2.27.2025

Monsters attacking Dad's cabin. Oh no the dogs are out. Is that a bear? Simian, long arms like a baboon. Noisy attacker. Seems counterproductive. I can get behind this door but it's just a few strips of wood and glass panels between us. Now the ape-bear is attacking one of the other monsters so that's good, let's keep 'em busy.

There's a plane to catch, a mysterious benefactor, we're in a hurry but no one will tell us where we're going. They're all like this now. My recently married friends are trying on outfits. Neil settles on this short fuzzy crop top thing and mom jeans, Whit is fashionable in a shiny dress.

I’m at an altar and everyone is trying to get a seat in the pews. Pink and green phone cases on the arm rests as dibs. There’s chatter and anticipation, like we’re here to check out the buzz on a movie the critics are horny about. I don’t want to take anyone else’s seat – they paid to be here, after all, and I’m just a volunteer or something – so I find a place over on the side, careful not to have my view blocked by a column. Nothing happens, no one arrives. Someone needs to make a sacrifice but who will it be.

A gas station with a deli kitchen in back. Day old breaded chicken pieces on a heating element on the counter. A women works back there, she’s kinda goth, just sitting there with no pants on, as you do when your job sucks. We become friendly. Later I come back with this notion I need to make something, a short film or a music video, about a guy who thinks it’s romantic to bother his girlfriend at work. Maybe it’s a satirical country song, I say, and sing some. She agrees to let me do that and she asks if something is wrong and I say no I’m just reading your tattoos. She gets flustered. Sorry, I know you’re shy, I say.

Adjacent to all of this I’m trying to establish citizenry in my own country for some reason. The TSA folks or consulate or whoever I’m dealing with don’t believe me, don’t think my passport and my driver’s license have enough information on them. There’s some elaborate set of tasks I have to perform involving ordering clothing from a limited selection – like a Sears or Kmart catalog from the 80s – and having it sent to my mom’s house in Ann Arbor to prove I exist.

Neil shows up again and we’re involved in something important but he can’t tell me what it is, I’m just supposed to follow him, and I’m in a new apartment but there’s trash everywhere and a gallon jug of cleaning solution and a coffee maker which is my only present concern. Then the news: Mike Drew had a little side project, a software company or an app. It was called Jub. None of us know what it does, but he just sold it for 12 billion dollars. He’s in obvious shock and doesn’t seem to be fully aware of what’s happened. It’s a scramble to do what we can to protect him and also make sure he remembers us and what we're doing for him. Maybe not all billionaires have to be bad, we say.