This is my favorite quote from nephew Christopher, said today at his third birthday party... note that he usually refers to himself in the third person, and always refers to himself as "boy," ala Tarzan's movie son, after being called "good boy" once to often:

"Boy needs Evil Gollum toy!"

He apparently won't go anywhere without a rubber Smeagol action figure, including to the tub, the bed, or to grandma's house. (He apparently has also watched all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy more often than I have, but hey, who am I to question today's parents? I hear they're holding the Nightmare on Elm Street Series until his fourth B-day...)

I'm thinking about buying this audiobook I just found on Audible called The Procrastinator's Handbook. Ostensibly its about getting things done NOW but I prefer to think it would offer even better and more effective ways to not get things done at all. Of course, for me, they need only one chapter and it needs only one paragraph with three words: "Surf the Internet."

I've got an entire day here all to write. No wife (she's off at agility seminar), no snow to remove, no day-job distractions, and the dogs think it's just another weekday so they're snoozing. Meanwhile, I'm not being productive. I'm answering e-mails and trying to buy TurboTax on eBay and I just found out that Google is now using answers.com instead of dictionary.com to link to a word's definition, which is kinda freakin' me out. (I haven't touch a paper dictionary or thesaurus in three years.)

Time to get past this, though. I haven't worked on the novel since Dec. 20 (and before that since the plane ride back from Hawaii in October... apparently I'm good for about a thousand words a month).

I just hope I can stop surfing... it looks like this Answers.com site is pretty cool...

My wife is perhaps the most self-sufficient person I know. Except for the fact that she can't reach stuff in the very highest cupboards in our kitchen because she is, I believe, about 3 foot 4 inches in height, there's not much I think she needs help with in life.

So it always throws me for a loop when she asks me to read over something she's written or edited. She's so good at this stuff that my backup inspection is like having a kid with a $69 telescope from Wal-Mart double check the theories by Stephen Hawking.

It was even more egregious last night when she asked me to read over some article she'd brought home to edit, as I was three sheets to the wind (perhaps four, if that's allowed) by 7pm and trying desperately not to cut myself as I chopped the heads off some broccoli and cauliflower to steam as a side dish to our store-bought-and-oh-so-delicious rotisserie chicken. Still, the article had her steamed (I could tell, as she was verbally abusing it as she read), and she wanted my opinion, for what little it would be worth.

The article was attempting to extol the virtues of the various multi-cultural aspects of attending my old alma mater -- a college that is about as white as a mayonnaise sandwich on Wonder Bread in a snow bank. The target audience: minority students.

As a marketing person for the admissions office, Bonny faces a very strange battle: the goal is to get in the door more minority students (sorry... students of an "under-represented group" is the PC term the college uses). To do this, they have to make it sound like they've got a thriving community of minority students -- because no one wants to show up and feel like Franklin in Peanuts. Yet that's what happens, and I can only assume such freshmen kids feel tricked. But you probably can't get a lot of minorities to attend by telling the truth --that it's a school where rich white kids practice getting their drunk on.

It's a Catch-22 that I railed about last night with the coherence one can only master when brain cells are pickled. I'm not completely sure what I argued for or against, but I believe the gist was this: why tell only minority students about the multi-cultural life at IC? You should send this to all the potential incoming students, especially our local central-upstate NY Caucasians. If they are racist enough not to want to go to IC because of this "overwhelming" presence of people who don't look like them then Good Frickin' Riddance.

Which I'm sure didn't help Bon at all.

Where I did help was a couple of days ago when she needed to brainstorm some taglines for a program called College Countdown, a series of e-mail blasts they are sending out to kids considering attending Ithaca. The bunch they had in come up with all used horrible words like "process," and "consideration," like "Smart Advice To Navigate the Search Process" or "The Guide to Smart College Consideration." Ew.

So, I started out mocking with:

So the wife seems to have been quite understanding about my advanced drunkenness before 7pm on a school night. She even made me read an article for herwork, all meant to trick "multicultural" students (read: black) into going to my whitebread alma mater. I yelled and screamed about it for a while, but it's not like she didn't know that.

