Dear God, What the Hell?!

Always toward the light. One more step.

A while back I wrote something about how we are all the trapped German sewer rat, resisting salvation because we literally do not understand that we are being helped. And like most advice-givers, I sort of tucked that little nugget, given in my great beneficence to You People, unheeded by myself at all because I am an unadulterated moron, into the back of my head to be unearthed later in the presence of darling younger persons in need of my guidance.

I am, as I said, an unadulterated moron.

The other day, I was sitting & the cat wished to be held by me for approximately 2.7 milliseconds. Having exceeded this parameter, he then attempted to remove my face while also caught on my sleeve with his little needle claw. I tried to extract his claw so I could set him down gently, which redoubled his intent to slice my face off & wear it like a mask. Dear gentle reader, I am ashamed to say I dropped my cat unceremoniously on the floor (he was fine).

Rather than yell at him, I said, “You are a jerk. I was just trying to help you.” And then I said, “I am you!”

I have known for some time now that I am in an intolerable, inequitable situation. Even from a servant’s perspective, this is pretty out-of-bounds bad. I kept excusing it, though, coming up with perfectly reasonable & charitable excuses for the behaviour of all involved, until I realized how it might sound if described to a priest. And then it suddenly seemed so clear.

This is the result of prayer. I don’t ask for a lot anymore, except when you ask me to pray for your mom or brother or coworker or whomever. Instead I ask to be lead, to be a channel of God’s peace. To be a light.

After all, you can’t be a halfway decent spiritual director if you suck at taking direction yourself. So you’ve got to keep the channel open to the Holy Spirit all the time.

I then had a very strange series of experiences with Alexa and classical music that made me pay special attention to my dream last night. Upon waking, the dream made absolutely no sense to me until just this minute, when the thing I dreamed started continuing in real life (but without Ramona Singer from Real Housewives of NYC, a dream stand-in for someone I know).

To be fair, the dream still doesn’t entirely make sense & the continuation of its plot in my waking life makes almost no sense at all, except that it’s clear God is up to something. And I’m supposed to be paying attention.

The one thing I’ve learned over the years is that the moment things get beyond even my imagination weird, the Spirit is at work. And when the Spirit is at work, you’ve got to be ready to jump.

Attachment is the snare of the Enemy.

Thirst

What we crave is really inside us.

I woke today in an utter panic, trying to recall exactly which scheduled activity was next so I could time the process of extricating myself from my bed & my own muscular pain. I was quickly relieved to realize this was the last Saturday for probably 3 months that I had NOTHING planned…except to read a book for class. NOTHING.

NO. THING.

And then the dream from which I had just awoken came flooding my consciousness. To say it had a related theme to the night’s before is an understatement. I cannot get into details because they would reveal real-life secrets about others in the dream, but the overall gist was the Eucharist, a profound desire to partake of it at every opportunity, and a marked longing & misery when it is not possible.

The liquid of the first dream was quite clearly wine. I recall the taste of it on my lips like it just happened. But the liquid of last night’s dream was…Gatorade. Yeah. The sport stuff. A priest was unpacking it from a box and making the sign of the cross over each bottle filled with garishly coloured electrolytes.

“Liturgical Gatorade?” I joked. “Why?”

“Here, have one,” he said to me, handing me a fruit punch. That’s when I woke up.

In my reading today I started laughing out loud when I came across an analysis of the woman at the well. She’s in The Gospel of John, chapter 4 somewhere. Jesus asks her for a drink because he’s thirsty, & then he tells her he can give her living water. The Psalm about the deer longing for running streams comes to mind.

We are all longing. From the cheerfulest youth pastor to a billionaire exec, a single mom to a happily married person with abundant resources, to the homeless guy yelling at you outside the market, to the soldier to the teacher to the priest to the baby to the doctor to the Queen to Beyoncé, we all long for holiness (though we may call it different things).

The kingdom of God is literally among us & we completely fail to participate in it. It’s like that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Geordi & Ro are phase shifted & can’t quite reach the people in the correct phase. They’re on the ship, but not quite home.

We’re here, people. We’re the kingdom of God. Be in it. It’s a simple matter of making a phase shift.

A simple matter, she says.

Well, yes, years of spiritual direction later…anyhow, I phase shift out of the kingdom all the time. We all do. Some people live within breathing distance of it, but don’t breathe it in. Their whole lives. Pray for them. It’s so hard. You remember.

