Stray thoughts: A roundup

1. I had a nightmare last night within 45 minutes of falling asleep. Don't remember much of it. I know I had to walk across town at night in bad weather. I took a shortcut that should have gone through an alley, but in fact took me through someone's house. When the occupant noticed, I apologized and explained that I was lost. She was very understanding. I eventually came out the other side, and then had to walk past the quarter mile of graveyards along the south central edge of Nanticoke. As I began this walk, I spotted something crouching in the graveyard that I simultaneously identified as ghoul and crackhead. I decided not to run - running would only make me more vulnerable, and would be worse than dealing with it head on. It charged at me in full gallop, running on all fours, using its hands to push itself forward. I think around this time I woke up and checked the clock to see how long I had been asleep. It was about an hour since I had gone to bed, and I knew it had taken a while for me to fall asleep.

2. When I was in high school and college in the 1980s, in what was effectively the pre-Internet era (an early version of the Internet existed then, but not for us, mostly), we had to generally rely on liner notes and close listening to decipher the lyrics of songs. (Some fan clubs would send you "official" copies of song lyrics, but you had to join, and there was always a fee involved.) R.E.M. was a band legendary for its often-incomprehensible lyrics. U2 also had several songs with lyrics that were only semi-coherent, most notably "Elvis Presley and America" from "The Unforgettable Fire." (The legend was that Bono drunkenly mumbled things into a microphone in a single take, and even if that is not true, the lyrics really have nothing resembling narrative coherence.) When "The Joshua Tree" came out while I was in college, we listened intently to each song as it came out on the radio. I remember a friend stopping me in the cafeteria to hand my the lyrics she had transcribed from her first hearing of "With or Without You." These days, of course, you can just Google these songs and pull up what are allegedly the "official" lyrics to almost any song. For some bands, like My Bloody Valentine, this has become a bit of a game; their lyrics intentionally hover on the edge of comprehensibility, no "official" versions exist, and the band will privately rate posted versions on the degree to which they correspond to what they recall actually singing.

3. Ricky Jay died today. He was so many things: a magician, an actor, a historian, a writer - his book "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women" re-introduced me to the world of strange and unusual performers that I had once learned of through furtive glimpses at the pages of a paperback in the book department of the 1970s-era department store Fowler, Dick, and Walker: The Boston Store (now Boscov's in Wilkes-Barre, a store which, like so many others, no longer has a book department.) I am constantly surprised whenever he pops up in a random movie or TV series - his acting credits are extensive.

4. On Monday I will be heading back to work. These last few days I've been spending as much time as possible with two of our cats who will most likely be the next to die. In both cases we're forestalling the inevitable by identifying and providing foods that the individual cat is most likely to eat in quantity. Foe one cat, Joey, that means Friskies Beef with Extra Gravy and Fancy Feast Beef Pate mixed with extra virgin olive oil. For Thor, it means Fancy Feast Grilled Beef and Fancy Feast Beef and Liver Pate, as well as chicken, turkey, and thinly sliced ham. Joey also is fond of taking naps, especially if he is first wrapped in a blanket and held against your chest. Thor prefers to be scritched and scratched and massaged all over. I'm sorry I won't be able to do these things once I head back to work - at least during the nine hours or so I'll be out of the house.

So, one more sleep. Church in the morning. I'll be meeting some friends for dinner in the afternoon. And then - back to work I go!