Now we'll sit and watch American Idol and laugh at the crazy people who sing very badly.

Drunk on Wednesday. It's a good thing.

It's 6:30pm and I'm more than a trifle buzzed.

I'm not sure why but I decided that as I wait for my wife -- who I call Squantotilian!-- that I would have a couple of screw drivers. I'm listening to the end of an audio book, and it was either that or try to do something like exercise or do dishes. Oh wait, I did do dishes. But No exercise. Fuck that, holmes. (spelled with an L, note).

These ain't wimpy screw drivers either. Weee!

I have to get some vegbitables (sp?) ready to steam though, as Squantocalifragilioustiousis is bring home a chicken from Tops, one of those, whattayacall, the chickens the kind they turn around and broil, I forget, as I'm having a hard time spelling and I really am glad I am typing this in MS Word, the smartest software EVER!

Need to sit down. Room is spinning. Oh shit, I think Squanto is home. I'm fucked.

This time of year, it's all about snow, I guess...

Talking to the wife today in IMs, I was telling her "the upside of my day today: the sun was out enough that you can now see actual blacktop on our driveway!"

And then I realized, this is what constitutes a victory in my live these days, and was brought low.

The Wife's -- who i call Squanto! -- response: "buck up little camper." And I did, knowing that the battery on my tractor would soon have enough charge to start turn over, or I'd be getting a new god damn battery.

Last night I was starting to feel it: SAD.

As in Seasonal Affective Disorder, AKA the winter blues, AKA the Arctic blahs, AKA the misery brought on a brain by nothing but snow and grey skies.

I'd just had an annoying day, was waiting impatiently to be paid for an eBay auction, and so sick of just about everything. The day should have concluded with a relaxing, fun-filled Zen-like clearing of my driveway of all snow when my snow blower started backfiring and idling low, effectively killing all snow clear activities, since the battery on my tractor with the plow is dead. I started drinking Smirnoff Ice's before the Wife even got home.

So I was please as punch this morning—after I replaced the snow blower's spark plug to great success and got the tractor's battery on the trickle charger—to find that it was perfectly natural to be depressed yesterday: January 24 has been mathematically proven to be the most psychologically depressing day of the year! It has something to do with debt, and weather and low motivational levels. Makes sense to me.

(I feel much better today, but no promises on how I'll be at 5pm...)

Canine Edition

Name: Siren
Aliases: Poop-dog, Bitchy, Princess, the Squirrel, Boo, Skidmark, Griffith's No Cause for Alarm,
Titles: Agility AX, OAJ, PD1, FD, NAC, NJC, NGC; Canine Good Citizen
Age: 8 (April 12, 1996)
Species: Labrador Retriever
Color: Poop-colored (chocolate)
Affiliation: The Idiots
Origin: Born in Easthampton MA, the victim of a cruel joke of fate in that her grandfather may also be her father (unconfirmed), Siren was adopted as a puppy and raised by inexperienced humans to become the house neurotic.
Powers: "Fish-eye" stare, ability to drink copious amounts of salt water, ability to mind-control humans into playing ball.
Weaknesses: Elbow displasia, tendency to vomit when her stomach is empty, obsessed with bouncing orbs called "balls."
Attitude: "Play. Now. I said 'Play NOW,' goddammit. FINE, you stupid human. Move the eff over on the couch."

Name: Kylie
Aliases: Piglet, Care-Bear, Blondie, Chiclet, Cooter, Nightwind's Justa Flirt
Titles: Canine Good Citizen, Working Certificate
Age: 5 (June 12, 1999)
Species: Labrador Retriever
Color: Yellow
Affiliation: The Idiots
Origin: Abandoned by her original owners after coming north to have a single puppy litter -- a "lit" -- Kylie came to her current home overweight and feeling underloved. She quickly got over it (and lost her pregnancy fat).
Powers: Can spin in incredibly tight circles without getting dizzy, can reduce surface temperature of nose to range of absolute zero while staying moist, can spray mucus almost 360 degrees when sneezing. Emits full growls and yelping barks as she dreams.
Weaknesses: Cuddle impaired, low IQ even for a canine. Obsessed with biting water from a hose.
Attitude: "Love me Love me Love me!"

