I'm at this compound/ghost-town that's kind of similar to Camber Sands, where ATP took place, but it's way older, the buildings are bigger and farther apart (you'd have to drive to get to some of them) and it's more remote-- the immediate landscape is sparse and after only a mile or two drops off completely into wasteland. There is no festival going on, nothing going on-- it is the off-season. But I am here along with a handful of people I don't know. Somebody is after somebody else for shoplifting.

In a the building of a large, empty bar that has no electricity available right now, me and some girl push a set of closed double doors at the back wall and and find a whole entire secret restaurant on the back of the building.

I smoke this secret joint and exhale smoke that turns from blood red to purple before dissipating. Loud trumpets start playing behind me and I open the sliding-glass door that leads out to the deck. There's no deck there, though, it just drops off into the back yard. I open the door but close the curtain in front of it and sunlight peeks through the sides and the bottom of the curtain. It's bright daylight outside but I didn't know that because it's so dark in this building and I haven't left it for a while. There's kind of a latent "survival horror" vibe to the whole scene. I'm not sure if the girl is still in this secret room. I kneel down in front of the closed curtain and jack off.

This is just a regular classroom, although I'm the oldest person in the class by far. Except for Pedram, aka Pedro, this kid who sat next to me in homeroom every year in middle and high school because his last name started with KH and mine, of course, is KI.

Some little tiny annoying kid with greasy black hair, totally waify, does something and a young guy in a collared shirt and a really clean haircut throws him on the ground. I have to intimidate the older kid and tell him violence isn't cool, that nobody doubts that he could beat up the little guy, and that even if that kid is being annoying it's not his place to be punishing this kid. I think he kind of buys it but young male pride of course won't let him buy the whole thing. He's gotta be at least 6 years younger than me.

Later, the annoying kid takes out glow sticks and I tell him, "This isn't Intro to Raving!" then realize all these kids are too young to have gone to a rave. I start telling them an exaggerated story of what raves are like in a fake old-timer voice and like one or two girls laugh.

This building is basically like the old type of theater-- ie, not a multiplex or whatever. But each theater, each room with the seats and the projector, is particularly small. I am part of a large extended family that has come here, where there is some kind of weird, multi-generational new age school. There are some people attending the class I am in that aren't a part of my extended family, and I know some of them. Geoff Langham and his girlfriend are sitting in the second row.

Changing classes is a huge to-do for the family. All kinds of yokel distant aunts and uncles have to get all their little rugrats' toys and backpacks and put some stuff back into their cars and change some of the little kids' clothes and between every class this happens, and as such, the whole family comes through the door, loud and late, to every lesson.

I have decided to stop being embarassed by this and just enjoy it for the chaotic spectacle that it is. Some distant yokel uncle asks me to carry these two baby dolls that have backpack-type straps on them. I do. I also have a long white goatee for some reason-- blindingly white, and down to the middle of my chest. I put the baby-backpacks on over one shoulder, like cool kids in middle school, one and then the other beside it, and it looks like I have two babies clutching my upper bicep to hang on. Some of the relatives are watching me walk jauntily, pretending to whistle, away from the parking lot (which is indoors) towards the next class and I can hear them voicing disgust and/or concern because they think its somebody's ACTUAL, living babies which are perched precariously on my left shoulder. This is even weirder because one of the baby dolls has big white wings on it.

Dave Chappelle is hosting a giant awards show, and he says, "Wait, wait-- I need a hat on my head," and raises his arms, and this giant crane-thing starts extending, this platform that he's on rises up and into the audience and he swoops out there, I guess in order to snatch a hat off somebody's head.

Earlier, I was trying to have band practice but my mom and Kevin Coelho's mom were there and kept talking to me. At one point they both suggest that I sell my Access Indigo keyboard. There were also two little girls, eating sandwiches at a table. They were maybe 4 or 5 years old, and both of them were talking about their mommies' gambling problems and how that affected them. Oh wait, one of them was MY sister. They both knew what the word "bookie" meant.

