Bobcat Eggs

Most of the time my dreams give me a bucket of nonsense, random images and events thrown together with no meaning at all, like Muppets fighting a war on the backs of dinosaurs, or diving into a bowl of salmon eggs to discover a magical underwater realm. (Both actual dreams.)

But every now and then a dream will give me something that's worthwhile, like a new song, or a plot resolution to a story I'm writing. It doesn't happen often, but it happens often enough that I'm content to put up with the fluff I get for the other 99% of sleep.

Recently a dream supplied me with a handy new phrase. In this dream, I was working on the assembly line of a very cheap factory that took chicken eggs and packaged them into cardboard cartons. The place was so cheap that they couldn't be bothered making sure all the eggs actually came from chickens. They just threw in any old egg until they had a dozen, sealed it up, and called it good. Me, being the investigative sort, went hunting around until I found the back room where the eggs were collected, and there I discovered the shocking truth: that the mysterious "other" eggs were coming from an assortment of quails, ducks, and - naturally - bobcats.

I'll bet you didn't even know bobcats laid eggs, did you? They do in dreams, though... nice chicken-sized pale green ones. Pretty.

So after I warned everyone in my dream to avoid purchasing from the disreputable egg company, I woke up with that phrase on my lips - "Bobcat eggs." I use it to describe something that's just plain wrong. For example, if someone suggested using babies as oven mitts, I might well respond, "Bobcat eggs!" Here are some other bobcat eggs I stumbled upon recently.

Senator Mike Gravel is running for President. This video shows why you should vote for him. For me, I might have put it in the "just plain strange" category, but the fact that now I can't get that picture of his face out of my head classifies it as a bobcat egg.

I've managed to avoid every bit of Paris Hilton in the news, but it hasn't been easy. Don't we have anything else to be keeping tabs on? Like... a war? The rest of the world? The topper was when CNN broadcast the two-hour program titled "Why Are We Fixated on Paris Hilton?" to which I said, "I'm not fixated on her. You guys are! Will you please report something else?" Next, I suppose, they'll have a show called, "Why Are News Programs So Obsessed with Figuring Out Why We Are Fixated on Paris Hilton?" Bobcat eggs.

This one is funny, but also somehow disturbingly wrong.


The toymaker says, "This Cold War Unicorns Play Set allows you to play out the intense struggle between two global superpowers in the majestic fantasy world of the Unicorn! Can the Communist Unicorn’s horn of classless social structure hold up against the Freedom Unicorn’s hooves of capitalist opportunity?"

Nice, but not as bobcat eggs as the Avenging Unicorn Play Set with Real Koala-Impaling Action.

Happy 4th of July, y'all!