Name: Caper
Aliases: Capeman, Cay-cay, Monkey, Monkey-Boy, Ass-boy, Nightwind's Leap of Faith
Titles: Agility AXJ, OA, NAC, NGC, NJC, AD, PD1; also JH; Canine Good Citizen
Age: 6 (Dec. 5, 1998)
Species: Labrador Retriever
Color: Yellow
Affiliation: The Idiots
Origin: Born in a "breeding program" with the specter of death over him -- his mother's uterus was perforated as a sibling headed for the light -- Caper was adopted and taken in by now experienced humans who managed to raise him to be less crazy than is "sisters." Caper's good looks and friendly personality have always been his true weapons.
Powers: Sad soulful brown eyes, expert cuddling (even on a lap), smiles like a human, can swallow uncooked chicken wings whole, once drank a gallon of used turkey-frier grease with no ill effects, depsite castration at age 1 can still sometimes sport wood (AKA "the devil's lipstick").
Weaknesses: Occasional ass leakage; can not prevent himself from smelling asses, even of humans, leading to many a goose for the unsuspecting.
Attitude: "I love you I love you I love you! Now let me sit on your lap!"

Last night, I started to dream a mystery. Apparently, I was the detective, because in the dream, everyone in my family kept telling me how much they were impressed with my deductive prowess. (They said nothing of my induction, however.)

The mystery involved my father's military service. My initial goal was to track down the person responsible for "recruiting" my father into the Air Force almost 45 years ago. While in real life his service took place between wars (Korea and Vietnam) and Dad spent most of his time, I believe, working at an office in Great Britian, in my dream reality his service was quite the harrowing experience and thus in need of some quick detective work to find out who was responsible.

Somehow we -- the family, with me in the lead like a modern day Poirot, sans the "meticulous moustache"—ended up at an old folks home, talking to an ancient black man, who sat in a rocker still wearing his equally ancient military uniform, frayed and fading. I questioned him and was glad to find him very lucid and, what's more, very cognizant of his past and the man we sought, the very recruiter who tricked my father into joining up in 1961. The old man in the rocker even knew the recruiter's name and told me, but either he mumbled or my ears popped -- I couldn't make out what he said. I asked him to spell the name, but as he did, his words were still garbled. Was that R-E-N?

I was momentarily distraught -- I did not want to make this man feel he wasn't being clear, or cause him embarrassment. But knowing I had to have this name, for the third time asked I him to tell me the recruiter's name. He did, as if I'd asked him for the first time.

He said the recruiter'sname was: "Irene."

I think it is probably pretty clear to anyone who's read my blog that I'm kind of like Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. I'm not talking about the weight or the facial hair or the manner of speaking ("Worst. Blog. Ever!")-- because, yeah, I've got that. All I lack is the Android's Dungeon shingle from which to sell my priceless collectables. And the pony tail.

What CBG and I have most in common is that we're complete whores for material goods.

Knowing that, I found it interesting that a few friends of mine have forwarded to me in the last week this e-mail calling for a "Not One Damn Dime Day" on the day of the inauguration, to teach the Bushies a lesson by not spending any money, basically boycotting the economy. Yeah, that'll help. It's about as effective as protesting topless bars by going topless.

It reminds me of that classic piece of idiocy called "Turn On Your Lights," meant to support the family's effected by Columbine a few years ago.

It was nice to see that even big-time famous author types fall for this: read Neal Pollack's spot-on take on NODDD after he was forwarded the e-mail by none other than Stephen King himself. Pollack spells out perfect why this is, at best, a knee-jerk reactionary thing to do. It won't prove anything and doesn't work as a protest. It's pointless. (Maybe the way to anti-Bushites should have protested was getting more of them out to vote last year... naw.)

