Hooray for a child's ability to mindlessly regurgitate dogma!

Lucid dreaming, for those who don't know, is essentially when you take control of your dreams. You realize you're dreaming but stay asleep and you begin to will the dream to take the form you choose. I haven't had any dreams that I can remember for quite awhile but I can still remember my first lucid dream. I was 9 years old and, like many children my age, I suffered from nightmares. In my dream I had been captured by a couple of witches who had taken me to their home which was like a large underground burrow. Naturally one of them was stirring a large, black cauldron while the other told me of my fate. Hunch-backed and terribly ugly she glared at me and said, 'Well little boy do you know who we are?'

'You're witches.' I replied meekly.

She grinned exposing her yellow teeth sharpened on the bones of little children. 'Yes, and do you know what we're going to do with you?'

I glanced over at the other one as she looked up from the cauldron and peered at me with here good eye. 'Um.. no..', I whispered.

'Well', she said,'we're going to eat your flesh, grind your bones into dust but first, we'll boil your head!'

At this point I'd heard enough. Summoning all the courage and will-power a dreaming nine yearold can I shouted, 'NO! I'LL BOIL YOURS!!', and with that I karate-chopped her head clean off and into the cauldron. I ran to the second witch and did the same. Looking around I realized that I had won and so I awoke.

But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

Now while looking up the reference to, 'Bloody Battle in Afghanistan', I encountered this page. It seemed to me that they were just trying too hard to find some sort of prophetic connection between those lines and the events surrounding September 11th. I was sure that those references had to have been related to something before 1851, the publication date of Moby Dick.

So I began searching through the history of Afghanistan. I found what I was looking for here. From 1839-1842 the first Anglo-Afghan war was waging in Afghanistan. The British had setup a puppet king, Shah Shuja, throughout this time Afghans continued to fight against the British. In January 1842, out of 16,500 soldiers (and 12,000 dependents) only one survivor, of mixed British-Indian garrison, reaches the fort in Jalalabad, on a stumbling pony. This was a prime example of a 'bloody battle' and it fit in the timeline of the writing of Moby Dick.

I then began researching former presidents of the United States. I was looking for something that could be considered a 'grand contested election' occuring before 1851 and, to back up my previous point, before 1842. Here is where my research reached somewhat of a dead end. So I turned my attentions to Melville's biography. Soon after I epiphanied explosively all over my desk and keyboard. After cleaning up the mess I double checked what I had read. Melville had begun his own sailing career in January of 1841 and since I suspected that Melville's protagonist, Ishmael, was largely auto-biographical I checked my list of presidents again. In 1840, William Henry Harrison was nominated for the presidency of the United States by the Whigs against Martin Van Buren. Harrison won the popular vote by less than 150,000, but swept the Electoral Colleges 234 to 60. With this small majority and its timing in Melville's life I am fairly confident in stating that this is the 'grand contested election' referred to just before Ishmael's whaling voyage.

That's better. For any of you who ever read Trendymisanthropy.com you might remember an update I made entitled, 'A Turn For the Worse'. In which I recounted the true story of a guilt ridden young man who felt the need to burden me with the tale of how he demolished his family's car, put his mother in the hospital and cost his family thousands in damages to public property all because of a wrong turn in the car. Well I have an update to his misadventures. A few weeks ago I received my credit card bill, which I usually just throw out, when I noticed something on the back. Every envelope I get from them usually has one of those Child Find reports printed on the back with the name and picture of a child who's gone missing. To my surprise there was the face of 'A Turn For the Worse' kid smiling up at me from the back of this month's envelope. So I decided to post it seeing as it could only do more good than harm. His name is David Vickers, I went to High School with him and though he wasn't really a friend I knew who he was. It was certainly surprising to find that he's missing but I suppose these tragedies they show on the nightly news have to happen to someone. So in summation, yes Virginia there is a real world out there and it will have you turning tricks for one more puff of that crack pipe.

The ghostly dawn awakens the land causing all things to quiver and shake in expectation of the morning sun. It blasts its photons across the landscape causing them to bounce back at specific frequencies which humans view as colour. Some of these photons happen to bounce through the window of a quaint little farmhouse into the observant eyes of Mr. Hammersmith as he gazed out at the fields surrounding his property. Mr. Hammersmith was a simple man with concrete ideas of how the world worked. Each morning he awoke at 5am, came downstairs, and looked out the window while sipping his coffee before he began his daily chores. He glanced back at the empty chairs surrounding his table. He didn't like to look at them. He could remember when the house was full of the noises of his family. His sons arguing over the bathroom. His wife singing one song or another while getting breakfast ready. They seemed like echoes in his mind contrasting with the stale silence of the house. His boys were men now with families of their own. His wife passed 3 years ago after a long bout with cancer. Everytime Mr. Hammersmith looked at those empty chairs he felt so demoralised and alone. So he turned back towards the window and watched as the wind flowed across the grassy field causing it to sway as if dancing. He used to question why god would see fit to tear apart everything that he loved but now he just quietly sits and watches the gentle swaying of the fields. He'd attained a kind of remorseful peace that only comes with age. He looked down to his now empty coffee cup permanently stained from years of use.

Another by-product of our late night meanderings was this call I made to a random 1-800 number. In this tale of ordinary madness a lonely chinese convenience store owner thinks he's found his match; will the lovely long distance operator buy what he's selling? Click here to find out.