Buy some acid! Join the normal people!
— Street “vendor,” Yonge Street, Toronto 1986
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When I was a kid I’d climb onto displays, join the mannequins and strike a pose. Whenever someone checked out my clothes and felt the fabric, I’d slowly turn my head and STARE at them. Some yelled as they ran away.
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My BF told me he’d got a copy of a cool old horror movie. I pointed out that I’d already got it, and had told him when I did.
“Well, I guess that means I should listen to you.” he said.
“Nah, where’s the fun in that?” I asked.
“What?”
“Exactly.”
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Mom and I were staying at our favorite little place in Jamaica. One day the cook complained while Cab Calloway was on my tape player: “Ev’ry tyime ya pley dat soang, it reyn!” The song, aptly enuff, was Stormy Weather.
“The rain stops every time when the song ends, so what’s the problem?” I asked, completely deadpan, before we both began laughing.
It was true: it rained every single time that song came on, no matter the time of day or night, and it stopped at about the same time the song did.
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I fell asleep one night after telling my machine to play my entire Hauntology music folder. There are naturally lotsa weird-ass songs in there, and I kept waking up when things got esp strange or a song was too loudly mixed.
I’d fall asleep again fairly quickly each time.
I had fallen back to sleep during an extra-strange song, probably by English Heretic, and found myself thinking, “Okay, am I awake, or dreaming?” I looked around and saw I was in a well-lit, completely unfamiliar white room.
“Yup, this is a dream allright!” my dreaming self said aloud and laughed.
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I’d broken my leg during the winter of 2015, and had what I called a 500 Pound Leg because big giant cast. Getting around was V hard, and because the break was so weird, I never got a walking cast.
I’d finally fallen asleep one night (never easy w/500 Pound Leg!) and found myself dreaming. I was doing all kindsa stuff, cooking, running around, going shopping. Shit suddenly got lucid. I said aloud in the dream, “Wait a minute! I’ve got a fucking cast!”
The dream immediately ended. I did not awaken, it was just as if a giant screen before me had gone blank. I just looked at darkness for a little while, and remember nothing else.
It’s as if my sudden lucidity caused an immediate down tools at my dream factory.
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Flooding in Detroit: Lower East Side, corner of Ashland and Korte - 25 Apr 1976
This was a hell of a year in Detroit, meteorologically typing. We’d had a horrid ice storm only the previous month!
I was still 9 at that point, and do vaguely recall a huge, scary-despite-having-grown-out-of-being-afraid-of-storms-and-had-come-to-enjoy-them, noisy storm with freakishly heavy rain.
Schools and many businesses closed on the Lower East Side, near Lake St Clair. We were more than a mile north of the lake and our street was probably swimmable. Even areas well north of us were very badly flooded. I don’t remember whether places on the Detroit River were similarly affected, but they musta been.
When the waters finally receded, everyone naturally had to throw away their basements’ entire contents. It was surreal - everybody’s cellars were suddenly out on the curbs, these cairns of all sorts of stuff. 
Oh, and note the AMC Gremlin, car fans!
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Tree damaged by ice storm on Detroit’s Lower East Side - 3 Mar 1976
I was 9 years old and at school when the lights went out. We quietly left our classrooms (it was amazing how subdued we kids were in our suddenly dark school), gathered our belongings and carefully! went home. The trees wore coats of thick, heavy ice, like everything else. Walking home was beyond treacherous: sidewalks and streets were like glass. It was scary! I saw twigs, then small branches already succumbing to gravity, and could hear all the ones I didn’t see. I gingerly made my way along, wishing I were already home. The large branches later fell, and eventually some whole trees.
Detroit was locked in an icy grip and vast swathes of the City and environs were without power.
Our neighborhood was blacked out; curiously, Grandma’s house (just a mile away) still had power. She was out of town on a long trip, so we happily stayed there. We took everything outta our fridge and its freezer, grabbed some stuff outta the cupboards, packed up a buncha clothes and sundries and left.
The fallen trees and big branches already lay across some streets, demanding we take an unusual route. It was a frightening drive: the whole time, all around us parts of trees were falling.
The blackout in many places - inc our neighborhood - lasted around a week. We were most grateful there was a nearby place to which we could fairly easily escape, and it was a real trip watching the news.
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Here’s a quick one about the first time I listened to Eskimo by The Residents. By that time, I was pretty well into them, and needed to catch up on albums I’d not yet acquired, especially the early efforts (which I prefer over the recent stuff). Anyway, right after work one Friday, I rushed over to the local Tower Records store (the dear departed brick & mortar days), picked up Eskimo, got it on the turntable, took off my shoes, and kicked back on the sofa for a listen. Interestingly bizarre. Synced up perfectly with their dubious story about Eskimo babies and hunting boats. I was enjoying its brilliant eeriness and kept thinking about the performers’ commitment to delivering such material. About half-way through side one, I fell asleep – then abruptly woke up from the most disturbing nightmare of my life. I couldn’t recall any details from the nightmare… and I always remember my dreams. Obviously, the music was fueling my nightmare, and it was a couple of weeks more before I could commit myself to listen to both sides uninterrupted. No new bad dreams though.