Heck, you may be there now. Spiritual desolation comes to the most devout. It lingers as long as you need it to teach you.

There are a couple of major things for which I thirst. The Kingdom of God is one. Perhaps if I keep pursuing that relentlessly, the other will come.

A Personal Relationship

Pic by Gage Skidmore.

We are about to have the dumbest conversation. You are going to laugh at me. I’m okay with this.

First, since perhaps 10 people read this blog, I will have to answer your question, which is “Why is there a picture of Chris Hemsworth on your blog? You’ve never mentioned Chris Hemsworth to me in conversation, you don’t follow comics, & you never watch superhero movies. This is literally the first time I have ever even seen you acknowledge that Chris Hemsworth exists.”

And you would be right, dear reader, if this was a picture of Chris Hemsworth. And…okay, technically, it is. But wait! There’s more!

On June 15, I awoke & wrote the following in my personal journal, which I will now share with you after some encouraging words from my spiritual director:

Dreamt I was at a dinner party with Simon Helberg, who was about to eat a chunk of poisoned chicken until Jesus walked in & took it before he could. I burst into tears because for some reason I was the only one who knew what was happening, that Christ was dying, died, but came back almost immediately. Nobody else knew what was going on.

He winked at me upon Returning, & after that, everyone was at peace, even the ones who didn’t know what was happening. I was still sobbing, so he took me over to a corner to talk.

I could have asked my Lord & my God anything at all in that moment, but first I started with “Are you okay?”

He laughed & put out his arms in front of him as if examining them, then twirled around. “Yup, right as rain!”

So my follow up question was, “Uh, Jesus?”

“Yes, Kellie?”

“Why do you look like Chris Hemsworth?”

He laughed. “Now now. I look like Thor.”

Note: Jesus was not costumed like Thor. He looked like Chris Hemsworth going to a casual California dinner party.

This was unhelpful. “Okay…why do you look like Thor?”

He made a face that wasn’t unkind, but seemed a little weary. “Well, my child, so many people here [he gestured, indicating the whole Earth] don’t know me anymore. They have no concept of God, or what concept they do have is scary.” He brightened. “But everybody knows Thor! He’s the only god some of them have even heard of!” He laughed.

“But Jesus,” I went on. “I don’t watch those movies or even like that whole genre. Like, I don’t read super hero comics.”

Jesus laughed. “That’s exactly my point! Even you know who Thor is. So there you go!”

This was supposed to satisfy me, so it did. I then woke up. And now every time I think of Jesus, I think of him looking like Chris Hemsworth, & smiling, & being my brother who is very supportive & sometimes laughs at me (not unkindly).

Jesus appears to all of us in a way that will make sense to us (or not, in my case, but I have a high tolerance for weird). Christ may come to you with the face of a beloved family member or favourite teacher or for you it may be Robert Downey Jr. How the hell should I know?

The Christ concept I had previously created in my head was a young Jewish…I guess realtor, but usually dressed like he was about to play racquetball. This is the Jesus I prayed to & spoke to, especially in the car. I will say it never quite rang true to me, though. I was very conscious that I had created a modern Christ, that he was someone I purposefully created to talk to, & that he himself never presented as an ’80s stereotype (replete with sweatbands).

This new version that came to me in a non-lucid dream is not anything I would have imagined, dreamed up, or picked. It sounds inauthentic, but upon encountering him, it is absolutely correct. Don’t ask me why that is…it makes no sense & it doesn’t have to.

Christ may appear to you as Ben Vereen or Danny Trejo or Phyllis Diller for all I know. It’s none of my business. But if you can have a 100% honest conversation with that image of Christ & be open to love unimaginable because of it, GO THERE. BE WITH THAT. Rest in that joy!

Maybe Jesus wants everyone to know that whatever happiness you get from watching Thor do things or thinking about Thor or whatever Thor means to you (& I 100% literally have no idea so don’t @ me) is what he wants with you. I don’t know. Jesus knows that I write, so maybe he wanted me to write about this. I was keeping it to myself pretty much, but here we are. Now all 10 of you know.

Maybe in prayer tonight, ask Jesus to come hang out with you. See how he appears. He may be a movie Jesus or a Discovery channel Jesus, or he may be something totally unexpected. Most importantly, he doesn’t have to be the authentic human creation that walked this earth for 33 years over 2 milennia ago, because he’s infinite again. HE CAN BE LITERALLY ANY IMAGE THAT SPEAKS TO YOU. It’s okay!

