I swear to God, I just had the strangest day of my life. I’ll try to run through it real quickly, because I need to get it all down before alcohol destroys the memories. But be warned, this includes a relatively detailed summary of a strange dream I had, so it’s going to be one of those posts.

Started yesterday, when I was catching up on episodes of Party Down after work and found myself falling asleep in my chair (despite that, I highly recommend the show). So I figured I’d take a quick half hour nap. Half an hour, and then I’d get up and hit the gym for some physical exercise.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, least of all to myself, that never happened. The half hour nap turned into eight solid hours of sleep. Unfortunately, that eight hour period ended at 4:00 AM in the morning, when I could not force myself to go back to sleep. I woke up reaching for my glasses, which I haven’t needed for months now…you know, on account of the laser zaps.

I woke in cold sweat from a horrible dream in which my brother and I were surviving the zombie apocalypse. Which in itself is not too horrible, because honestly out of everyone I know, I think he’s right up there as my number one pick to partner up with in a zombie apocalypse. Most of you want me dead. He is growing wheat and vegetables in our backyard specifically for that hypothetical contingency. Easy pick.

But something happened, and we were both infected…only we managed to stumble into an abandoned warehouse that a group of survivors were holed up in, just as we started to turn. And to our luck, they fortunately had a dose of the zombie virus cure in one of their unguarded store rooms. The zombie cures were like orange pop, in Fanta cans. …or maybe the cure was orange Fanta. I don’t know. I thought it was kind of messed up that they would be hiding that shit in some dark storage room instead of putting it everywhere like hand sanitizer, but whatever, dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.

They had enough of the dose for two people…but I was in a panic, and after drinking half of it, I decided to selfishly chug another couple sips before administrating the rest of it to him. I then stumbled out of the room, and crawled to another part of the abandoned warehouse to recover.

I want to mention at this point that approximately like half of these zombies were also clowns as well, for some fucked up reason. I don’t know if there were just initially a lot of clowns around the area that just happened to turn into zombies, or if some horrible side effect of the zombie virus also turned them into clowns…all I know is that shit was FUCKED UP. So I was actually legitimately scared in this dream, which hopefully excuses some of my fratricidal tendencies.

I was eventually found by the group of survivors, and I found myself so guilt-ridden that I had selfishly taken more of the cure than I needed and let my brother to die. I was absolutely convinced he had turned, and so was devastated. I convinced them to lend me their pristine condition carbon-fiber ASA legal softball bats and to go hunt for my brother’s reanimated corpse along with me…because putting him out of his misery and granting him the sweet release of death with my own hands was the least I could do for him at this point.

I found him in the same store room, a cloth draped over his body – luckily, he had not yet fully waken from his undead stupor. So I did it. I beat him to death (from undeath) with the bat, delivering multiple killing blows to his head, still draped under the cloth. I don’t know if I could have done it otherwise…having to witness his zombified face would have made it impossibly more difficult. I felt an infinite sadness that one experiences when forced into a course of action that requires killing your own brother to release him from zombiehood…apparently this is a unique emotion that you can only experience in dreams (or I suppose…in the event of a real zombie apocalypse)…and while I grappled with how to handle this new feeling, one of the survivors examined his body.

He hadn’t turned yet. The cure had been effective. He was merely sleeping, and I had murdered him in cold blood before even bothering to check – so wracked with guilt that I had just assumed the worst. And I found myself unable to face the true depth of the tragedy I had committed…in a blind rush to appease my guilt, I had only worsened it a thousand times more. The rest of the survivors were suitably horrified to learn of this, this cruel black deed that I had done.

So I killed them too. All of them. The former sheriff, his wife and little boy, his former partner, the young blonde woman, the old man, the token Asian kid…I killed them all. In the end, it wasn’t the mindless zombie hoard that was their greatest threat…but the clear and rational evil of another man that they had mistakenly let into their trust.

…

So that was a pretty heavy way to start the day.

I mean that is some real Tales of the Black Freighter type stuff. After an hour of tossing and turning trying to clear that from my head, I gave up on it and decided to go out.