I'm going on tour with Atmosphere. Slug and I are hanging out at my grandma's old house getting ready. Somehow I have accidentally asked my sister and parents to come with me and they're really excited about it. The tour is four weeks long and I think my family is going to come for four weeks. I rented a little four-door car. Turns out Kevin Coelho is tour managing for Slug, too, and he's not bringing a DJ or anybody else. While we're packing the car, Kevin comes to me with an acoustic guitar and asks me to show him how to play "My Head" so that Atmosphere can cover it at some of the shows. I figure it out again faster than I thought I would be able to, but I'm puzzled as to why he would cover a track of mine. I'm really pumped to play the new material live for big crowds but I'm really worried about my parents. For some reason I can't bring myself to tell them they can't come. I start thinking about all the ways tour would be different with parents along. I try to console myself thinking it's only for 2 weeks but inside I know that is really a long-ass time when you're on tour.

Later I'm in this bus for some reason, a school bus, riding around Manor Road, on the other side of Sweet Air, down where it's all wooded. The end of my old bus route in high school and middle school. There's some weird shit going on down there, and we're moving along at Disney-ride pace through big bales of hay and construction of some fair-type shit. We're driving on the grass. Me and the other kids in the back of the bus are playing this game where we spot somebody we know's house and then sing a tune using just that person's name. When somebody else sees a house they know, they jump in doing maybe a different instrument (with their mouth) using the name of the person who lives in THAT house. I am prepping to bust out with a 8 or 9 name mouth-guitar-solo as soon as we get a little closer to where Steve Will, Steve Oppitz, Justin Hebbel, Katie Sauerwein, Julie Iltis, and some other kids who rode my bus in middle school live.

I'm in somebody else's house, and I get a frantic call on my cell phone. My friend Melanie went to go pick up her brother, Divine, from jail, but got busted by the cops on the way and now she's in jail and needs me to come get her. I ask about what's going to happen to Divine. Divine just called Kevin Coelho and some other guy named Ryan who I have never met but think that I've heard of to come get him. I ask Melanie what those guys don't just pick her up, too, and she says Divine didn't tell them she was in jail now, which is so like Divine. It's really late and I don't like the idea of driving out in my car to some jail somewhere, but I guess I have to do it so I ask where it is, and she says western New York. I don't remember how the conversation ends but I never actually get to the jail.

Instead, sometime later, I'm in my parents' kitchen with Lucianne. I can't figure out why there are so many people in my parents' house. Lucianne says we're going to go to the Imax and have breakfast there tomorrow morning, on her, and asks me if I think their breakfast will have enough chocolate in it.

I'm with my entire high school on a field trip to my elementary school, Carroll Manor Elementary. I'm the only kid in my high school who went here, and I'm kind of amazed at all the changes. For instance, the library has a huge glass window that faces into the main lobby and entrance now. All my high school classmates are being herded around and shown things by our teachers, everyone doing that kind of weak shuffle as they walk slowly through the place. I'm kind of excited to be back here for some reason, so I'm cutting through the crowd and walking off whenever I feel like it, peeking in classrooms. The elementary school teachers don't really care, but the high school teachers are not psyched, but I still act as if I can't get in trouble for anything. And I don't.

When everyone else is getting on busses to leave, for some reason I get into a car with somebody's grandparents and two other kids, one of whom is a skinny kid with really good posture, glasses, and the beginnings of a puberty mustache. The other kid is a little, underdeveloped dude with dirty brown hair who just laughs. On the way through the parking lot, I pick up this nice, mountain-climbery backpack that is just lying in the parking lot and bring it into the car with me. I'm still in a really good mood, and I tell the grandparents and the other kids in the car that I must be stupid for not driving here myself because I live so close to this place, and it makes no sense for me to drive all the way back to Timonium to get my car at the high school, only to come all the way back here. The grandparents put a tape on the stereo and explain it's the mustache-kid's music. I think to myself that it sounds too much like Prefuse 73, but I don't say anything out loud about it I don't think. I'm not sure if they're HIS grandparents, but they seem really into/proud of the music. The kid sits perfectly straight up and looks straight ahead with a super-serious look on his face and I think to myself, "What's this guy's deal?"

