Uno? That's a gateway game to pinochle!

In last night's Simpsons episode, I liked the stuff involving Marge and the Flanders family. It's always funny to see the activities in which Rod and Todd participate, like Christian Clue ("The secular humanist did it, in the schoolhouse, with misinformation!" [1]); as well as Marge's clueless attempts to reference pop culture ("I'm a Star Wars!"). What wasn't so great was the subplot about Bart being kidnapped by a chimpanzee. Is there some plaque on the wall of the writers' room saying, "When in doubt, bring in a wild animal"? It's annoyingly common for a largely character-driven plot to be resolved using a conflict with an animal. Also, I think there was a little too much of Homer getting hurt.

I had several crazy dreams last night. In the first one I can remember, my car engine fell out on the highway, and someone took it. I think I somehow got contact information for the thieves, and tried to arranged a meeting with them, but they wouldn't show up. Two other people DID show up, but I don't remember how they fit into the whole thing. I think I owed THEM something, maybe. Anyway, after that, I was contacting a bunch of government officials and news people. 3x1minus1 might be interested to know that the one person I distinctly remember trying to contact was Anderson Cooper, who apparently had a missing piece of the puzzle. How there was a "puzzle" involved with a missing car engine is beyond me, but hey, it was a dream.

The puzzle theme apparently continued, because the next dream I remember included what I guess was a scavenger hunt in a museum. The only thing I actually remember finding was a key inside a box, a few of which were hidden in the building. There were also parts to that dream about walking home from work and my sister complaining to my mom that I'm lazy, but I don't remember the details.

In the final dream (that I can recall, anyway), I was watching a movie or something, and a discussion with some other audience member led to a question about how I would draw an elephant falling on a monkey. I mentioned how I couldn't draw, but if I HAD to, I'd show the monkey opening a little umbrella. This led to a discussion of cartoon clichés, and then of magic potions that required ingredidents like laughter and hen's teeth. (I must have been thinking of The Magical Monarch of Mo, in which the Wicked Wizard uses hen's teeth in a magical formula. It's also pretty similar to how the chain used in Norse mythology to bind Fenris was made up of such things as women's beards and the footfall of a cat.) Anyway, during this discussion, I was eating some kind of pancakes, or something similar to pancakes, and they actually tasted pretty good. That's pretty odd, as food in my dreams usually tastes dry and bland. Later, the dream morphed into some sitcom or something, where some supposedly cute little girl wanted to go out in the middle of the night, because she thought she had school.

[1] Incidentally, is there any other show on television that mentions secular humanism as often as The Simpsons?