6:00 AM, to the gym! I will be one of those people! On the way to the gym, I find that Yonge Street is still closed due to that crazy six-alarm fire on Monday, and I actually see the Toronto police/fire marshals investigators leaving the scene. Those guys are hard at work!

7:00 AM, get back. Cook myself breakfast. Seriously, I did! Two month old expired bread is still delicious if you toast it in a pan with chicken oil.

11:30 AM, I am falling asleep at my desk, possibly because my internal clock is all messed up. Or maybe I am just a really lazy human being, I don’t know. Regardless…lunch time! Walking around on the street, I pass three Asian male/white female couples. THREE! I don’t see that many in a year, and suddenly I past three in the span of two city blocks? Are they going to a convention or something? What is going on!?!

2:00 PM, the new bank card I got from the branch yesterday is apparently canceled. It is a day old. I think someone screwed up. Need to go downstairs to the branch again for another new card. While dealing with the teller, I notice out of my peripheral vision that the guy next to me looks really familiar. I turn around for a closer look…yes, I know this man. It’s the glasses. But from what? I can’t even recall a name. I’m going for it.

“Hey, sorry…you’re on television, right?”

Both of our young, attractive, female tellers suddenly look up from what they’re doing, alert, like someone has just spoken some secret passphrase to them.

“…OH MY GOD, YEAH!”
“Hey, you are!”

A more capable man turns this into a noteworthy and interesting social situation. Unfortunately, I am not that man. He turns to me.

“Ha, yeah! I’m Danny. What’s your name?”

We shake hands as I introduce myself, a somewhat hazy realization of where I know this guy from is starting to fill my head. At this point, I completely freak out – I am having my own Adnan Virk moment…only I don’t know his name or really what he’s done. Despite that, I say something about being a big fan, which likely sounds like a complete fabrication to both of us. I’m starting to panic, I’m this close to punching him in the face and using the resulting commotion to mask my escape. He says something about appreciating that I recognized him…all I can hear is blood rushing in my ears and the increasing instinctual urge to fight and/or flight. I eject.

“Anyway, I don’t want to keep you from your…day to day banking, it was really cool meeting you.”

THEN WALK AWAY AS FAST AS SOCIALLY PERMISSIBLE. Take the elevator upstairs to the office, staring at my hand the whole way, heart beating like a hummingbird’s, feel like I’ve just met a combination of Joe Carter, Chris Farley, and Jesus all at once…don’t even know where I know him from. Wait…something’s coming to mind…the guy from the video store harassing Marky Mark to return his copy of King Kong Lives from The Big Hit…the sidekick from Big Wolf on Campus…

I think I just shook hands with Danny Smith.

That’s cool, right? I thought about asking him to take a picture with me, but I don’t think my main concern at this point is with the credibility of my story. I don’t think people would have a problem accepting that it happened…but maybe just with why they should care. This has been a constant struggle throughout the history of this site.

7:30 PM, special general meeting of my condominium board…WOOHOO PARTY CENTRAL. These are my responsibilities, now that I have been bestowed the great power that comes with being a homeowner. I have to attend these things. Well, I don’t have to, but if I want to check out if there are any hot nubile young female homeowners in my building, then I should probably go to these, yeah? Though I think the main reason I went is because I figured there would at least be some free coffee, a spread of cookies or pastries if I was lucky. Nope, struck out on everything.

For an hour and a half, people talked about garbage chutes, what colour to paint things, how fast the automated doors close on which levels, and forming special committees to liaison with other committees…I honestly don’t know if I’m cut out for that stuff. I just want to murder everyone that speaks.

Tomorrow, I want to meet PJ Phil and/or Snit. Let’s make that happen, universe.

“I still have to get approved by the Co-op Board. I’m all nervous. I have to dress up and smile and try to get them to like me. It’s going to be like going on a blind date.”
“Oh no. It’s so much better cause an apartment never waits until you get in the shower then steals the necklace your mother gave you.”