i was walking on a beach. the water was light blue and it was very sunny, but not hot. a woman in a hoop skirt was rolling around in the sand. she said that i had to meet baudelaire's niece because she was a really cool person.

i went on an expedition to antarctica. it took weeks to get to the camp where we would resupply for our trek to the south pole. when i came home everyone asked what it was like, to demonstrate we made the dog sit in a bucket of ice water with green popsicles in it. then we watched videos of my trip.

a friend moved to portland. we talked on the phone for a long time about being sad, even though i hadn't been sad like she was sad for a long time. we also talked about riding bikes and stealing books from libraries. later that day i painted words in morse code on all the mailboxes in our neighborhood. when i went to work my boss asked me to show her how to embed a video on twitter.

i was fighting on the side of rebels in a nameless country. the war was in the cities, in the country it was very peaceful. in the country i sat by a lake and talked with my friends; we were all dressed like we'd just stepped out of the great gatsby. in the city, i was holed up in a store, fighting against a group of soldiers on the second floor of an apartment building across the street. this was the end of the war, we weren't afraid of dying so much as we were afraid of becoming heroes.

godzilla was attacking the earth. i was hiding in a cabinet with a microwave, a baseball scorecard, and harry potter. we talked about magicking ourselves away but were afraid if the cabinet broke that we would be unable to get back. at some point we fell asleep. when we woke up a group of old ladies had set up easels and oil paints and were painting us as we slept on the broken pieces of the cabinet. they were less concerned about the godzilla attack than they interested in speculating what we had been doing in the cabinet.

i worked on a battleship that was docked in the Thames and had been converted to a laboratory. some of my co-workers and i decided to break in on the weekend and steal valuable stuff to spite our boss. we paid a kid in a batman suit to be our lookout. while we were gathering all the stuff we planned on taking (and then dumping in the ocean) we talked about rodgers and hammerstein musicals. one of the guys with us was dressed in footie pajamas, he said for safety.

my sister and i were driving around in a tank with two other people hunting large snakes. we forgot to bring a box. the first snake we caught, which was white and about three feet long, i had to hold in my lap. the snake bit my arm, but no one seemed particularly concerned despite the fact that they previously mentioned it was poisonous. we drove to a fast food place and the guy who was driving the tank went inside. i was standing in the parking lot waiting. i dropped the snake and a car ran over it. all that was left in an un-mushed state was the head. i picked that back up. the guy came back with a hot spoon, he said if i put in on the snake bite i would be okay. when everyone else saw the dead snake they became very upset with me and we drove back to the hotel. people were bungee jumping off the roof of the hotel using fire hoses.

my sister and i started a service that answered your email and telephone while you were alseep so that you weren't interrupted. we also were an anti zombie and alien invasion service. our first big job was to stop some shady characters from taking over a hockey game and holding everyone inside hostage. we each played goalie opposite sides. whenever we needed a weapon we would hold our hand in the "gun" shape and depending on the sound effect that we made, our hand would function as various guns.

i was researching new musicals for a theatrical agency. one of the videos was of people juggling styrofoam cups like soccer balls. another involved a woman dressed like a peacock singing about punctuation and proper MLA citation formats. another was a musical that had been written in german and the people translated it using Babelfish, so the book and lyrics made very little sense. i went with the peacock one.

my boss and i drove downtown to a big art gallery in a giant glass building. we gave a tour to a group of people. after every piece we looked at i had to survey everyone to find out what they liked and what they didn't. a guy i knew from high school kept asking me to get an apartment with him cause he couldn't afford the rent on his own. 

i worked in a pharmacy. everyday a lady would come in and take a picture of the store for a newspaper she was printing in her basement. after work i would go to the IKEA, which was set up in a series of tunnels, and buy things from the clearance section. The IKEA also connected to a grocery store and a high school. for exercise i would jog through the tunnels.  later, back at my sister's apartment, we were talking about vampire movies. my mom showed up and said my sister owed her 34 cents, she also told me to call her next time i went to work.

when gasoline was no longer publicly available, everyone used a camel to get around. my camel was named Mugen and in the winters he lived in the hallway of my apartment building. he loved coleslaw.

