I had a late night and if there’s any such thing as a weed hangover, yeah, I had that, too. I’d hit the “snooze” button on my alarm three times already and the dog was going nuts, so I summoned every last ounce of willpower I had, dragged myself from the haven of my warm, soft sheets, and started my day.

I wasn’t feeling much more awake by the time I made it to my computer to figure out what would be the first story of the day for MetalSucks. As I browsed my e-mail and RSS feed to see what news had transpired since last night, I saw a headline on Lambgoat:

Asking Alexandria to support Korn on U.S. tour

I glanced at the story and saw that Head’s other shitty band, Love and Death, would also play on the trek.

Ah, fuck, I thought. I’m still asleep. There was no way Asking Alexandria were actually going on tour with Korn; that’s the kind of disaster Nostradamus would have foretold, a Freddy Vs. Jason scenario that only Hollywood could imagine. I’m still asleep, and I’m having an anxiety dream I told myself.

I sighed. Oh well. The alarm should be re-awakening me for real at any moment. It would suck to have to do this whole routine all over again, but maybe I’d wake up to some good news.

The alarm didn’t blare, though, and I remembered a key lesson from the movie Inception: time moves faster in a dream than it does in real life. So even if I only had another, say, thirty seconds until the alarm finally did go off, that was a not insubstantial amount of time in the dream world.

Alright, I thought. What should I do with this precious moment of lucid dreaming? I had tried to teach myself to dream lucidly many times, and had never had much luck. So actually realizing I was in a dream suddenly seemed like a gift — I now had access to a world of infinite possibilities, limited only by my imagination.

I decided to have a three-way with Scarlett Johansson and Olivia Wilde.

I was already undressed and in the bed when I realized that neither Scarlett nor Olivia had materialized. Hm. That was odd. I tried to concentrate on the two women — I mean really concentrate — thinking they would magically appear at any second, giggling, telling me how sexy they find my beer gut.

But no. I was still alone. And the dog was looking at me like I was nuts. Even in my dreams…

Well, fuck this, I thought. If I can’t have a little fun, I might as well wake up.

But still, the alarm never rang.

I decided to take extreme measures: I got up, walked over to my stove, turned it on, and without a millisecond’s hesitation, stuck my hand into the fire, hypothesizing that, surely, this act would awaken me from my slumber.

“FUCK!” I screamed, an intense, searing pain shooting through my entire arm. My hand instinctively yanked itself from the flame, the skin bubbling already, the pain crying out for an immediate cocktail of Vicodin and Stoli. I ran to the sink, turned on the cold water, and stuck my hand beneath the running water. Not since I first heard the opening moments of “Fuel” had I felt such severe torment.

In fact, in such agony was I that it took me a moment to realize:

This is no dream. THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING!!!

Korn. Asking Alexandria. Head’s other shitty band. They were all going on tour. TOGETHER.

Oh my God, my mind reeled. Nostradamus didn’t predict this… but The Bible did!!! The tour was but one act shy of embodying The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

I bandaged my wounded hand, rushed back to my computer, and began to check the tour pages of various other bands: ICP… Limp Bizkit… Emmure… Winds of Plague… Crazy Town… were any of them available to join this tour? Were ALL of them potentially available?!?!?!

I realized this situation was wholly out of my control. If The End were, indeed, about to arrive, there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I fell to my knees — and for the first time since I was a foolish, naive little boy, I prayed.

9/26 Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
9/27 New York, NY @ Roseland Ballroom
9/28 Worcester, MA @ The Palladium
9/30 Toronto, ON @ TBD
10/1 Detroit, MI @ TBD
10/2 Chicago, IL @ The Riviera Theatre
10/3 Minneapolis, MN @ TBD
10/10 Los Angeles, CA @ TBD
10/12 Las Vegas, NV @ TBD

[via Lambgoat]