Dreams, Moments, Travels
Roadside in front of some townhomes in Phoenix, Arizona is this sign: No Trespassing – Private Property. This warning is becoming more and more prevalent as if the gates and seven-foot-tall cinder block walls weren’t enough to keep out the undesirables. Does anyone actually know to who these signs apply? I know the residents are welcome, I’m sure law enforcement need not heed the exclamation, and I’d bet that residents’ visitors are allowed, so I guess the exclusion applies to me and my ilk.
Not an attractive place and not a very busy place on a Monday evening, but this is the New Times Best of Phoenix winner for Thai Restaurant. The Siamese Kitchen does offer some great cooking. I had the Tom Ka Kai, a chicken with coconut milk soup that was served with plenty of chicken and mushrooms. I asked for medium, and like a good Thai restaurant should be, medium is other restaurants’ hot. My main dish was the old standard Panang. I asked for mine with chicken and to make it Thai hot. Now, typically, when a white guy orders hot or Thai hot, I think the waitresses have come to believe we are showing off or do not really understand what we are getting ourselves into – not Siamese Kitchen. Not only were my eyelids sweating profusely, but my shirt was darkened with sweat from my collar down nearly to my belly button before I realized my hair had started dripping. What does it take to make hair sweat? You’ll find Siamese Kitchen on the Northwest corner of Olive and 43rd Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona.
After a long period of forgotten dreams, where for months I have been lucky to wake up with but the smallest of fragments of what I had just been dreaming still floating in my head, I awoke this morning with the better part of a quite peculiar dream intact.
I am on my way to Missouri. The year is sometime in the future. I am a genetic mutation. I know a place in Missouri where I can make a few extra bucks at a bootleg operation. The farm isn’t making alcohol; they are not taking kidneys, but what they do is clandestine. They are making cheese. Not just any cheese, although at most times, this is just a normal farm, and cheese is a part of the repertoire of products they produce, but today, upon my arrival, they will switch gears and secretly change the recipe.
My mutation is that I am one of the one in 500 men who have developed teats near our hips. I produce man-milk. The farm I am visiting makes man-cheese. The product is illegal, but most would agree that this cheese has no competition. Due to our rareness and since this mutation to our species is new and not yet thoroughly researched, there is a concern that ‘this’ version of a genetically modified organism may produce undesirable results from consumption, so man-cheese is illegal. My dream didn’t tell me if it was illegal in France, too.
A strange side effect of being milked is that there is a correlating relationship to how much urine is produced, and so typically, after milking, I have the most extraordinary lengthy urinations one could imagine lasting minutes. It was during this act of disposal that I think someone reported the operation. We were alerted that the police were responding, and it was time to get away fast.
I grabbed a couple of Wigglers, threw one to my traveling companion, told him how to ride it, and we were off. A Wiggler is a genetically designed muscular creature about the size of a Frisbee that is three-pronged or Y-shaped. The top two prongs are handles for the rider to hold on to. These muscle-bound handles are attached through a brawny jumble of thick central muscles to a foot reminiscent of a kangaroo foot, only much smaller. To ride the Wiggler, you grab the two handles close to your chest and get on the ground face down. The foot of the Wiggler will keep your torso and face about six inches off the surface, but this requires that the rider wear hard rubber pads on the knees, hips, and elbows, so as you glide over the street, you don’t get road rash.
To get moving, pull up on the two arms or handles, and you go forward, push both, and you slow to a stop. Pull one, push the other to turn, do the opposite, and turn the other way. As the Wiggler flexes its powerful muscle and its foot begins the action for which it was named, the rider is propelled to a speed of nearly 15 miles per hour. The Wiggler is fast enough to evade anyone on foot and nimble enough to move in tight spaces to avoid vehicles.
As the police approach from behind a hill, we have the opportunity to pull around the corner of a house just as the policeman in chase comes into view; fortunately for us, we are no longer visible, but quietly we hide, hoping we have escaped the long arm of the law.
Another empty corner bites the dust in Phoenix, Arizona, as yet another Big Box store opens to satisfy the needs of the never-can-have-enough crowds. If you are alone or a small family of two, these stores feature the most incredible sideshow attractions, such as the 80 Rolls of Toilet Paper Package, the 2 Gallon Bottle of Shampoo, 12 Pound Bag of Asparagus, and the ever-attractive must-have 125 Pound Wheel of Brie. I do have to give credit to Costco as they figured out the magic formula to get men shopping by featuring tools and lots of free food samples. These men now walk around pushing the shopping cart with only a half-dazed look on their faces.
Caroline found the sheet music for the soundtrack to Amelie on the internet, printed it up, and, after a long break from the piano, had a good practice this afternoon.
The hallway leading to the various theatres at the Super Saver Cinema 8 on Bell Road, where Caroline and I went to see War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise for only $2.50 each at 8:40 this evening. This was our second time in 10 years visiting this theater, and tonight we were amazed – it was a full house.