For me, this above picture perfectly illustrates our relationship. He is always smiling because he’s usually on the verge of laughing at whatever I’ve said, but kindly, like you’d laugh at a child’s meandering story. He is always interested to hear what I feel & sometimes is just waiting for a chance to give me a hug. And he wants us all to come & live with him in light everlasting. Forever.

Go say hi. See what happens.

The Sin Collector

I dreamt last night that I had died, & God assigned me the task of noting & categorizing the sins of the newly dead by going through something like a highlight (or is it lowlight?) reel of their lives.

I was sitting in front of what seemed like some kind of AVID rig & going through The Tapes. Thankfully, it was not my job to count cruelty to children or sexual assault or anything like that. My particular “beat” was cruel things said.

That’s right; words do hurt.

But what was interesting is I was meant to establish context. The final tallies ended up in Degrees that, no joke, ranged from School Yard Silliness (eg. “YOU’RE a poopiehead”) to The Dozens (eg. “Yo mama so fat…”) to Almost Kind of Hitler. I won’t repeat any of that.

My instructions were quite clear. No one was to be marked down for saying words they didn’t know the meaning to, for repeating what others said with the intent to convey information, or for words that didn’t actually hurt anyone even if maybe another person who had no context heard them & found them offensive. My angelic supervisor was adamant that offense was not the same as pain.

Lies were also considered hurtful words.

And yes, anything that had been confessed was wiped from the tapes, so I wouldn’t even have seen them. I figured out fairly quickly who had ever been to confession & who hadn’t by the amount of gaps in their reel.

I was told that each evaluation then gets combined with other evaluations & a Judgement is rendered from the full report. Some of you would be surprised by who did poorly.

It struck me upon waking that this was a terrible job, & I am certain that God doesn’t do it that way. It also struck me upon waking that there are people alive in the world today on social media & elsewhere who have made this their job. They don’t get paid for it, but they quite literally scour people’s online history to find anything they’ve said that might be deemed hurtful or offensive or even slightly dodgy.

The difference is, they don’t give a damn about context. The Dozens becomes misogynist fat shaming. Teenagers calling each other the fringe words of their culture becomes racism & homophobia. People with self deprecating senses of humour are judged to be racist, body-shaming, or all number of things.

There are some people who really are quite awful online. That’s different. But finding the awful people has spawned something of a crusade to “get” others, with quite ridiculous results.

I always wonder if people are paid to take things out of context. Because in the context of a person’s entire life, what Skeeter McTweeter said on MySpace when he was 13 is not going to be the same thing he says on Twitter at 23. At least, one hopes not.

What someone drunk Tweets with friends at 24 is not the same thing she thinks at 34 with two children.

What someone said repeatedly over the course of a few recent months might be an established pattern of actual belief. If people employed common sense more often, this would be evident.

And yet here we are. I kind of wish knitting were still a thing everyone did. Keeps their hands busy. Less drama. More blankets.

I don’t want to live in a world where we police each other’s thoughts. If you say something I think is gross & we are not friends, I’ll just unfollow you. How’s that? If we’re friends, we’ll talk about it.

Simple.

But now that everybody’s a gotcha journalist/investigator, it can’t be that simple. It needs to be A Thing. “On October 14, 2008, you bought a pumpkin spice latte & made a shitty comment about white women.”

Well, yes. I am one, & I both lament & revel in my basicness. I AM GENETICALLY PROGRAMMED TO LOVE PUMPKIN SPICE AND BEETS WITH GOAT CHEESE leave me alone.

If you enjoyed this, you will probably dig my books. I don’t know.

What in the actual

I am trying to remember my dream from last night because I know it was Significant. I fell asleep in tearful prayer (apparently the glutening is still a thing, despite my slight improvement in symptoms), and I prayed to remember anything told me. But it seems I have been shown things instead (which happens).

I can’t remember the beginning at all, but eventually it seemed to unfold that I worked at a thrift store run by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. We were all of us encouraged to shop there, too, so we did. I think my Facebook friend Eric was my coworker somehow.

I had been looking through make-up (something I would never buy used) when a girl (maybe Meghan from Reno?) brought me an empire-waisted blue top with 3/4 lace cuffed sleeves. It seemed cute to me in the dream, so I tried it on. It didn’t quite fit over my clothes. She found another that was more of an Easter green & that was a little too big, but quite comfortable. Everybody thought it looked really good although I looked pregnant.

