My Dinner with Dell or was it?

Every night at about 1am I reach a depth of unconsciousness known as rapid eye movement, or R.E.M. sleep, which is a status of sleeping that allows me to dream, according to Star Trek TNG anyway.

I dream in all sorts of formats and aspect ratios. Letterbox, pan and scan, black and white, Technicolor©, Cinemascope. My dreams have even been animated, live action, and most recently motion capture. Those haven't been as successful as past dreams and frankly quite creepy, but my dreams try to keep up with all the technological advances.

The following story took place in my sub conscious, any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

I've usually found that my dreams are greatly influenced by what I watched or experienced before I retire to bed, but this dream, I can't explain because it stars this guy:



Which is odd, since I haven't seen or heard this quiet, soft spoken person in a long time. Well, every good story has a hero, that's me, and in many stories, there's a MacGuffin, that's a DVD/VHS dual player. In my dream, for some reason, I was trying to find one. Apparently, the man with the answer to my quest, was Dell. So, I set out to find him.

Upon arriving at his home, which was easy to find since it was advertised on a billboard, I found it surrounded by a giant gate with a sign that said, "Neverwasaland," (which is obviously stolen from Peter Pan who stole it from Michael Jackson's ranch, if I have my history correct) with another sign below that one which read, "No Questions." Immediately, I was disappointed, since I thought Dell had the answer I was looking for. The large estate, was what you would imagine any retired computer entrepreneur would have, horse stables, a five car garage, swimming pool, tennis courts, and a corner that resembled a stone castle wall that he let young film makers use as a set for their student films.

Just my luck, there happened to be a group of film students entering the gates of the compound getting ready to shoot a scene for their movie. I quickly shuffled in with the crowd and onto the set. As soon as the coast was clear, I B-lined it to the front door and went inside. There, I was greeted by none other than Dell Schanze. He asked who I was, and I told him. He didn't seem to be impressed and offered me a drink of some substance that was in a square bottle. I was hesitant to partake since he was acting drunk and had two of these bottles in each hand and was downing them simultaneously. Then I saw the label on the bottle, it was Mountain Dew. He had taken old liquor bottles, washed them out, filled them with soda pop, and put his own labels on them. Apparently, the Mountain Dew had the same effect on him as the most potent liquor would have on your average raving alcoholic. Realizing that I wasn't in any real danger in drinking his soda, I tried to show him that I had some class by saying, "Fish swim, but I drink." Which didn't make sense but, for some reason, I thought was clever. It impressed Dell enough to have him give me a tour of his house.

After the tour, he invited me to have dinner with him, where I sat alone at a giant table. He served me a cereal bowl filled with corn, rice, and was swimming in ranch dressing. He left the room and I tried a bit, just to be polite. I promptly spit it out and dumped it in a trash can that was labeled, "Leftovers." I looked inside only to find that this can was filled with this slop. I dumped it in and waited for Dell to come back. When he did, I decided that I had had enough, no more Mountain Dew, no more tours, and no more dinner. I asked him my question, I said, "Dell, where would I find a reasonably priced DVD/VHS dual player?" He looked up, stared at me a moment, opened his mouth, and then...

I woke up.