Since no one else is talking, I start examining the backpack and tell everyone that I found it and picked it up. It has a tube that runs around it and curls around the neck of the person who wears it. It's pink+reddish, and made of soft plastic, maybe polyurethene? I'm not really sure if that's the right word for it, but it's probably 2-3 inches in diameter and flexible. I open the backpack and there's one sheet of paper in it. On the back of the paper there's a photocopied article about Mel Gibson's wife. I realize that she's wearing this exact backpack in the accompanying picture, and that the article explains what the tube is. It's a dildo. A long, flexible dildo that wraps around the backpack. On one of the straps there's an electronic switch that makes it vibrate. I tell everyone I could probably sell this for a lot of money on Ebay, but the grandparents tell me that I have to give it back to Mel Gibson's wife, it's not right to sell it. I don't really care what they think because I don't even know who they are. I turn the paper over and there's another magazine article about Mel Gibson's wife, although this one is about her work with charities. I start to think that this backpack is a secret, that the article that's photocopied on the back is probably from some publication that only super-super famous people get, and that if regular people ever found out about the dildo-backpack, it would be a huge scandal.

I'm at a college that is made up of a lot of buildings in the middle of a city. These are not college-y buildings, they're like buildings that would have been there anyway. I don't know where classes occur or what they look like, but I walk through an alley where a bunch of other kids are and go into an old coffee shop-ish place. There are kids in there. Is this a class? Is this just a coffee shop? The kids behind the bar are obviously students. Are they in class right now? I don't know. I talk about the music that is playing with some girls that are sitting at a table. I get a call on my cell from Stefan Constanstinidis, a tiny kid that went to my middle school and was friends with my friend Bill, who was not a full-on bully, but close. A total hellraiser and frequently suspended. His friendship with this tiny kid who sometimes cried confounded me, I think it went back to diaper-days. But in any case, I barely talked to this kid back then, but his name is now flashing on my cell phone, which means I have put his number in here and maybe called him before. I answer it in a funny voice, like I would do to a good friend.

Stefan asks what I'm doing. I tell him that me and some other kid (who I can't remember anymore) are going to go mini-golfing with these high school girls. In my head, I know this is trouble, but I don't know how to get out of it, and I'm not sure that I want to get out of it. Stefan says he and Andy DeVos, my best friend from middle school who was older and did not go to the same school as me (and the most devout religious person I have ever known) are playing video games and they don't think going to Sports (Where the Summer Never Ends!) to play indoor mini-golf with high school girls sounds fun or smart. I laugh and Stefan laughs and I tell them that maybe I'll be able to get out of it and call them up.

The coffee shop has really high ceilings, and the floors are old wooden boards. All the tables and everything seems old, like the stuff you'd find in a really old warehouse. In fact, this could just be the smallest room of a warehouse with walls in it.

I resolve to kill myself because my parents don’t understand me and ask me to do something I don’t want to do. I go to school and Mr. Kovacs is leading the class in some kind of indoor kickball game that’s a lot more complex than kickball. Since I’m going to kill myself I feel like I should do some crazy shit and make people laugh first. I talk to some kids about the game that’s going on because I’ve never seen it before, and they all seem apathetic. I ask Mr. Kovacs when I’m going to get to bat and he seems irritated and tells me that everybody has to go in order. Somehow this implies to me that it may be days, which I do not have, so I flippantly tell him I need to get to bat today. He gets mad but decides to ignore me. I stand on a desk and nobody cares.

There's a really tall buidling with sandstone-ish sides in the middle of the desert, with a couple of buildings like it around, but clearly a good drive from civilization. There's a bookstore near the top of one of these buildings, although I believe the rest are empty, almost like primitive parking garages. The bookstore is very, very modern though. I work here. There's a big field trip of my school that is here now as well, all these high school seniors and most of their parents, as well. Somehow, I am both in school and subject to the authority of the teachers, and also at my separate job here at the bookstore, where I have a boss. Some parent of some popular girl has a problem with me and keeps trying to tell my boss I should be fired. I am definitely goofing around but apparently I'm so well liked by the bookstore staff and customers that it is understood I have a lot of leeway. There are cars up in the building, in special rooms. Not many of them, and I can only find one. And it's mostly taken apart, as I assume all of them to be.

Me and my sister are in this large, one-level house in rural Baltimore County. It's got a lot of doors-- way too many, although not so many that it's surreal. It's just a rich-people's house. There is a courtyard in the center of the house, like an outdoor part, and there are these white thatch gates in there and also out in the yard. I am rushing around the house trying to keep all the doors closed because slow-moving but deadly zombies are around. It's totally sunny outside and my sister keeps forgetting to close the doors because she's tired.