I had no time to take it off because Bishop Diane was visiting. She set her shoes (shearling-lined wooden clogs with a bit of a heel) aside & asked me to try them on in front of everybody. They were comfortable, but I felt like something was off. I touched the top of my head, which was sticky.

I went into a bathroom & there was dried dirt caked on my face (that I assumed came from the top I was wearing) & it looked like a bird had crapped fuchsia glitter slime onto the top of my head. I could see it & feel it, but nobody else noticed it. I was pointing it out to people, but nobody could see it.

Suddenly I was in a subway station and Jimmie was hovering over the far platform in the lotus position. “Everything I have said is as it is,” he intoned with a smile, which is interesting, because in the real world, he has been trying to help me understand something.

Then the “screen” of my mind went blank, and the cat flew in with an envelop & a wax stamp.

He stamped the envelop with an elaborate, pretty black seal & handed it to me, saying in a kitty voice “Here!” Then I distinctly heard Jesus say, “This is my official seal; these were your answers. Wake up.”

And I did.

The seal was a very wispy, delicate version of this, but in a circle with some leafy looking embellishments:

To say that I am confused is an understatement. I am also really tired. Jesus wanted me to only get 6 hours of sleep (well, Him & the cat).

Bump

  It happened again. I dreamt a thing & then a version of it happened the next day.

I dreamt I was still working at the hospital in Reno, but was stuck in traffic more indicative of Los Angeles than northern Nevada. I moved slowly forward & accidentally bumped a cop car in front of me. My dreams are very real, so I felt the bump (akin to hitting a curb gently when you parallel park) in addition to the adrenaline rush when the cop in the driver’s seat emerged with gun drawn.

I had my window down so I put my hands up & shouted out “Unintentional!” He approached me (very Reno, thick mustache & belly) with the gun still up but said “Good. Exactly the right way to behave.” He lowered the gun slightly & asked me to exit the vehicle.

The two plain clothes officers he was traveling with at this time went through my glove box for my paperwork & patted me down. Meanwhile I was explaining that it was Take Your Cat To Work Day & I was distracted by Neil’s yowling & I was very sorry & felt super stupid. 

One of the plain clothes emerged from the rear of the car with a carrier that contained the yowling Neil. “Take Your Cat to Work Day?”

I shrugged. “It’s not an intelligent department.”

The uni drove my car into the “station” (log cabin) conveniently located right next to the road (where the Hell’s Angel house is in actual Reno, if I remember correctly) & they detained me & asked me some questions while Neil chased some chickens around (even Reno doesn’t have chickens in the police department in reality).

I was apparently so charming & entertaining that they let me go.

Fast forward to my actual driving to work in the real, waking world. Not 500 meters from my house, in a line of abominable LA traffic, my car lurched forward ever so gently. It felt like the engine revved or knocked or something, so I looked for a light on the dash, looked to see if the gear slipped, turned off the radio & air to listen. Nothing.

Idiotically I started looking around the inside of the car to see what caused it, & then I saw my rear view mirror. I had since edged a little forward as the traffic had moved about a meter, and in the mirror was a white Prius, & in the white Prius was a slim young woman in huge sunglasses making wild gestures at her steering wheel. It was interesting enough that I watched her for a while before the light turned green & I was able to finally go. I noted that she was texting while also flailing.

It was about 5 minutes later I realized she had hit me, exactly with the same almost-nothing force that I hit the cop car in my dream. And I had let her go, not because her flail-texting behind the wheel was entertaining, but because I genuinely hadn’t figured out what happened.

When I got to work, I checked the bumper & she hadn’t damaged it at all. I did not notice any damage on her bumper when she was behind me. So that was the strange, short tale of the bump.
I say “again” because the last dream I posted here also came true-ish, in that I was lost in Pasadena (where Christopher lives) in a mall & the surrounding construction looked exactly like the Pirates of the Caribbean construction in the dream. I turned to my sister & said “I have intense déjà vu right now,” & then realized why.

And also because this has been happening to me since I was 9 or 10. But many of you already knew that.

No Interpretation Feasible

Last night I was unceremoniously woken at 4:30AM by a vomiting cat. I had to pee so I got up & stepped in the vomit, which necessitated cleaning my feet & making it impossible to just drop back to sleep.

So I read a couple chapters of Harry Potter & The Methods of Rationality before falling back to sleep. This may have been an error in judgment. I usually read the prophets to sleep. Sorry, Isaiah.