There's actually a Sniggletesque name for this kind of "protest": slacktivism. NODDD is so unrealistic as a protest that it even has an entry on Snopes.com, the urban-legend debunking site. In fact, it's the first link you find when looking up NODDD on Google.

Will I rush out tomorrow and buy a few books and DVDs just to prove it wrong? No. But will I be in my house using electricity and natural gas and heating oil and Internet bandwidth and food and water and gasoline (snow blower, if needed) and indoor plumbing? Yes.

All of which I'll be paying for.

(Yes, I know the focus is on the "retail economy" but guess what? I've got relatives that work in retail. Guess who the first person is hurt when that economy takes a dump? The one's on the front lines, at the cash registers. The people in power will still be having their billion-dollar parties in D.C.)

I guess if I really loved my country, I'd unplug everything I own and curl into a fetal position under the blankets for the entire day, my lips growing cracked and dry from lack of moisture, trying not to soil myself as the hunger pangs wrack my body. Some patriot I am.

I'd make a good cartoon character on the Simpson's though. Maybe I could be Comic Book Guy's cousin.

While there's no man on earth I love or admire more than my father, the simple fact is we really don't have all that much in common.

He thinks The Simpsons (and most animation) is stupid. He votes Republican for no reason. He's a technophobe (yet we bought him a computer). He runs his wide-screen TV in wide-screen mode even for shows that aren't in wide-screen, so everyone looks short and fat—he can't stand those 'black bands' on the ends—nor can he stand the "black-bands" on top and bottom of wide-screen movies show on standard TVs. He can fall asleep at anytime and in any position—I need to pull an all-nighter to do that. He's got a memory like a sieve, while I've got one like a steel... something-er-other. I forget.

However, the things we do have in common are great, maybe because he taught some of them to me. We both read constantly. We both have toast for breakfast just about every day. Neither of us are big outdoors-men (much to my brother's consternation). We both put on too much aftershave every day. He loves to make short visits and return to his own home: he once made a day trip out to see us in Massachusetts, which was a six hour drive. One way.

But when I was a kid, one thing we shared in common most of all might have been our utter devotion to the beverage Coca-Cola. There was always a six-pack in the fridge—or a 2-liter bottle after they made the scene (remember when the commercials showed them bouncing off floors, never shattering? Oh, what we take for granted now in our jaded world of plastic...). The need for a Coke with every meal was great, we once almost burned the house down going to get some.

Coke was such a big part of my life at home, right up until college (when I broke the habit) that whenever I consider a drink for my dad, I always think Coke. It's automatic. Hell, one of the greatest gifts I ever gave to anyone in my entire life was when I got my father-in-law to get one of his friends to build my dad his own Coke machine out of a little dorm-room refrigerator.

Dad stopped drinking Coke a long time ago. The Coke machine was actually hooked up to canisters of orange soda most of the time.

He didn't give up caffeine. In fact, he moved to far more caffeinated items like his current favorite, Mello Yello, the Coca-Cola Company's version of Mountain Dew, which he also drinks.

Various Asides:

The American Beverage Association says Mello Yello has 35 milligrams of caffeine per 8 ounce serving, compared to only 23mg in a Coke. Dew has 37mg.

Because I know she'll be disappointed if I don't say this, my mom likes to point out that she calls both Mello Yello and Mountain Dew by the sobriquet "Panther Piss."

Has anyone seen the new Jolt Cola design that's shown here ? Holy crap, that's cool. I remember drinking this in high school and my friend Keith, pretending to be completely hopped up on Jolt-y goof balls, bit an empty can in half. He cut his lip, but it was worth it. Now though, they make a version with Ginseng. How 90's.

All this talk of dad and his favorite soder-pop leads me to the year 1996. In January that year, the DisneyWorld resort in Orlando, Florida was celebrating its 25th Anniversary since opening its doors. They even glammed up Cinderall's castle to look like a cake. Seriously. And I got to attend. For free. And it sucked.