Later, the neighbors, who are some chatty, generic suburban types that I have never seen before, come over and at first I'm very annoyed with them but then I think they're OK. The wife has black hair tied up in a bun and a mole on her face. She invites me to come study at her university, and I think it's a good idea until she starts telling me what classes I would take, and I don't feel like she understands that if I'm in school, I should probably study writing. A lot of family members show up for some kind of party and my dad's mom because fixated on the idea of trying to light one of her farts with a lighter.

Scott Gould (my good friend in elementary school and an occasional aquaintance in high school) and I are on tour. It is just he and I traveling in a black 4-door sports car. We have a day off in a dark town full of tourists in the middle of nowhere. We eat at a restaurant that has a great jukebox and candles in the bathroom--- the kind of bathroom that's more like a closet, only 1 person can go in at a time and it has the little metal loop-lock nailed into the wooden, painted door. We decide to go swimming next door to the restaurant when we're done but before we get there, we pass a little window that is selling crappy trinkets. One thing they have is an old, 1960s-looking, beat-up box of magic potions that are in little vials. It looks like food coloring but it's supposed to make you look younger. We each buy it and drink the whole potion right there, then we find our bodies have been physcially transformed into 9- or 10-year-old versions of ourselves. This doesn't really phase us, we just go right into the pool-place. A bunch of families are there and some little kids, and we kind of forget that we look like little kids, too, and wonder why these kids are swimming when it's so dark outside.

I have to go to the bathroom again, and on my way there, where the bathrooms are at the back of the room, there is water above the pool. The area above the pool is dry on the other end of the room, where the entrance is, but for some reason down here you are pretty much still swimming even when you get out of the pool, because the water is out of the pool and gets higher and higher the closer you get to the bathroom. It's at your neck once you're in the bathroom, and I open up a stall and wonder whether pee will go where you point it if you're swimming. At first I think, "I guess it must," but then I think about how gross it is to be standing where a bunch of other people have peed in the water. Then I think that since this water connects to the pool water, everyone must be swimming in some amount of pee. I get grossed out and leave.

The next day, we make it to the little college where we're playing. There are 4 or 5 bands and things are running late so we're rushed on stage after watching some crappy unsigned bands. We still have 10-year-old bodies. Scott sets up his guitar and I set up a keyboard, but decide I will play guitar tonight, too. I set up his other guitar and we play a song, it's really pretty, instrumental post-rock, like Mogwai or Tarentel or something. There's no stage, we're just playing at the back of a commons-room-type room with a red carpet. Our song is pretty much just improvised, but we try and make it look like it's not improvised at all and I think we suceed. We play another song where Scott stands at the other end of the room and I stand behind the keyboard, but I just sing on this one. Then I decide that we should set up some pedals for me and Scott starts configuring some weird effects pedal system that has way more buttons than I thought it would, but seems to be designed pretty intuitively. He's very careful about setting it up, so it's taking a while. I realize, while watching over his shoulder, that I'm standing with both feet on his guitar, which he has set down. I get off of it and hope he doesn't notice, then tell him he should just play a song by himself for a second while I finish setting up these pedals. He does, he plays a song where the only lyrics are, "All these marigolds all over the ground, ________(something something)." I can't remember the second part, but it was really catchy and all the kids are singing along by the end. I abandon setting up the pedals to sing along and lead clapping, but Scott keeps looking at me like the clapping isn't exactly in time. After the song is over, all the kids start leaving like we're done. I tell some girl that we're going to play at least one more and the kid who set up the show says we have to stop because the last band just got here and we're almost past the sound curfew. I'm bummed, but we start taking our stuff down and go to the car in the parking lot. We're parked under a big tree that has huge white blossoms on it, and these two girls run ahead of us and get in the car before we do-- one in the front passenger seat, the other in the rear seat behind the driver. I make a joke to them about how that tree is a pillow tree and they agree that it's a weird tree. Then I remember that we have 10-year old bodies and I ask them if they noticed. The girls say yes. I ask them if they thought it made the show better and they say yes. Scott finished putting one of his guitars in the trunk and gets in the driver seat. I tell him we should drive the car right up to the door of the place we played so we can load out into the trunk and leave. We see the other band getting out of there big white van and they are white dreads, kind of crusty looking, but definitely don't look like they're going to be a very good band. I'm worried kids came to see us and are bummed because we only played 3 songs.