My friend Christopher turned me on to this fan fic, which you know was no small undertaking because, well. Um. Cough. But this is Christopher. He knows things. Anyhow, I’m hooked.

Subsequently I dreamt that Christopher & I were visiting w/ his school friends. He is working on a PhD in physics in Los Angeles, but in the dream it was an undergrad in Engineering from UNR.  His friends lived in a part of town that was already  known to be enchanted, but thanks to overzealous Disney development had become possessed of evil spirits. 

It was an unholy mess. Disney was building a Pirates of the Caribean themed shopping center in Reno, which is the last place anything like that should happen, & also something like that should never happen. Ancient tortured souls now infested the shopping center. Christopher’s friends lived adjacent.

I drove over there with my actual real life roommate & Christopher, pointing out along the way all the times I had seen actual gnomes in this neighbourhood when I lived there, before Disney chased them all out. When we parked, I spotted a stone gnome & dragged Christopher over to a stand of trees to see that they were real. Christopher shrugged, said that there was probably a scientific explanation, & I patted the stone gnome on the head & told Christopher he was undoubtably right. Stone gnomes don’t talk, so the little guy smiled & went back to being a statue.

Christopher’s friends were two blonde girls who had both made foods Christopher & I can’t eat (him, nuts; me, celiac disease). They said that we were pussies if we didn’t at least try, but Christopher talked them out of it (& apologized to me out the side of his mouth). I mean it was a frigging nut cake, walnuts & wheat. My roommate made up for us by eating a bunch.

Christopher wanted to have a word with these girls, so he left me alone in the kitchen. My roommate went with him part way. I saw a leather bag on a chair & went to move it to sit down, but the second I touched it, it turned into Persephone, who has just died in real life, & I held her & sobbed & told her I missed her while stroking her. Christopher came out, saw I was crying, & asked what was wrong. I told her “She’s dead, but she came back for a minute to say goodbye properly. Don’t you see her?”

“Kellie, I’m sorry, but that is a purse.”

“No, it’s my cat,” I sobbed, but it did turn back into a purse, so I set it down. While I had been crying, I’d removed my glasses & now couldn’t find them. Christopher & I were looking for them, then saw my roommate had them in her hands. She said “Do you need these?” & then snapped them in half. We were shocked. His blonde friends came out cackling & said “Now you can never leave!” My roommate said she had a migraine but I could tell she wanted to stay with the blondes. I knew something was wrong so I shouted “Run!” & started running.

I was half way down a walk way/gang plank in the stupid shopping centre when I realized Christopher wasn’t behind me. A father & his kid told me “You’ve been sprinkled with poison. You need to rinse off,” so I wandered back looking for a shower. I ran into Christopher & he said, “I’m so sorry. My friends have become evil witches. I’m trying to talk sense into them.”

They were already closing around me, so I just tried to stand in the shower with my clothes on while they hovered over me with hands like claws. Then a little blonde angel boy appeared in an orb of white light & said “Don’t be afraid! They cannot hurt you now.”

The witches backed off & the little angel boy came closer to me. Then he turned into this guy:

 

The Simpsons’ social worker/black angel, Gabriel.

He then said “You and Christopher must vanquish this evil. Also you were black all along. Behold!”

And I looked down at my fingers & they started to go from my usual pallor to darker & I looked in the mirror & I was this girl from Bones

  & I turned to everyone & said “I knew I was black!” And my roommate handed me a Happy Meal & I said “I can’t eat this; I have celiac disease,” & the angel Gabriel said “Yes, you can, child. You’re black now.” So I shoveled that hamburger, bun & all, in my face while Christopher said “That doesn’t make any sense. African-Americans are also susceptible to the genetics of…” & then the alarm went off & I woke up.

DAMN YOU METHODS OF RATIONALITY!!!

Horror Show

Now that I’m watching The Walking Dead, my dreams are clearly influenced, except I don’t believe in zombies so my brain invents even more horrifying scenarios.

In last night’s dream I was living in the messiest of dorms. I think it was Georgetown. A ginger dude I met in the hall had a clear & endearing crush on my roommate, who I’m pretty sure was my friend Nurse Rachel. I jokingly said he needed to step up his game if he wanted her attention, & his face instantly changed. His eyes glassed over & he broke out in a sweat. He didn’t actually become a zombie, but everything he did after demonstrated a sublimation of his free will & motion.

