A Cold Sweat.

So I had a horrible dream last night.

I dreamt I was in my car -- or at least I THOUGHT it was my car -- it was very small, which my car is, but it had a backseat, which my car doesn't. Dreams are like that. Anyway, I was trapped in my car, but I didn't have my keys, so I couldn't start it. and I was panicked. Why TRAPPED, you ask? Why PANICKED? Well, because there was a swarm of dogs -- yes, a swarm is the only way I can describe it -- trying to get in. Very small dogs, but a LOT of them. They all had the bodies of Jack Russell terriers, but their heads all looked like George Bush, Dick Cheney and Carl Rove.

I'm not making this up.

So there was this cacophony of barking and howling outside, and all these little politico-headed canines were jumping frantically, Jack Russell-style, all over my car, their claws scratching and tapping crazily on the glass and steel, and their tiny, disgusting little dog-genitals smearing on my windows as they humped away like dogs do. And then I realized, as I listened, that they weren't really 'barking' at all. They were all saying one thing, over and over. It was: "Who's your Daddy?" Just like that. There were so many of them, it was hard to make it out at first, but that's what they were saying. "Who's your Daddy?" "Who's your Daddy?" Yeah, sure, it sounds funny now -- but in my dream, I was scared outta my mind. I didn't know what to do -- if I opened the door to run for it, surely I'd be overcome by the spastic horde of little dog-fascists, and then god knows what sort of hideous things would happen. I've seen Jack Russell terriers -- and the Bush doctrine -- in action. But I couldn't start the damn car, and it was only a matter of time before I'd begin to starve, or perhaps just go insane.

I looked in the glovebox where I used to keep my stun gun, but it wasn't there anymore, and anyway there were too many of them for it to be all that effective. But as I reached over, leaning my body ever so slightly to the right, I got a whiff of -- was that urine? And I thought I heard -- was that panting? -- in the backseat...

I shuddered, not wanting to look back there, and then I heard the voice, distinctly feminine but in a post-op transsexual, contrived sort of way. My shoulders slumped forward, and as my trembling fingers reached to adjust the rearview mirror, it filled with a pair of eyes so hauntingly familiar -- eyes I remember seeing from old drawings of African slavers, tribesmen that sold their own people into the clutches of the white traders.

"Condoleezza?" I said aloud.
"They hate our freedom," she replied, smiling, showing dog-teeth right before she leapt over the seat.

And then I woke up -- in, as James Brown so eloquently put it, a Cold Sweat.

* * *

Now, I'm no dream interpreter, but it doesn't take a UN Weapons Inspector to figure this one out. And I think the car -- my tiny, easily parkable-in-the-city car -- represents San Francisco. I can't really afford to keep living here forever, and I don't know that it's going to matter when the proverbial shit REALLY hits the proverbial fan. But I think I'm stuck here for awhile, because I don't think there's anywhere else to go.