Glass House Blue Goat Art Dinner

I'm standing in an apartment.

My friend Stuart is there.

The apartment belongs to Mark Chester, a San Francisco photographer.

For some reason unknown to Stuart and I, we are visiting Mark.

We walk through the apartment and it is rather odd. Around the place are Mark's personal belongings, photography equipment and the like. However, the place itself is a strange construction.

The apartment is a kind of "loft" that takes up the whole top floor of a building. The building is in the shape of a "u".

The walls of the building are made of glass and we can see outside. In the middle of the "u" of the building is another "u" shaped building that is similar constructed and, inside that one, another smaller "u" shaped building. All have glass walls and I can stand in Mark's apartment and see into and through all the others.

I comment on the apartments and think they're interesting - they seem so open and there's so much light. I see inside the other apartments on the same floor as Mark's place and see some covered furniture, but they mostly look empty. I ask Mark if anyone lives there.

"They're away now," Mark says.

Stuart and I continue to walk around Mark's apartment as he tells us about the place. I wonder what he's doing with his photography now, but he doesn't seem to be interested in talking about that.

I look outside and it's getting to be late afternoon. Stuart and I are both feeling hungry, so we decide to go eat.

We say goodbye to Mark, open a door at one end of Mark's apartment and start walking down stairs.

Down and down we walk, around and around the stairway.

We pass by different apartments, which all have glass walls. The building must have thirty floors, but the whole place seems empty.

Outside, I see rolling hills and meadows.

I comment to Stuart that moving from San Francisco to Maine must have been a culture shock for Mark and Stuart laughs.

Soon, we reach the ground floor and open a door to the outside.

It's a beautiful place - lush grass, flowers - and it feels like Spring. There are a few birds chirping here and there.

As we walk, we pass by a field where there are about a half-dozen goats grazing. A couple of them bleat at us as we pass by.

The goats are blue.

Bright, primary-colored blue with white patches.

"I've never seen blue goats before," I comment.

"It's a special breed," Stuart says.

"You mean they're not painted or something?"

"No," Stuart says, "that's their natural coloring."

Soon we come to a small wood building under some trees.

A wood carved sign outside the place reads "Blue Goat Cafe".

We step inside and it's a kind of rustic place; it looks something like a log home on the inside with wood walls and a stone fireplace.

It's still a little early and the place hasn't opened or is getting ready to open for dinner. So we look for a menu as we wait for someone to show us to our table.

On a little stand, there's a thick box that looks something like a book. It contains the menu for the place. The cover is hand-crafted leather, dyed blue, similar to the goats.

I open the cover and see that the menu is some type of mechanical thing. I push a button in the lower right corner and it shows different meal options on little rotating banners, similar to the changeable signs they have at drive-through restaurants.

By reading the menu, I discover that we're on the campus of Glaxo Smith Kline Arts University in Maine and that the campus was formerly called the "University of Maine" until the company bought the naming rights to the school.

The menu is quite strange. Each week's menu is different. The food and options are chosen by a committee of art students at the school each week and work on a theme.

This weeks theme is "I Ran So Far Away: Cultural Constructions of War" and each meal you can get is designed to be a statement about the Iraq War.

The meals don't actually contain food - the idea is that you are seated at a table and brought some drinks and some type of artwork (sculptures, paintings, etc) as your "meal". One, for example, consisted entirely of Lego constructions - an appetizer of little figures representing Congresspeople having a hearing, an entree of an Iraq battle scene, and a dessert of little Lego coffins covered in flags.

Next week's theme was to be "Race, Gender and Identity in Glass Houses".

"This doesn't sound very good, Stuart," I said. "Do you want to see if there's a burger joint around."

Stuart peered through his reading glasses at the menu, smiled and laughed.

"Yeah," he said, "let's get a burger."

And then I woke up.

Technicolor Hostage Cereal Gangster

I am alone in a huge movie theater.

I am watching a movie.

It looks like a bright, vibrant Technicolor movie from the 1930's. But the film is one of those Warner Brothers gangster movies, which were all done in stark black and white.

A gangster is holding a woman captive on some kind of road trip. With them, they have a Black cook, a young girl.

The man resembles George Raft; the woman reminds me of Loretta Young.

The house they're staying in is dark, with high contrast shadows all around.

The clothes the characters wear or objects in the room are vibrant reds, greens, yellows and blues, standing out from everything there.

They’re about to have breakfast. The gangster sits at the table in the dining room, reading a newspaper. He talks about the cops not being able to find them.

The woman tries to figure out how to get away. She nervously drinks coffee and spreads some jam on a piece of toast.

The woman says something about checking on breakfast and goes into the kitchen.

The cook is there. The woman starts yelling at the cook and the cook recoils.

She leans in close to the cook and whispers in her ear.

“He’s trying to kill me. Just play along.”

The woman takes a stack of brightly colored dishes and throws them to the floor. She yells at the cook, asking her why she has to be so clumsy.

The woman leans in and whispers in the cook’s ear again.

“Run away and get help.”

The woman crashes some more dishes against the wall and yells at the cook again.

The cook seems like she’s in a state of shock and doesn’t know what to do.

The woman pointss at the door. She pleads with the cook, motioning with her hands.

The cook quickly and quietly scurries off.

The woman regains her composure. She picks up a tray that has some food and dishes on it, along with two boxes of cereal.

The woman carries the tray into the dining room.

"What was that about?" the man asks.

"I just fired the cook - she’s so incompetent,” she says, trying to remain calm.

The woman moves the tray towards the table.

Two boxes of Life cereal are on the tray -- the kind of boxes they had in the 1960's with "Life" spelled out in brightly colored letters.

As she sits the tray on the table, some of the letters on the cereal boxes float away into the air, forming the word "Lie".
Then I woke up.

Classroom Rune Goat Lunch

I am in a classroom. It looks like a room in my old high school.

It is a nice day and the sun streams through the windows.

I stand at a chalkboard with a class full of students. These are not high school students ­ these are men and women who are all adults, their ages varying quite a bit.

The students all sit in rapt attention as I stand at the board lecturing. I draw some strange symbols on the chalkboard, discussing the significance of each symbol.

I glance down at my watch. It is noon.

"Let's take a break for lunch," I say.

The students in the room rise up from their desks. They head out a door in the back of the classroom, murmuring and chatting a bit with each other about the lecture.

I know that they will be going to some type of cafeteria or restaurant for lunch.

But, at the same time, I know that I am not supposed to eat there.

I look to my left.

Standing at the front of the classroom is a goat tied to a chair.

"That's lunch," I think.

I walk up to the goat. I look down and have an ornate long curved knife in my hand.

I cut the goat's throat and drag it in front of my desk.

I take the knife in both of my hands.

I chop off the goat’s head. The goat’s body falls to the floor.

I carefully place the head, blood gushing from the base of it, on the desk.

I get down on my knees and use the knife to skin the goat.

I look up and see a little mound in front of me. There is a spit and a fire is slowly burning.

I drag the goat's body to the mound.

I insert the spit into the goat and place it above the fire.

I notice as I turn the goat on the spit that there is a strange thing in the center of its belly -- it is like a hole, a couple of inches in diameter, to its insides, almost like a round window.

Around the hole, impressed into its body, are two circles. Between the circles are strange rune-like symbols, similar to the ones I drew on the board during the lecture.

There is good fire going and the goat is cooking pretty well.

I look up and see a hole in the ceiling. The sky shows through the hole -- the smoke drifts through the hole in the roof to the outside.

The goat is ready.

I rip off some of its flesh.

I look over at the desk. I see the head of the dead goat just sitting there, staring at me, blood steaming down the front of the desk.

I have to eat the goat, but the thought of doing so repulses me.

I need to eat the meat, but I cannot bring myself to do it.

I wonder why.

I think it’s a cute goat -- it would be like eating Bambi or something.

