The Fed Funds Skewers

The next time someone asks how I've been sleeping lately, I'm going to send them a link to this.

The main component of this vision, I guess, was the engineering/design contest which required a rolling desk with a computer/driver at the navigation wheel designed for mobile food preparation. This was some sort of big damned deal. For whatever reason, government grants became available that were available for use in a public feeding program, but the make table had to serve a couple of functions. One was to control the two differing cable systems in Pat Long’s (the current President of Baker University, I think?) cartoon viewing room, the other function was for one person sitting at an easy chair with a computer (controlled primarily by a joystick), flanked by enormous speakers (all of which have been placed on enormous greased casters) that would automatically move itself down the make-table setup, while blasting a variety of Sousa’s patriotic selections.

The make-table for the winning design utilized a system of capturing various foods hanging down at a less than uniform height off the floor. This roving table/PA system would roam around with a pair of “Federal Funds Skewers”—they were probably fifteen foot long sharpened metal poles on which the various foods would be targeted and impaled for preparation for the eventual heating for human consumption. The idea was that the electronics on the roving mechanism would somehow electronically overheat perfectly to the point that the assembled foods on the massive skewers would be fit for consumption. I’m going to say that Brian Boyle masterminded the winning design of this food prep unit, because he was there, he was the only one wearing a chef’s outfit besides the oriental judge I didn’t know, and he would talk endlessly about the need for “more onions!” as an answer to whatever question was asked of him regarding the winning design.

Configuration of the cable boxes essential to something to appease a couple of groups in the old Baker gymnasium, where Pat Long was never seen, but was always “just down the hall.” At least that’s what her messenger told me. The people in this room under the so-called watch of Ms. Long were somehow put in charge of the musical selections at the time of the food prep. This didn’t make sense, but then again, the fact that I was asked by the judge of the event to determine if any of the previous three presidential tickets were better than the future republican ticket of Ricky Martin and George Michael, and Carl Butell was there to remind me that we hadn’t yet pulled off something that bad. “Well, we’ll see, though. This outfit might get the job done,” CB told me this while giving me a thumbs-up for my suggestion that the Mondale-Ferraro ticket was still worse, although that ticket was well outside the parameters of the three previous tickets required for analysis by the unknown Japanese chef/design competition judge.

On one stage at the center of the vision was a community musical/buffet where the choreographed unwinding of electrical cords was performed in concert with the food preparation. This made things somewhat logistically difficult on a rotating disc/stage. There were several items dangling from the ceiling besides food, the most concerning to me were the massive electrical components necessary to power the mobile make table. The winning design was similar to a San Francisco cable car, and the make-table was hooked to that overhead electronic power source at the same time I was asked by the Iron Chef organizer to man one of the fifteen-foot metal skewers. This, I was told, was essential to the success of the operation.

The very stupid mother/father conflict: **ed. note: In real life, it’s been a difficult week around here, but almost all of it was without noticeable conflict. To make matters worse, for some reason, I read Ryan LeFebre’s autobiography this weekend, in which he blamed his folks’ separation at a very young age for most of his struggles as an adult.** It (this dream conflict) came down to a misunderstanding over ergonomics with the winning design for the chair driving the food prep assembly. The mother/father conflict, which I guess was necessitated in this dream by my reading a very silly book, resulted in lots of flipping off of both my folks, which is more than a little uncharacteristic of me, and much more strange that they would reciprocate. I was offended that neither understood my wiring diagram for Ms. Long’s cable setup. (My wiring concept was all fouled up, but I was trying to talk politics with Carl Butell at the same time Ms. Long would send me messengers informing me that the current design was inadequate. At the same time, these adults gathered in that one room were acting quite a lot like children in their demand for cartoon viewing options very quickly. It was a high-stress deal, for a dream.

The actual capture of the food on these skewers was an agonizing process. I must have been about to wake up at this point, because things were getting dumb, even by the dumb level previously established in the dream. One crawfish had been missed in my prepration of a Fed Funds skewer, and it got trampled by me and/or Kyle Trendel in the process of assembly. I didn’t even know there were crawfish in the initial make table or the finished hanging foods variety show that was suspended over the massive rotating concrete disc on which we were required to assemble these foods. I was too busy trying to avoid massive amounts of onion scattered amongst the heavy-duty electrical cords on the ground. The fatal flaw of the selected design was, again, the utilization of overhead lines for powering the mobile unit. None of this mattered to the judge of the competition, who pulled me aside and asked me, “What is wrong with this picture?”

