I had a really cool dream last night, a multi-part epic involving spores, China, tunnels, a ninja, and a red canoe. If that sounds ridiculous, I can only say, yes, and, but it was pretty awesome.

I woke up and for the first time in months, I thought I should do some writing, get some of this on paper and see where it goes. Then I looked at the thermometer and saw that it was only 63 degrees outside of my covers. So I stayed in bed.

(I've already forgotten most of it.)

Jenna: The Prop?

Our Bold Hero: Yeah, it's the first time in a while that I've just, you know, pulled a book off the shelf at the library. I mean, I do that, but this time I have no idea...

Jenna (distant): Uh huh.

Our Bold Hero (excited): Look at it, though. I think it's from that period — remember after The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay came out, there were all these retro books, with the similar covers. [Dan is mistaken, but does not realize it.] Like, uh, Carter Beats the Devil, and... you don't know what I'm talking about, do you? I should be having this conversation with someone else.

Jenna: Yeah. [Some names are suggested.]

Our Bold Hero: Crap! She's not online. WHERE are all my book friends!?!

Freedom, freedom, freedom, oi! My work on the Big Elaborate Edits will no longer be double-checked by a second editor, which (as I've hoped before with the Tricky Little Edits) will hopefully mean more hours.

Though not now. I've been informed that the last two weeks of the month are meant to be really slow; so, for example, I have no work to do today.

Because of this lull, and because I was still feeling all shooty after my Gears of War Thanksgiving break, I pulled Halo out of the box yesterday and tried to play through a few levels on Legendary difficulty.

But I'm already bored with it, because I know that sooner or later I'll be fighting the evil Jiffy Pop race, and that idea does not excite me. They are lame.

Command: Please up the amount of editing jobs and first person shooters in future supply drops, until further notice.

Friday. Bar-hopping in B-town with the usual suspects plus a few people (Ben, Nick, Joey) who I haven't seen since high school... felt somewhat sketchy.

The bars had linoleum floors and ugly carpet and generally had that feel you usually only get from bowling alleys and strange barbershops, but the funny thing is that we didn't have to go to a bunch of crappy bars. Even I know of much better bars in Brainerd.

Which begs the question (prescriptivists: stifle yourselves): did we go to these particular bars out of foolishness, laziness, geographical convenience? Or was it to be ironic, because we are all so urbane that slumming like this is just hilarious? Did I just unwittingly devote a night to irony?

Saturday: Shopping! Cue music. Mostly at Kohl's, a step up for someone used to buying everything at Target. O, the sale prices! I spent a ridiculous amount of money, for me, but don't worry, it wasn't real money, just credit. And all that spending that seems to do is make this scary number a bit bigger.

I delayed my return for a while to have dinner with the family, but still got back to the Cities with enough time for one more go at Gears of War, hurrah. The most exciting activity of the past few days is probably that videogame.

One thing in particular that has grown on me is all the backstory just sitting there. The game might allude to it, and there are strange posters and symbols everywhere, but of course, your character knows all of this, so why would anyone explain it to you?

(Maybe Act Five is more forthcoming; we were three or four hours short of beating the game when I had to leave and sleep and all that.)

Also, the game is pretty hard, which is very nice. In particular, whenever it split Ben and I up for two or three minutes, we seemed to end up spending half an hour trying to meet up again. We found ourselves accidentally specialized in different weapons after one particularly rough patch: I must have killed that guard with my shotgun at least twenty times.

Ate too much at Thanksgiving; my fabled gluttony transformed into a sort of "Shooting the Elephant" thing. Good stuffing though.

I was late because — and this so far is the highlight of my week — I was up late at Ben's playing Gears of War co-op on his new Xbox 360 and his family's gigantic HDTV. It was wonderful; my idea of a good time.

If you scoffed at that, I hate you just a little.

