Drifting
by Matt Worley

"Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge..."

A friend at work dreamed I died in a car accident (or some kind of accident) and they had to use bulldozers to move rocks away from my body. As I left work she reminded me to be careful driving home.

Strange that I should die in her dream, since I've been almost dying in my own dreams lately. There was the one where my older brother came at me with a knife, stabbed me in the stomach and I had to turn the blade on him. It really sucks to kill your brother in a dream--especially if you're not really mad at him about anything.

The other recent death dream I had involved guns. As in, I was riddled with gunfire and died while crying in my dad's arms. I can't remember if there was a reason for getting shot, but I do remember getting shot and crying. I woke up not knowing what day it was, what time it was or why I was even sleeping in the first place.

According to most dream experts, death represents change. Tarot is much the same way (although the draw of the cards also determines meanings as well). Not that I'm overly concerned with what other people think my dreams are about. That's for me to decide. But it is nice to remember dreams once in a while. It lets me take a look at what my brain is thinking while my body is resting.

"Trying hard not to lose my head..."

U.S. Representative Brian Bilbray, R-San Diego, has decided not every baby born in the U.S. should be granted citizenship. As is the sport in California, illegal immigrant hunting season has begun once again. Okay, so they don't have the right paperwork, they take all those $25-a-day backbreaking labor camp jobs away from all of us legal citizens, and most of them don't have homes. But they have hopes and dreams, and there's no way in hell any self-respecting U.S. citizen would work for less than minimum wage AND get his hands dirty in the process.

Not that I'm for exploiting illegal immigrants because they can't speak English and would do anything to eat every night. What I'm saying is, get off their backs. I think if a person or husband/wife team has the tenacity, know how and chutzpah to cross the border pregnant just so their child can become a U.S. citizen for free, well, go for it. It's more than most of us do in one day or even one month, so this kind of entrepreneurial spirit is applauded.

Rep. Bilbray contends that there are some people already exempt from getting free citizenship (foreign diplomats--or their wives with child--cannot get freebies like citizenship, although they do get to break laws with impunity because of diplomatic immunity). It's a stupid argument. The guy should quit trying to come up with a legal reason to screw people who are just trying to better their lives. Sometimes the system fails, which is why the system works.

"Can't hardly breathe...can't hardly breathe..."

And as my patchwork column begins to sink into the midnight sky, I realize that something has changed. The rational and clean looking are sounding more stupid and banal, while the radicals are at least trying to move humans a little farther down the evolutionary chain. On CNN Crossfire Friday, a man who represented the Taxpayers for Common Sense blathered on about the way NASA wants to spend money for the next few years. While his organization sounds like one of those carpeted basement, mini-militia, intellectual circles for city dwellers who drive to work in utility sport vehicles (because those interstates are oh so rugged), his spoken thoughts were even less revolutionary.

"We need more Pathfinders! We need more Pathfinders!" he cried, dripping small bits of sweat from his upper lip as Pat Buchanan tried to edge his chair away from a man even more whiter than he is. Possibly not realizing the purpose of the Pathfinder mission Mars from the BIG WHITE LETTERS of type on the front page of Newsweek, Mr. Taxpayer with Common Sense said that since the Pathfinder mission was so economical, we should send more of those things out into space.

The Pathfinder mission (which was a scaled down version of something that should have been much larger) was launched for two specific reasons. One, they needed to know the density of Mars' atmosphere for future landings. Two, they wanted to analyze the surface of Mars as much as possible. Mission accomplished. NASA needs (and wants) to go on to bigger and better things. Sending out a bunch of remote control cars that can't retrieve objects and fly back to Earth is only useful for so long.

But Mr. Sense and Sensibility Taxpayer probably didn't really delve into the exact nature of NASA's exploration as much as he crunched numbers. Which is probably why the guy looked like someone shot his elephant when he was denied the FINAL WORD. Trembling lips aside, it was quite a performance.

Matt Worley writes the funny words (and apologizes for all of the CAPITALS), while Tricky wrote the lyrics that separated each section. They appear in the song "Vent" from Pre-Millennium Tension.

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