They say that everyone gets their pre-defense nightmare sometime in that last month. I had my odd dream this morning, then woke up and went to the gym. WARNING: long, weird story. The good side is that it didn't scare me, it just caused me to shake my head and say "Well, that ain't happening."
As the dream went, they somehow did a massive renovation to Ross Hall for the occasion, adding a classic Roman ampitheater to the 6th floor. Some friends in the program returned for the occasion from all over the country, and the place was packed.
For some reason, I started running errands right before the defense, then remembered at the last minute and ran into the ampitheater. We got started, and some unnamed stranger joined the panel with an ax to grind. He started into something feisty, and Zach Braff appeared to argue with him.
Braff argued that he owned an inner-city restaurant with which he combatted white flight issues by employing only African-Americans. Whether he owns a restaurant in real life, I have no idea.
The other guy started screaming things like "so you want black people to depend on you for a paycheck, and you cut them off the second they disappoint you. That's dependency, not freedom," and railed off all the old 'wage slavery' arguments the South used to make.
He and Braff went at it for a while until the unnamed stranger finally turned to me, pointed his finger and declared "This book shows that you hate African-Americans, you racist, and you wish slavery never ended."
Imaginary me didn't take that very well. Things got "military" in language and really loud, then I woke up to use the toilet.
None of that ever actually happened. Probably for the best.