I don't know what it is about this week, but I find myself wondering if I'm turning into a horrible person. Not the conceptual horrible person who neither the Politician or I (to recall for the moment a very inside, very comforting running joke) will ever be, but rather the specific kind of horrible person I was at a point in the distant past, before the onset of even the near-mythical Catholic Dan epoch.

For those keeping score at home, seventh grade was my least favorite grade: there was stress, awkwardness, even a few bullies. However, it's the ninth-grade Dan who, though he had his moments, I'd most like to punch in the face.

(Old friends are reminded at this point that it is very bad form indeed to pile onto another's self-deprecation, especially when it's more than half sincere.)

To the point: I worry that I've once again become too judgmental and too detached, and I've got enough respect for this problem not to conclude that this worry in-and-of itself magically resolves the issues.

Ninth-grade Dan eventually solved this problem with the combined power of incessant self-deprecation and religious faith, but this time around I've got nothing much to believe in — and unlike ninth-grade Dan, that pompous jerk, I don't feel superior; the problem isn't that I'm wrongly putting myself on a pedestal.

(And I don't think that Our Bold Hero could really stand to be kicked around at the moment, in any case.)

Normally, though less so since I read Joseph Epstein's Friendship and abandoned some of my old romantic concepts, I've had some sense of leniency in my judgments. Like, you know, a sane person does. Everyone has faults, most of us can probably see them, but we all take them into perspective.

I appreciate the irony of having my cynical, unapologetically judgmental nature, something I usually count as one of my best qualities — that probably sounds absurd to you, but I'm not here to make the case for it now — become such a negative force. I do. But irony doesn't fix anything, and the Return of the Evil Eye isn't making me any better or happier.

In fact, all it's doing is making the world look worse, and that's where I have to live. And it's not like I can wave all my cruel judgments all away: I'll be right a lot of the time, and feel like I'm right all of the time. Or whatever that statement ends up meaning.

Call it a conceptual crisis, reactionary introversion, a bad week, or maybe just a foul mood, but ugh, lately. Some lows, a few highs, and some times (like tonight, watching Casino Royale) when I can relax and forget. I hope that this new perspective doesn't too last long.

Went to Chicago this weekend to see the Strategist, and some members of her posse who I met during my visit this summer.

Drinking did in fact ensue. On Friday, after some preliminary wine-drinking at her place, five of us headed to a local wine bar and I spent waaaaay too much on half of a surprisingly decent bottle of Merlot.

(Since I've gone drinking with the Strategist in the past without breaking the bank, I'm beginning to suspect that her boyfriend is a "cashalyst," one of those people who motivates everyone around him to spend a little more. Hamlinites: compare Kevin.)

It's been a month of unlikely events, and so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised to find myself ice-skating late Saturday afternoon. I was not awful, but clearly I'd become a bit rusty in the preceding ten years. One thing I will never understand is why girls never seem to get bored of all that endless going around in a circle.

The music was good though: did you know that good rollerskating music is also good ice-skating music? It was a rock lobster! And I saw the requisite burly black guy having trouble on ice skates, though he was not swearing and making proclamations about what black people were not meant to do.

Saturday night was more drinking, though with a movie and Arrested Development — the call-forwards make it very rewatchable — instead of all that going out. The Strategist's boyfriend was around for much of the weekend, but I was a third wheel only during dinner; I can't remember the name of the place, but it had its own brand of Bloody Mary mix and claimed to be "bodacious".

Good times and all. The weekend tended toward hanging out and talking with small groups of people, which I am of course OK with. My last visit, shoehorned in as it was with Adam's bachelor party, was a bit odd and awkward, and while there was oddness to this visit (e.g. Dan on skates, above) it was generally pretty good, to the point that the previous short visit, in retrospect, now feels like a sort of preview instead of an anomoly.

Off to Chicago this weekend. Have I told you that yet?

Tonight we watched Top Chef, which, along with America's Next Top Model, is the default television show for our Wednesday night get-together, now that Project Runway is off the air.

