Transcription of miniature tape recording. The morning of Monday, October 6, 2008.
I just woke up, feeling an urgent need to urinate and, more importantly, to document the specifics of the dream I just had, in the hopes it will prove beneficial to all of humankind.
In this dream, I am living in the 1950s and working in advertising. It should be noted that this has nothing to do with the fact that I watched two episodes of Mad Men last night and, frankly, the suggestion of which diminishes the seriousness and weight of this revolutionary concept and its ideas, so let’s not for a second even consider it.
I have traveled back in time, from 2008 to the past by a means that is so simple and feasible, I can scarcely believe that it has yet to be implemented. More on that later.
I’m sitting around in an office with five or so rather well dressed gentlemen. One has a beard, is smoking a pipe and bears a striking resemblance to Orson Wells. Another rather timid fellow is wearing a bow tie and glasses and goddammit, come to think of it, maybe these are the guys from Mad Men, because there’s another rather smarmy little prick over there by the window named Pete Campbell. And the others I’m pretty sure are from Mad Men, too, like the guy, who’s name escapes me, that the closeted Italian guy has a crush on (the one who had been published), he’s there, too, and why shouldn’t they all be from Mad Men? That’s fine—it need not diminish the potential contributions of my dream to science or, more specifically, the science of time travel or society at large just because there are some characters from a TV show in it. Big deal. Mad Men is utterly serious: its moments of levity are few and far between and, themselves, still quite upsetting. It’s a very highly regarded show. And unlike the New York depicted in Mad Men, we’re in the Chicago of the 1950s.
So I’m sitting around in an office with some guys that are probably the characters from Mad Men, and we’re trying to brainstorm for a customer account or something. I make the suggestion that we all try to come up with things that are currently of interest to us personally. One of these is Kleenex, another, black baseballs and, another, spiral ham.
I look out the window and see an immediate signifier that I am indeed in the 1950s—the window frames a view from atop a super-tall building where, since it is the 1950s, half of the land below is concrete and generally very hustly and bustly, and the other half is submerged in water, just as Chicago was in the 1950s.
Not sure I can verify the truth of that last statement, but I’m also not yet sure how significant it is that half of Chicago was submerged in water during the 1950s; this will be determined later, with further investigation of this aspect and its relevance to the importance of the concept as a whole. (If it turns out to be a minor topographical detail and its importance to the concept is determined to be that of merely a cosmetic nature, then—perfect! If it proves to be integral to the concept, then we may have to verify this by: (1) interviewing people who lived in Chicago in the 1950s; (2) photographs, etc.)
At any rate, there are some really large and tall boats out there (on the water portion), as they were the primary means of transportation in Downtown Chicago at that time. (Again, may need to verify this.) The portion of land that is not submerged in water is swarming with businessmen all dressed up like they often were in the ’50s, wearing hats and stuff and carrying around accordion-style briefcases, a pictorial representation of which makes up Fig. 1. (IMPORTANT!)
I am looking out the window with the other gentlemen, one of them noting that it is quite a view, and this makes me smile. Oh, ye simpletons of the past, I think. Impressed by the simple construct of a half-water, half-land metropolis. How amazed would you all be by the all-concrete futurism of the true present day (in the future)? I fear that your poor heads might explode.
Though the specifics of our conversation/brainstorming session escape me, I remember constantly berating myself for using the word dude (as I often do when talking to our nanny and my boss) because, I’m fairly certain, people didn’t talk like that in the 1950s.
It is important to note here, before we get too far into this thing that, for those existing in the 1950s via time travel, it was (is?) imperative that their secret remain as such, as there are some that view their very existence as a threat to civilization. But we shall delve into that in more detail later, as its role in the situation expands, at which point it will be impossible to ignore.