#1: they built a small planet to orbit the earth. it was made entirely of padded foam. people could sign up to go there and contend in a big fight with everyone else who signed up. it was to be televised on earth.

#2: the Bluth family (Arrested Development) was hosting a golf tournament at a hotel near my house. i got a job as a page. everyone staying in the hotel was someone i knew. each of them had a problem and i had to help them solve it. there never was any golf playing, but i did sit on the top of a waterslide with James Franco and talk about water quality. our jeans got wet and our shoes filled up with water.

the world ran out of yellow. people were using old things that still were yellow, like paint and pictures in magazines, to make new things yellow.

i was working undercover, roommating with this woman and trying to get her to admit to a great many crimes she had committed. we lived in a fake apartment, the outside was simply a scale model of a hotel and a parking lot, but somehow the woman didn't realize it. she kept trying to convince me to play sports or join a club. i tried to talk to her about man with a tree for a head because that was supposedly the key to her crimes.

an old lady was driving around on errands. at a stoplight she makes eye contact with an old man and they realize they love each other. she follows the old man back to his apartment. they drink listerine with a straw from martini glasses and watch reruns of "I Love Lucy." they keep lists of all the things that can kill you, organized by state. they are very happy.

i was at a friend's house and her obnoxious boyfriend showed up. he was on his school's fencing team and we had an impromptu match using a stick and the branch of a christmas tree. i won, and all i know about fencing learned from Errol Flynn movies. he stood in the snow and smoked two cigarettes at once.

in the sky was a giant, rotating tylenol PM. just looking at it made you sleepy, but no one ever complained of being tired any longer.

my family moved into a big house with several staircases and a disjointed downstairs with two basement levels. in the back of the house was a private pub. when you walked outside it was like a video game. arrows would point in the directions that you could go. every building you couldn't go into was sort of a vaguely defined box shape. the big attraction in town was the "Mexican Bath House," which was done up to look like the southwest of the 1880s, but inside was just a regular spa kind of place.

a baby was being passed around at a party as a game where you had to describe how it smelled. the person who lost had to climb down the fire escape and buy everyone a fish sandwich. then we watched 9 to 5 and read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. we decided to form a club, dues were to be paid in the foreign currency you always bring home with you from abroad because you just couldn't spend every last penny at the airport like you hoped.

i was going around to everyone at work and making them smell my hair because i used a new conditioner. then my boss wanted me to make a list of every word i know and send it to the chair of the department. everyone was wearing nametags that declared they were the best in the world at something very specific.

as i was packing for a big trip, Andy Warhol and a big fat lady came into my room and started taking things out of my suitcase and talking about them. they spoke into a tape recorder. after they had taken everything out, the lady told a story about how her cousin won an academy award and he every month he mailed it to a different relative so they could put it on their mantle. then she complained about the snow; it was summer.

i was in a big reception hall waiting for everyone to leave because i wanted to watch a dvd on the big projector they had. a cousin kept coming up to me and hugging me. i never did watch my movie. the next day i was meeting my sister at a place for lunch and that same cousin came out from between the cars in the parking lot and gave me another hug. inside, the lunch place was very busy and we had to sit in a booth with some other people. a very short person of Tom Thumb proportions was seated with us. she kept getting lost in our food, several times we feared she was dead, smashed by a utensil or something.

everyone i ever knew gathered at a house in suburbia to take part in an investigation, a very CSI meets MI-5 investigation. we have video of a man being shaken in  a big tube, but that's all we have. we break up into teams. eventually, we find an old warehouse that matches the video. the warehouse is filled with ladders and giant barrels. we put out an APB for Donkey Kong. the police catch him coming out of a back room poker game. our team celebrates in a big hot tub in the middle of someone's living room.