I usually spend most of America's Next Top Model drinking and compiling proof that Tyra is a racist, which she is. Except for Markie, everyone was off doing stuff tonight, or something, so the get-together was very old school. But Markie is a fellow lush, so it all worked out.

It's nice to have this night waiting for me right in the middle of the week.

When the decibel level in the room reaches a certain point, I find it hard to care about Top Chef: suggestions for an alternate show are welcome. Jenna has entered that realm that my dad lives in, the one without any free time at all, and says she won't get caught up on Lost before February, so that's out.

(Still: A "Lost Returns" party on February 7th, our place? I imagine — nay, I promise — tasty tropical drinks and island decorations.)

I'll have to check the listings.

One thing is clear though: as I said to Jenna tonight, "We need to drink more."

The frequency of booze-related posts notwithstanding, drinking is not an especially important part of my life. Still, I certainly find my life far too devoid of drinking games and fun drinking outings (the easiest and often only kind of outing available once you reach a certain age, kids).

Partially, it's because I usually put off work and end up at my computer until 9 or 10; partially, it's lack of funds. Whatever the reason, there's a lack. Thank goodness I'll be seeing the Strategist, my old grad school drinking buddy, in a matter of days.

So last night I finally finished Bully, then spent another hour or so wandering around trying to find the items I'd missed, yeah.

Anyone who's seen me play videogames won't be surprised to hear that during the final boss battle, my big worry was that I didn't have my camera, and still needed this guy's picture for the yearbook. What if I beat him, but find that I can't conquer the game?!?

Also, it's a small point, but when a game like this has generated a few teacups worth of controversy, it's important to step back and look at how ignorant the critics are. This critic, cited in a lousy Salon article on the topic, is typical:

Coloroso [author of "The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander"] -- who isn't a gamer, but who had her 28-year-old son buy the game and give her an account -- pointed to one scene that involves Jimmy Hopkins visiting an adult book store. Then there's the part where "in order to get some of the tools you need, you have to beat up a homeless man," she said. "You're getting a reward for doing something negative."

Sayeth the copy editor: walking past an adult bookstore does not a visit make. The Salon author correctly points out that you never have to beat up a homeless man, but I'm fairly certain that Coloroso's son and Manjoo are referring to very different missions.

(Another sad truth: even the most prominent defenders of videogames have rarely played more than a few hours. After spending thirty hours tooling around with the Bottle Rocket Launcher and Spud Gun, I, for one, thought that Manjoo's assertion that "there are no guns" in Bully was true only in spirit.)

Also, Salon: in the immortal words of Peter K Sheerin, "Hyphens are Not Dashes." You're a webmagazine, for godsakes.

The game itself is quite fun. As usual, I tended to find the game too easy — the fighting system is essentially The Warriors-lite, and I won most fights without using any special moves — but the plot was probably Rockstar's best yet. Ditto the character design.

The missions are fun, and there's a surprising amount of variety. Also, it's a huge game, but it's set in a small town and at a small school, so when you see the same character models on the sidewalk, it's not a glitch, it's just Sheldon, remember him? And unlike GTA: San Andreas, it's pretty hard to get lost, and you can get to any destination fairly quickly.

The stuff that bothered the IGN reviewer: falling asleep at 2 regardless of where you are on a mission, and the lack of structure after you finish all the classes (finish! hah! I'm still sucking at Shop!), well, those weren't really issues for me at all. I'm just annoyed that this never came out for Xbox, or, you know, one of those new systems everyone is buying these days.

Tonight was... my brain feels dirty from re-watching BloodRayne. I know we had company, and it's nice to have something on — but no more letting a bad movie take over my life like that: the subtext of every Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode was the struggle I just lost.

I think it was Nick who divined the real reason behind the awfulness: plot-wise, BloodRayne is best grasped not as a failed vampire movie, but as a failed softcore porno. There was exactly one sex scene, ridiculous even in a genre notorious for its ridiculous sex scenes.