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That’s really strange! O_O Sounds’ frequencies can have some interesting - and not always pleasant - effects on our brains.
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Frequencies, perhaps, but I’d say (in my case back then) only to the extent that The Residents had, with Eskimo (side one), thematically inspired then drove my nightmare. My dreams always have unique and interesting (not phantasmagorical) ambiances that continue to resonate long after I’ve woken up. Eskimo side one must have inspired a dream of staring talking dolls and confined spaces. Brrrrrrr!
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I was introduced to a younger girl who’d gone to school w/several dear friends. She turned out to be one of the worst kinds of fake friend: whenever one of us was interested in or going out with a guy, next thing you knew, she was sitting in his lap. She stole boyfriends at least once from all of us. She also kept all the music I’d lent her, which made me even more angry. A guy dumb enough to dump one of us for her was obvs not worthwhile anyway, but I would have liked getting my records back!
I’d already had much more than enough of her when her underage ass had the gall to show up at a club where my real friends hung out, and w/the guy she’d stolen from my BFF!
I was livid. My BFF was also there, but was elsewhere in the club when this happened.
I waited for the 2 of ‘em to get their alcoholic beverages and start drinking them, then calmly pointed her out to one of the lovely bouncers, truthfully explaining that she was 16 and had a fake ID.
The bouncer rushed over, took away her beer, told her to get out, and informed them they were banned.
I serenely smiled like an Egyptian statue while watching this tableau unfold. The evil girl and stolen BF looked stricken, standing there, cover charges paid, him with a barely-started beer which he had to abandon, the 2 of ‘em all dressed up w/nowhere to go except home. No other club in town had a Monday nor Thursday night thing, and neither were 21. They couldn’t get in anywhere else - they’d just lost the only place they could.
I didn’t tell my BFF until some decades had passed. I certainly wasn’t about to tell her that night because it would have hurt her, knowing that they’d shown up there together. I’d waited the right length of time - she LOL’d and told me she loves me.
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Yikes! 
Do Not Want!
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Yikes, indeed.
Signing off. Beddy-bye. Work tomorrow. More true tales later including the story of the only nightmare I recall having. A “doll” thing.
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I’d submitted a piece to my school’s literary magazine when I was 16, and the teacher in charge erroneously told me I’d mis-spelled ‘subtlety.’ I told her she was mistaken, but she wouldn’t hear a word of it. I got out a dictionary, and sure enough I’d properly spelled it, but I knew she’d just get nastier had I shown her she was indeed mistaken.
I erased the word, and rewrote it exactly the same way I’d originally done. I gave it to the teacher, saying, “Now it’s right,” instead of telling her what I’d actually done. She looked at the word and condescendingly smiled at me, the idiot.
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I was working the followspot for the Eastman School of Music’s student opera and the lighting director kept complaining that I wasn’t following the singers’ face well enough. The next time around I parked the spot on the ceiling and he was very pleased with my improvement.
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Unbelievable! 
My BF and I went to see friends’ great bands perform on Fri, Oct 28th. We were headed home on Woodward Ave, one of Detroit’s main drags, and we’d come to a large, unlit park just north of Highland Park.
A pair of misty, foggy, cloudlike plumes, seemingly without source, were emitted across the sidewalk and crept toward the right lane. We both saw this and were quite surprised - neither of us had ever seen such a thing!
I said that fog had been mentioned by the weatherman, but my honey scoffed, immediately insisting, “That wasn’t any damn fog! They Were GHOSTS!”
Sat the 29th, we went to see old friends play at a big backyard party. They’re called The 3-D Invisibles, and they play great surf-y songs about monsters and spooks from film and literature. I naturally told them about our experience the previous night, and they were suitably surprised, and amused by my BF’s response. 
Not long after their first set, we then headed to a bar across town to see more old friends play. That was another great show.
We were heading home, driving along McNichols (Six Mile Rd), passing by one of the many ambiently lit empty lots, when a pair of misty, foggy, cloudlike plumes, seemingly without source, were emitted across the sidewalk and crept toward the right lane!!! This time I opened my window, but when I looked into the empty lot, there was no fog in it - there was no way to figure out whence these ghosts had come, either!!!
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We used to see mobile, isolated plumes (as you described) in Boy Scout summer camp, always near some wet (enough) area, usually near (starting out from?) nearby marshes and patches of wetness. A natural occurrence requiring certain conditions… although… 
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It hadn’t just rained, either, and the humidity wasn’t as high as expected Fri night.
Sat night, I was looking out a window after my BF had gone to bed, and could barely see the homes across the street. I went out on the front porch into heavy damp, but not still visible fog, looked up and down the block, and everyone’s porches on both sides of the street were engulfed in fog.
I headed for the back porch and down the stairs. For the second time in my life I was in such thick fog, I could see and feel it surrounding me. It didn’t seem to be everywhere but near me…if that makes any sense. Maybe this will explain it better: I’ve entered many fog banks since childhood, only to find it was as if the fog had retreated at least six feet from me in all directions.
Perhaps Sat night’s ghosts were a harbinger of the coming pea souper.
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