Not really a dream, but...

Naperthrill.com is having a contest to see who can drive the most traffic to their Naperville New Year's Eve Guide. Details here:

http://www.naperthrill.com/nye/?pg=contest

And the guide itself is at http://www.naperthrill.com/nye

Ok, time to go to bed! Hopefully I'll have an actual dream to write about tomorrow.

I secretly want to be a biker

It's almost 5 am which means it's just about time for me to go to bed again (I keep weird hours), but I still remember some big parts of a dream from last night.

I don't know where I was, but (the character) Mike Delfino from Desperate Housewives had a motorcycle and apparently I wanted to ride it but didn't know how. From out of nowhere, Louise Kao came out and said she would show me! I knew Louise in high school and last I heard - like 10 years ago - she had married Brian Durante, another NCHS classmate. So Louise got on this bike and told me to jump up onto the handle bars and off we went. Why did I dream of Louise, someone I haven't seen or thought about since the 90s? I have no clue!! Funny how these things work.

This dream sort of melted into a haze that involved some odd locales in San Francisco (where I lived for almost 8 years) and some very odd instructions on how to operate a motorcycle's clutch and brakes. Not the most exciting dream in the world, but it was memorable for some reason. Do I have a crush on Louise Kao? Or a man-crush on Mike Delfino? You be the judge! Ok, I didn't mean that. Don't judge. I am madly in love with Louise. End of story.

And Chicago's next QB is...

Last night's dream is pretty fuzzy at this point (didn't have time to write it down this morning) but it had something to do with some players from the Bears practicing in a lake. I think they felt that running in water would be good exercise. The best part of this dream? The return of The Punky QB! Yeah Jim McMahon was there, looking to make a comeback. Maybe that's not such a bad idea given how bad the Bears have been this season...

Jessica Alba ate my stuff

This is my second Jessica dream... maybe I should rename the blog I Dream of Jessica?

So in this one, Jessica was dating my friend Nathan and naturally I had a crush on her. I also had some papers which I think were printouts of this blog describing my dreams of her but Nathan didn't know about those. So she, Nathan, my friend Dan, and I were all at a movie theater together. Jessica was hungry and I just happened to have a plate with something on it... macaroni?... and she started to eat it with no hands. Just stuck her face in the plate and started gobbling down whatever was there. Funny thing is I felt this gobbling in my pants too! Not making this up, it's a dream. And it was spectacular. Nathan didn't know about this incident and I definitely wasn't gonna tell him. There was some concern over him finding my blog transcripts, but I'm not sure if that ever happened.

After that, the dream (unfortunately) changed into something different and kind of disgusting. I encountered Patrick Kriwanek, the film department head from Academy of Art College where I went to school, and I saw him making out with his gay lover underwater after they stole a stereo of some kind. Patrick isn't really gay, or at least I don't think he is, but as a student I wasn't exactly a fan of his. I truly hope I never dream of him again. More Jessica, less Patrick.

Please let go of my teeth

Man... I was really pissed at my friend Ben Hauser! I don't know where we were, but I was drunk... Ben might have been, too... and he reached into my mouth and grabbed a hold of three of my teeth with his fingers and started leading me around the room. I kept telling him to let go but he wouldn't and, shortly after he finally did let go, my three teeth fell out.

Apparently I was supposed to be getting married a week later but my wife-to-be (an unknown white girl) didn't seem too concerned. At some point I sent Ben some really nasty text messages and proceeded to tell everyone how evil he was, and later on I picked up my teeth and stuck them back into the gums they were pulled from.

Ben, if you try to touch my teeth the next time I see you there's gonna be trouble!!

Definitely a DREAM

This one is pretty fuzzy since it happened almost 24 hours ago but... I was with my friend Lee and I needed to stop at some fish place to pick up some sushi. Lee stayed in the car while I ran in to get the fish, and I ordered tuna and yellowtail sashimi. They chopped up what I asked for, and somehow I wound up with a bunch of salami and sashimi-cut ham, too.

