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.