I figured out, after a couple of scenarios involving thinking that I wanted a coffee & that traffic in Hollywood was bugging me, that he responded to my every whim even if it would kill him. The guy would show up in a panic & sweat to take care of my every thought.

He was in obvious distress & so was I. I got to a point where I tried hard to stop thinking of anything so he wouldn’t show up. I begged him to stop bringing me things. Dhino at work even tried to bar him from coming in to hand me food or clothes or shoes. I was in tears seeing his haggard, exhausted face. I gave everything he brought me away.

Toward the end of the dream, it occurred to me to pray to God to restore this young man’s free will, which he had given to me without my permission or desire. And immediately he was free. He wandered off in a daze & I never saw him again. Then I woke up.

That was awful.

Hecho En Mexico

The most significant item in this dream, to me, is that I was drinking a non-gluten free beer, which is the first time I’ve consumed a gluteny item in a dream since my celiac diagnosis in 2009. Indeed, my paranoia about getting sick again is so ingrained that even when Eliza Dushku took me to a pastry buffet in one dream, I refused.

But you guys no doubt will find the rest much more interesting.

I was asked to come down to a Mexican border town to meet a prominent Mexican psychiatrist to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of a famous American. The doctor met me for the cervesa (which I did order “light”…evidently I can’t not dream I’m off my diet), but said he’d rather discuss the case in his office. We walked down the street to a beautiful old stucco building and went inside.

His office was a richly appointed typical psychiatrist’s office, with shelves of books and a couch or two covered in fine Corinthian leather. My brain is nothing if not informed by Ricardo Mantelban. He took out a file and handed it to me with great ceremony. I sat in a chair and started reading:

Subject displays profound fear of alien abduction. He states he has been taken by aliens in the past and probed anally with a long, glowing, white instrument. His obsession and paranoia over this instrument has caused him to experience great psychological discomfort when rewatching Star Wars. He presents because Star Wars viewing is an integral part of his identity, and he wishes to be free of this distress so he can return to his normal life activities.

The photo inside the file and the name on the file was Wil Wheaton. I looked up at the doctor and he looked at me with wild eyes.

“Chupacabras, Miss Adan?”

I chuckled. “Maybe Star Wars overload.”

“¿Creas en las chupacabras, Señorita?”

“No, doctor. But the patient clearly should be submitted to involuntary psychiatric incarceration & observation.”

“Then it is as I feared. This is the course of action I had decided upon, but I needed your help to get your government’s permission. I will write up the order now.”

He scrawled the order in pencil on a legal pad, which was apparently good enough for the US government. In a joint effort between American authorities and Federales, we finally cornered Wheaton on a dock at gun point & took him into protective custody, for his own good. Myself & the doctor asked the law men to please go carefully with the patient, as his fear of chupacabras was so great that any authority figures might spook him. They locked him in the back of a car & he pressed his hands against the window, screaming “No, not again!”

Then I woke up.

Lessons From The Apocalypse

As y’all know from Twitter, I dream about the apocalypse a lot. It’s not the apocalypse of Revelation, but a post-catastrophic earthquake kind of to-do which is always survived in good humour and with many tacos. I’ve compiled a list of my own post apocalyptic revelations below, entirely based on my dreams:

-When The Big One hits California, all the homes on the Malibu cliffs slide backwards into the valley, not forward toward the ocean. Sorry, rich peeps. It’s oddly a lot of fun to be in one of those homes as it slides, & everyone survives with cuts and scrapes.

–Recoil is the soundtrack of the apocalypse, but to be fair it’s the soundtrack to pretty much everything.

-My friends & I always survive. We are well armed, protect the women & children, drink a lot of beer, & eat a lot of tacos. Until the gasoline runs out, we drive around in a Hummer helping people. Then we have a boat. Then we just walk everywhere in giant formations, cracking wise & getting lost.

-I am extremely physically fit in the apocalypse. Like T2 Sarah Connor fit.

-Post apocalyptic people are mainly about helping each other. There is no cellular service. We gather mostly to party. People have no existential angst. Nobody whines. All battery power is used to run music playing devices.

-There seems to be an unlimited supply of canned goods.

-Everybody has a dog. Cats are inexplicably absent.

-The sombrero becomes popular as the world’s supply of sunblock runs out.

-Most people live in portable tents & go where the party is.

–Meredith Dake looks immaculately groomed all the time & can pick off a rabbit with a rifle from 500 yards. Mmm, rabbit taco.