I look up, seeing a moose head (Fig. 2) mounted above a desk littered with papers, fountain pens
and coffee mugs. From the 1950s. Behind the desk, on a small rolling cart is a 1950s-era computer, and—wait a second; a computer in the 1950s? Looking at the design of the IBM logo on its screen (Fig.2(a)), I am quickly reassured as, ah yes, every office did indeed come equipped with an IBM computer in the 1950s, an this IBM is most certainly of that era, given the vintage of the IBM logo.
I am finding it difficult to refrain from asking if anybody has heard that new Pink song, the one she performed on the 2008 VMAs. And I want to know, mostly because I am wondering if anybody thinks she is as attractive as I do. I am looking for validation, because I am not sure why I find her so irresistible, but no, I must remember that I’m in the 1950s, and Pink and the 2008 VMAs won’t exist for years. We are listening to Rosemary Clooney on an ancient turntable—though it’s most certainly new to these human fossils—until one of the gentleman, I’m thinking the bow tie guy with the glasses, slips a CD into the archaic (it was the ’50s after all) CD drive of the aforementioned computer. I ask him what he is playing, as it sounds to me like Daft Punk. He says he doesn’t know, that he got it from Gabe, who works at the Sears Tower.
Well, hell’s bells, I think. He must be talking about my pal Dorosz. It’s just the sort of brash move Gabe is known for making: time-traveling back to the 1950s and introducing the people of the past to Daft Punk.
So I ask him: “Is that Gabe Dorosz?” not really considering the possibility that Gabe might use an alias.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I only know him as Gabe from the Sears Tower.”
“Well, does he laugh like this?” I extend and shake the fingers of my right arm, which is bent at the elbow and locked at my side, releasing the heft of my best laughing Gabe impression.
“I don’t know,” he says, somewhat confused. “I’ve never heard him laugh like that . . . or at all.”
“Well,” I sigh, “is he Greek?”
“Yes,” he says and, for me, this is affirmation.
I now know I am not alone. There are other time travelers here. Friends. Like Gabe Dorosz (who is actually Polish).
We break for lunch, and after I walk through the building’s lobby and out its revolving doors, I run into my friend Chris.
“Dude, what are you doing here?” he asks in a whisper. He looks and talks just like he did when he was fifteen, with braces and a tendency to mumble. Oh, and he is wearing army fatigues. “Whatever happened to buckling down and giving it one last chance?”
I now remember, that back in the present (2008), we co-own a struggling pizza parlor called Pizzeye (Fig. 3),
which is also the name of our band that plays exclusively at our pizza parlor. We had sworn to each other, in the 2008, you see, from beneath our chef’s hats and from behind our flour-powdered aprons, that we were going to give it one last shot before packing it in and going to chef school.
“How long have you been here?” I ask him.
“I don’t know. Four months,” he mutters. “Come with me.”
I follow him through what looks like downtown Columbus, OH, where, if you’ve been there, you know that everything, in an attempt to impress, is a bit unimpressive.
Given his comment about whatever happened to buckling down and giving it one last chance I am somewhat unclear as to how this whole time travel thing works: is the time spent here, in the past, equal to the time spent there, in the present? Like if you’re here for four months, when you go back to the present, does that mean you will have disappeared for those four months?
Without me asking him—and I think that this sort of mind-reading phenomenon may have something to do with time travel, or at least time travel as it pertains to this situation here—he looks at me and says: “No. That’s the best thing about it.”
I wonder if we’re here in the past and there in the present at the same time, then how is my being here a detriment to giving it one last shot in the present?
I refuse, I think, to feel guilty about this. Besides, I am in advertising now, which is certain to have more of a future and be more lucrative than the whole pizza parlor/band thing.
I follow him into his neighborhood, which appears to be more residential. We break into other people’s residences along the way by indiscriminately smashing windows with bricks and cinder blocks, mostly sifting through the belongings in their basements and littering them all over the floor. Occasionally, Chris will steal something, as he does with a bottle of laundry detergent and a gallon of milk. “Milk and detergent,” he reveals, “are expensive here.”
I wonder what his motivation for time traveling back to live in the 1950s is.
“Do you work?” I ask.
