Contact

Trent slept over last weekend.  We watched Contact, the Jodi Foster movie about first contact with aliens.  Trent hated it; he was begging for it to end.  I thought much of it was boring as well, except for one part: when she traveled through the wormhole to a distant planet.  She landed on an island with the most beautiful beach I've ever seen.  The sand was pure white, the water a clear blue, and the night sky was cast in a velvety purple.  It looked like the coastline of a painting by this artist who does tropical seascapes.  I don't know his name [Christian Lassen], but I wish I did.

This beach inspired me to draw an island for one of my fantasies, called Sandwich Island.  This island is surrounded by a sea of coral.  It has a tourist town called Encinitas; the Corcos jungle, where many apes live; an Andean-looking peak called Maccu Piccu, based on the real place in Peru; and Half Moon Bay, where my perfect beach exists on a limestone coast.  The fantasy involves Lauren, my latest crush at school.  Denise and Amy are in it too.  Basically, I save them from a volcano just before it erupts.  We survive the eruption and end up living in a jungle mansion on the beach for the rest of our lives.

Frequently I dream up fantasies like these.  I like how they draw me out of the real world so I don't have to deal with it.  The prospect of talking to any of these girls in real life is too frightening for me to seriously consider.  Casanova would be ashamed.