"Is Your Czar a Prophet?" or "My Lunch with the Recently Deposed Intelligence Czar" or "Why the hell does this guy still call himself the Czar?"

Let me start by wishing all of you a Happy New Year and thanking you for bearing with me through what is sure to be a nerve trying post.

I believe that I have prophetic dreams. Yes, after last night's dream it has become very clear to me that not only am I "Josephus, Czar of all Lunches", but I may also be "Josephus, Lunch Prophet". I shouldn't really be surprised by this as throughout history Leaders of Men have often shown a knack for supernatural powers, (usually they were dictators whose superpowered stories were spread to the masses by a secret police force but that doesn't mean they were made up.)

My powers of lunch prophecy have displayed themselves before but never as obvious as last night. I've often experience a "Lunch deja vu" in the form of eating a lunch that I had foreseen eating before. Or tasting a a sandwich and knowing exactly what it would taste like before the first bite. I had always chalked up these manifestations of my abilities to the fact that I rarely try anything new for lunch, so in effect I have tasted just about everything before, but that was simply your Czar's over active humility trying to explain away his gift. The truth is I regularly know exactly what I am going to eat well before I even thin about eating it. This is known in the superpower world as the power of precognition. And as my dream last night will show the sceptical among you, Your Czar is a very powerful "precog".

So on to the dream: I dreamt that I was out late drinking at a house party somewhere in a "tony" (czarish for fancy) DC neighborhood. I was regaling the other guests with lunch stories and other amusing anecdotes when I realized that I had been overserved. I immediately realized that it was foolish to try and drive home and came to the conclusion that it would be smart to simply go around the party and ask if anyone had keys to one of the houses in the neighborhood so I could rest (I know this makes no sense, but it was a dream so just bear with me). A young woman almost immediately came to my aid and offered me the keys to such a place with the caveat, that the family who lives there is supposed to be out of town. "Supposed to be..." Good enough for me, so I headed out. I arrived at the darkened home and proceeded to crawl into a slightly open 2nd floor window (shush!).

I found a comfortable single bed in a child's room and slept the sleep of an overserved czar. (I was sleeping in my dream! Isn't that kind of strange since I was asleep in real life too? Is it true you can't preform mathematical equations while you're dreaming?) So I awake the next morning to the sound of activity outside the room. This is not a good sign as I realize I am in someone else's home. I quickly dress and decide to investigate instead of sneaking out the window. Someone is vacuuming and talking on the cell phone about how sorry she feels for her boss. (Okay now this is getting annoying even to me and I know how it ends, I'll speed things along.) She says that her boss' new job gives him less power, pay and responsibility and that he is being effectively "castrated" by his boss. Castration annoys me so I decide to investigate further. I find a desk and start to rifle thorugh it. CIA documents are strewn around the desk with...with...little care ("wild abandon" seemed a little much.) On the walls I notice pictures of old men with foreign officials and several of a black (read "African American") woman with a gap in her front teeth. Where the hell am I?

Then I realize what is going on. The kind young woman from the party (who happens to also to be the vacuuming girl) has given me the keys to the home of Intelligence Czar John Negroponte. And apparently he has just received a demotion from his "boss" none other than President Geo. Bush II. Fate has put two Czars together for a reason. (Wrapping up now...)

I immediately reveal myself to the vacuum girl and I announce, "Call your boss sweetie. This Czar is taking that Czar to lunch!!!"

So that was the dream, and I wake up to hear on NPR that John Negrponte has indeed been demoted from Director of National Intelligence to 2nd in command at the State Department. Could it be that I saw this happening in my dream, or could it be that I heard it on npr during one of 7 snooze cycles this morning and incorporated it into my dream?

Science will never know the answer.

So today obviously the topic has something to do with dreams, getting demoted and delusions of grandeur. Knock yourselves out with that.

And I already know what you are having for lunch. Tell me so we can see how powerful I truly am.

Happy 2007 and WFL?