In my prison cell I think these words

I'm writing this on Tuesday afternoon, but it might not be posted until sometime on Wednesday at the earliest, for reasons that should become clear shortly.

Since bethje's computer is still having problems, I brought mine over to her house. Unfortunately, though, she uses dial-up, and my computer just won't work for dial-up anymore. I tried to install AOL, and when it didn't run, I kept calling tech support. Each time, they told me something that they were SURE would fix the problems I was having, yet it never did. Finally, the last guy told me that there was some problem with my drivers, and I would have to have them fixed up at a repair shop, with help from my Windows CD. I don't think I'll bother doing that, but it puzzles me why it wouldn't work. When I first got the computer, I used a dial-up connection to connect to the Internet, and I don't recall having any problems with that. Later, however, I had difficulties similar to the ones I had at Beth's house. I couldn't connect to the Internet using dial-up. Fortunately, we got DSL around that time, and I didn't really have to worry about it. Since then, though, I've gotten a new hard drive and then reformatted that drive, with Windows installed anew each time. Why I would be having the same problems after a reinstall, and why, if this was, say, a problem with the Windows program itself, I was able to use dial-up before, remain mysteries to me. Anyone have any ideas?

Anyway, the point is that I currently have no way to access the Internet, except at work. When this kind of thing happens, I always feel disconnected. I tend to get used to it after a while, but it's both annoying and depressing at first. Of course, when I finally DO get online after a long absence, I usually find that it's pretty much as I left it, with hardly anything in my inbox or posted to the forums I read.

Last night, I had some interesting dreams. One was about a movie featuring They Might Be Giants that had come out BEFORE Gigantic. It was apparently kind of rare, but known to TMBG fans. In my dream, I was actually watching it for the second time, the first having been when I rented it from a local video store that carried a lot of rare stuff. Anyway, the movie wasn't a documentary, but rather a fictional story in which the Johns played themselves (sort of like A Hard Day's Night or something, I guess). It started with Flansburgh in jail writing lyrics on a piece of paper. I think Linnell was also in jail later on in the film, and the two Johns were talking about the band Linnell had been in prior to TMBG. He was actually in a band called the Mundanes at that point, but, within the dream-movie, his former band was known as "Snickers." Linnell also mentioned how he had been rejected by some goth band. There were also a lot of slapstick parts, like when Flans ran into a fence face-first. I think the last part of the movie that I saw had TMBG opening for some other band at a theater.

In another dream, I attended some kind of convention. Just as I was getting ready to leave, I met Weird Al. He walked up to my car, said he had heard I was a fan, and gave me an autograph. Later on, when I had time to examine the autograph, I discovered that Al had misspelled his own name, making me wonder if he was a fake.

Okay, here's to hoping I can get this online shortly!

I Want Everything

In a dream last night, I had some kind of flying machine, sort of like the one I gave to Dr. Vell, the villain in a few of my Oz stories. It was sort of an open hovercar, operating like an automobile but not looking much like one. A cop gave me a ticket for something, but I don't think he was at all surprised that I had a flying vehicle. It would be cool to have one of those in real life.

Speaking of wanting stuff, I've been wondering if I'm a materialistic person. It sometimes seems like being anti-materialistic comes with being an anti-capitalistic, anti-war, free-thinking liberal wacko, but I like getting stuff, and I don't think wanting material possessions is bad in and of itself. I won't say that someone with, say, a computer is necessarily happier than someone without one, but I'd be lying if I said having a computer didn't often make me happy. (Of course, it also makes me really angry sometimes. It's a real love-hate relationship, or something. But I digress.) I think problems tend to come in more because of competition (the "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality, and getting things not because you actually want them, but because other people do, and you have to outdo them) and valuing money for money's sake more than simple material desires. I'm all for more equal distribution of wealth, but it just seems like, in a rich society such as ours, everybody who wants one should be able to have, say, a Game Boy Advance and a big-screen TV. (Keep in mind that not everybody WANTS these things, and I'm certainly not advocating forcing them on people, like it's some kind of cautionary science fiction story.) I guess I don't know really the economic logistics, though.