As I noted yesterday, my dreams lately have been really boring, full of obvious metaphors and tedious fantasies. As far as I'm concerned, if I need to sort out my subconscious dilemmas in dreams, like a pansy, then I've obviously got some issues. There's no reason for me to keep things from myself; why not just worry about these problems during the day, when I'm conscious and alert?

When my mind is in good order, though, I can have the kind of dreams I love -they may not always be happy dreams, but a really creative nightmare is infinitely more welcome than another dream where my dad beats me over the head with The Deathtrap.

We watched BASEketball last night, a movie I will no doubt regret for the rest of my life, and the touching story of the dying young boy, lifted without any pretenses from a Seinfield episode, must have stuck in my brain. So when I slept, I dreamt of death, and dying.

I was sitting in the dorm room, reading or something -I'm boring even in my dreams- and this anonymous guy walked in and told me Greg was dead, one of those kinds of dead where they'll never find the body. The hilarious part, thinking back, is that I didn't care. I've always joked to Greg that I wouldn't be affected by his death in the least, and that I'm going to kill him in his sleep one day, and it turns out that I really am that much of a dastard. I just kept reading in the dream.

Then the phone rang, and I knew in that dreamy way that Greg wasn't dead anymore, but I still couldn't be bothered to care. I really am a dastard. Anyways, the phone rang, sounding a lot like our old rotary phone back home, and I picked it up. I didn't have a conversation, but apparently someone communicated to me telepathically through the phone lines that my family was dead and I had to go home.

This time, I cared; I got in The Deathtrap, drove for about five seconds, and stopped at the toy gas station I'd had for my huge matchbox car collection. By this time The Deathtrap had turned into some sort of red firetruck-pickup, which didn't really matter in a few seconds anyways. I'd somehow found the last full-service filling station between Appleton and Brainerd, and the attendant came out to fill my red firetruck-pickup with gas.

But instead of a gas pump, he had a firehose, and instead of an attendant, he was Graham! Yes, his red bellhop uniform aside, this man was definitely Graham, which is why I was surprised when, in a very jovial manner, he pointed the running firehose at the car, looked at me, and lit a match. Graham and my vehicle exploded in a huge ball of fire.

In my panic, I somehow managed to find my way to an internet cafe, and read Graham's lengthy suicide letter, posted in advance on his webpage. Graham had, however, made yet another css stylesheet before offing himself, and his page now looked exactly like Manney's. It was a very touching letter, and I started crying. I hadn't thought that my subconscious was so weepy, but dream-Graham's last words to the world touched dream-Dan's heart.

Then I was home, a year ago and outside for some reason, talking to my slightly younger and more popular brother Matt, who was running around in a typical show of athleticism. I flashed forward to the next day, and Matt was dead. That was a shocker, given how healthy he'd looked only the day before, but apparently he'd caught that disease where you just drop dead in 24 hours.

In remembrance of Matt's death, Brainerd High School held prom outdoors, and everyone was invited to pay their respects to his black casket, which was situated next to the punch bowl. There were no adults around, except chaperones. There were a lot of round white tables everywhere and the sun was shining.

Everyone was mingling and I was standing there really, really distraught. Apparently I was the only member of our family to come to this, because the school had finally cracked down on non-students coming to prom, and I looked at the tables and all the happy people and then looked at the casket.

I'd imagined this scenario in high school, and I was never quite sure of what I'd want if the school encouraged students to come to my funeral. There were a bunch of people around that had never known Matt, and they were all paying their respects and trying to remember who he was.

I got very angry and for some reason started yelling at Lisa, his former girlfriend I believe, and her generically handsome date, for not knowing Matt at all, and everyone started looking at me because I was ruining the Brainerd prom. I started to say something profound, but then I got even more upset and started throwing wild tornado-style punches.

With that, I woke up and laughed.