WHAT!? Oh, it's you.

I'm sorry, I'm a little on edge ever since my housemate showed me a video game called "Chu Chu Rocket" for the Dreamcast. See, there are these little mice that run away from cats, and escape into rocketships -- that's what the game is about. But here's the freaky part! Just last week I had a dream about mice flying rockets to get away from monsters. I swear I did. It's as though these sick multicolored visions were pulled directly from my head and made silicon before my eyes.

That's not the first time it happened, either. You know that girl in the expresso place, the one who wears the tight orange CoffeeHut shirt? I had a dream about her once, too -- no, not one of those dreams -- I mean, I was in the coffee shop, but then aliens came down, and suddenly the coffee chick was in a space station, and she was trying to save the earth from Michael Jackson by dancing. I assumed I dreamed that only because subconsciously I long for carnal relations with her, which is why, by the way, I'm so wired on caffeine right now that I'm seeing three of you and my bladder is quivering uncontrollably.

Where was I? OH YES! The very next day my housemate turned on his Dreamcast and showed off a new game called "Space Channel 5," where this orange chick dances around in space, just like my dream. THIS WAS REALLY STARTING TO FREAK ME OUT. Somehow this "Dreamcast" thing is wired into my brain. Why else would they name it that? You saw in the paper how that University student rigged up a Nintendo so that he could move Pikachu with his mind? Well, I think my housemate secretly did that to his Dreamcast, and he's sucking the dreams right out of my head at night using aluminum foil sheets scotch-taped to top the ceiling fan right below my bedroom.

But I'll show him! Last night I had a dream so bizarre, so convoluted, that it'll never show up on a video game system! See, I was this huge yellow glutton, no more than a giant mouth. And I was trapped in a maze, and I had to keep eating these little white things to live, I suspect it was mana from heaven. But I was haunted by apparitions of the dead! Fortunately, if I ate big dots, the spirits would turn ghastly blue and flee. Most assuredly such mental images are mine and mine alone -- Ha ha! I'm safe!