“No, I don’t have to.” He says. “You can live really cheaply here. My rent is like seventy-two dollars a month.”
And here’s where the whole method and funding of this time travel deal blows wide open and starts to make logistical sense. I guess I had been somewhat hazy on this until this conversation with Chris, but of course, I now remember how this works. And this is really the part that’s going to be ultra-revolutionary and change the way we live, and how we all view time travel.
Time travel accounts are available only through a disguised, secret posting—though I can’t remember exactly the nature of that listing, I’m sure I could pick it out from the others—on craigslist.org (though, if you type in craigslist.com, it’ll still work), and payments for impending time travel excursions may only be made with a valid Pay Pal account.
Of course. That’s why that shit is such a big deal.
For example: if you deposit $5,000 into your Pay Pal time travel account here in 2008, when you arrive in the 1950s, you’ll still have $5,000 at your disposal. And everybody knows that $5,000 in the ’50s has, like, exponentially more value than it does in 2008.
Pay Pal, in conjunction with craigslist, has developed and provides this time-travel service at no cost to you.
And now I remember that Chris had been eyeing a dummy check made out to my wife—hmm, wonder what happened to her—back in 2008, denoting a $5,000 deposit to her Pay Pal account.
Was he eyeing it so he could steal the money and use it to travel back in time? And if you spend that money in the past, but return to a point in the future before you paid the money to Pay Pal, then do you even have to bother to pay the money to Pay Pal?
“No,” Chris says, once again using his mind reading powers, which, it is becoming incresingly clearer, are indeed inherent in time travel. “You don’t pay again. You pay once, go back in time, and just make sure you return to a point in the future before you’re supposed to pay. So it’s essentially free.”
I guess you can’t really be mad at somebody for stealing your money, as long as, after returning from the past, he makes sure to return to a spot in the future before the point where he is to steal your money, making sure that it never really happened/happens.
This is unbelievable, I think.
“It’s addictive and it’s dangerous,” Chris warns. “If you’re exposed as a time traveler, they’ll kill you.”
It’s getting dark, and Chris and I stop at a row of newspaper dispensers to grab a newspaper of some sort. “French fries,” a robed, hunched-over woman, purportedly homeless but sounding and looking more like a witch than a homeless person, bellows. “French fries! One dollar!” Chris and I are engaged in heady conversation—I can’t remember the particulars, but it has something to do with avoiding being killed by them—and are scarcely paying attention when we each hand the woman a dollar in exchange for the fries she is selling.
“From the future!” she screams, removing her hood and revealing herself to be neither a witch nor homeless; she is a normal looking person wearing some sort of disguise. Selling french fries to expose the time travelers.
“They’re from the future! They paid one dollar for fries—a full month’s rent—when they should only cost five cents! They’re from the future!”
People are starting to stare. “We had better go,” Chris says, and takes off running. I take note that that is a big disparity between paying one or seventy-two dollars for a month of rent; someone here has their figures wrong. Still, we fell for it. How could we be so careless?
As we scurry, I notice that Chris is eating his fries. “Aren’t you afraid that they’ve been poisoned?” I asked him. “No,” he responds, continually jamming them in his mouth.
We finally arrive at Chris’s apartment building, and I am struck by how indicative of the 1950s it is that the entrance to his apartment is via an elaborate series of narrow tunnels sliding down into the underground. I am somewhat concerned and claustrophobic about being too broad to fit in, and make it through, the tunnels, but before I know it, I’m on his “patio," a sprawling, white circular wafer; immaculate, smooth and reflective. In its middle sits an aluminum, circular patio table with four interrogation-room-style chairs (Fig. 4).
“The apartment’s not that great,” he says, “but you can see the entire universe from here.” And you can. Except that the universe is an indescribable expanse of water, space, steel and dirt; you can scarcely tell where one construct ends and the other begins.
It is beautiful and it is heartbreaking, and now I know that the majesty of time travel is worth risking death.
Before I can dwell on such notion, Chris and I are in some sort of junk shop, gathering unknown supplies for reasons not entirely clear.
