GIGO

A strange thing: Two mornings in a row now, I've awakened from the same weirdly frustrating dream.

I'm back in college. Since I've been given a second chance, I've decided I'm going to make the best of my college career; really bust my hump to get great grades, participate in campus affairs, join debates, be a somebody in campus life.

I'm in a lecture hall. The professor is banging on about Middle Eastern affairs. One of the students breaks in to admonish the prof about something. His words are nonsense, and I can refute the nonsense. I have facts and figures at my disposal. Another student interrupts, with more nonsense. I raise my hand to be called on. Everybody ignores me. The prof doesn't see me. I start being vocal -- call on me! I know this is bullshit, and I can prove it! To no avail. The nonsense drones on.

I come to full consciousness, frustrated and angry. Goddamned public life. You just can't break in!

Only now do I realize what's been happening: My radio's been on. I've got my bedside alarm radio set to NPR, and the bullshit I've been trying to break into, with such frustrating results, is their 6 AM News Roundup. My Dream Self has been taking in the words, but not the meaning, of the news reports, reassembling them into gibberish, and that's what I've been trying to argue with in my sleep. Of course, the radio is rather unlikely to stop and call on a dreaming goober who wants to argue with a reassembled dream-version of something just asserted: "Yes, Neddie, you wanted to say something about the garbage your subconscious just created out of our broadcast?" I'd be a little afraid if it did, come to think of it.