Lee apparently got sick of waiting in the car so he came in to see what the holdup was. By that time, the fish and lunch meat was all ready to go, so we got back in the car and started driving. At some point, Lee managed to get out of the car (even though I hadn't stopped) and he was talking with someone on the other side of the road. I pulled over, and then... *poof*... Jessica Alba made an appearance. In fact, the Goddess appearance was so out of context that it might have been an entirely different dream! Doesn't matter. Any dream that involves a female like her can't be a bad one.

Ouch that was painful

My friend Cory was under house arrest - not sure what he did, but I was visiting him. While I was at his place, I accidentally cut my BALLSACK on the corner of one his dresser drawers! Eeew. At first glance it didn't look too bad, but then I realized that I had completely split myself open I could actually see inside Mr. Scrotum. I tried to patch it up with gauze and some tape, but to no avail. Not sure what happened after that, but I woke up with two nuts and no injuries so I'm feeling pretty good right now.

Hi, I'd like $30,000 please

My friend Keith Longwell and I needed to raise money for a 5K race being hosted by our high school (even though we both graduated from different high schools almost 20 years ago). We went to a shopping mall where we ran into Mary Rechenmacher, someone I knew growing up. She was working for Citibank and said she'd help me get the money.

We went to Citibank where she worked and she gave me a credit application which I dashed off as fast as possible. I didn't know what amount we needed for the race, so I just put $30,000. As I was doing this, I confessed to her that I didn't think it would take this much work to get a loan, and she asked me if I'd researched this funding at all. Duh! Of course not. Then Mary asked me something like, "Didn't you at least get an Abbey Report?" I was like, wtf is an abbey report? Apparently, in my distorted and mostly-fictitious world of sleep, and Abbey Report is a type of revenue report.

I left the bank resigned to the fact that I wasn't going to get any money.

The world's coolest boat

My dad had a sailboat back in the 90s, and I was inside the cabin just laying around. The boat was drifting aimlessly around Lake Michigan around all the harbors, and then it started to collide with other boats that were docked. I don't think my dad knew that I was in his boat, so I had to try and keep it from getting damaged.

I got out and looked around, and the sailboat wasn't a sailboat anymore, it was one of those Hobie-Cat things, yet somehow it still had a cabin. When I tried to go back inside, the vessel had turned into a hybrid boat/seaplane and I accidentally flipped the engines on! Oops. So I was in this sailboat/hobie/seaplane, and I was kind of panicking because I didn't know how to land the thing. The boat plane went airborne on its own and I started flying around looking for a good place to try and land without dying.

I called my dad from the plane and started to explain what was going on, but in the course of doing so I landed the boat plane safely and was taxiing through traffic near the lake. The plane's wings were folded up like the old planes on WWII-era aircraft carriers, and that was that.

Why do I keep dreaming of Korean people?

This one actually happened a few days ago. There was this girl I knew when I lived in Korea - JiYoon. She was one of my students and, for a while, she had a little bit of a crush on me! Yeah, weird. Not bad looking either. Nothing ever happened between us, and apparently my subconscious is regretting that.

The dream is a little hazy since it was days ago, but I kept on trying to get a hold of her from offices that I was visiting for one reason or another. I never did manage to get her on the phone, but on one desk (which belonged to some guy I didn't know) I saw pictures of her! Hmmmmm...

'Twas the night before christmas, and Jinho wouldn't leave

I think this took place in the house where I grew up.

It was the night before Christmas and I hadn't done any shopping at all. I was trying to figure out where I was going to go for presents, and for some reason one of my former students (from when I taught English in Korea) was staying with my family. I found myself rummaging around in a closet to find a remote-controlled Tonka dump truck. Maybe I was going to give it to Jinho? I dunno, but Jinho was apparently supposed to go back to Korea but he wasn't budging.