I notice a crudely designed rolling-mechanism hot dog warmer, like the ones advertised in Sky Mall that have since shown up in the sale fliers of Kohl’s and Target. Recognizing the worth and usefulness of such a machine, I ask the shopkeeper how much it costs. “Fifteen dollars,” he snaps. “Without the filter.”
Fifteen bucks in the 1950s; that’s like 600 bucks! Or something.
Though I’m not at all certain what the filter is supposed to do, given that we’re in the 1950s and there is a filter for this queer apparatus available, I am assuming it is, if not essential, at the very least more hygienic.
“How much for the filter?” I ask, pitching the tone of my words to include the utter disbelief that such a thing would cost so much.
“An extra fifteen percent.”
“Fifteen percent? Are you joking?”
“Look—you’re not fooling anybody, “ he accuses. “We carry these things for you people but we’re not fooled by you. We know where you come from. Fifteen dollars.”
It becomes clear that, not only is there a black market of products designed for time travelers from the future living in the 1950s, but that I have given myself away by showing a familiarity and an interest in a rolling mechanism hot dog warmer—a thoroughly 21st-century concept.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I blubber, blushing and sweating.
“Get the fuck out of my store, time traveler!” he shouts.
The doors to the shop burst open, revealing gas-masked, black-clad officers armed with comically gigantic flashlights and seriously frightening dogs, obviously looking for time travelers from the future to mangle.
I snatch the rolling mechanism hot dog warmer from the counter and hurl it at them, and they all turn into balloons emblazoned with the image of Captain Caveman.
And then I woke up.
I am somewhat reluctantly coming to realize, after recounting this tale in urgent and regaining my composure, that there is scarcely anything to be learned from this dream.
No wait, strike that.
There are two things I have learned: (1) I am perhaps the only male in America whose dreams featuring characters from Mad Men contain only the male ones; and (2) that the mixture of a pint of Walgreen’s brand ice cream and 10 mg of Paxil is a super shitty before-bed elixir.
I just woke up, feeling an urgent need to urinate and, more importantly, to document the specifics of the dream I just had, in the hopes it will prove beneficial to all of humankind.
In this dream, I am living in the 1950s and working in advertising. It should be noted that this has nothing to do with the fact that I watched two episodes of Mad Men last night and, frankly, the suggestion of which diminishes the seriousness and weight of this revolutionary concept and its ideas, so let’s not for a second even consider it.
I have traveled back in time, from 2008 to the past by a means that is so simple and feasible, I can scarcely believe that it has yet to be implemented. More on that later.
I’m sitting around in an office with five or so rather well dressed gentlemen. One has a beard, is smoking a pipe and bears a striking resemblance to Orson Wells. Another rather timid fellow is wearing a bow tie and glasses and goddammit, come to think of it, maybe these are the guys from Mad Men, because there’s another rather smarmy little prick over there by the window named Pete Campbell. And the others I’m pretty sure are from Mad Men, too, like the guy, who’s name escapes me, that the closeted Italian guy has a crush on (the one who had been published), he’s there, too, and why shouldn’t they all be from Mad Men? That’s fine—it need not diminish the potential contributions of my dream to science or, more specifically, the science of time travel or society at large just because there are some characters from a TV show in it. Big deal. Mad Men is utterly serious: its moments of levity are few and far between and, themselves, still quite upsetting. It’s a very highly regarded show. And unlike the New York depicted in Mad Men, we’re in the Chicago of the 1950s.
So I’m sitting around in an office with some guys that are probably the characters from Mad Men, and we’re trying to brainstorm for a customer account or something. I make the suggestion that we all try to come up with things that are currently of interest to us personally. One of these is Kleenex, another, black baseballs and, another, spiral ham.
I look out the window and see an immediate signifier that I am indeed in the 1950s—the window frames a view from atop a super-tall building where, since it is the 1950s, half of the land below is concrete and generally very hustly and bustly, and the other half is submerged in water, just as Chicago was in the 1950s.
