Bedtime For Gonzo

When The Going Gets Surreal, The Iguanas Juggle Radishes...

I'm somewhat loathe to discuss the output of my brain during REM state.  For one, I'm at an unfair disadvantage in the vivid dreams department, popping my daily dose of Vitamin Prozac just before retiring to bed.

Whatever chemical gateways are swung wide by the fluoxetine have nothing but my sleeping brain to deal with, so I suspect that it uses the opportunity to go purely apeshit and light up as many neurons as possible.

The results can be... well, I'll let you judge for yourself.

The latest in bad craziness:

I'm being led at high speed along the edge of a parking lot.  People are handing me gear like helmet, comm gear and gloves as we trot towards a trio of oddly shaped vehicles on the edge of the tarmac.

It's nighttime, and a light mist is falling.  There's a slight water slick on the ground, and you can see the moisture beading up on the grass at the edge of the paving.

The parking lot itself is ginormous.  We're talking Disney World huge.  Acres upon acres of shiny blacktop, punctuated here and there by low curbs and striping.

The lot has dozens of extremely tall light towers, each with a ring of quartz vapor lamps.  They're so tall that the light is diffused, but you can see clearly for a couple of hundred yards, even through the mist.  The individual lights are reflected in the sheen of moisture on the blacktop.

It looks like... a starfield...

Arriving at the vehicles, they appear to be made out of white ABS plastic.  Kinda like the material you use for porta-cans, strong enough to get the job done, but still a bit flimsy.  They consist of a large central sphere with an octagonal windshield, flanked by two huge panels on either side, about the same height as the sphere.

Shitfire... These are like low-rent TIE fighters from Star Wars!  The side panels are smaller and square, and each one has a big chunky wheel like a chair caster on each lower corner.

The front of the sphere lifts up, and there's a plain plastic seat, and a smaller jump seat off to the left.
I'm stuffed in the main seat, and find myself trying to hook up the comm gear.  You've got to lower the front lid, and unscrew two large nuts off of a pair of brass bolts on the inside of the shell.   Once the nuts are removed, I shove two brass connectors onto the bolts, the wires of which lead back to a headset.  Screwing the nuts on turns on the two-way radio.

Here's the fun bit...   Next thing I know, I'm scooting in formation with the other two TIE go-karts across the parking lot.  Since the wheels are set up in a perfect square, they're not tracking like a car or truck.  There's a marked tendency to sideslip, which isn't helped by the wet pavement.

Each time we take a corner, we slip and skip and the wheels make that unmistakeable TIE fighter roar.  I'm kinda digging it!

There seems to be some sort of urgency to our patrolling about, but I never see another vehicle to chase, and if the TIE is armed, I'm not aware of it.

Eventually it turns into just another driving dream, where I get to relive the past crap cars I used to own.  I like the recurring one where I drive the VW GTI through the front compartment of the Dodge Dart...

Anyway, jut a bit of brain oddity to kick off the weekend.  Y'all play nice, now!