Last night I dreamed that Sam died. Was killed, actually. Some people killed him until he died. It was sad.

Actually, the way things went was, I got a note from some woman who was a rising star in the RinkForum. (I'd never heard of her -- latent guilt feelings over not participating so much nowadays? U B teh jUd63.) The note was an announcement that Sam had been killed; the perps were a bunch of punk kids who got ticked off at the comeuppance Sam had wittily administered to their idiotic forum posts.

(This probably stems from some now-deleted posts in the older Forum, in which some kid apparently reading from a dictionary of street slang vowed to come and "bust caps" in our collective hindquarters unless we "reckanized". Several of us managed to get in quite a lot of ridicule before Sam deleted the thread.)

According to the note, against all probability these kids learned Sam's whereabouts and showed up to actually perform the grisly deed. To make matters worse, their next stated target was the mofo called "Issachar". Strangely, the worst feeling in the dream was pity for poor Leen.

So I drove up to see how she was doing, which took about ten seconds, as road trips in dreams are wont to be truncated. Arriving at night, everything looked perfectly normal; there wasn't even any police tape or other signs of the crime. I reviewed the note again and noticed that it gave the wrong surname for Sam -- something other than "Stoddard", and with two or three silly-sounding middle names thrown in, such as "Maurice". At that moment I realized that this whole series of events could not be real; it had to be a dream. But I didn't wake up; the dream just changed channels on me and went on to something else.

Anyway, I'm quite relieved that, as far as I know, nothing untoward has befallen Sam and Leen, who continue to be TEH RULING. I love you guys, and I'm glad you're not dead or bereaved. Or even named "Maurice".

Iss "Mr. Sandman... doo, doo, doo, doo, doo... you're FIRED!" achar