Das Tagebuch Murnaus

I had a dream last night in which a lonely and needy Jake Busey held me prisoner out in the desert somewhere. He took my rifle away when my attention was diverted for a moment, so I regretted not shooting him when I had the chance. Meanwhile, a weird old B-movie named "Nevada Test Pilot" was being made in the background, involving a large styrofoam model of an F-86 Sabre jet crashing into the ground, followed by a giant turtle that was sprayed with gasoline and set afire.

I have no explanation for anoy of this.

I dreamt last night that I was at a community centre or something like that and Barack Obama was sitting at my trestle table, shovelling dry coffee grounds into a 7-11 Bubba Keg. He showed me the mug, which was two-thirds full of coffee grounds and dry macaroni, saying, "Do you think that's enough?" I asked him, "Are you going to eat that when you've finished drinking it?"

Later a Polish woman tried to shoot him at close range with a pistol, but the Secret Service got to her first. They hustled him away and everyone ran, leaving her bleeding body on the stage.

Just thought you might like to know.

Last night I tried out some casts from the RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanising) silicone molds I had made on the long weekend. A few successes but frequent spills of molten metal because the molds were not well supported - no sand available so I tried bases of modeling clay, which promptly melted. No one got burned though, and Aki ran into the centre of the yard every time I melted down a new batch of linotype metal.Also used part of a coil of lead-free solder I had bought, the castings come out with a strange yellow patina. One big problem is pouring too much metal into the molds, which are all one piece and rather shallow. I'm going to try spreading the molten metal around with a wooden stick in the mold; tried it with a nail but it sticks.

I made up 11 different molds for the first run, using up about half of the tube of RTV material (bought a grade of stuff that takes a 700F degree intermittent temperature - buy it at auto parts stores for gasket material). Burning Man shapes in three different sizes, a Jesuslike medallion, a Burning Man medallion marked "MMIII", The Order of the Giant Robot, two bar-shaped ones stamped "AWE" and "AWRY", and three weird-looking man-shaped things by Akito. The molds did not come out well in one or two places, probably because I had not thinned the RTV material enough, or had thinned it too much. Many of these castings will need cleanup work and hole-drilling with a Dremel tool.

We also used some properly made two-piece molds I had bought from someone a while back of a chicken and a Japanese lady in kimono, 1" tall.

This all reminded me of the times I spent while a teenager, casting pils of lead soldiers alone in the garage, inhaling Lord knows how much airborne lead oxide. Too bad; I could have lost those IQ points drinking cough syrup or popping Mom's 222s or huffing glue, in much more amiable and pneumatic company. Ah well, youth is wasted on the young, whether they try to behave themselves or not.

My Mom dropped in for a surprise visit last night too, and as I was standing at the side window declaiming about my plan to plant a row of evergreen trees along the side of the yard facing the Fuckwads (the Croatian Landlords chopped down a large bushy tree that used to grow in the space between our houses, so now every car that rounds the corner on our street shines its brights into our bedroom window, and when the neighbour's Critter Light snaps on, it's like someone aiming a searchlight in the window), they happened to arrive home in the SHINY NEW DARK RED PICKUP TRUCK. She immediately moved back into the centre of the room so as to be invisible, while Aki and I stayed at the window, staring and talking while they got out of the truck and wandered into not-really-their house. She doesn't understand that I WANT these people to feel vaguely uneasy and doubtful and weirded out, maybe it will lead them to question other aspects of their lives.

I have to think of a new name for them, Fuckwad is too abusive. I thought maybe the Monos, a combination of their self-absorbed nature and "mono", the Japanese word for "thing". Or maybe I'll just call them the Sims, since they seem to be happy with the kinds of inducements players of that video game use to keep their digital charges happy. Yes. That's it. My new neighbours are now dubbed Rob and Wife Sim.

Some Constant Readuhs are perhaps becoming a trifle concerned over the monomaniacal nature of my disdain for the Sims, but fear not - I really don't spend much time thinking about them, and in due course will probably forget that they exist at all. As long as they keep the fucking noise down. Oh, in case you were wondering, they managed to get that huge stupid white couch in the house after all - Mxo said they removed one of the windows so they could get the monstrosity into the living room.

I also had some strange dreams last night. In one it was like I was watching a movie that featured a modern Genghis Khan type who had to make a decision over what to invade next or something. He excused himself to go into his private study and a moment later walked back on camera with an erection and started wanking onto a large brass globe in the study, spreading his jizz over Mongolia. Later I dreamed that some Gothvic friends and I were over at Kevin's new house, which he said he had bought for $15,000. It was much too large for that price, even as a down payment, so after testing the shower faucets I asked him how many people he had had to kill to get the house, and that I hoped none of them were innocent. Well, it rained last night, whaddya expect from me?

WAN

I have been amusing myself recently with the "find random user" function of Livejournal. An unexpectedly large fraction of the journals I've seen are written in Russian. I wonder (since I've been too lazy to look it up from their userinfo pages) whether these are Russians posting from Russia, or are they Slavs transplanted to America, taking advantage of abundant and cheap American technology and Net access to write online in their first language? For that matter, where are the other immigrants - I have found only one other user posting in a foreign language (German).
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TUP

One of the more disgusting things to come out of the Mammon McDonald's Corp. is the new "McGriddle". Haven't tried one myself yet (I don't eat eggs) but I understand it's a wad of bacon or a sausage patty, scrambled eggs and American cheese, served between two McGriddle cakes, which are small pankaces with syrup added to the mix. Apparently 550 calories and a colon-clogging 33 grams of fat.

Now, where do you suppose the idea for this came from? Did someone in the marketing department think that people who eat at McDonald's really do not have the time or coordination to eat things separately, or were they perhaps slumming it in an actual McDonald's one day and saw some obese moron who preferred to eat with his hands shoving the components of his whole Hotcakes n' Sausage tray into a huge syrup-soaked sandwich and stuffing it down his capacious maw? Equally probable to me but we'll never know the truth.
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TREE

For all the time I spent in the Army in my younger life, I rarely dream about it. But last night I had another mixed-up dream in which I was a platoon commander, had been wounded in the shoulder slightly and was kind of slumming around the mostly empty barracks while my arm healed. I scrounged a couple of doughnuts from the kitchen and sat around reading war comic books. Later the dream turned into a sexual (though not consummated) fantasy involving one of my co-workers, a woman I've never been interested in, see once a week and speak to once a month. Jeez, why can't I just sleep?
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FORT

Uh, that's it. Say something, whydoncha?

O hey, if I happen not to have posted anything here recently and you want to see what's new, click on this: The Apathetic Journal Entry Generator, brought to you by those wacky guys at Brunching Shuttlecocks.

I had some weird dreams last night. One involved a comedy movie about a talking monkey that amused people by whacking off at inappropriate moments. In another I was sitting in something like a basement wet bar with someone who in the dream was my friend but whom I had never actually seen before, and we were watching a tape of assorted music videos he had made. The last video on the tape was a video Devo had never made - the Spud Boys were bouncing and singing along an animated desert landscape, with their faces animated on top of potatoes that were clad in the famous yellow suits (but no legs). Behind them stretched a vast army of potatoes, also bouncing along, with heads wrapped in rubber monkey masks.

What does it all mean? I mean, setting aside the simian theme, of course, that's obvious.