Because I was working. At the time, the magazine I was at, FamilyPC, was still half owned by Disney and our bosses somehow got us involved in doing Web-related stuff at the show. We were one of the few, if only doing that kind of thing, since the Web was only about two years old at the time. So, I got flown to Florida and for a week I sat on a very hard wooden bench inside the "Innovations" "InnoVentions" Pavilion at Epcot, under the shadow of the giant golf-ball called (at the time [likely still is]) Spaceship Earth, coding HTML all day long as park visitors walked by. I was like a monkey in a cage banging on a typewriter. And my ass was very sore. I should have flung feces at them.

Apparently, one of the few surviving tchotchkes of that trip is a special 25th Anniversary round cardboard container showing Mickey, Goofy and the Genie from Aladdin . It holds a glass 8 ounce bottle of Classic Coke (back when they still were recovering from the multi-year debacle called "New Coke.")

I apparently gave it to my parents. And last time they came to visit, Dad brought it out and left it with me. He didn't want to drink it back in 1996 apparently. And he doesn't want it now.

Which is good, because the "drink by" date listed on the bottle looks to be February 1997.

And now I sit and consider the possibilities. Do I drink it, just for the hell of it? Pour it out? Or save it and pass this on to my nephews, maybe trick them into drinking it while they're still gullible enough to fall for it, before the television teaches them to mistrust all adults? The one turning two next month is, after all, already addicted to it and when I talk to my brother on the phone I can hear is son in the background chanting the never ending query of thirst: "Coke? Coke? Coke?"

Decisions, decisions.

I'll tell you though, if Dad was here, I'd make him share that eight year old bottle with me, anyway. While we ate some toast.

And then I'd make him watch the season 4 DVDs of The Simpsons.

I should clarify that this is probably not my first all-nighter in 12 years really... tho it is my first one that didn't involve a red-eye flight. So I think that gives it a certain specialness.

Also, Earl Grey, hot, is yummy. But only with three sugars.

6:11am. Wowee zowee.

Crazy. It's 5:42am and I'm still up. I wrote the review I said I probably wouldn't... I figure I'm going to want to have some work done when this whole caffeine induced insanity wears itself out sometime around mid-morning. To stave that off, time for some Earl Grey, hot!

This is not good. It's 3:44 in the morning and I'm not remotely tired.

Apparently, this is what happens when you have a large chocolate mousse from a local bakery while watching Alias. I didn't realize the primary ingredient was methamphetamine.

At this rate, I could be looking at pulling my first all-nighter since New Year's Eve going into 1992. The day after that, my brother made me go skiing with him in the most frigid cold ever, which was exacerbated by my exhaustion, no doubt. So I always feel cold at the thought of all-nighters. It's not helped that I've got an industrial fan running down here in the basement to dry out the carpet that was saturated by the flood of rainwater that came down the back stairs today. I should get a sweater...

Perhaps I'll write a short story... I've been reading through some stuff I wrote back in my college "Personal Essay" course and think there's a couple worth revamping for the blog. You know, for posterity.

I should probably just write a review for my day-job that I've been putting off... tho probably not.

Anything's better than watching this guy on Conan scream into a microphone. (And who knew Conan was on at 3am?)

We're living in a golden age of television, quality wise. When I think about the sheer number of hours of absolute magic I saw from "movies" last year versus the same on TV, is there any comparison? Does tripe like Van Helsing deserve to even be considered in the same breath as the series ending of Angel? (The answer: no.)

Seriously, name a time in the history of the medium when there was this much good stuff on: West Wing, Lost and Alias on one night alone. 24 is a roller-coaster ride. ER continues to limp along with occasional fits of life (and can deliver better than most "feature films"). The procedural chains of CSI and Law & Order churn out story after beguiling story. Medium is a new gem from the fantastic producer Glenn Gordon Caron, who did Moonlighting when it was good, and who's last show was the fantastic Now and Again (if only Medium had as good a theme song, it would be almost perfect). The only things missing are shows from Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin (West Wing no longer counts) and maybe a good Star Trek. (I admit, I've kinda given up on my old fav, David E. Kelley). Survivor and The Amazing Race continue to prove that "reality shows" don't have to suck (though, let's face it, we should just go back to calling them game shows). Not so good on the sitcom front, but who cares when there's four Daily Show with Jon Stewart episodes each week? Cable has some amazing shows the networks can't handle: The Shield, Nip/Tuck, Sopranos, The Wire, and more.

