Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I’m just like, “What the hell kind of dream was that? Am I really stupid enough to have thought of that?” My dreams make David Lynch’s movies seem like an abridged version of Dick and Jane, and I can never figure out what the hell is going on in them. It’s frustrating, because there I am trying to get a decent night’s sleep, and all of a sudden I start seeing insane images of people I know occupying bizarre, surreal settings, and everyone’s talking in retarded riddles. “Go not to the cave, Eric! Heed the words that were written in stone!” In the dream, these things all make sense to me, but then when I wake up, I’m confused as hell. It’s like, wait a minute, wasn’t I flying around in a police car with TV’s ALF? Then how the hell did I end up in what appeared to be a castle/factory hybrid looking for stolen jewels? And why do I always get violently murdered at the end of my dreams by a darker, twisted version of myself, only to wake up in a cold sweat with a pounding headache?

You know, dreams wouldn’t be so bad if you got to choose what you dreamt about, but you really don’t. It’s not like I’m laying down on the bed before I go to sleep and thinking, “OK, tonight I’m going to dream about bowling with a talking metal penguin and my 8th grade algebra teacher, only instead of using bowling balls, we use dictionaries. Oh, and we’re in outer space.” Yet, sure enough, there’s the talking metallic penguin and Mrs. Miller, and we’re bowling with dictionaries in outer space. Call me crazy, but I think that I should have control over my subconscious.

Also, I demand to know who came up with dreams in the first place. I want to know who said, “Alright, let’s have the subconscious take a bunch of fragmented ideas, choppily edit them together, toss in some random characters from one’s past, and then let people watch that while they’re sleeping.” I mean, it’s not like dreams mean anything. A lot of people like to sit there saying, “OK, let’s see, the Jello represented my struggle battling adversity, while the cast of UPN’s Moesha was a metaphor for–” No, I’m sorry, there’s no meaning to any of that nonsense. And if there is meaning to it, it must be some kind of dumb, ridiculous meaning that doesn’t make any sense. To be perfectly frank, I don’t have time for that.

I apologize for the infrequent updates as of late, but you have to understand that during the summer I can only do one thing per day. For example, last Sunday I checked the mail (I forgot it was Sunday) and on Monday I watched a show on the Discovery Channel about roller coasters. These things occupied my time quite neatly, and I didn’t have the energy to do anything else, so I just sat on the edge of my bed the rest of the time, mentally preparing myself for the next day’s activity–which in today’s case is updating eKarjala. Tomorrow I plan to either get a job or eat a bagel.

You know, as I walk by people downtown, I’ve been noticing how retarded their conversations are. If you pass by people and they’re talking with somebody, nine times out of ten they’re going to be saying something really stupid. This one guy said to the person he was with, “There’s no ‘R’ in [some French word that sounded like ‘bavari’].” There’s no ‘R’ in bavari? What the hell does that mean? Granted, I didn’t hear the context it was being used in, but I don’t think knowing that would have given this guy any added credibility. Was the girl he was walking with asking him how to spell bavari? Was he regaling her with a story about some sort of bizarre French spelling bee he had participated in? Either way, chances are that this guy is kind of an idiot for saying something like that. If I ever said “There’s no ‘R’ in bavari,” I’d expect everybody in hearing distance to laugh in my face and say, “Bavari? What the hell are you talking about?”

What we’ve been doing lately is, after passing by people on the street and overhearing their conversations, we comment on what they’re talking about in an audible, semi-sarcastic tone. For example, after passing the Bavari guy, I said, “There’s no ‘I’ in team” really loudly. None of us looked back at him, but you have to imagine that he had to be sort of thrown off by this statement. As he should be–how dare he talk about there not being an ‘R’ in the word bavari. Or maybe I just need to get some sort of a real hobby, like bass fishing or collecting old-fashioned radios. Something dumb like that.

My favorite part about getting my wisdom teeth pulled is that now there aren’t those bothersome teeth in my mouth. My least favorite part is probably … hmm … that’s a tough decision. However, I guess I’d have to say that it’d have to be the insane, mind-numbing pain from hell that’s associated with it. Yeah, that’s definitely it.

Actually, it isn’t that bad. This may be the Vicodin talking, but once you get over the fact that you’re constantly swallowing blood, your cheeks are puffed out like a little chipmunk and you can’t eat anything other than applesauce and soup, having your wisdom teeth pulled isn’t that bad. You really get a lot of time to relax. For example, yesterday I slept a total of about 21 hours. Even my cats, who sleep almost all the time, are looking at me like I’m lazy. They said, “Christ, are you going to sleep all day? You’re freaking pathetic.”

Changing the subject a bit, does anybody remember freestyle walking? This may have been a regional thing, but about four years ago a lot of young people went through a phase where they thought it was really rad to do tricks with their feet. This entailed them jumping off of benches and then twirling around in the air and then giving their friends high-fives afterward. It was kind of like skateboarding, only without the skateboards or the dignity. I wish I was kidding, but people actually thought that they might look cool by jumping up in the air and then spinning around. Could they not afford Rollerblades? Were they unable to ride a bike? If so, why would they do this in public? I mean, Screech from Saved by the Bell could have walked by these kids and have rightly called them a bunch of losers.

Speaking of Screech, did you know that the actor who played him is now living in a small house with his father, the very person who swindled all of his money several years ago? That is so like Screech.