by Jason George

Sen. Barack Obama's autobiography is entitled Dreams From My Father, but nowhere in that book do the dreams involve writing on hamburger buns, eating ballots or Obama chasing people through the streets of New York.

Those dreams, in all their nonsensical glory, are courtesy of a new Web site, "I Dream of Barack," and its companion, "I Dream of Hillary," where people submit their own overnight observations about the Democratic candidates. The project is the brainchild of Canadian author Sheila Heti, who came up with the idea last month when a friend recounted a dream about Clinton.

"I just thought it was so beautiful," Heti said by telephone from Toronto.

Since launching a few weeks ago, the sites have caught dreams from across the globe. And Heti even recently had her own Obama dream, but she suspects it was the result of working on the sites all day.

"I met Obama at a mall, and he was kind of hitting on me in a way, and I was kind of bewildered," the 31-year-old fiction writer said.

"He then sent me an e-mail saying he was coming to town, and the idea was to hook up with him.

"There was all this anxiety because I have a boyfriend in real life and I didn't want to cheat on him, but hey — it's Obama," she said, laughing.

"I ended up not," she added, sounding a bit proud of her subconscious.

Why folks besides Heti are having these dreams — and whether they're even happening as they're submitted — is of course an unknown, but there do seem to be some patterns emerging, Heti said.

"The Obama dreams seem to be more twisty and move around a lot. But the Clinton dreams seem to be more static," she said.

As a Canadian, Heti cannot vote for either candidate; but if she could, she's not sure whom she'd support.

"It would be a Democrat," she said.

That's not why she says she left out Sen. John McCain. Instead, she focused on Clinton and Obama because she suspects the historic nature of their contest prompts people to think about politics in a new way.

"I just think that they have this very strong symbolic power. It's the first time a black man has run, and it's the first time a woman has run."

On the Web:

http://www.idreamofhillaryidreamofbarack.com/