And not all of these shows are even on my watch list. But what makes this age great is more than just TiVo (which I seem to be using as a way to watch old films with Peter Sellers and Cary Grant) -- it’s the age of everything on DVD. Entire seasons of old shows. What's left that's NOT out on DVD?

I mentioned before that I've got like six seasons of Star Trel" Deep Space Nine on video cassette -- greatest Trek ever, by the way -- which I know I'll never watch. Why? Because all seven seasons of the show are out on glorious DVD! With extras! It would cost $636 to get them all brand new, but that's what eBay is for.

It's true for great shows from the Dick Van Dyke Show to Buffy to The Simpsons. You never have to miss anything. Even shows that never aired on TV.

Of course, I'm talking about Firefly -- a show so good it makes you want to cry when you realize out there are no more. Fox showed them out of order... playing the pilot after seven other eps played out of sequence. This didn't help people catch on, so the ratings never grew and it got clipped. Yet,this is a show so good that despite Fox's ineptitude, Universal gave a greenlight to a feature film based on the show. Same cast, crew and producers.

Which brings me to the greatest thing about this trend of whole seasons of DVDs -- shows that got even less of a chance than Firefly can still get the full treatment. And here I'm talking about a little show that no one every saw in 2003 that got only four episodes under its belt -- in order, at least! -- before it went belly up: Wonderfalls.

Great writing. A premise similar even to another show -- Joan of Arcadia (which I've never seen) -- where a girl hears voices and acts upon what they tell her. However, Wonderfalls was done with the wit expected of the writers like Tim Minear who was a producer on the much loved Angel (and Firefly). (From what I can tell of Joan's commercials, it's pretty preachy.)

Wonderfalls comes out on DVD with all 13 episodes of the show, nine of which never aired. That’s 566 minutes of pure entertainment (less if you fast forward through the credits, but still.) I recommend it highly. Get it cheap now on Amazon -- it ships Feb. 1. You will love it. And I won't share my already pre-ordered discs, so you might as well buy it, so there. Hopefully it will sell like crazy, make Fox regret canceling it, and get a movie deal of its own. Probably not, but hey... a bad Wonderfalls episode is still better than most other big Hollywood movies made today.

I was going to leave everyone hanging, but I've heard from all three of the regular readers of my site, clamoring to know what happened with the video submission for Survivor: Wisconsin. (I'm pretty sure the next one is near Milwaukee.)

We did go back out on Saturday morning to try and shoot some more takes of my try-out video. We talked and talked all night about it, wrote up a little script, planned what to do different, really started to treat it like a series video production. The Wife said at one point, "Video production is a pain in the ass." And she's right.

Standing out in the snow and freezing rain as it came down, the wife holding the digital camera with an umbrella over it, we did about three more takes.

They all sucked.

So I scrapped the whole project. I mean, if I can't send them Kubrick quality, I'm not going to do it. No frickin' way. I have standards.

Well, actually, no. I don't. I went back to our older VHC-C camcorder that we'd use the night before and found the one take I did like. I had to dub it over to a regular VHS cassette, however, because that's the only way they'll accept it. But I couldn't find a blank tape.

I've probably got a 100 of the stupid black plastic bricks around here (with stuff like the entire run of Twin Peaks, the mini-series V (both the original and sequel, but not the series), and about six seasons of carefully recorded Deep Space Nines, all recorded long before DVRs and TiVo. They're like the equivalent of having stone tablets still around after you bought a Gutenberg printing press. But even with not a single blank tape, I found myself unwilling to do away with any of the cassettes. I'm such a pack rat.

