It must have been the late night Indian food. I don’t normally wake up at 8:30 am on a Saturday (I’m more of 10:30-11 o’clock kind of guy). But this morning was different.

Have you ever had a dream that was so vivid and real and shocking that it didn’t just snap you out of sleep, but snapped you all the way to the shower?

The Dream.

As with all dreams, this one has faded since I first woke up and some of the details have turned to mist. But, a lot of it is still there, especially the end. And as with a lot of dreams, this probably won’t make much sense to anyone else.

The dream was actually quite long. My family was visiting the Missus and I here in California, except for some reason we were in the mountains near a small town called Vesuvius (Italy?).

It had been raining a fair amount limiting our ability to site-see. Finally, the rain stopped and we decided to make our way into town to check things out.

After some touring around we somehow added two new people to our group; a friend of mine from college and his significant other. We’ll call them John and Sally for lack of more imagination at this time in the morning.

I should probably mention that John has an uncanny resemblance to Tiger Woods and Sally has a similar complection.

It was at this point that it was getting towards sunset, which was a problem. I was informed that sunset meant the beginning of the third day of some random and rarely observed Jewish holiday that forbids Jews to be seen in public with people of other skin colours.

My family and I are not Jewish but the Missus is and in the almost ten years that we’ve been together I have become increasingly sensitive to Jewish customs and the issue of anti-semitism.

Now, not being strict observers of the Jewish law we weren’t too concerned with this archaic and incredibly racist (and completely made up by my unconcious brain) tradition. But, it appeared that the town we were in was very aware of this law and so we decided that it would be best if we avoided confrontation and headed home.

I led the way home with my brothers and John right behind me. The Missus and Sally were walking arm-in-arm the way that best friends often do.

But then we ran into a problem. As we were walking through town (imagine a town with narrow streets and open squares with cafés, basically, imagine Venice without the water) we were interrupted by two city workers (possibly garbage men or street cleaners). They informed us that this seemingly archaic Jewish law was actually a California State Law and punishable by jail time.

I proceeded to dispute this fact with the young man. How could the state possibly endorse and enforce racism? It was too much for me to handle. At one point the young man got upset (I may have called him a name, it happens) and he tried to run me over with his little golf cart-type vehicle.

I asked to speak with his manager (surely he would be more civil and agreeable). The conversation basically continued in the same way. The small square we were in started to become more crowded with people but the whole time the Missus and Sally stood side by side and John and my brothers stood together.

Sometime mid-sentence it felt like I was kicked in the side. When I looked behind me there was a very large, bearded policeman with a taser forcing me to the ground and telling me that everyone was under arrest.

I couldn’t breath and I couldn’t find the Missus. From my knees with the large policeman holding me down I managed to catch glimpses of policemen in riot gear and waves of bodies crashing against each other.

I didn’t care about going to jail (I still couldn’t believe that this was a real law). But when I lost track of the Missus and saw the riot break out right where she had been standing with my family and friends, I panicked.

That’s when I woke up. There was no going back to sleep from that. So I got up and tried to wash it away in the shower. No luck. The panick, fear, and inability to do anything are only now slowly fading.

Making sense of it all.

I don’t normally attribute much meaning to my dreams other than maybe I shouldn’t each spicy food late at night. But this one is pretty easy for me to see.

First off, we’re going to be heading up to Calgary to visit my brothers and enjoy the Stampede in two weeks, which I’m very excited about.

Next, I just finished a book call “The Year of Living Biblically” by A.J. Jacobs in which he tries to spend a year living the bible literally. During the course of the year he discovers numerous strange and absurd laws in the bible. Hence the crazy three day Jewish holiday.

And finally, the conflict with the guys on the street about a crazy state law probably has something to do with something I saw yesterday.

While walking home with the Missus after work we came across a few people with a little table set up on a street corner. Their banner read, “Obama’s Nazi Health Plan.”

Yes, it actually said that. And they had a lot of pamphlets and literature on top of their little table to go along with it. A quick Google search brought me to this page. It may not be the same group as the one I saw on the street, but the message is the same.

An aside: a little more research shows that the man behind this publication is Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. Basically, the dude appears to be incredibly intelligent, but is very extreme and probably no longer completely there. Imagine an older, smarter, wealthier version of Mel Gibson in “The Conspiracy Theory.”

There is no way you can compare Obama’s attempt to reform the broken American health care system with Hitler’s attempt to completely exterminate the Jewish race along with political and religious dissidents, homosexuals, Gypsies, ethnic Poles, Soviet citizens, Soviet prisoner’s of war, people with disabilities, and basically anyone who didn’t conform to the Aryan proto-type.

The most conservative estimates place the total number of people systematically murdered at around 11 million.

Sometimes the ignorance and downright stupidity of some people goes beyond my ability to comprehend and apparently gives me bad dreams that then continue on into my sunny Saturday mornings.

Even if you disagree with Obama’s policies how could you possibly make the cosmic leap democratic reformer to genocidal, fascist dictator with aspirations of global domination?!?

This is way too much to deal with on a Saturday morning. Time for cartoons.

~Kbshea