The rest is too hazy to write about in any detail. It was a pretty lame dream anyway!

Skiing and driving, but not really

I was skiing with my friends Lee and Grace, maybe at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. Odd thing is, I didn't have skis on... I was trying to walk up the ski hill in my boots (there wasn't a chair lift) and it was so slippery that I fell and slid back down the hill to where I had started. Eventually I made it up the hill by way of a rope lift.

Inside the lodge I changed the channel on the big projection screen from some black & white movie to Chronicles of Narnia, and then Lee told me that we had to get going soon. Next thing I knew we were in a car and going downhill, but we were rolling instead of driving and I took a wrong turn that put us at a dead end. We turned around (except at this point we didn't seem to be in a car anymore) and got back on the main road... and somewhere during all of this, the Dolly Parton song "Here You Come Again" was apparently playing because it's now stuck in my head. Hmm.

There's a little more, but this dream is so boring that I think I'll just stop here.

Oh man Dad's gonna be pissed

I was in Korea with my Dad, sister (Kelly), and brother (Pat). For some reason, I had to get my dad's watch to Kelly. Dad was looking for the watch, a gold bracelet-type that was all metal, and I hid it in a pair of pants that was on a nearby chair. He was asking me where it was and I told him I didn't know, and when he went to the bathroom I ran to Kelly's room with it and gave it to her.

A disgusting toilet dream, but at least Kelly was there

I think I was at a party or something, and I was waiting to use one of the stalls in a bathroom. Somebody came out of one and, when I went in, the toilet was all plugged up with shit! Ugh. So the guy in the next stall (the stall dividers were short) reached over and stuck his bare hand into the shit-filled toilet and unplugged it! No idea why - maybe he could relate to desperately needing to take a huge dump in an inhospitable environment.

And somewhere in this big disgusting mess, the ditzy Indian girl ("Kelly") from The Office was determined to be my new girlfriend. Huh? Kelly's real name is Mindy Kaling. I have no clue where this came from - even though I'd get with her, she's definitely not someone I drool over - but nonetheless I'm sure Mindy would be proud to know that she was part of my diarrhea dream.

Jeremy Martin wears diapers

Apparently I was back in Korea where I lived from 2002-2005, because I was playing football with the same group of friends that still plays there today. On my team were Benny Blaze, Jeremy, some girl, and a few others. We couldn't score, Blaze couldn't complete a pass, and we were down 16-0.

On the sideline, I noticed that Jeremy was wearing diapers. I had secretly been designing a football uniform with diapers built into the pants so that players wouldn't have to leave the game to take a wiz, so this was intriguing. Jeremy explained that his diapers were made for fat babies, so he was trying them out. Then I started asking the dumb questions.

"Are you really gonna run around after taking a massive dump in those things?"

"Did you and Hope do anything dirty when you first put the diapers on?"

Hope is Jeremy's girlfriend. When I asked that question, Jeremy didn't say anything so I responded with something like "ummmmm ok dude we don't need to know".

Hey, I know that dog

My old dog Rosie came back from the dead! When I was growing up our family had two dalmations and Rosie was the second. Without three kids around to walk her, my mom eventually gave Rosie to someone she knew and I think poor Rosie croaked within a year or two after that. Anyway...

I was sitting outside (maybe I was in Naperville?) and some lady came walking in my direction with a really old dalmation. She was super old and kind of fat (I mean the dog), and the lady she was with said "you know me, right?" I was like uhhhhh no, sorry. Turns out she and her husband were both wearing handwritten nametags which I didn't see.

It took a minute, but Rosie eventually recognized me and tried to shake hands. Then I whipped out my wallet and started showing this lady old pictures of Rosie, including the one above. The other pictures I showed her don't really exist, but they were pretty gay... the kind of thing a mother would force her kids to do, like dressing up in black and white to match the dog and then get in some goofy pose. Eeeew.

Supermarket vampires!