Not sure I can verify the truth of that last statement, but I’m also not yet sure how significant it is that half of Chicago was submerged in water during the 1950s; this will be determined later, with further investigation of this aspect and its relevance to the importance of the concept as a whole. (If it turns out to be a minor topographical detail and its importance to the concept is determined to be that of merely a cosmetic nature, then—perfect! If it proves to be integral to the concept, then we may have to verify this by: (1) interviewing people who lived in Chicago in the 1950s; (2) photographs, etc.)
At any rate, there are some really large and tall boats out there (on the water portion), as they were the primary means of transportation in Downtown Chicago at that time. (Again, may need to verify this.) The portion of land that is not submerged in water is swarming with businessmen all dressed up like they often were in the ’50s, wearing hats and stuff and carrying around accordion-style briefcases, a pictorial representation of which makes up Fig. 1. (IMPORTANT!)
I am looking out the window with the other gentlemen, one of them noting that it is quite a view, and this makes me smile. Oh, ye simpletons of the past, I think. Impressed by the simple construct of a half-water, half-land metropolis. How amazed would you all be by the all-concrete futurism of the true present day (in the future)? I fear that your poor heads might explode.
Though the specifics of our conversation/brainstorming session escape me, I remember constantly berating myself for using the word dude (as I often do when talking to our nanny and my boss) because, I’m fairly certain, people didn’t talk like that in the 1950s.
It is important to note here, before we get too far into this thing that, for those existing in the 1950s via time travel, it was (is?) imperative that their secret remain as such, as there are some that view their very existence as a threat to civilization. But we shall delve into that in more detail later, as its role in the situation expands, at which point it will be impossible to ignore.
I look up, seeing a moose head (Fig. 2) mounted above a desk littered with papers, fountain pens
and coffee mugs. From the 1950s. Behind the desk, on a small rolling cart is a 1950s-era computer, and—wait a second; a computer in the 1950s? Looking at the design of the IBM logo on its screen (Fig.2(a)), I am quickly reassured as, ah yes, every office did indeed come equipped with an IBM computer in the 1950s, an this IBM is most certainly of that era, given the vintage of the IBM logo.
I am finding it difficult to refrain from asking if anybody has heard that new Pink song, the one she performed on the 2008 VMAs. And I want to know, mostly because I am wondering if anybody thinks she is as attractive as I do. I am looking for validation, because I am not sure why I find her so irresistible, but no, I must remember that I’m in the 1950s, and Pink and the 2008 VMAs won’t exist for years. We are listening to Rosemary Clooney on an ancient turntable—though it’s most certainly new to these human fossils—until one of the gentleman, I’m thinking the bow tie guy with the glasses, slips a CD into the archaic (it was the ’50s after all) CD drive of the aforementioned computer. I ask him what he is playing, as it sounds to me like Daft Punk. He says he doesn’t know, that he got it from Gabe, who works at the Sears Tower.
Well, hell’s bells, I think. He must be talking about my pal Dorosz. It’s just the sort of brash move Gabe is known for making: time-traveling back to the 1950s and introducing the people of the past to Daft Punk.
So I ask him: “Is that Gabe Dorosz?” not really considering the possibility that Gabe might use an alias.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I only know him as Gabe from the Sears Tower.”
“Well, does he laugh like this?” I extend and shake the fingers of my right arm, which is bent at the elbow and locked at my side, releasing the heft of my best laughing Gabe impression.
“I don’t know,” he says, somewhat confused. “I’ve never heard him laugh like that . . . or at all.”
“Well,” I sigh, “is he Greek?”
“Yes,” he says and, for me, this is affirmation.
I now know I am not alone. There are other time travelers here. Friends. Like Gabe Dorosz (who is actually Polish).
We break for lunch, and after I walk through the building’s lobby and out its revolving doors, I run into my friend Chris.
