In exchange for a generous allowance, I spend 40 hours each week locked up in a building with advanced computer equipment and software. With this, I can create wonderful things as my imagination leads me.

I


  work the night shift at an internet service provider. I'm expected to answer the phones, provide technical assistance to clients, maintain the integrity of the network, and to update and lend design to the ISP's web site. None of these tasks involves much effort. I am mostly free to work on my own projects. Basically, I have been handed a wonderful opportunity. In exchange for a generous allowance, I spend 40 hours each week locked up in a building with advanced computer equipment and software. With this, I can create wonderful things as my imagination leads me. I often have the feeling that some day I'll look back on these times and say, "now those were the days." But am I taking full advantage of what has been handed to me? Will I be asking myself, "What were you doing Gus, why didn't you see that opportunity and run with it?" If the measure of my success in these times is money, then no, I'm not doing so well. But if the measure is contentment, if the measure is fulfillment, then I'm doing excellent. I work very hard every night telling my story to the world. And there's no more economical way to do so than via the World Wide Web. Not only that, but people are listening. Forgive me if I gloat, but I was very pleased to note that the musings had nearly 300 hits yesterday.

---

I thought that by staying home better things might happen. I was right, and I was also wrong.

I


n the afternoon I went to Comet to pick up my paycheck as usual for an every other Friday. A dark cloud hung over me after that, from something disturbing I overheard. I'll discuss this matter more some day, no matter how it turns out.

Back at Kappa Mutha Fucka, I sat around by myself watching teevee, drinking Beast Ice and eating greasy fried chicken from Old Dominion Chicken. Meanwhile, Matthew Hart had left on a solo trip to the beach, Nagshead North Carolina I believe. And Rory and Leah (along with a Phish teeshirt-wearing dude from the C&O named Ocean) had gone swimming at Blue Hole in the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains. I could have gone with either group, but I didn't feel like taking off another Saturday to go with Matthew, and the trip to Blue Hole didn't seem to hold much promise for excitement. I thought that by staying home better things might happen. I was right, and I was also wrong.

To have some energy for tonight, I took a nap at something like 7:30. When I awoke, it was almost midnight, and I was feeling tired, so I just stayed in bed. I awoke several times throughout the night after that, but I never got out of bed. There was something safe and wonderful about just lying there, even if I wasn't asleep. And whenever I was asleep, the excitement kicked in as good as any in my waking life.

Then people started amputating each others limbs with chainsaws.

I dreamed I was riding in a big van with a bunch of friends and a few enemies, including a number of skinheads such as Eric "the Huffanator" Huffman. But for some reason, we were all getting along relatively well. Nathan VanHooser was driving, and he seemed to be a little confused as we headed towards my old childhood home south of Staunton. At a bridge, he mistook Folly Mills Creek for the road, and drove down the creekbed for a distance. At the next bridge, he daringly drove the van right up the steep embankment, smashed through the guard rail and continued down the road.

My old childhood home was a strange hybrid between the Dynashack, a spacious urban apartment and the actual squalor that it is. It featured a large communal space that is absent from the two actual places, but it housed a mix of Dynashackians, my parents, and some vaguely hippie strangers. The reason we all felt free to just walk in and hang out was that my parents lived there, and we were presumably visiting them.

The whole time we hung out in the large communal room, Eric Huffman kept threatening me with a shiny little switchblade knife, but mixed in with such aggression, he talked amicably about things. This confused angel/devil behaviour is more typical of Eric's older brother than it is of Eric himself. My mother was there watching, and she was concerned, but not as much as you'd imagine.

Then people started amputating each others limbs with chainsaws. The victims of all these amputations were men, but it was being done as an erotic display intended only for me, and I was actually enjoying it, even though I also wanted it to stop. Arms and blood were everywhere.

Finally, one of the hippie strangers came in and told us we had to leave. This came as a sort of relief.

In another dream fragment, I saw Elly Jordaan. She was wraithlike, unimaginably thin, and her face was a freakshow of wrinkles and taught tendons. Her eyes were sunk deep into her skull, and while looking directly at me, she seemed to behold nothing, as if watching me from a television screen. To paraphrase Alan of Heinovision, they don't call her Dreamdweller for nothing.

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