Phantasmagoria of Pop Culture

In honor of my psych class, which is now studying dreams, I present the most bizarre dream I have yet to remember. There’s a theory in psychology that dreams are simply the result of random chemical and electrical firings of your brain. I find this a depressing explanation, but scientific, empirical me leans toward it. (You would too if the alternative was Freud’s psychosexual theory of dream interpretation where every possible object takes on sexual meaning. Methinks Freud was a dirty old man.)

My dreams have always been fragments of stories, stitched together by fade-out transitions and loose connections. This one is no different, and if it gets too weird, just chalk it up to random nerve firings.

I’m reading the newspaper in a brightly lit salon—the kind with open glass walls and an overabundance of sunlight. As I flip through my newspaper, a photo of two preppy young men catches my eye. The headline above the photo reads in big, bold, newsprint letters: “Prince of Monaco to Marry.” My immediate befuddlement at seeing a picture of two men accompanied by a wedding announcement was solved as I glance up to the TV, which is playing the exact same story. The black and white news reel explain that the Prince of Monaco and his fiancé both belong to an ancient Jewish sect, which allows the matrimonial union of two men. Another grainy black and white photo flashes on screen, depicting the Prince and his fiancé exchanging vows with white skullcaps on their heads.

At this moment, I catch a glimpse of the fiancé’s face and realize that he is Asian. In fact, the TV explains, he is actually a Taiwanese émigré who works at Dunkin Donuts. The screen begins to show a color video of the Taiwanese man filling cups of Coffee Coolata on a conveyer belt.
My brow furrows in disbelief that the Prince of Monaco would deign to marry a Dunkin Donuts worker, but the TV continues profiling the strange fiancé. It turns out that the man is actually a nuclear genius forced to drop out of MIT due to lack of funds. Aside from working at Dunkin Donuts, he had also managed to build a superior nuclear defense system—a miraculous accomplishment if consider that this man was living off of his Dunkin Donuts’ income the entire time. On TV, he is showing off his nuclear defense system aboard a speedboat, from which he launches a small rocket while shouting, “George Bush should come talk to me!” The rocket, in truth, was about one foot long and hardly seemed capable of defending against a snowball attack, let alone a nuclear one. The rocket’s amateurish designs and the man’s arrogant attitude convinced me the Prince’s fiancé was a hack playing for the money.

Just as the news program on the Prince’s impending wedding ends, Kate Beckinsdale saunters into the salon. Perhaps mistaking me as an acquaintance, she walks up to me and starts complaining about how this salon had messed up her hair. Despite thinking her hair is fine, I smile politely and wonder why she is in this salon again if they were that bad. Brrrrring brrring. Alarm clock beckons.