I Was Running.

The Gonzo Journals

May 12th, 2023

It’s been a long time since a dream stuck with me long after waking. To be honest, I’m still a bit shaken up about everything that happened. This usually means I’m ready to begin writing something again and that the juices are flowing in all the right directions. Unfortunately, I have too much on my plate to flesh this out so, if anyone is dealing with writer’s block looking for an idea, feel free to use it. My gift to the clogged, yet talented.

Here’s the just of it…

I giant alien came to Earth – bad idea – and was all pissed off at us for some reason. The possibilities are truly endless. Perhaps he didn’t like the CNN Trump Town Hall the other night. When I say giant, I mean he was about as tall as a five-story building. There were few places to hide.

He was totally humanoid but glowing in a sort of electric orange like the electricity monster in the first season of Scooby Doo. No, the ORIGINAL Scooby Doo. None of that new shit counts. Whenever he would see one of us puny humans, he would shoot forth a wave of energy that would destroy everything and everyone in its path. You weren’t safe hiding in buildings, under beds, or in cars. Everything would be a smoking shell of what it once was, and we would be a narcissistic, Facebook-loving pile of ash. Not YOU in particular, but the people. Hooray for humanity!

For some reason, I would “respawn” after death like what you’d see in the movies Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise, learning my survival lessons through trial and error. Eventually, I stopped gawking at the giant alien bastard and ran in the opposite direction. I somehow managed to get my family to a boat on the coast, and we ducked under water whenever the abomination would spray our surroundings with his destructive wave. He walked on by without noticing.

We swam for our lives while the screams of unfortunate bastards behind us filled our ears. We hopped in a car and drove as far away as we could. Now, this wasn’t our typical Texas landscape of “meh” and “dammit”. No, this reminded me more of Santorini, Greece with cities built on hillsides and cobblestone streets. I don’t know why none of us gave the damn alien a bottle of vino and told him to chill the fuck out. Maybe I’ll do that tonight if he comes back.

Anyway, we managed to arrive at another town where another alien was terrorizing the townsfolk. This one was different. He was about the same size but glowing blue with similar powers to the previous entity. I know, not very original, right? I’d managed to land my family in a similar predicament as before and was dying repeatedly.

Now, this must be when the “gummy” kicked in…

I was able to befriend the blue alien by showing him where the closest liquor store was. I got him shit faced wasted and conned him into fighting the orange alien for the sake of humanity. Talk about an ending shitty enough to make Stephen King proud!

Somehow my brain managed to take War of the Worlds, Edge of Tomorrow, Groudhog Day, and my old love of Jack Daniels into a screwed up repeating nightmare of Tommy Wiseau proportions. Maybe the alien was named Mark. Either way, I woke up disturbed and it took me a bit to shake it off. I can imagine it was from watching my family suffer and perish over and over again.

In my dream, I wasn’t good enough to save them. Perhaps this stems from my inability to love myself or ever think I’m good enough for someone as amazing as my wife and children. In turn, this subliminally stems from all the bullying I received from growing up dirt poor. The human brain is truly fascinating, yet so damn ugly it turns my stomach to see one on film or in photos. Ack!

I’m pretty sure this is why I strived later in life to be so goddamn outgoing and successful as an artist. I wanted to be the center of attention and have something they’d all want from me. I wanted them to be able to see me for who I truly was instead of some unwanted social reject who lived in a mobile home next to the highway. In hindsight, I can’t blame a 5th grader for their treatment of others. They were still too young to know the difference between right and wrong social situations. No, the blame falls on their shitty parents who, according to my calculations, should be nearing the coffin any day now. Good for them. The worst society has to offer never changes, it just dies and relieves the next generations of its closed-minded disgust.

Wow. This shit got deep quickly. I lulled you all into a false sense of security with talk of aliens and destruction, and then I went and flipped it to my own repressed memories and victimization. Forrest Gump was right to a point. Life IS like a box of chocolates. Some of us have nuts. Eat these nuts, oh harbingers of doom and gloom in days gone by. I hope you taught your own children to be better people than you were.

There’s a story in all of this somewhere, but I refuse to write it. Hell, I lived it according to the realizations and afterthoughts revealed while typing. Even the simplest of tales have a deeper meaning rooted in reality.

Kind of makes me wonder where King’s mass childhood orgy originated from in IT…

Happy Friday!

Peace.