Some girl who went to Naperville Central... not sure who she was, I just remember her picture from a yearbook... was hot & evil. She wanted my blood because I was the Head Vampire, but I didn't know it. Maybe my blood was going to make HER the Head Vampire? I dunno. The whole thing is pretty hazy but I was running around this grocery store and somebody (possibly me?) was stabbing people in the heart they may or may not have been vampires, too! Fun stuff.

Hot Evil Vampire Girl had already gotten very dirty with me as way of trying to get my blood. You know what really sucks? The dirty part wasn't in the dream! What a ripoff. Eventually it turned out that I really wasn't the Head Vampire after all and Hot Evil was pissed because she'd already porked me. Ha! Idiot. Score one for me.

Chicks hate me, but at least I have a gun

I went back to Korea to visit and somehow found myself living with Jisun (my ex-gf from when I lived there) and Da Hae (Jisun's coworker from Hongik Universtiy). Jisun never actually appeared - it was just me & Da Hae in the apartment. I was kind of hitting on her and she said something like "even if I see you naked you won't take my innocence!" See, Da Hae's one of those Christian types.

Da Hae showed me how to use Hongik U's internal IM system, so I started talking to both her and Jisun through this thing. It was pretty brief, but then it all kind of shifted into this whole thing where I was shooting people and trying to figure out how people in Korea can fax certain OBJECTS to each other, like carpet samples.

I found myself running around this building with a gun (which had a silencer) and I was with somebody who was, um, "showing me the ropes" or something. We were sneaking around and my partner shot a couple of people but one of them got up and ran away. I chased after him, went up a few flights of stairs to the top of the building and assumed he got away, then on the way down I found him just sitting there on the stairs looking at me! Dumbass. I shot him in the chest and said "outta my way". See what a badass I am? Just call me BMF.

When I went back downstairs I was in some kind of store and I asked a couple of kids about the faxing of objects and they explained it to me... people could fax colors to each other, which then get applied to objects. Or something like that. Whatever it was, it was pretty screwy. Oddly enough, the kids were white, not Korean. You'd think I'd find Korean kids in the store since we were in Korea, but not this time.

Near the end of it all, I decided that I wanted to stay in Korea for good and I started wondering how I could afford it. Not sure what happened after that, but the one thing I can be certain of is that Da Hae never gave it up! She knows better than to mess around with creeps like me.

My Naperville shoe store sucks!

I bought a pair of running shoes at some department store... let's just say it was Kohl's because I would never buy them at an expensive place. So at Kohl's, I paid about $60 and they threw in a free bottle of Michael Jordan cologne! Oooh what a deal. It was a manufacturer promo, so you'd think that the free cologne would be available everywhere the shoes are sold, right? Well...

After buying the shoes I was like, wait a minute, I own a shoe store in downtown Naperville! I should have just bought the shoes there to (a) save me money, and (b) score a sale for the register. I went to my shoe store and got the same pair of shoes, but when my employee rang me up it was $200 and no free cologne. WTF?? No way was I forking over $200 (even to my own business), and I asked the girl about the cologne. Not only was she clueless, she also didn't give a shit.

At that point, I started to talk about how it's important to know the promos and whether or not we should lower prices. Then my brain somehow realized how incredibly boring this dream was getting and it kicked me into a weird game of Starcraft where my base was about 2 feet from the other guy's and I was going around trying to make cannons. Still not the most exciting dream, but at least it wasn't a lame retail store meeting.

(On the plus side, the two girls working at my store were pretty hot. Not exactly Sports Illustrated bikini material, but more like Girls-Gone-Wild hot.)

Jacob Gepeghetti is illiterate

I dreamed about being at a casino with my friend Cory and someone else... possibly Nik?... but frankly that dream wasn't very interesting. I remember bits and pieces such as having to stand on my toes to see the pass line on a very tall craps table and trying to arrange transportation from the casino to Bangkok (apparently we were in Thailand), but overall that dream was pretty boring.