I stumbled, however, up on a Timon and Pumbaa cartoon on a cassette I'd inherited back when I worked with folks from Disney, some freebie copy of the show starring the Lion King's meerkat and warthog. It had the virtue of being VHS but only having enough tape on it for about 20 minutes of footage -- that means it was lighter than most VHS tapes, and thus cheaper to mail. I put some tape over the tab, popped it into the VCR and dubbed my video over onto it.

Then I spent 20 minutes looking through all the DS9 and Twin Peaks tapes trying to find a label to put over the Timon and Pumbaa sticker on the cassette.

When I was done, I had my completed application (thoroughly checked by my editor, whom I call Squanto), a passport photo taken to renew my passport (required to do the show, so now I need another passport photo to do the renewal), a copy of my renewal form, and the tape squared away in a Priority Mail box. I took it to the PO, driving in ridiculously nasty weather, and I paid for the postage using their in-the-lobby kiosk, which is really not much better than just doing it at home online. When I was done, I put it in a hole in the wall.

And I left.

And that's it. It's all over. If I haven't heard from the producers by March, then I know I'm out. They'll only bring in about 800 people to interview that month (out of 50,000 applicants). That 800 has to be knocked down to 16 or 18.

So... don't get your hopes up.

You just leave that to me... the Sole Survivor. Woo-Hoo!

I seem to be dreaming about death a lot lately. Luckily most of these dreams don't stick with me for long after I wake.

Aside: I told the wife -- whom I call Squanto-licious -- about one of my dreams the other day and she said "You should keep a dream diary next to the bed." To which I replied, "Oh yes, you'd like that when I woke up at 3:47 in the ay-em to grab a pen and a notebook and that would mean I would have to turn on the light so I could write stuff down. You wouldn't mind that at all, considering how long you let me read in bed now." She thought about it a moment, realized that she usually gives me about 5 minutes to read after she decides it's lights out... then she starts elbowing my throat. She agreed that a dream diary next to the bed probably wouldn't do her much good.

Still, even though the details of these dreams have not lingered, what has is that the deaths are all caused by me. Literally, in one dream, I killed three people. I don't remember how, nor exactly why, but I do know that I did it with practiced aplomb. There was nothing too it. At least, not until some time had passed and the guilt started to seep into my consciousness.

The guilt was all I had with me hours later when I got up to feed the dogs.

Doesn't seem quite fair... guilt over a crime I didn't commit except in my noggin. I don't feel guilty when I thinking about doing away with any number of people while awake, such as the people who follow me to close when I pull into my driveway, oh yeah, those fuckers will pay some day with karmic retribution that will hopefully burn them from the inside out.

I'm hoping this phase passes, but just in case, I plan to take a notebook upstairs anyway. I figure if there's got to be a death in the house, it should be my wife killing me. At least then I won't feel too guilty, even if I did wake her up.

Maybe I'll keep the notebook in the bathroom.

Some of the best "names" I've ever read are the fake ones I get in spam, which usually consist of two unrelated words that aren't even names, matched up with a fake middle initial. Favorite today: Ambitiousness F. Depravity.

Three weeks later than I'd hoped, I finally shot my Survivor audition tape today. The hold up was, I don't have a tripod and the wife wasn't able to go outside and hold a camera up until now due to her surgery. But hey, with seven whole days to the deadline of submitting, there's no time like a Friday.

I decided to do it with little planning to make it seem more down to earth, out in the back yard, in the snow. We did about seven takes, four of which I just flubbed by running out of anything to say, two that were blah (one where I grimaced to much according to Bon the camera-gal), and one that seems just right. We're going to try more in the morning when the light is better as well, and decide which one to send in then.

We talked about what it would be like if I were to actually make it on the show (chances are better to be kidnapped and anal probed by aliens), wondering how she'd manage the dogs for seven weeks without me, if my company would let me take a leave that long so I could come back to work (doubtful). It was fun, like having a lottery ticket in hand the night before the big drawing, wondering.

