The True Depth Of My Obsession

On occasion I will have vivid, narrative dreams experienced at the cusp of consciousness. Generally the world needs saving and I'm the man to do it. They're sort of like dadaist Jerry Bruckheimer movies except invariably I lose, at which point I wake up with the blood of six billion dream-people on my hands. It's a little unsettling.

But not as unsettling as the dream I just had. Approached by a small team of aerospace engineers, astronauts, and Michael Rappaport (don't ask -- I don't understand either), I accept a berth on a small privately-funded starship that is making a journey to a planet one of the team members has deduced contains intelligent life. We plan to get rich by bringing back fantastically advanced alien technology.

The trip is a fiasco. We are discovered, our spaceship is impounded, and we are forced to live on this slightly foreign planet filled with people who look almost human and work for them in a sort of indentured servitude/slavery.

Apparently this is what alien planets look like.

It seems that these people are a hidden race and we can never go home, as their discovery would lead to some sort of cosmic sanction. The overriding mood of the dream is poignant loss. My friends are all gone, Rappaport is a useless tool, and I'm on a foreign planet largely composed of strip malls and Starbucks (actual line: "Something's fishy here. Check out that Taco Bell. I'll buy that they have Starbucks millions of light years from home, but Taco Bell?" It's all very sad.

Anyway, after some high speed rollerblading (again, don't ask) we pass the Vanderbilt football team practicing. I say "ha ha, you're going to lose" when it hits me: since I am an alien slave on a planet millions of light years from home the chances of me being at Michigan Stadium on September second are nil. Apparently Vanderbilt is not likely to put in an appearance either, but this does not occur to me. My mind fills with one oppressive fact: I Am Going To Miss The Game.

It is at this point, and this point only, that I resolve to escape, which means death if caught. My first tactic, perhaps spurred on by the overall weirdness of my life, is to attempt to wake up. My eyes open and I am once again within easy driving distance of Michigan Stadium, no hyperdrive or escape from slavery required. I exhale.