I thought yesterday would be a similar wash, but special guest Dylan called and invited me to a party a block or so from our apartment. Very nice to walk to entertainment for a change.

I was blown away by their variation on my favorite drinking game, King's Cup. Sometimes called Waterfall — or any number of names, really — if you take away the cup. Last spring, I posted the canonical King's Cup rules, taught to me by the Politician himself oh-so-many years ago.

Their version, Categories, is familiar but retains few of our rules. There is no Seven Sentence, no Red Dead (instead it's "two for you, three for me"), and only one of those cards where you have to pay attention. Guys drink on six, girls drink on four. There was no cup, no surprise there. There are other changes, some of them lame.

Here's what really struck me though, as an appreciator of art:

1. Queen Question is different. You are the Questioner until the next Queen card is drawn, and if anyone answers a question you ask, they have to drink. (They let you answer without penalty if you swear at the Questioner, but this rarely came up.)

2. The Five is still a reaction card, penalizing the last person to put his or her thumb on the table, but as with the Queen, the person who drew the Five has this power until the next Five is drawn.

3. Eight is still the rule card, but you can either make a rule or veto a previous rule. If you make a new rule, the others remain in play.

Categories was fantastic, and though the new rules were a bit hard for me to pick up, I rocked as the Questioner. Afterwards I played my first-ever game of Beer Pong, on a team with the drunkest guy in the house. The game wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I still wasn't very good at it. We lost to Dylan's fiancee.

Having drank surprisingly little (there was significant spillage, go team), I left after the game and met up with Jenna and Markie, who were partying with the social group that we've started calling simply "the Lesbians."

Not a very accurate label... maybe 20% of this group? But evocative.

I remember good Czech beer, and clearly winning some kind of impromptu dance contest. And delicious pizza, and arguing over whether said pizza was hand-tossed. (Like clockwork, I find myself on the wrong side of an argument, and mind-numbingly wrong, every time I drink.) It's always a good time at the Lesbians.

Also, there was someone trying to pick a fight, I guess? He was certainly being rude and parochial, in any case. One minute I was calmly talking to him about voting and the next minute he was saying that none of my opinions were valid on any subject and storming off in disgust.

It was so strange to meet such a willfully rude party acquaintance; you can usually count on them to be pretty good, or at least neutral. On my way out, I scooped up some kids from St. Thomas who had wandered into the parking lot, because things between them and the rude guy looked very close to violence.

A rare specimen, spotted in the wild: "becked."

As in, beckoned, but without that fancy extra syllable. Maybe just a typo, but hopefully it was a pronunciation spelling. The writer was a Texan, but who knows if this is a dialect thing?

(The rare rhetorical question where the answer is "linguists and Texans.")

As I edit the rest of this, my hope that this was an honest mistake and not mere sloppiness is dying rapidly. If you could only have seen that hope! It was adorable.

Nothing to do this weekend, unless you count playing Bully... almost went back hunting; I do love venison.

Scarface: The World is Yours doesn't seem to exist in real life. Still looking for a new monitor, also. My last two attempts to buy one failed.

Overheard at Best Buy:

Employee: "Well, what kind of music does she like?"
Customer: "Um... she likes rap."
Employee: "Radio rap or hardcore?"

We need more questions ending with "or hardcore?" Or maybe we don't, maybe that's what's wrong with America. The newspapers will tell me tomorrow.

I wasn't interested enough to watch all that election coverage after all, though I caught the gist of it via "live blog." Twenty years from now, when the Connecticut For Lieberman party controls Congress and the White House, we'll remember where it all began.

I watched Tank Girl instead. It must be good, if I still don't know if I liked it!

As I've said many times before, this is the month, the month for movies — there are so many good ingredients in Stranger Than Fiction that it just has to be good gumbo — but as far as old movies go, after two months with Netflix I've prettymuch seen every movie I've ever wanted to see. Surprises like Tank Girl (assuming for a moment that I did like it — did I?) are the exception.

