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First, some domestic scene-setting: Tony had plastic surgery to resemble キムタク and I was serving oranges that grew increasingly unlike ones I’d pick at the grocer, the last so much larger and hideous it had to be a saggy grapefruit. A cabbage in the fridge had a purple streak in the center that also indicated its past-best state. Then I was part of an outdoor procession returning home from a protest gathering and a young woman walking beside me looked dejected, so I took hold of her hand, which seemed to pick up her spirits. This platonic gesture caught the eye of my boyfriend, former co-worker Fred (to whom I apologize, my field isn’t what it used to be), whom I pointed out and neither of them was pleased. When we reached the tall carved double doors of the place I shared with him, I bid farewell to her and she turned my way with a Ruth Wilson smile under her hood, which all but sealed my fate with my current relationship. We retreated to our indoor pool with a third man, who joined us in a game where I threw a football at a target at the other end, but my partner remained distant. The living room hid the water under a retracting floor like the one at the host’s in The Party, and as well as we were doing, I knew it was time to divvy it all up.

Cursory keyword search tells me I may not have mentioned it yet, though dreams like this happen often enough that my recollections of them ought to convey the real emotional or intellectual impact from such self-inflicted scenarios. (I shall never forget one where I met 할머니 years after her passing and was overcome with sorrow that we didn’t have more time together, feeling it even after I woke.) But jealousy is for more passionate, primitive minds—I recall a recent opportunity to experience it when the wife took a younger lover, which left me nonplussed—and my simulation only produced resentment, a reminder of immature wardens.

It was the second season of a Squid Game/Severance love child and I was one of the employee/contestants, waiting in a spacious modern lobby with all the others for our first assignment. There was an announcement and a rush of people to the elevators, who then returned with forms they were furiously completing, filling in shapes with their №2 pencils, presumably as part of the next series of tasks. What I immediately noticed, however, was that all of them were women and the four or five of us fellas still lounging on the couches didn’t seem too interested in participating. Instead, we went downstairs to a seat-less auditorium where in place of a stage was a towering window covered by a flexible lattice. I joined one of my colleagues trying to climb it to freedom, but a tsunami raged outside with such force that we were swung off by the rising water.
I actually enjoyed the series last month, despite my niggling issue with co-opted business terminology; wouldn’t “balancing” (as in work-life) have conveyed a more favorable impression of the fanciful procedure? But who am I to know the discarded ideas and ultimate plans of successful people. While the premise shouldn’t be too far beyond my experience to have come up with, maybe I’ve been preoccupied with mitigating the frustration of corporate bureaucracy and organizational dysfunction on a short-sighted personal level, after hours or no, rather than exploring how it might be done away with once and for all.

I had finished up a tour with the new company—new-ish because I seemed already to be familiar with the place and know many of the people there, maybe they were a local customer—and got to join former colleague Steven Xie as he was preparing for his entry exam. The administer was a gruff American who wasn’t capable of accommodating his applicant’s language and personality nor cared to, and told him he’d dock his score if he wouldn’t “shut the fuck up” and said a single thing while taking it. After hearing Steven repeat that abrasive instruction without the least bit of sarcasm, I stayed to help him refrain from outburst while he retrieved five small fish out of a tank with his choice of available tools, a shovel with a flexible scoop. His future department teammates gathered afterward to congratulate him, going so far as to wear T-shirts with Chinese characters on them, which I am sure made him feel as welcome as one might surrounded by smiling people adorned with halves of words. (One had five on his and claimed it spelled his name.) All employees were rounded up for a slideshow presentation and I took the opportunity to bring it up with the mostly-Asian Accounting girls, who nodded in embarrassment. The projector looked 8mm and the initial picture was tiny, then spread across a messy wall; my test was to save the movie to digital and insert some captions. After the screening, I was handed what appeared to be a VHS cassette and was confident in my ability to accomplish the task, even if I was no professional like in that recent Netflix casualty; would my old rig with a USB dongle and Microsoft Photos be enough?

[Title and meme from this new track for old people like us.] Actually, I’m quite enjoying my daily visits to the am/pm down the street, where I would stop on my way to work 9-10 years ago for that refill of crunch ice and Mountain Dew on dispenser lines that must be corroded with just the right chemical buildup it’s borderline toxic and intoxicating. The rewards app helps, and I can’t help be amused that I’m charged 3¢ for tax on my free drink.

Work took me to a sparse apartment in one of New York City’s most dangerous neighborhoods, as evidenced by a crime scene right outside, but I felt fairly safe by staying inside with the door locked and lights on. When morning came I was joined by my team, a rag-tag group of folks, young and old, and one of them, a tall Kramer-type with a curly blonde afro, came out of the bathroom allowing me to go in next to shower and change for a final visit to the client today before returning home. I removed my pants, my only pair for the trip, and set them down but noticed there was water, no, urine pooled on the tile, and appalled as I was by the behavior of our resident hipster dufus, I had to prioritize drying them off in what little time I had. Dabbing it with a towel wasn’t likely to be effective, as wet as the jeans became like they had been submerged.

