Gross and gruesome

Last night I dreamed that I was working with my computer when a disgusting, crusty toe eaten up by athlete's foot appeared on my screen with the instructions to click on it.

No one in his or Her right mind would have done that. But in a dream, one has limited control over the dreamer, who is often dumb as a sack of sand. The dreamer clicked on the link.

Not only did his screen go ominously dark, so did the room he was sitting in. Demons began to enter.

At that point, Sweetie shook me awake, which surely prevented things getting even worse.

It must have been the Chinese take out

I had a repeat nightmare last night -- the one where I step outside to see someone destroying the forest behind my home. I've had it three times now. Each time, the details are slightly different.

This time, the developers had also torn down my neighbor's house -- who knows what they did with him.

Some piggish looking guy was supervising the destruction and I stood in front of him and said, "You don't know how badly I want to hit you right now." He just sneered, because he knew the threat of a lawsuit would prevent me.

So I ran around pulling their plugs (?), locking the door to their construction office and generally fuming in rage.

I don't know why I keep having this dream, since this precious slice of woodland is pretty well protected by its steep topography and its proximity to a creek.

It's probably a combination of the Chinese takeout I had last night and the report I read that says my region is expected to "grow" more in the next 40 years than it has in the last 400.

Ultimately, the developers -- as much as I hate them as mindless agents of destruction, clueless bastards who care only about money -- aren't to blame. They are just filling a need. If nobody bought all their stupid, soulless, artificially sodded homes, they'd stop building them.

I've been coast to coast, in Washington, Nevada, Utah and all over the east and its the same story -- houses going up by the millions, everywhere you look, obviously based on the fact that people will soon be buying them.

Where are all these people coming from? Is there some huge baby boom going on that I haven't heard about?