The Runcible Blog

Am I going to die soon? If so, I'd like to record here that I foreshadowed my own demise. If not, I'll go back and delete this entry...

Two nights ago, I dreamt that I was a child running away from the Grim Reaper. An unidentified little girl that I was running with told me that if I didn't look directly at Death's "face", I'd be safe. As ominous as Death was, and as hard as it pursued us, it could do nothing unless we turned around and looked. We still ran, however, because there was no telling where Death would pop up next, and even a passing glance would've killed us. At some point, the girl tried distracting the Reaper so that I could get away. I think that's how the dream ended.

Last night, I again met Death, but I wasn't a child. And this time, I could look directly at Death without being snuffed from the planet. Maybe Death wasn't as terrifying as I once thought. Not only could I look at this cloaked figure, but I even taunted the Grim Reaper in my dream. I made fun of its wrinkly, grey fingers and dared it to come after me...

Without warning, I jumped into another dream. This time I was riding a bike in Cambridge when I met my grandmother sitting in a wheelchair on the sidewalk. I left my bike and pushed her wheelchair through the deserted streets, looking for some unnamed destination. We crossed railroad tracks and unfamiliar passageways before I realized that we were lost. Even though mimi was irritated that I had gotten us lost, I remember feeling safe because at least we were lost together. After a while it didn't matter that we were lost; it didn't even matter where we were supposed to be going. I told her to hold on tight and ran us down a long, empty road as fast as I could, laughing the entire time.

I pushed mimi up a steep hill -- an enormous hill, in fact. When we made it to the top, the feeling of desperation finally hit me. We weren't in Cambridge anymore. Ahead of me were vivid red, green, and yellow fields as far as I could see. We were looking into a valley of farmland, far from any city that I know or any place I've ever been. I worried about being far from home but at the same time was in awe of my surroundings. Mimi told me not to worry about being lost. It was no big deal.

A car coming from the direction of the farms drove up the hill, and mimi vanished from my dream. It passed me, stopped, and backed up to where I was standing. There were four happy people my age inside. One of them saw that I had my camera (I hadn't noticed it until then) and gave me a small, point-and-shoot digital camera. He said, "you can have this. You look like you can use it more than I can."...

I ended up getting in the car and going with them, but I don't remember the rest of the dream. I know that it was definitely more mundane than the previous scenes.

So, what should I learn from these dreams? hmm...

Found on one minivan on the way to work:

• Red Sox World Champions
• Bush/Cheney '04
• John 3:16
• NO JESUS, NO PEACE
  KNOW JESUS, KNOW PEACE
• license plate: EPH4-32

According to the awful Valley Patriot, ETPC newsroom employees voted 85-52 against the initiative to unionize. During the election on thursday and friday, the North Andover building practically shut down -- or at least, everybody kept silent. Managers weren't allowed to wander the halls, and any doors leading up to the Ed-Center had to be closed AT ALL TIMES. We even had to put paper on our window to keep any potential voters from seeing management figures lurking inside. The "federal agents" overseeing the election had orders to shoot to kill if they caught anyone loitering near the polling place. Helicopters swarmed overhead as Alabama National Guardsmen (requested by CNHI) held sniper positions on the roof.

The federal presence thwarted most efforts to disrupt the election. A successful suicide fart bombing by local fixture Joe Boren did not deter the purple-fingered voters but inadvertently improved Lawrence's air quality. Veterans Memorial Stadium's resident Elvis impersonator attempted to distract reporters and photographers with hypnotic gyrations to an imagined soundtrack but failed to capture their attention long enough to affect the election's outcome.

Nobody knows what will happen now that the union has been squashed. (Well, somebody probably knows, but I don't) All I know is that the election was democracy in its purest form -- intense corporate lobbying and propaganda, appeals to the basest emotions, rampant apathy, and exploitation of fear and preconceived notions. I wish every newsroom employee luck, regardless of how they voted. I'm curious to watch the fallout from the election and wonder when we'll find out who really "won" this contest between workers' self interests and the company's desire to maintain control.