Nightmare
OK, one more, and I’ll stop. Probably.
I had an intensely terrible nightmare while napping today, one that we could call a WGA Strike Nightmare, a “Shades of Gray” Nightmare, or a Patchwork Nightmare: it contained fragments of pretty much every bad nightmare I’ve had in the last year, even ones I had consciously forgotten, woven together.
But it did have some relatively non-nightmarish weirdness in it. Philatelic weirdness. The ninth U.S. president was running around and was assassinated onscreen. A bystander saw this happen and was able to identify the victim because he was on the nine-cent Prexy that he used on all his outgoing mail! This bothered me for a couple of reasons in the dream: 9¢ was never the First-Class postage rate in the U.S., all the presidents on the Prexies were already dead when they were put on the stamps, and the Prexies were in use between 1938 and 1952, so the dream shouldn’t have been in color. But I went with it.
I had to identify to the police who the ninth President was. This is one of the lists I have memorized for no particular purpose. So in my dream, I began enumerating them. Literally, I counted from one to nine, out loud. I felt foolish. The next list I tried was books of the Christian Bible, which I also have memorized. I counted and determined that the president was II Samuel (off by one, not bad while asleep), so I informed the officer that the President’s name was Sam, Jr.
You really didn’t care about any of that, did you?
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4 Responses to “Nightmare”
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February 10th, 2008 at 19h53
Some smartass is going to point out that Prexies are still valid for postage. I know that. I like using a Ben Franklin and a Martha Washington together as my make-up rate from 39¢ to 41¢, if I have time to paste them (the gum has sweated away on my postage examples — I’m sure they’re unused, because they are still glazed-looking on the reverse and still in largish blocks). Otherwise, I use the Pan-Am Inverts reprint of the 2-center. Stuff that the USPS just doesn’t expect to be used. I like making clerks do double-takes. But this point didn’t occur to me in my dream.
The Pan-Am reprints, by the way, are so intricate and fancy-looking that I’m frequently asked if they’re denominated in dollars or cents. They’re ready to just take my word on it. They’re in cents: 1¢, 2¢, and 4¢. Face value 7¢. If you want to try to take a run at defrauding the USPS, I’ll sell you a set of mint examples for $3.
If you’re a Postal Inspector, I’m kidding.
February 10th, 2008 at 20h08
Wow.
February 10th, 2008 at 20h41
I dreamed about cows and horses.
February 10th, 2008 at 20h44
I dreamed about cows and horses.
And there are like four people in the world who know how funny that is.