America - fuck yeah!

I sat in someone else's living room. I heard the cheers. I lifted my glass. I sat outside. I heard screams coming from neighboring houses. I drove home. There were people dancing in the street and horns honking all around.

Austin wasn't this happy when Vince Young won us the Rose Bowl in 2005. I love it here, and for the first day in my entire life, I wish I had a flag pin.

Oh and Karl Rove? Raise those Horns and sing that fight song again and I will send Bevo after you. I'm not even kidding.

I see dead people.

So. I don't believe in ghosts. I don't not believe in ghosts. I've gone on "haunted" tours, I've taken pictures and seen the little boy in the window, I've seen the "spots," and none of those things has convinced me one way or the other. But then I started watching Paranormal State and Psychic Kids on A&E. And, umm, that shit freaks me the fuck out! There, I've said it. I'm now officially afraid of the dark.

I found Paranormal State on my A&E On Demand last night. Who knew they even had A&E on demand? Anyway. I watched 3 episodes in a row and there was a whole thing about how you weren't supposed to say this demon's name out loud. It sounds silly and truthfully it probably was but all last night? I had dreams that people kept trying to say this devil person's name out loud and if they did it would come get me. For someone who doesn't believe in god, much less the devil, this makes no sense. Logical? No. Terrifying? Yes.

Here's a clip from one of the shows I saw involving the "demon," if you will:


Now let us move on to Psychic Kids. I have no clue if mediums or psychics really exist. I'm neither. At least I hope not, because if I am some demon is coming to visit me. *shudder* I watched what I think was the first (or second?) episode the other night. One girl was 8 and her name was Faith. She was haunted by a little boy named Freddie (dead) and his mean mother Catherine (also dead). This girl gave exact dates as to when they died (1880s I think?), how, where, the exact spelling of their names, etc. The crack research team at Psychic Kids found some census information that basically proved the 8 year-old was talking about people that actually existed at one time. I'm not saying it was a hoax but if that 8 year-old girl is faking, she's a lot smarter than I was at that age.

And then there was JoAnn (I think?). She was 12 and dreamed about the meeting place where the show was taking all the psychic kids. And guess what? The drawing of the place she dreamed about? Was almost an exact replica of where they went. And it wasn't just a normal house or something. It was this old timey shop thing that looked nothing like the rest of the town they were in (where she'd never been before, at least according to the show).

Finally there was a 3rd girl who was 11ish. She wasn't nearly as interesting as the other two because she could just read people's auras and predict their death. Whatevs.

Here's a clip fo these kids and I think I got the part where the girl dreams about the place they're going to:


I'm back to my original point. I don't know if ghosts are real or not but a) shows about them are freaking scary and b) I'm beginning to have dreams about ghost shows*.

*Secret confession: I'm only slightly afraid that if I think about ghosts too much I'll become one of those people who can see them and then I'll have to think they're real and I'll be haunted. Not cool, man.

I'm a natural disaster dream hoarder...

Back when Katrina happened I had nightmares that the city I was living in was flooded - like Noah's Ark flooded. I had them repeatedly. I have various other natural disaster dreams anytime I focus too much on how terrifying it must be to have your world destroyed by forces you can't control, i.e. mother nature.

Give the above precipice, I had a dream last night involving a huge tornado that started out looking like a hurricane on a doppler map. I was in a high rise hotel (or apartment building?) when I looked out the wall of windows and realized a huge ass tornado (in my dream I called it a twister) was coming right towards the building. I grabbed the two people I was with and high-tailed it to the stairwell. While I was doing so I called the front desk and told them a tornado was heading for us and for everyone to get in the stairwell. (In my dream I was secretly slapping myself on the back for being so prepared with all my tornado safety knowledge.)

We were in the stairwell when the tornado hit. It hit the building and made a sound not unlike a really big bird thudding into a window in my office building. Then the building started going down. Not down like an imploded casino or something but down like the you'd imagine the leaning tower of piza would go down - all sideways and what not. In my head, again, I started thinking about how in Titanic Jack knew exactly what to tell Rose to do when the boat hit the water (a-I'm very cerebral in my dreams and b-Titanic, wtf?), and I started panicking. I realized I have no safety knowledge on what to do if a building falls down. It occured to me that we should probably have run down a few flights of stairs to get closer to the ground but it was too late at that point. I also, in my dream, moved the vending machine (that was naturally in the stairwell) to the direction the building was going down so it wouldn't smush us. (I've watched a lot of Black Sheep in my time.) But other than that? I had nothing. It was terrifying.

The last thing I thought before I woke up? As I was huddling in a corner with other girls (all girls in this dream and I was the Alpha), I thought that I should probably try to call my mom and tell her I love her because I might die there. But then I thought that my cell probably doesn't get very good reception in the middle of tornado. And then I woke up.

This dream has created several results in its cause and affect nature.

1) I'm extremely tired today due to lack of sleep. Everytime I tried to go back to sleep this morning I was in a falling building in the middle of a tornado.

2) It created a desire for a new phone plan that has all the fancy text messaging for free, so I can contact people in a tornado. I text now but it costs $$$ and if I'm going to be having natural disaster dreams, I really need to be secure in my ability to text and check email for free, ya know? Less potential catastrophes in nightmare land.

3) The dream made me wonder if it was a bad omen or something. Is this a sign that I should put off girls' night and get new tires before my long, car trip home tomorrow morning?

4) Perhaps I actually should buy one of those Worst Case Scenario books. I like to be prepared and it seems I know shit about falling buildings. I bet that's in there somewhere.

5) When I called my mom over lunch to tell her what a sweet daughter she had in that my last thought before death was to call my dear mother and tell her I love her, she replied, "hmmm, I don't know how cell phones react in the middle of tornado. I've never had anyone call me during one."

Three cheers for Mother's Day! (I don't know the html tags for sarcasm but they should be entered before three and after day. Oh and probably before and after this parenthetical reference.)