Luckily my wife is a great editor and she also read my Survivor applications and noticed that one of the questions I answered I completely misunderstood and my answer made no sense. So I reprinted that page and filled it out again. My application has a different color ink on every page, making it obvious I took me like a month to fill out, each time with a different pen in hand.

I realized also -- being a technological genius -- that my digital camera does have a video out so I can shoot a video on that and transfer to VHS for the Survivor submission, and still have a digital version of my antics to show here. But I won't post it until March... by that time I should know for sure whether I'm going any further in this, as the producers discretion. Here's hoping. Maybe I'll buy a lottery ticket while I'm at it. And watch the skies for UFOs...

I try to use letter openers, I really do. I have like four cheapy ones -- barely as sturdy as a plastic knife -- that I have placed strategically in mugs holding pens that are in my office and the kitchen of the house (where most mail is sorted and piled before we recycle it as needed). I even have a couple of electric mail openers around here some place, though they suck.

So explain to me why I still feel the need to open envelopes by sliding my index finger below the sealed flap? Last week I did that and sliced the paper into my skin just above the knuckle on the back of the finger. I proceeded to bleed like I was filled with anti-coagulants.

And then, today, I did the same thing -- and sliced right into the same spot. There's blood all over the place as I type this. So, lesson for the day: opening mail is dangerous for many reasons in this age of mail-bomb terrorism, but nothing hurts worse or makes you feel dumber than a paper cut.

Just before New Year's, I found a body next to my mail box, that of an adult female white-tail deer. It had been struck by a vehicle traveling down our road (speed limit: 55MPH plus whatever you want since there's never any cops on it). I could tell this was true based on all the little bits and pieces of car that were strewn along the shoulder of the road, the obvious remnants of a plastic bumper and headlight and all else you'd find on a today's little toy cars.

I called the village office and was told that they couldn't help me because I'm technically in the "town" of Lansing—though my mailing address is Ithaca. Whatever. Turns out to get someone to pick up such a carcass was all a county matter anyway. I called the Tompkin's County highway department and got some voice mail, and left a message telling them where to find the victim.

This was all late on January 30, so the body was left to putrefy next to the mailbox for four days over the holiday weekend (luckily for my nose it wasn't August and 85 degrees). A couple of times I went down to the mailbox to put stuff inside to mail out, and I swear it appeared that the body had shifted a little each time or that the fur was different or even missing —though it really had not changed. It's one of those tricks that dead things play on the living, to make you question your non-belief in otherworldliness.

Today when I got the mail, the deer was gone. The only evidence of the animal's untimely death was some crushed down grass and the plastic bumper parts still on the shoulder of the road.

The Wife—whom I call Switchback Squanto!—told me earlier this week that not long ago she'd been stuck in traffic behind the truck that travels around the county and picks up the decaying roadkill. She watched as two guys had pulled out a 100+ pound deer body by the legs and heaved it into the back of a large dump-truck sized vehicle, tossing it like you would a small child into a pool or lake on a lazy summer day.

I had mentioned to my brother the cop that I'd called the highway department and he'd sagely said they'd be out after the weekend to get it, and he was right. So it's obviously something rural police have to deal with calls about. There's not much I can find online in a cursory search about this job of roadkill removal, and nothing at all locally. I've been wondering though: Who picks it up? County government employees? Freelancers, contracted for pickup and disposal? How do they dispose of them? Burial? Cremation? Dog food factory? Seems like an awful lot of work for bodies that would usually just go back to the soil if they hadn't had the idiocy to walk in front of a fast moving metal and plastic beast that could obviously take them in a fight.

I have been thinking about this a lot for the last few days in the back of my mind, and I've realized tonight that I really don't want to know much more. I'll just sit back and be happy I live in a civilized world where there are people willing and able to do the dirty work the rest of us are too squeamish to consider.

Comments are back online for the blog. Go forth and tell me I'm a weiner, or a winner, whatever you prefer. (Kudos and not much else to whoever can identify the movie that this entry's title comes from without using Google...)