Last night I dreamed I had the avian flu. It was awful. I think it was a lethal combination of being really sick and the irrational fear left over from a few years ago. Avian flu is at least one strain back from the newest outbreak of deadly flu, but for some reason the idea of “bird flu” sounds much scarier than “swine flu”. After all, who hasn’t seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie about flocks of birds suddenly turning on humanity and going all Norman Bates on us with their razor sharp beaks? I’ve never seen anything about pigs banding together to attack. I mean…not since Animal Farm, but even then, they were much more civilized. No…pigs bring up thoughts more along the lines of Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web. They don’t attack…they need to be rescued.
Enough about pigs…back to my dream.
I’m literally crawling my way through death’s door and I find myself at this white velvet rope in front of a shiny white gate. There’s an old guy standing there with a really bright flashlight and he’s shining it in my eyes like a detective in some old film noir. He’s asking me questions about my life, and why I think I should be allowed to come inside his pretty little gated community. At first, I’m not sure I want to come inside. Gated communities always strike me as being on the pompous side, but I notice a few people I know in there and they seem to be having a really good time…wine, hors d’oeuvres, and a cheese plate that is to die for…I can tell from where I stand. So I tell him, sure…I wouldn’t mind getting in. But he says I can’t go inside until I answer a bunch of questions.
This is where I throw my hands up.
I ask him if he has any idea what my Klout score is. Surely my Klout score is good enough to get me into his little group. It has to be good for something after all. I didn’t build up all this useless knowledge and influence for nothing did I?
He doesn’t know anything about “Klout”.
“It’s my measure of influence,” I tell him. “It means…well, I’m not sure exactly what it means, but it’s important. Ask me about zombies,” I say. “I have Klout in zombies.”
“Zombies aren’t real,” he says.
So, I spent all that time preparing for a zombie invasion and some old guy with a big flashlight and the keys to this really cool club wants to tell me there’s no such thing. And now he wants to “discuss” a blog I wrote about George Lucas and the burning bush.
“We were not amused,” he says.
Now I’m really angry. That was a funny blog.
So I’m still standing there at the front of what is now a pretty long line, and he keeps letting other people though the white velvet rope so they can walk through the shiny gate.
“You can’t be serious,” I wonder out loud. “You’re not letting me in because I joked that George Lucas is God?” I was kidding…mostly.
Next thing I know he lowers his flashlight enough that I can see his face. It is George Lucas. Holy crap…I was right all along. I totally have Klout in George Lucas! And, by the way, it’s not a flashlight at all…it’s a really big lightsaber and he’s raising it above my head like he’s about to use it…
That’s when I woke up and realized I needed to go to the doctor.
Three prescriptions later and I’m still not feeling my best, but hey, I’m alive. At least that’s what they tell me. If I could only figure out what the pharmacist meant when he said, “May the force be with you.”
Until the next time…I’ll be taking my medicine like a good girl.