“Dude, what are you doing here?” he asks in a whisper. He looks and talks just like he did when he was fifteen, with braces and a tendency to mumble. Oh, and he is wearing army fatigues. “Whatever happened to buckling down and giving it one last chance?”
I now remember, that back in the present (2008), we co-own a struggling pizza parlor called Pizzeye (Fig. 3),
which is also the name of our band that plays exclusively at our pizza parlor. We had sworn to each other, in the 2008, you see, from beneath our chef’s hats and from behind our flour-powdered aprons, that we were going to give it one last shot before packing it in and going to chef school.“How long have you been here?” I ask him.
“I don’t know. Four months,” he mutters. “Come with me.”
I follow him through what looks like downtown Columbus, OH, where, if you’ve been there, you know that everything, in an attempt to impress, is a bit unimpressive.
Given his comment about whatever happened to buckling down and giving it one last chance I am somewhat unclear as to how this whole time travel thing works: is the time spent here, in the past, equal to the time spent there, in the present? Like if you’re here for four months, when you go back to the present, does that mean you will have disappeared for those four months?
Without me asking him—and I think that this sort of mind-reading phenomenon may have something to do with time travel, or at least time travel as it pertains to this situation here—he looks at me and says: “No. That’s the best thing about it.”
I wonder if we’re here in the past and there in the present at the same time, then how is my being here a detriment to giving it one last shot in the present?
I refuse, I think, to feel guilty about this. Besides, I am in advertising now, which is certain to have more of a future and be more lucrative than the whole pizza parlor/band thing.
I follow him into his neighborhood, which appears to be more residential. We break into other people’s residences along the way by indiscriminately smashing windows with bricks and cinder blocks, mostly sifting through the belongings in their basements and littering them all over the floor. Occasionally, Chris will steal something, as he does with a bottle of laundry detergent and a gallon of milk. “Milk and detergent,” he reveals, “are expensive here.”
I wonder what his motivation for time traveling back to live in the 1950s is.
“Do you work?” I ask.
“No, I don’t have to.” He says. “You can live really cheaply here. My rent is like seventy-two dollars a month.”
And here’s where the whole method and funding of this time travel deal blows wide open and starts to make logistical sense. I guess I had been somewhat hazy on this until this conversation with Chris, but of course, I now remember how this works. And this is really the part that’s going to be ultra-revolutionary and change the way we live, and how we all view time travel.
Time travel accounts are available only through a disguised, secret posting—though I can’t remember exactly the nature of that listing, I’m sure I could pick it out from the others—on craigslist.org (though, if you type in craigslist.com, it’ll still work), and payments for impending time travel excursions may only be made with a valid Pay Pal account.
Of course. That’s why that shit is such a big deal.
For example: if you deposit $5,000 into your Pay Pal time travel account here in 2008, when you arrive in the 1950s, you’ll still have $5,000 at your disposal. And everybody knows that $5,000 in the ’50s has, like, exponentially more value than it does in 2008.
Pay Pal, in conjunction with craigslist, has developed and provides this time-travel service at no cost to you.
And now I remember that Chris had been eyeing a dummy check made out to my wife—hmm, wonder what happened to her—back in 2008, denoting a $5,000 deposit to her Pay Pal account.
Was he eyeing it so he could steal the money and use it to travel back in time? And if you spend that money in the past, but return to a point in the future before you paid the money to Pay Pal, then do you even have to bother to pay the money to Pay Pal?
“No,” Chris says, once again using his mind reading powers, which, it is becoming incresingly clearer, are indeed inherent in time travel. “You don’t pay again. You pay once, go back in time, and just make sure you return to a point in the future before you’re supposed to pay. So it’s essentially free.”
I guess you can’t really be mad at somebody for stealing your money, as long as, after returning from the past, he makes sure to return to a spot in the future before the point where he is to steal your money, making sure that it never really happened/happens.
This is unbelievable, I think.
“It’s addictive and it’s dangerous,” Chris warns. “If you’re exposed as a time traveler, they’ll kill you.”