Things got more interesting in this other dream where I was at a school or something. I had dropped a big can of Suave deoderant (the kind that sprays on) and I went back to get it. Instead I found a smaller can of Suave, so I figured hey what the hell, it's just a spray so I'll use it anyway. Then this guy who was nearby said that the deoderant belonged to his friend, but I could have it.

Somehow we got to talking and we decided to go to the cafeteria which I had just walked out of a few minutes earlier. Along the way, this guy had to step away for a minute and while he was gone I noticed a metal nameplate on one of his things that said "Jacob Gepeghetti". Who the hell is Jacob Gepeghetti in real life? No idea!

So Jacob came back and we were talking, and he told me that he had just joined the army and that he'd be going to Iraq. I asked what his job in the army would be, and he said that he got put into the "illiterate army" because he can't read. Naturally, the illiterate army goes to the front line (if there is such a thing in modern battles) which made perfect sense to me... let the dummies die first, right?

The rest of the dream got too hazy to describe in any detail, but it's a little weird to remember an actual name from a dream. Jacob, if you're reading this, LEARN TO READ!! Wait, that doesn't make any sense...

Wikis... the wave of the future?

Last night's dream is a little cloudy (as most are), but it definitely had something to do with wikis, as in Wikipedia, or any kind of site like that where content is created, moderated, and edited entirely by users.

In my dream, everybody and their mother was creating wiki sites! It was the new, hot thing on the internet, like the explosion of social networking a few years back. Someone had created a wiki called Nigggo.com - yes, with three Gs - and I thought, hmm that almost sounds racist. And then fried food somehow got involved! I'm pretty sure it was the same dream because I had a whole plan for frying foods in a certain order, like that was somehow going to help me get into the wiki business.

Maybe I'm onto something here? With Wikimedia gearing up to take on Google in the search business, wiki could indeed be The Next Big Thing.

NCHS at the airport

You know how your dreams sometimes blend together and you're not sure if you had one dream that skipped to different locations or if you had a few different dreams? I had one of those last night.

Part of it involved my friend Eric who was trying to figure out where his wife works so that he could call her. Flash forward to a cruise ship where someone was asking me if I was interested in shooting a fish with a gun (trust me, I wasn't).

The biggest chunk of dream that I remember was at an airport. I was picking up my car... not sure if I had just gotten off a plane or not... and I ran into Steve Forsythe. Steve and I met in 2nd grade at Steeple Run when my family first moved to Naperville (ok, we really lived in Lisle), and we went to the same schools all the way up to high school at NCHS.

So Steve and I started walking, and then he ran into someone else he knew.. not sure who, though. Walked some more and he found Kim Redmond, a girl from Naperville Central! And Kim was looking HOT. Back in the day, Kim was the resident Hot Blonde. Every class has one, and Kim Redmond was it for the class of '89. In case you're wondering... no, she wasn't a bitch. She was actually really nice.

So Steve, Kim, and I started walking out of the airport to a hotdog stand and suddenly I realized that I didn't need a hotdog, I needed to get my car. In order to do that I had to take my claim check to a guy and pay him. So I ditched the high school people and tried to run to the parking guy but I could only run really slowly. It was like the pavement was a treadmill or something because I couldn't go very fast no matter how hard I tried.

Somewhere along the way I found a very shiny quarter and picked it up, and then I finally got to the place to pay for parking. Steve was there and he said something about Las Vegas and eating nothing but a can of beans, and then I finally gave the parking guy my claim check.

After that, the dream transitioned into something else entirely but I'm not sure what. I think it had something to do with the environment.

For a first dream, this was pretty lame... unless your name is Steve Forsythe or Kim Redmond (in which case it might be a little creepy). Sorry about that.

I'm gonna post something soon

I just have to have a dream worth remembering! Don't worry, it usually doesn't take too long for that to happen.