the strangest thing...

Ugh, I woke up early this morning all anxious and jumbled because I had just had a bad dream, and then afterward I couldn't get back to sleep. So I got up and (as is often the first thing I do in the morning) checked my e-mail. A message had just arrived in my inbox a few minutes earlier from a premium subscriber in Tashkent, OH:

jeremy, i had a dream that you wanted to know why pine cones were shaped    

the way they were shaped.  i promptly responded, suggesting that nature

selected for its aerodynamical design so that it would travel farther when

falling from the tree, thereby enhancing the spread of its seeds.  at

first, you were impressed with this explanation.  but then you chided me

for some part of my answer, though my memory of this is less clear...

Which is all kind of ironic given my own bad dream. In my dream, I was sitting something like a dentist chair on a stage surrounded by all these bright lights and also on the stage in this other dentist chair was this guy who looked like the guy on that morning TV show with Kelly Lee Gipper or Rifford or whatever her name is. The guy is shouting to me about how he will give me a million dollars if I could tell him why pine cones were shaped the way they were. I had no idea. I couldn't even really remember how pine cones are shaped. So I asked him if I could call this especially wise friend of mine in Ohio and ask him. The guy says yes and suddenly a phone appears and I call my friend and ask the question. My friend says it's so that when they fall they will float farther from the tree and this helps them spread their seeds. I think this is brilliant, and repeat the answer to the guy on stage. He asks me in this cartoon-villain voice if this is my "final answer." I nod. "Wrong!" the guy cackles manically and all this thunder and lightening starts crashing all around the stage. "Now I own your soul!" He claps his hands twice and suddenly this trap door opens underneath my chair and I'm falling and falling down into this giant fiery pit...

Which is when I woke up. Quite a coincidence, huh?