It’s getting dark, and Chris and I stop at a row of newspaper dispensers to grab a newspaper of some sort. “French fries,” a robed, hunched-over woman, purportedly homeless but sounding and looking more like a witch than a homeless person, bellows. “French fries! One dollar!” Chris and I are engaged in heady conversation—I can’t remember the particulars, but it has something to do with avoiding being killed by them—and are scarcely paying attention when we each hand the woman a dollar in exchange for the fries she is selling.
“From the future!” she screams, removing her hood and revealing herself to be neither a witch nor homeless; she is a normal looking person wearing some sort of disguise. Selling french fries to expose the time travelers.
“They’re from the future! They paid one dollar for fries—a full month’s rent—when they should only cost five cents! They’re from the future!”
People are starting to stare. “We had better go,” Chris says, and takes off running. I take note that that is a big disparity between paying one or seventy-two dollars for a month of rent; someone here has their figures wrong. Still, we fell for it. How could we be so careless?
As we scurry, I notice that Chris is eating his fries. “Aren’t you afraid that they’ve been poisoned?” I asked him. “No,” he responds, continually jamming them in his mouth.
We finally arrive at Chris’s apartment building, and I am struck by how indicative of the 1950s it is that the entrance to his apartment is via an elaborate series of narrow tunnels sliding down into the underground. I am somewhat concerned and claustrophobic about being too broad to fit in, and make it through, the tunnels, but before I know it, I’m on his “patio," a sprawling, white circular wafer; immaculate, smooth and reflective. In its middle sits an aluminum, circular patio table with four interrogation-room-style chairs (Fig. 4).
“The apartment’s not that great,” he says, “but you can see the entire universe from here.” And you can. Except that the universe is an indescribable expanse of water, space, steel and dirt; you can scarcely tell where one construct ends and the other begins.
It is beautiful and it is heartbreaking, and now I know that the majesty of time travel is worth risking death.
Before I can dwell on such notion, Chris and I are in some sort of junk shop, gathering unknown supplies for reasons not entirely clear.
I notice a crudely designed rolling-mechanism hot dog warmer, like the ones advertised in Sky Mall that have since shown up in the sale fliers of Kohl’s and Target. Recognizing the worth and usefulness of such a machine, I ask the shopkeeper how much it costs. “Fifteen dollars,” he snaps. “Without the filter.”
Fifteen bucks in the 1950s; that’s like 600 bucks! Or something.
Though I’m not at all certain what the filter is supposed to do, given that we’re in the 1950s and there is a filter for this queer apparatus available, I am assuming it is, if not essential, at the very least more hygienic.
“How much for the filter?” I ask, pitching the tone of my words to include the utter disbelief that such a thing would cost so much.
“An extra fifteen percent.”
“Fifteen percent? Are you joking?”
“Look—you’re not fooling anybody, “ he accuses. “We carry these things for you people but we’re not fooled by you. We know where you come from. Fifteen dollars.”
It becomes clear that, not only is there a black market of products designed for time travelers from the future living in the 1950s, but that I have given myself away by showing a familiarity and an interest in a rolling mechanism hot dog warmer—a thoroughly 21st-century concept.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I blubber, blushing and sweating.
“Get the fuck out of my store, time traveler!” he shouts.
The doors to the shop burst open, revealing gas-masked, black-clad officers armed with comically gigantic flashlights and seriously frightening dogs, obviously looking for time travelers from the future to mangle.
I snatch the rolling mechanism hot dog warmer from the counter and hurl it at them, and they all turn into balloons emblazoned with the image of Captain Caveman.
And then I woke up.
I am somewhat reluctantly coming to realize, after recounting this tale in urgent and regaining my composure, that there is scarcely anything to be learned from this dream.
No wait, strike that.
There are two things I have learned: (1) I am perhaps the only male in America whose dreams featuring characters from Mad Men contain only the male ones; and (2) that the mixture of a pint of Walgreen’s brand ice cream and 10 mg of Paxil is a super shitty before-bed elixir.
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