I am a woolgatherer

Not that it should shock you, but a word exists for what I am, and for what I do. It's cool that there are words for like everything in existence. If you were to forge a toaster and an electric blanket together with a lizard egg, and somehow this Frankenstein creation performed anything at all, even like, um, smelling terrible on command, it would be named by somebody. According to Mitch Hedberg, this is done by adding "-er" to the end of the name. You would have created a smeller.

While reading about this really sweet album (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel) I came across the pejorative term "woolgathering" used in a review of the album, and I was like, "Hmm, I would sure like a specific definition of that word." So I looked it up, and it turns out, it's something I engage in quite frequently.

Woolgathering: indulgence in idle fancies and in daydreaming; absentmindedness: "His woolgathering was a handicap in school." (PS: In case you wondered, dictionary.com says that this word is a combination of the words "wool" and "gather", and not "woolga" and "ther" like you thought. I mean, if we listened to you about word etymology, most people would still be communicating with semaphore. Ha! Just kidding. We're friends.)

I often find myself daydreaming about nearly impossible situations, some of which may come true, such as engaging in a sabre duel with terrorist leader Sayid abu Bakr and former Grand Wizard David Duke on a steel girder 80 floors above the ground. I came real close to that last year, and then David Duke was all, "Forget it, you guys, I just watched the Deerhunter last night, and I realize now how crazy it is that I've been shooting heroin and playing Russian roulette ever since I lost the race for governor of Louisiana." That guy is a pussy. Note to self: never again fantasize about duels with Klan members. They will always make some excuse and back out of it.

Sometimes I think about things that could happen for real, but most of the time, I think that I fantasize about things that are not real for a reason: they are much cooler than real things. Just as an example: in real life, I will never be President. But in my fantasy life, I'm like better than President. I'm the Emperor of California and Nevada, and we're poised to invade Arizona and northern Mexico. I drive around in a Cadillac that's had the top sawed off, and it has a chandelier on the hood, like the Duke of New York in Escape from New York. (If I ever meet Donald Pleasance, I will demand that he tell me that I am "the Duke of New York, "A" # 1!" Shit, he's dead. Oh well. See, better to live in fantasyland!) Actually, none of this is true. In reality, I come up with these blogs as I'm typing them, and that may be far more interesting, the fact that all this stuff kind of lives inside my head.

I mean, in real life, my fantasies are all about being interviewed by like Rolling Stone magazine, and people are like, "Cheetah X, your blog has become a touchstone for people who don't give a shit about the future of anything," and I'll be like, "The people who read my blog care about the future of things, they just don't care about the future of jalapeño pizza, Furby, or Diet Coke Plus." And the interviewer will be like, "Heavy." End of interview. Insert like twenty photos of me posing like a badass with the carcass of an animal that I've hunted and killed with my bear hands. I mean bear hands. This is another fantasy of mine, to kill a bear, and then hollow out his paws and wear them over my own hands. It will be sweet. I don't think my girlfriend will appreciate them, however, so I will need to judiciously choose when to wear the bear hands. Mainly when I'm hunting and killing animals with them.

How gathering wool came to be associated with idle fantasy seems a little strange. I mean, wool is a fucking commodity. Maybe if I was idly collecting cockroach feathers, then I would be guilty of idle fantasy. Again, because they don't exist. But that might be a little long. Cockroach-feather-gatherer. Also, gathering for a long time has gotten a bad rap. I mean, when it comes to hunter-gatherers, who were the badasses? That's right, the people with the bear hands. Gathering is a worthless activity. I mean, look at homeless people going through your recycling bin, and tell me that you have respect for their activity. But if those homeless people collected glass bottles, made them into weapons, and went around killing pigeons for food, you'd be like, "I'm calling the cops! There's a pigeon hunter on the loose in my neighborhood!" The cops, of course, would tase the shit out of you. Then they would violate all kinds of civil rights of everyone in a 20 block radius. That's the LAPD for you. Injustice much?

Anyway, I'm sure there's something else that could be gathered instead of wool. What about those plastic grocery bags? I will admit to having a collection of them, and it is a fantastical collection, because I always imagine as I ball up yet another plastic bag that I will someday find a purpose for it and the other 60 bags under my sink. Of course, since I don't make a habit of needing to put things in plastic bags, this never happens. So really, let's say that from now on, woolgatherers just got themselves a pardon, and people engaged in absentminded idle fantasies shall henceforth be known as baggatherers. I like the way the two g's looks in there. Bagga. Therers. No, it's bag and gatherers, silly dictionary. Oh, fine, we'll keep it the way it is. Jerk.