The Postal Service are going on their second tour, and I am asked to open on 8 of the dates. I kind of wish I was opening on all of the dates, but I am so happy to see Ben and Jimmy and Jenny when I arrive at the first show that I tell myself I will just have the best time possible on these eight shows and fit a whole month's worth of bro-down into them.

The first show is at a small college and after we play, we are walking around a crowded freshman dorm, where the promoters are putting us up for the night in separate rooms, rooms whose occupants have found other places to sleep for the night. Steve Olson from Stars as Eyes is also traveling with us on this tour for some reason and he calls the first room we see because it has a big, exexcutive-looking mahogony desk with an internet connection. Jenny gets a really narrow and messy room, and I get the only room where the bed is perpendicular to the doorway, so that you see the side of the bed when you walk into the room. The bed is against the other wall of the room, and sideways, and under a window. I am not tired so I go back to Jenny's room. She's already asleep. I sit on her bed and start talking to her anyway, but even though she wakes up and talks to me for a while politely, it's obvious she just wants to go to sleep so eventually I wander off elsewhere.

Lots of friendly little college kids are around. Somehow, though, things become kind of dramatic, and Ben, Jenny, myself, and 3 random college kids are outside of the dorm. We know somebody or a bunch of somebodies is inside trying to get us-- suddenly, we're the only people here and we're scared. There's a wooden fence along the side of the building and a little yard in the back, and we go there, afraid of the darkness in the building. One of the kids picks up a flamethrower and sprays it around the yard just in case anything we can't see is there, and part of the wooden fence next to the building catches on fire. We're strangely relieved, though, that nothing else is there, and we relax a bit. This backyard area has access to a garage and a back road. Ben and I sit at a picnic table while the college kids and Jenny go for help. There's a boombox on the table and we use it to play a tape. The tape is the sound that is going on inside of the building. We can hear a group of "agent"-type people searching the building for us. For Ben, specifically. We're safe, though, outside at this picnic table-- at least for the moment. I'm pretty nervous about the situation, but then I remember that Ben's last name is Cooper, and suddenly he takes on a much more Dick Tracy-type of air. In fact, everything feels older and spy-ier after this realization. I think about how Cooper is not only the name of the detective from Twin Peaks, but also of that guy who jumped out of a plane with millions of dollars and was never caught or found. Then I remember that David Lynch named Dale Cooper after the plane guy so that makes sense. Soon, a much-more 1930s-out Jenny Lewis drives up in a jeep and tells us we need to get in. Ben, who is now at least 40% physically larger and heavier than I remember him being, jumps in the back. I grab the tape out of the boombox so they won't know that we were here, and get in, too. We take off. For some reason the steering wheel is on the right side of the car.

We drive down a country road, surrounded by big hills. There are cop cars everywhere, and tons of traffic going the other way. Cop cars seem to be coming towards us then turning left over and over again. I don't think they know we're in this jeep. I tell Ben to take off his big cowboy hat, it might be a giveaway if a cop looks into our car. We take a turn up a steep road towards an old-looking school building, and finally some cop cars seem to be pursuing us directly. We pass a sign that says excavations are in progress and pull the car up a very steep incline where we find ourselves at a dead end. The cops think they have us until I tell Jenny to gun it and the car flies off the precipice and into the school. We drive through the hallways, where no one seems to be freaked out at all, with the cop cars eventually chasing behind us. I take out a very antiquated pistol and try to shoot the cops' tires, but the gun is really hard to fire and doesn't seem to hit anything I aim at.

I'm in a small car driving down a long bridge over a huge body of water. Water in every direction. We're going to some town that's like Las Vegas but smaller. For a long time, the highway is just this four-lane bridge over water for as far as the eye can see.

When we get there, it's like one basic, overdeveloped road surrounded by sand. There are huge signs crowding the road-- big neon signs, and gawdy advertisements for restaurants and stuff. The car breaks down by the side of the road so we go into an arcade. There are arcades up and down the street, tricked out in bright lights and decorated very tastefully inside. Patrick Quinn is playing a game where you have to shoot baskets. I try to play skee-ball but there's a plastic covering over the top of the lane where you roll the ball, and the only opening to the lane is facing upwards. I try and lift up the plastic a little bit so I can get a little bit of oomph on the ball, tossing it with wrist awkwardly bent to get it into the lane. Some girls are watching and they think I suck.