Googled the title in the hopes of finding a sufficiently tantalizing image to draw the reader’s attention to this otherwise personal subject of insecurity but instead learned that social media influencers took torn jeans up down yet another notch.

For an extra-Asian sugar high, Yi Fang didn’t have anything on Tea Station, but at least it was consistent between the two Bay Area locations. The camaraderie during a miserable project must’ve sweetened the memory, that’s my lesson from our 50-mile round-trip to Rowland Heights this past weekend. No stamp cards, discounts for buying a refill cup, loyalty programs—they’re just not worth it without them. And the eggs and corn from 辛巴樂 were packed in too much water. Remember how I used to stop by the one in Arcadia for sausages? Worst of all, some dbag Chinese (from the dashcam footage of him unloading his shaved kid and the “GZ FMLY” plate, what other language uses those awful j-sounding z’s in their names) parked their thrashed Model X obscenely close to our car with two empty spaces on the other side, asshole.

I was on a plane, though the velvet decor and roomy aisles were more like a theater’s, and wandering around there were spacious corner sections with luxurious sofas reserved for VIP’s like basketball players. Upon returning to my seat for the second leg of the flight, there was a rush when more of them became available from no-shows, and the woman I had been sitting next to, a Brit named Sandy with long brown hair, got up and made for another across the way, which I took personally as I thought we had developed an amicable relationship; in fact, I had only made that trip to track down someone who had insulted her honor, big Black athlete or no. My loss was consoled by the arrival of another attractive girl.

I refuse the inevitability of contracting a virus whose spread is aided by selfish unmasked anti-vaxxer pricks and almost worse, people who know better but have accepted it, because they’re “tired.” Like those endless videogames of yore, there’s no tiring in the fight against intruder organisms.
And because I probably won’t retain any details about new dreams while I’m still holding onto this one’s, best.client.ever Wing was at odds with her management and while she argued with them behind a glass-doored meeting room, asked me to pick up her drycleaning, which consisted of a branded jacket and was marked on the tag “Very expensive.” She severed her ties and emerged, dressed in a long frilly coat and high boots, with curls like Japanese ne’er-do-wells from the 90’s. I can’t quite place the look—maybe it was one of the ガングロ-type girls the main character saves in オヤジぃ。—but it attracted immediate suitors whom I had to fend off before she got into my car, though I had no idea where to take her in DC.

I was reunited with old co-worker Laura Armijo, maybe because at the time she lived in Lakewood, where we went this weekend to cash in our Bed Bath & Beyond gift cards before they become worthless, and a roomful of Mark Malinski clones, all armed with automatic weapons, waiting for a signal to start blasting away at each other. Apparently we had the ability to restore our consciousnesses into new bodies, so death was nothing to fear, though I concentrated a few more times as if to upload the latest backup, just in case. All I had to make the best of it was to take her gun and give it a go, but before the activity began I succumbed to my doubts and backed out. I left the arena and took a seat at a student’s desk and played a holographic game on the tabletop with my hand, but Shining Knight whose presence I otherwise took entirely for granted approached and startled me by stabbing me in the gut, smirking as he retreated. For this I gave up sexy Wing?

Miserable start to this anniversary of that heinous revolt: I dreamed Six o’ One Patrick McGoohan and I were on the run and had only a small guardhouse to pass, so I let the champ sneak in and do his thing—only to find that he failed and was being held by a group of ruffians; it was Wild Wild James West who never lost a fight, after all. Their leader approached me with all the swagger his entourage afforded him and effortlessly caught my fist, mocking me. If only I could muster the strength to challenge his grip, but it would take longer than I had left, more confidence in myself to reign in my insecurities. Incompetent leadership at work got to me and my run didn’t make up for it, but by the end of the day I was chuckling at the sodium warning on Taco Bell’s new limited-time Crispy Chicken Wings (seasoned with “Mexican Queso”, for future reference).Napped during lunch and saw a passenger jet whose pilot the news said had successfully regained control of it to land intact; was more of a vertical drop out of the sky onto the runway in the near distance, but it didn’t go perfectly: as I looked closer, the plane’s body began twitching, as if it were going to explode. There were two young girls beside me and I pushed them to take cover from the blast behind a parked American sedan while the building wall kept me safe.

The library was under attack by zombies, or someone else I needed to get away from, and in the next room over Daisy told me that she hides in a makeshift cubby-hole behind a shelf of books. I cleared the mostly clothes hiding the entrance at eye level and peered inside to see a tight chamber lit green, but before I could hop in, a young Black woman with close-cropped hair showed up and sought refuge. Despite our differences and all, I wasn’t going to turn her away and helped her up; she was followed by another attractive Persian girl with long dark hair, whom I also let go before me. When it was finally my turn, I only then realized the opening between shelves was too short even for my head. (My female companions must’ve been of svelte physique, lucky for them.) Lucky for me there was another below between two others that were set further apart and I could hop in, through a long shoot like mech pilots do in anime.

There was more to the follow-up but it’s been a more eventful Sunday than I’ve been used to, which has purged my recall except for something where I bluffed a bunch of bad guys with a bomb first, a common enough tactic in person, then a second time when they thought they had me remotely and planting it on them.