at a theme park they drained all the fountains of water and started pumping oxygen through them. they encouraged everyone to go stand in the new fountains because it was holistic. the fountains were packed full and no one was on the rides. people dressed like stereotypical pilgrims were trying to entice people to ride the rides by offering them cheesecake.

my dad invented a cure for sneezing. we were selling it out of big suitcases to workers in the mall. my mom was the accountant of the operation, keeping track of the orders we needed and who owed us money. we had a secret lab on the second floor of our house. our house was near a bay and overlooked a train track. the robotic lab helper had a morbid fascination with death. because she could not die, she wondered what it felt like when humans did. she hated the movie Blade Runner, which we made her watch in attempt to answer her questions.

everyone in our family came to our house for Christmas. the grandkids sat on top of a bunk bed watched Joseph Cotten movies and ate sandwiches. all the presents were not new things, but things we had lost during the year. i got a remote for my surround sound. another cousin got a makeup brush. one room was filled knee-deep with discarded paper wrapping. the dog slept in there.

my sister and i were in the grocery talking about the ridiculous looking people who make exercise videos. our mom waved at us through the window. she found us and said she was cold and could we get her a blanket. i took my shopping cart into a back room and found a big afghan, but it kept sticking to all the other blankets that were back there. two guys from my work came in, they were telling each other dirty jokes. they were carrying a book about world war II. they gave it to me and said it would help with my afghan.

i was living in a large gazebo on a lake. it had sunken into the water a bit and to get to certain rooms was a bit of an obstacle course. i worked for a newspaper. my neighbors were writing a play. we'd have dinner in the living room almost every night. we'd wear our rain boots and watch the weather channel. i'd complain about my boss and they'd complain about their writer's block.

at my university, there was a large swimming pool filled with air that you could swim in. everyday i would swim laps in that pool. i worked on the police force with two other people. we would video tape suspects in order to gather evidence. we always brought a couch and a tv so we'd have something to do while we were working. charlie sheen was our boss. martin sheen came to see us, everyone called him president bartlett.

i was sitting at a woolworth's lunch counter. they had just installed a giant gridle for making hamburgers. the people sitting next to me were not impressed, they'd seen one before. i was in awe.

#1: a friend and i tried to rent a room in a big city. every day you had to draw a picture of yourself and put it on the door if you were in. we left after a day.

#2: dad took me to the grocery. he said we had to be careful because the building was filled with assassins. everyone inside looked normal. there was a gun hidden among the boxes of frozen spinach.

everyone gathered in a large auditorium to watch a film and dance performance about emotion and corporate branding for an art class. it was short, but very much like watching a strobe light for 20 minutes. it gave me a headache.

an anarchist group was breaking into shops and piling everything they could carry out on the sidewalk outside. they wouldn't take anything, but they would leave a note that said "if anything is missing, it is because average people are dishonest." ira glass interviewed them for This American Life.

i was taking a group of people on a driving tour. the road was paved with frozen ground beef. the neighborhood was very Blade Runner. one of the guys on the tour made us stop at McDonald's. he got into a big fistfight with another group of people there.

i was riding out West with a group of guys. We were herding buffalo. In the hills we would spot glimpses of people. I asked who they were, they said, with great fear, "characters from the Peanuts comic strip."

On the way to my grandma's house, we stopped to visit the guy who owns the owns the Greek restaurant we eat at frequently. His living room was a big half pipe. he told us how he was building a big wrestling ring, he was going to cover it in sand. we debated the pros and cons of san use in Greco-Roman style wrestling. we also talked about a nun that we knew, who was teaching classes at my university. no one knew her real name, we just called her Sister Fat-and-Ugly.

i was on a jet ski guiding a group on a bigger boat around the shoreline so the group could go snorkeling at various points of interest. i had gotten way ahead of them when i came upon a whale, suspended upside down in the water as they do sometimes. i waited near the whale while the boat caught up. the noise of the big boat startled the whale and it began to swim away, we chased after it, it came in very close to shore. i jumped off the jet ski and ran in toward the shore, in an effort to steer the whale back to sea. the whale turned just in front of me and as it turned it's side ran against my leg. it's skin was smooth and cooler than the water.