I now know how to spot a buck rub and a buck scrape; I can follow a deer trail and lead you to the finest bedding grass, and I can handle an aught-six, even hit what I'm aiming at. I, sir, have worn the blaze orange.

But... there are no pictures of me with a deer.

Up in my stand, I was lord of all I surveyed. However, though I did catch a brief glimpse of a panicky buck as it tried to cross a frozen pond — it was yelping, either because three hunters had a shot at it, or because the ice could not possibly, and yet did, hold its weight — for the most part, "all I surveyed" turned out to be a typewriter, a small reddish-gray squirrel, two gray squirrels, a black squirrel, a chipmunk, some mice, and a couple of chickadees.

(I was glad to see what is probably my favorite bird. Josh says that a few years ago one actually landed on his rifle, presumably turning into a fairy immediately afterwards. Oh, I hoped!)

Broken typewriters and small things that can sound like deer notwithstanding, what really sticks with me is the 14 hours of cold, discomfort, and boredom. I brought Grisham's The Broker to read the first day (it's awful), and yes doubters, I could easily read and listen to the many squirrels, but the next day I had nothing to read, and if I thought the first day had been boring, well...

Activities back at the lodge: confidential.

Deer hunting was everything I've been thinking it was for the past 10 years. (I have never had ethical objections to hunting.) I guess I'm glad I did it, spent some non-holiday time with relatives, gathered up enough skillz to level up soon, communed with nature and all that. But it was still meh.

Not sure I'll do it again; not shooting a deer after all that is like running a marathon without the runner's high. Ask me next year when I've forgotten what it's actually like, maybe.

***Lost spoiler threat level: Yellow. I imply that certain characters are still on the show this season***

Someone, I think it was my brother Josh, had a point when he told me that it's pretty ridiculous that I'm having issues with Lost now, given all the craziness of the past two seasons — but that was consistent craziness.

I mean, I'm sure they can pull a story together at the last minute, even Chris "Just Forget About Those Previous Seasons" Carter could do that, but after the ending to last week's episode, which seemed to flatly contradict info elsewhere in the series, I no longer expect that this is all going to form some sort of artful tapestry.

(Speaking of loose ends: I finished The Dark Tower. You know, I really, really wish I hadn't read the coda. Stephen King himself warned me not to, but it's pretty hard to stop at the epilogue when you've read thousands of pages about Roland already and you're given the opportunity to follow him a bit farther. And I'd have wondered, anyways. Better to say that I wish the coda had never existed.)

It's not Lost's seemingly-irreconcilable logical inconsistencies that really bother me, however.

Almost since the beginning of the show, I've relished the annoying aspects of these characters — I hate, hate stubborn, blinkered Jack even more than holy white knight Jack, but the irritating flaws are what make these characters real, and what still might make this the Best Show on Television.

I think the big difference this season is that instead of being annoyed with the characters for being the occasionally-crappy people they are, I'm annoyed with them for not acting like we all know they should act.

The Politician suggests that they've been broken by some of what has happened since they came to the island, but we know these characters, we've spent two seasons with them, and now they're acting... Stupid. Unrealistically. Without giving much of anything away, I got the same impression last season with Sawyer, who used to be my favorite character... but that just seemed like one slip-up, some sloppy writing in the service of drama.

(Now my favorite character is probably Sun. Or fan-favorite Hurley, but I don't see that character developing much more. I keep telling Jenna to at least give this show a chance, and her response is invariably, "Yeah, I know, the Koreans rock." But she's right.)

Oh, I'll keep watching: there are still amazing moments, and this may still be the best drama on television. Still, since the ridiculousness is likely to get worse the longer Lost stays on the air, I'm probably not alone in praying that this season, or the next, will be the absolute last.

Just picture it: all those answers falling from the sky.