To be perfectly fair, it would have been quite easy to describe what was right with the picture. But I was being asked by this oriental guy I’d never met exactly what was wrong with foods prepared using a mobile device powered by overhead lines designed to stab food dangling amongst the lines with what amounted to fifteen foot lightning rods. I told him that all things considered, it looked pretty good.

“Crawfish,” the judge told me. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, so he grabbed me by the arm and led me to the one trampled crawfish on the now highly electrocuted floor of the prep disc. “This is perfectly unacceptable,” he said.

“If there’s one thing you’re right about. That’s it,” I agreed.

For whatever reason, Tina Lawyer was in the room where the cable boxes had to be properly assembled? And she must have had some sort of big damned emotional connection to the crawfish, because this brought her out of the cartoon room to publically melt down over the loss of one crawfish. There were many others in that room…those people didn’t do very much but criticize various cartoons. There weren’t any kids that I remember in the dream, except all the ones handling the live power cords, which were also sourced by the overhead cable-car power assembly...it was a very stupid setup.

After this whole mess had taken place, Jill Boyle showed up and gave Brian an ultimatum. “It’s either cross-country skiing with me, or you can keep making salad with your friends.” She was all dressed up in winter gear, and was even walking around the auditorium with skis and poles. And goggles. Brian hemmed and hawed over the choice, but finally, and it appeared agonizing to him, he made a decision. “Folks, I’m going skiing with salad,” he said, and started to get ready for a pretty hot hike with a lot of gear. It was very much still summer in this dream.

Thankfully, I woke up after that decision was made.

A Letter to Hal

July 2, 2011

Mr. Hal Linden
Jewish National Fund National Office
42 East 69th Street
New York, NY 10021

Mr. Linden:

It has recently come to my attention that you’re the national spokesperson for the American Jewish National Fund. The course of events that led me to contact you about my marathon training and the possibility of fundraising for your organization are as follows:

1) After a recent trip to my periodontist, I recklessly downloaded marathon training instructions, and found some guy named Hal Higdon offered sets of rather detailed and rigorous training information at no charge. However, once I was actually running the routes, I found myself inadvertently cursing you, because I could not remember Mr. Higdon’s name. Of course, this problem is exclusively my own, but I’ve known a great number of people to mess up even my name. I knew in my heart none of this was your doing, and I hope you can forgive me for the misappropriation of my own pain and bad decision making.

2) After about four or five training sessions of knowingly, but still wrongly cursing you for my ills, I discovered that possibly things happen for a reason. I made a few google searches of you and marathon training, and discovered only a whole lot more of Mr. Higdon, and quite a bit of information about the Jewish National Fund. The more I read about the works and history of the organization, the more impressed I became. The conservation and planting programs in Palestine intrigued me most. I was also influenced positively by the JNF’s public infrastructure programs in concert with land management. Very impressive, and this is quite positively a time-tested and proven approach.

Now, I’m still following Higdon’s training regimen. He’s a SOB. But I realize it’s not Higdon’s fault that I used to down over a half-gallon of vodka every day and ruined myself so thoroughly and completely that I felt a marathon might be a sound reclamation project for myself. I told my periodontist I was going to quit smoking by running a marathon…So, I’m in this situation presented to you now.

Would you be interested at all in providing some periodic marathon training and/or life advice through this insane journey of mine? I would be happy to sign a waiver removing you and the JNF from any and all liability from taking your advice. I’m running in the Minneapolis half-marathon in August, and the Atlanta marathon in October, if I survive the training regimen. I figure there is an outside shot this has the possibility for humor. And some good. I might be able to raise a little bit of money in the process. That I’m doing anything at all is likely more than most would expect from a fat, lazy, out of shape, chain-smoking non-denominational with a bad attitude. Judging exclusively from your career in acting, I believe you might have a pretty good sense of humor?

Best Regards,


Slade Dillon
slade@specialtylumbersolutions.com