my sister and i were rearranging furniture in our apartment. after my sister left, i played Super Nintendo. our roommate, whose bed was in the living room woke up. she asked me for directions to the nearest art museum. i told her i'd walk her there since i had to go to work anyway. on the way, we talked about cathedrals in France. later, while i was at work, i was meeting with my boss and several other "important people" types. we were interrupted by the loud noise of an airplane engine. we went out on the balcony, which overlooked a street and square, to see a Cessna, painted in Fed Ex Air colors, spraying fuel. one of the guys with us commented that it wouldn't make it over the next row of house. the plane swerved to try and land in the street, but it crashed into a church across the square.

i was working on a big science experiment. some girls came along and started taking pictures of my computer for their facebook page. somehow that ruined the experiment.

at a restaraunt one of the line cooks comes out and makes an empassioned argument to the patrons about how great jazz is compared to the blues, because the kitchen staff doesn't believe him. he gets laughed at pretty mercilessly. later, outside in a back alley, the line cook is showing his little brother how to stop time with his mind.

a giant polar bear fought a pterodactyl in the middle of the ocean. the polar bear was the "good guy." he gained his power from cell phone signals. the fight ended in a draw. the polar bear ran away on the ocean floor.

there was a bomb threat in my school. everyone stood out on this big slab of concrete right in front of the building. kids got bored and started chasing after cars. "Rule Britannia" was playing over loud speakers.

my friends and i built a giant racetrack out of legos. the loop was about a mile and went through a construction site and some woods. we raced honda fits.

i was playing first base for the chicago cubs. we were wearing the blue alternate uniforms even though it was an away game. groucho marx was on the team too, but he always sat in the dugout reading a newspaper. when i wasn't playing first or batting, i would take off my shoes and lie across the bench, not facing the field. groucho would read crossword clues.

i was sitting in a room full of monitors, like a security guard station, and women in big hoop skirts would come in. they would ask questions about science. there were giant bear paws, from a costume that wasn't in the room, that some of them would put on. they asked if it was true that the bear paws had the power to stop bullets.

a guy was caught cheating in spanish class. he had a hedgehog that would tap out the correct answers in morse code on his leg, under the desk so no one could see. later, i was in an office with some co-workers talking about this guy and whether we should use it as a stroy for the radio. i was sitting at a desk, the top of the desk was made of a really really soft pillow. i fell asleep. my glasses broke.

i lost my job at a coffee shop. i drove to kentucky just to do something. i met a lady who needed directions, so i drew a map on her back. on my way back home i met an elderly couple, they mistook me for a detective. they told me the lady i gave directions to didn't make it and i had to find her. i told them they were mistaken about me. i stopped for stop serve at a place in the middle of the woods.

i was playing a helicopter game that i found impossible to win. in order to solve the problem i built a real machine that used lasers to transport anything safely through space to another point on the earth. i don't think it helped me win the game, but i did make some new, secret friends in the military.

i went around to each of my relatives and asked them two things, the best way to roast a chicken and the whereabouts of an escaped convict.

my family and i were at at a lecture by an artist, she was old and spoke very softly. the people behind us kept talking and were generally very rude. After the lecture was over they were serving refreshments in the hall, but they didn't have enough fruit salad and that upset me. then a friend came up and said an old rival of mine was here and wanted to box me. i went to find my dad and ask him what to do, since this rival was a cheater and the match against him was the first i ever lost. i didn't have gloves with me either. he told me to wait, in a few minutes he came back with an old leather football helmet filled with old-style boxing gloves. he pulled out each pair and explained who they belonged to, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey. he'd bought them at auction along with a set of baseball cards from the 1940s.

everyone i knew was staying in this big hotel (think The Shining) in alaska. my sister was in charge of running the election, she made me run for senator, though i don't know why, i'm sure we weren't really living there full-time. once she'd collected all the ballots she had me drive her to the courthouse in an old mail truck. instead of mail stuff in the back there was a tv and couch and bathtub. she sat in the bathtub, our dog sat on the couch. later in the evening a bunch of people were sitting around the big fireplace in the hotel lobby talking about movie soundtracks. there was a heated discussion about La Belle et la bête.