I feel sad for the goat.

Then I woke up.

Naked Jewish Boy Bus Trip Party

It's a bright, sunny spring day.

I'm riding on a school bus, sitting near the back.

The road seems very twisted and the bus speeds along around the curves.

The road is near some kind of big body of water, like an ocean or really huge lake. The road goes around the side of these cliffs. I look down and see the water on the left of the bus.

There are a dozen people scattered around the bus, all of them are adults. Some are men; some are women. I don't know any of these people.

All of the people on the bus are naked. They chat with each other pleasantly, enjoying the ride.

I hear a voice behind me.

"Are you going to the party?" a man asks.

I turn around and there’s a young man there. It is John.

He has long blond hair, a nice thin build and a bit of a shadow beard. Like everyone else, he's naked.

He wears a necklace that fits close around his neck. The necklace has different colored beads on it.

"Yes, I suppose I am," I say.

We chat with each other about the weather or something.

I happen to look down and notice that he has a really nice set of tit rings.

I also notice something else.

John has several piercings in different sizes. The rings are placed all the way up the front of his belly and chest, from his waist to just below his neck. They are all in a row, each ring about a half-inch apart.

The rings are arranged in a manner that resembles an erect penis, with smaller rings forming the shaft and the wider rings making up the head of the cock.

"It's going to be a great party," he says.

Suddenly, I am standing in a shower in the building where the party will be held.

It's a little musty and run down and the lighting isn't very good. It appears similar to open multi-person showers one might see at the gym.

I wear flip-flops and have a towel around my waist. I take off the towel and place it on a hanger.

I walk to one of the showerheads, turn it on and shower myself down, enjoying the feel of the cool water on my body.

I finish the shower, grab the towel and begin drying off.

"Where is he?" I wonder to myself.

"He's not here,” a voice says from behind me.

I turn around. It is one of my aunts.

She stands there in front of me, fully clothed.

I ignore the fact that I'm standing in front of my aunt wet and naked and just continue toweling down.

My aunt rambles on about some kind of cake she's baking.

I finish drying off, tie the towel around my waist and start to walk off.

"You should find yourself a nice Jewish boy," she says.

Then I woke up.

Crowded Shower Box Toothpaste

I am taking a shower. It is morning and I have just gotten out of bed.

In the shower with me are moving boxes.

I have just moved in to an apartment and there isn’t space for everything ­ I had to put some of the boxes in the bathtub.

I get out of the shower and towel myself off, working my way around stacks of boxes around the bathroom.

I walk to the sink and take my toothbrush out of a small cup on the sink. I grab a tube and squeeze some toothpaste on the brush and put it into my mouth.

It tastes strange.

I look down and see that I am brushing my teeth with anchovy paste.

Then I woke up.

McDonald’s Chocolate Milkshake Opera

I sit in my car at a McDonald’s restaurant drive-thru.

A voice comes on the intercom.

“May I take your order,” the voice says.

“I’d like a chocolate shake.”

There is a short pause the intercom comes to life.

“Okay…drive around.”

I pull up to the drive-through window. I see a woman inside, making my milkshake.

She wears a nametag.

Her name is Carmen.

She opens the window of the drive-thru and hands me the shake.

“You’re eligible for a free CD,” she says.

“What kind?”

“It’s the opera ‘Carmen’,” she replies.

“Sure,” I say. “That would be fine.”

I drive my truck around to the front of the restaurant. I shut off the engine, grab my milkshake and get out of the truck.

I open the doors of the restaurant and go inside.

I sit down at a table and begin sipping my milkshake through the straw.

A UPS van drives up outside the restaurant. The driver gets out and walks inside with a package.

He comes to the table and hands me the package. As he walks away, I open it.

The envelope contains a CD of the opera ‘Carmen’.

A fancy certificate falls out of the envelope.

The certificate reads, “Order a hamburger from Bertha and get Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, absolutely free.”

I’m not in the mood for a hamburger.

Then I woke up.