February 18, 1994

"I had this dream once," I said, before taking a sip of my Mad Dog, "that I was sitting in my bedroom with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and we were talking about something fairly inconsequential as I recall, when suddenly these three giant McDonaldland Fry Guys burst into the room, with huge gaping maws filled with row after row of razor sharp incisors, and they shouted 'Mmm, Jesus, yummy!' and flew across the room and sank their teeth into His neck, and I just started laughing like crazy."

No one said anything. We were all in a pretty mellow mood that night. We were trying to reminisce about all the good times we'd had together, but it was proving to be rather difficult, since we didn't really like each other.

"I had this dream once," Laurel said, before taking a sip of her Cisco, "that I was at this donut shop, and I was at the end of the line, and I was incredibly hungry, and the lady at the front just couldn't make up her mind, and I had this weedeater with me, so I just whipped it out and started whacking everybody in the place with it, while singing one of my beloved favorites from the hit musical 'La Cage Aux Folles' and balancing a large bowl of pig's blood on my head, and when everyone was dead, I ate every damn donut in that donut shop, even the ones with amphibian scales and some of my favorite silicate minerals, including feldspar and quartz.

No one said anything. Our moods weren't exactly brightening, and the alcohol wasn't helping either. None of us wanted to be there. We were all getting on each other's nerves.

"I had this dream once," Crank Boy said, before taking a sip of his Night Train, "that I was competing in the esteemed Olympic luge event -- naked, of course -- and I accidentally skipped the track and started plowing through the crowds, severing limb after limb, I mean, the air was literally filled with flying body parts, and eventually I gained so much momentum that the last row of people I smashed into were pulverized into tiny particles of blood and tissue, and suddenly little fairies appeared and started making pink snowmen out of the blood-stained snow, attaching the severed human limbs for added realism, and the snowmen came to a horrible kind of half life and began singing and dancing a tuneful jig -- the Lithuanian national anthem -- before destroying the city in a sudden huge burst of satanic vigor."

No one said anything. We weren't really looking at each other, since the mere sight of one another was enough to turn our stomachs. I really couldn't think of a single reason to continue living, at that point.

"I had this dream once," Beerbelly the Invisible Clown said, before chugging a giant jug of pure grain alcohol and then absentmindedly squeezing the life out of a small rodent, "that I was in a big time rock band, and we toured the nation singing nothing but power ballads, abusing ourselves with drug after drug, taking horrible advantage of innocent young groupies, making them perform horrible stunt shows with animal fat and solid gold shrimp forks, until one day the aliens showed up and decided to use me as a birdie in an interstellar game of badminton."

No one said anything. I was becoming sick to my stomach, thanks to the mere presence of these so-called "friends."

"I had this dream once," Satan said, before taking a sip of his Quaker State motor oil and then plunging his hand into a meat grinder, "that I was actually happy."

We all looked up.

"Yeah," he said, "it was a real nightmare, let me tell you."

We nodded. Yup, things coulda been a lot worse. At least we weren't happy.