i was riding my bike down a busy street on my way to a hotel bar to meet two guys who were publishing a book for which my boss wrote some articles. i left my bike behind the front desk. the desk guy tried to flirt with me, i was in a hurry. i didn't have a lock. the waiter brought around a bowl of spaghetti and put some on everyone's placemat. i didn't want spaghetti and got into a big argument with one of the other guys at the table about why i didn't have to eat it because i didn't ask for it. there was a proof for the book, i think it was about movies. everyone was drunk.

my mom was visiting me at work, embarrassing things kept happening. the baby from Eraserhead was everywhere.

an indiana jones type guy and a group of his friends were holding a symposium at a metropolitian university. afterward they boarded a private plane only to be chased into the sky by nazi-types in helicopters and cessnas. our heroes manage to escape the dangerous airspace, but are followed by a single plane. they fly toward a smaller airfield in a more rural setting. once they get away from the city lights they turn off their guide lights, making it impossible for the bad guy to see them on the moonless night. the bad guy is forced to land and give himself up to police after several hours of fruitless searching. after several tense more hours at the airfield, the plane with our heroes returns and lands safely at the airfield.

83 miles of train track had to be laid for a movie, john huston was directing. the train track ran through the entire studio lot, even sets of other movies. men from the military were setting dynamite on the track for the big finale and i had to go through and inspect it then report all progress back to john huston. japanese soldiers were chasing after us, trying to stop us. charles laughton was a spy for our side.

two friends from high school were supposed to meet me for ice cream, they were really late. the ice cream place was way up on a hill and had a long, steep staircase leading up to it. the specialty of this place was writing your name in chocolate. it was expensive and i only had $2, so i bought a medium Pepsi. we sat out on the porch. a car chase went by on the street below.

everyone had to stand in a circle and tell a secret about their day. later, back at my sister's apartment, we were packing her car for a trip and then going to dinner. her car was stolen. my parents drove around in circles in the parking lot looking for the car. they were dressed up, they said it was from going to the frisch's mainliner with my grandparents.

i wrote a term paper in record time and well before it was due. i published it on a blog. one of my professors had me edit an article for him, he had hair like einstein.

in an effort to be taken more seriously, fred armisen remade citizen kane. at the first screening the screen split in half and fell on the people in the first few rows. the speakers behind the screen were wrapped in an awful looking gold wrapping paper. people blamed fred.

I was part of a performance art marathon at the art gallery. Our group was reenacting episodes of The Venture Bros. My grandparents were there acting as some sort of judge, my parents were there to watch. We hung lots of pictures on the wall. We didn't get to finish because my grandma said ours was taking too long, it was severely disappointing.

#1: i was in a big theatre with my sister and my mom. it was a sold out show, but the show was only a radio sitting on a table, it played Judy Garland songs.

#2: i was married to Orson Welles, only it wasn't Orson Welles it was Charles Foster Kane. everything was in color, but he was in black and white and every once and a while he would flicker.

on a long airplane ride i was writing short stories in a composition notebook. the person next to me had a book of works i had already published, they didn't recognize me in the photograph.

a man was sitting in a holding cell. he compared his life to tolstosy's The Prisoner, but he wasn't sure if it was a real book or if he'd made it up. he worried that his houseplants would die while he was away.

i had to save the world in ten minutes. it was incredibly frustrating.

i came back from ten years in the future to stop a murder. i was carrying a stack of yellow post-it notes, but i never used any of them. i spent most of the time with a cop who looked like James Woods following around this little kid who knew what happened (in a very Cold Comfort Farm "i saw something nasty in the woodshed" sort of way)

i was playing golf with some german people. it was around halloween and the course was covered in leaves. one lady that was playing with us had little scars all over her face and neck. she said it was from teaching a blind person how to fence.