As if Walt's life on Lost isn't hard enough

Walt from ABC's Lost, Walt's twin, and I were riding an abandoned roller coaster at dusk. There was some sort of mechanical snafu, and this huge flashlight that I had was carried away by a runaway car. Walt then was shot in the chest by an unknown assailant and started profusely bleeding.

Since there was an emergency room a block away and Walt was too heavy to carry, I ran to the ER check-in area and told them a boy had been shot nearby. They asked if I wanted an ambulance, but I didn't want to pay the $300, so I asked, "Can't you just come over and get him?" They said no, and I realized that Walt was likely going to bleed to death before we got to him anyway.

Return of the airplanes

It was July 4th, and Claire and I were heading out to the lake by Shoreline Amphitheater to watch the fireworks. It was crowded, we were late, and I found it quite unlikely that we would find any decent lakeside seating.

A plane buzzed overhead, tailed by two military planes. Two more planes roared by soon afterward. I'm not sure how word got out, but we soon learned that London had sent three planes to drop nuclear bombs on US cities, but they didn't disclose which ones. We had watched the planes fly by without incident, so apparently they didn't consider Shoreline a target (a relief, as it is the site of so many rock concerts of my youth--R.E.M., The Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, but I digress.)

We stood frozen, staring at the sky, wondering what would be destroyed and when. The fireworks never went off.

Matt says it's macabre patriotism

I was wrestling a bald eagle. Denice, my old roommate, was somehow responsible for unleashing the bird, and I was pissed.

It was trying to bite me, so I grabbed its beak with both hands as best I could. There was some sort of leather restraint on the eagle's beak, but it was fairly loose and I could see through it. At one point, its beak opened wide enough so that I could see a full set of tiny pointy teeth lurking behind the beak waiting to bite me.

I was able to get a good grip on the beak, wrangling it closed, but the bird kept rushing me, and all the while was whispering, "I have AIDS! I have AIDS!"

Britney

Britney Spears, pregnant again, died in a car crash! I couldn't believe it, and moreover, I couldn't believe that I was, like, the last to know!

The night after the USMLE Step 3

My fellow resident Annie called me in the morning to tell me she was taking a sick day. She related that she had been stricken by the nephrotic syndrome, a most mysterious disease. It consists largely of a triad of symptoms: body swelling (edema), low albumin levels, and lots of protein excreted in the urine.

My first thought was "Wow! What a rapid onset of the nephrotic syndrome!" Annie then told me that she'd be resting, lying around the house, and would try to be in the next day.

I got off the phone, and then realized that I should call her back immediately. The enigmatic nephrotic syndrome, for reasons unknown, can make one hypercoagulable, and I became quite worried that if she sat around the house for too long, she could develop a blood clot.

Gere For President in Exile!

I was dating Drew Barrymore, like ya do, and we went camping with Richard Gere and Courtney Cox (whose continued presence in my dreams is a total mystery). We were all going to sleep outside, but in the middle of the night Richard Gere decided that he needed to set up the tent because he needed to have shelter if he was going to start campaigning the next day.

(I believe this dream was predicated on my belated realization yesterday that Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama are, like, best friends.)

The night before the USMLE Step 3

I, for no reason whatsoever, was struck by a severe asthma attack. I was wheezing so badly that I could barely talk, but was convinced that I didn't need medicine to get better. It wasn't until someone gave me nebulized albuterol and I recovered that I realized how bad my respiratory compromise had been.

Logically, my very next thought was, "I wonder what my PaO2 was during my attack!" (The PaO2, naturally, being the arterial partial pressure of oxygen measured in the blood.)

When your phobias gang up on you

I was nervously preparing for my last-minute role as an MC introducing a Shakespeare play to an audience, when a fire alarm went off. My apartment, due to a raging gas fire in the fireplace, was going up in flames. It's not often that both these recurring dreams arrive together, in a nice, neurotic package.

It's kind of like that day a few weeks ago when there was a hospital fire that went on for hours, followed by a repetitive and cryptic message on the PA system reminding staff that the hospital was on "condition yellow", and then the Blue Angels started dive bombing the city in a quite loud, arrogant, and militaristic fashion. Good times.

Poikilocytosis

At a barbeque, I found this huge, untouched bag containing new and never-before-seen Junior Mints in different shapes, flavors, and sizes. As unparalleled propagation and expansion of the Junior Mints empire is one of my life fantasies, I hurriedly poured most of the contents of the bag onto the front of my shirt, holding the hem up to carry the loot to my car.

I asked Farhad for a Ziplock bag so that I could get the Junior Mints out of my shirt before they started melting, but he didn't have any. The only thing I could find was the Altoids box that I keep my camera in. I put the camera on the floor of the passenger seat of the car and dumped as many Junior Mints as could fit in the small, dinged-up Altoids container.

That's right, dinoflagellates

I was in New England. Off the coast, on a rowboat, I smelled something strange, metallic, and acrid. I soon heard that the same smell was reported in the Midwest, off the shores of the Great Lakes, and was spreading. I figured that the smell was some sort of sensory horseman of the apocalypse, but then the official report came out. The coastal and lake waters had experienced unusual red tides containing dinoflagellates, which gave off toxins that caused the smell.

What's scarier: Cats the musical vs. ex-FEMA morons?

Lara and I went to see Cats in a small circular theater where we sat high above the performance. All the dancers were wearing black catsuits, and there was a pole for cat pole dancing.

I'm not sure what's scarier, Cats (or cat pole dancing, for that matter), or this: