my Magic Pants, and the only way to appease him would be to give him a mustard sandwich - but I don't like regular mustard and I didn't have any to give him! You know you've had that same dream, ok? You totally have.

I think it was Orko.