from a dream: after a work related outing bus drive to my childhood best friend's house (his name is gilbert) we all got out and walked down the driveway. there was some new girl who reminded me of irina there who i guess had the hots for me, and i thought in my head that i was going to cheat on becky, and i really didn't feel like i wanted to. we walked down the driveway and everyone was anticipating some famous burgers that were rumoured to be served. single file people walked into the garage where symmetrically laid out were about 15 burgers and matching buns. i remembered upon seeing the burgers that i am a vegetarian and instead gave an excuse about not wanting to eat food from the garage floor. i stepped out of line and walked up a familiar flight of 5 steps into gilbert's house, as i had in real life for so many years. when i got into the house, i saw an image of gilbert and i as kids. as 6 year olds about, (which is strange because we met when we were 10). before the image could vanish, i had a thought - grab them/us - then they have to be real. i grabbed myself and gilbert yelled. i had them/us! i was about to give a message to my 6 year old self. i always wished i could, and now i was going to. i grabbed my shoulders, and looked into my own face which was fearful, but kind of curious - and i was wearing my old brown rimmed nerd glasses. i said something forceful along the lines of 'you're going to make some mistakes, but take some chances, or do the right thing' or something along those lines. it wasn't as poignant as i'd hoped. gilbert's mom came downstairs from the kitchen (it's a split level house) and asked who i was yelling at. i told her that i had caught my hallucinations, that they were real - see? here's gilbert and here's me i said showing us off. she thought i was crazy, and instantly the young gilbert and i vanished. she asked what the hell i was talking about. i said, oh yeah, of course we weren't here...just ask eve (gil's sister - who i also just started to see) gil's mom looked at me like i was really crazy, and i said, 'just kidding'. i walked upstairs with her into the kitchen and she started telling me that she was pissed at me. i didn't know why. she said 'it was meg's last day in may, and you never wished her well'. i didn't know a meg. 'she was the intern!'. now i remembered - meg was a girl that gil's mom hired to help with the housework (not true in real life, obviously). i apologized, and she started yelling at me in tagalog. i said i don't know tagalog, and she continued to answer me in it. thinking it was a loss, and that the party and house had dissapated into a scene of severe urban decay, i decided to leave. before the dream was out, i tried to break up a mass beating of a kid by a group of catholic school students in an alley set in the severe urban decay. before i received my own beating for doing that, i woke up.

sometime over the winter i had told gil's little sister that i didn't want to receive her multiple daily forwards about how great america is, and how our troops are defending freedom by decimating iraqi children...because they had everything to do with 9/11. they were e-mails filled with hatred, and an extremely telling ignorance that runs rampany through this country when it comes to the war. the one that got me was a forward written in outrage about how the qatari oil-lords were building giant mansions etc, with the money they got from oil. so? it's their oil! it's from their country! america has no right to it...why the outrage? anyway, not to go on with that argument, i told her that i'd rather have real e-mails from her, so i knew how she, her 3 kids, and her husband who's in iraq at the moment were doing. i never heard back. i don't understand. i just wanted real e-mails from her, not forwards.

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