Ever since I stopped having access to cannabis, my dreams have come back with a vengeance. They're back to where they were in the Livejournal days, when I used to post regular dream diaries: epic, recurring, cathartic, and deeply weird.

Today I've been trying to nap my way through some sinusitis-induced fatigue, and I wound up dreaming about playing video games with Samuel L. Jackson. It started with us all in an enormous auditorium inside his mansion, playing off a movie theater screen, just us and 4-5 other guests.

Then the party started. Hollywood celebrities arrived. Hiphop producers arrived. Al Pacino arrived. We moved out into the main mansion, a gorgeous spawrling place Über-Victorian that was all stained glass and fine varnished wood.

They brought in a whole team of weed dealers and set up an open, traveling kief and hash bar. It was so acrid I couldn't even bring myself to try it... and you're talking to someone who's been dreaming of weed EVERY NIGHT since leaving the West Coast.

The whole party was just soaked in this alienating kind of het male power-player machismo, and I spent the whole time feeling very nerdy and out of place, keeping to the corners with the other broke-ass queer nerds who came with me.

And when I woke up, I felt so hollow about the whole thing. I thought about all the wealth and power on display and I asked myself, "Rez, is this really where you ended up by comparison? You've got none of this. You've done absolutely nothing with your life."

And I kinda gave myself an internal high-five and said, "Damn straight, Other Rez. Mission Accomplished." Whatever it was those guys had, I'm genuinely grateful I stayed way the fuck away from it, had a few fun years with my fellow shy-but-perverse nerds, and now have little besides an obscure webcomic, a subsistence job, a tiny social-media circle of gay-ass leftist weirdos, and this really cool dragon to pet. Oh, and more shrimp within walking distance than I can shake a tail at.

By cat standards, I've done AWESOME. 10/10, no notes. 🐯​