They have 6 or 7 different versions of Street Fighter, all in a row. At first I don't think I can find any versions I haven't seen before but then I realize about half of them are totally new to me.

I go outside and there are lots of people walking around.. tourists and students. An old man whose legs and feet are severely disfigured is hopping around, kind of like how I think a retarded satyr might walk, but he's not magical looking or anything, just disfigured. He tells me that his feet are actually really good for walking up steep piles of snow. I follow the big crowds of people who just seem to be walking in the same general direction. I walk for a long time without getting a good idea of where we're going.

As night falls, some kids my age and I go back behind the arcade into the parking lot, in order to throw our trash away in the dumpsters back there. There's an argument because most of the kids think we should pack up all the trash in the two dumpsters and take it out, deep into the woods. I don't remember there being any woods nearby but I imagine things might be different at night. I still don't understand why would we take it upon ourselves to take the trash to the woods --- "Let's just throw our trash in these dumpsters and leave, and somebody who works here or works for the city will take it all to the woods when they're supposed to." I'm the only person who thinks this.

Somebody explains to me that complexion is human EQ. "What about asians?" I ask, "Or, like, Middle-eastern people?"

"Midrange," that person says.

I'm at a basement show, it's a very important one, there are lots of bands playing. When I arrive, Chris Freeland is playing a set. He's playing drums and the bassist of Lightning Bolt is trying to play bass, but one of his pedals isn't working. I am holding my laptop, which I feel sketchy about, because I want to go watch the show up close but I don't want my laptop to get dropped or smashed, so I go set it down on top of a speaker. When I get back to where Chris and the guy from Lightning Bolt are playing, I am surprised at how close I am able to get to them. I can totally see their hands and everything. The problem with the pedal is not getting better, though, so I don't get to see much before they stop to try and fix it. Then I get worried about my laptop and go look for it. I pick it up and it makes a weird noise, which worries me, so I turn it on. When it comes on, the screen isn't very clear, and I don't recognize what's on the desktop. Then I realize it's too small to be my laptop, which is relief because at least it means mine isn't broken. I look around to see who might have picked up my laptop and I realize there are a lot of kids with dark, stringy hair and glasses here that are looking at laptops.

Sometime later I'm in a Spanish class. There is a video being played that has young people running around a city in Spain smiling and doing things. I think to myself, "This is a trippy video, I wish I could watch this when I was high," and then I realize that I'm in a high school so it shouldn't be hard to find somebody that has weed or mushrooms. The teacher, who is a young-ish, blonde woman, starts asking people to use these Spanish vocabulary words that are on a ditto in sentences. The video is still playing and the lights are out, but she's calling on people to use these words. I look down and figure out that my word will be "Somomoosh," so I think up a sentence with that word in it. When she calls on me, I say, "Somomoosh en el asiento abajo de me automobile," and she tells me I am correct.

I'm in some post-apocalyptic, Gaza Strip/Beirut-type town. I'm sitting at a wooden picnic table with a half-naked brown boy and we're watching a small TV set. On the TV, there's an icon of the globe that is mostly light blue, brightest around the equator, and the slightly darker above and below that area. The poles themselves are purple, but those areas are receding and becoming blue. Soon, the whole globe is two shades of blue. Voices on the television explain that this is a real-time representation of the US's control over the world, and that we are watching the exact moment that the US basically gained control of the whole world. The little boy gets up and runs away.

I go into a nearby mall with a few friends. We are walking around trying to find a place to smoke a joint when this big, slow kid comes up and wants to follow us. We're not sure if we should let him see us smoke this joint, or if it's even cool to do that in this mall, so we step out on a balcony. The mall has people in it but it's not very crowded for a mall.

My friends, the big slow kid, and I -- I think there are 4 of us total --- are rushed out of the mall abruptly and suddenly find ourselves far from the mall, near a little camp of teepees under a steep embankment in the desert. A group of 8-9 people are here, and they are dressed very strangely-- kind of Mad Max, but they are all very conservative-looking, older people. Moms and dads. Their leader is the father of the slow kid. He tells me we are going to eat the slow kid because he is the fattest and will feed the most of us.