A Rovarian Nightmare

Last night, I had a horrible nightmare in which I was trapped in post-Katrina New Orleans, stuck on the kitchen counter of a flooded first-floor flat. I was too afraid to venture into the toxic water covering the floor, and the night sounds of gunshots and screams filled the air around me. I was dying of thirst, and in my irrational state I briefly wished that I owned a handgun, of all things, to protect myself from the poor, disenfranchised shooters outside. After careful consideration, those thoughts quickly left my head.

Throughout my ordeal, I found solace in the idea that if I were killed by someone in the chaos, I would be a martyr reflecting the Bush Administration's neglect of the poor and the environment. After all, he practically created the global warming that caused Katrina, and his chronic neglect of the poor has forced them to take up arms against their majority oppressors. No one can blame them for shooting a white person like me, given that I share a race with the most evil Americans walking the earth today.

Still, I didn't want to die on a kitchen counter, so I weighed my options and decided to wade outside into the street in front of the flat. I cautiously stepped down into the muckish water, which immediately ruined my Birkenstock sandals, which in turn had cost me eighty hard earned dollars just a few weeks before. Maybe when this is all over, I'll send the bill to Bush, I thought, before realizing that he would never give any relief money to a person like me because it's all reserved for his coporate friends and oil buddies. Too bad.

As I waded outside the door of the flat, I noticed several people gathered around the front door of a Best Buy down the street. As I approached them, I saw that they were walking out with various electronic devices. I immediately shouted "Viva La Revolution!" in celebration of the spontaneous distribution of corporate wealth going on in front of me.

The bedraggled men just looked and stared at me for a few seconds, before one approached and asked if I had any money. Even though I really had a twenty-dollar bill on me, my greed took over and I told him that I didn't have a dime. He must have sensed that I had lied, because he hit me in the face with his fist. At that point, I was immediately overcome with a sense of guilt for having lied to this poor denizen of the streets, who simply needed the money and electronics to feed his family. I gave him the twenty, but then he hit me again to finish off my lesson. Lesson learned.

Then something really unexpected happened. All of a sudden the men scattered and ran in the same direction away from the Best Buy. I looked and saw a boat approaching from the other direction, with a man holding a shotgun at the helm. My fear of firearms paralyzed me on the spot, and I stood silently as the boat came closer. Eventually, I recognized the face of the man holding the gun. It was Karl Rove. My heart skipped a beat.

I thought that he would shoot me on sight, so I closed my eyes and thought about how I had never met Ani DiFranco, which had become a life goal of mine a few weeks back. If I had to die, I would at least die with pleasant thoughts of Ani and her music swirling in my head. But he didn't shoot. Instead, he asked me if I wanted a ride to a relief station. I was flabbergasted.

Then I woke up covered in a cold sweat. If the dream were real, I would have died at Karl Rove's hands. What a nightmare!