I was just reading Jen’s blog and she was talking about the autumn sleeping sickness. I have this in spades. I’ve had it for at least two weeks. I am asleep as soon as I hit the pillow. I’ve also been having odd dreams. I had two separate Mafia dreams last night in which I had to kill Danny Aiello. In the first dream I pulled his heart out with a corkscrew and in the second I just slit his throat. What in the hell does it mean that I killed a dream version of Danny Aiello twice last night in two almost completely different dreams (the death of Danny being the bridge)?

Kelsey Grammar put me up to it in the first one and in the second it had something to do with a government conspiracy. Yup, I am certifiable at times. Now that I think about it – my own blood pressure has been running high of late and the corkscrew in the heart seems like a pretty simple health warning. I am my own Danny Aiello, killing myself through unchecked hypertension.

I went to my blood doctor today and got the liver A OK. They check my blood monthly as I am having it dry cleaned. He says I am healthy on the liver front – the preventative medicine I am on – that I have five months left of – is hard on the liver so I am mega-dosing B-12 and must avoid alcohol and Tylenol. I’ve had a few sips of beer and wine along the way, but my last gin and tonic was in very early June. Gin how I miss thee, let me count the days.

I am allowed a full glass of either beer or wine from time to time, but why push it? I do drink N.A. beer to keep my bladder flexible. There is a new brand cooling down in the fridge that I just bought today at a German import store. Just to be clear on the medicine, it is not for something I have, but something that I was exposed to, to prevent me from ever developing it. People seem to get easily confused as regards health stuff. My sister went round the bend about it and had her whole family tested, better safe then sorry I guess.

In real life the tide pools just keep on swirling. The radio station that I was “on the advisory board” got sold and is off the air. Apparently my twenty bucks and pizza were a last ditch effort to save the station. I have to admit that I’d stopped listening to them months earlier as a result of their repetitious play list. I guess they couldn’t turn it around.

They are still streaming on the web, but I imagine many of the DJs got the axe. It was mostly digital anyway. The days of WKRP are long gone. When I did my tour I discovered that five entire radio stations were housed in a single hallway and everyone went home at six. Dr. Johnny Fever has been put on a nine to five, or rather a nine to nine forty five – they can do a whole shift of prerecorded cut ins in forty five minutes. Local talent need not apply.

My little grocery up the street, Mike’s place, closed. He said he’s been losing money at the rate of two thousand a month for over a year. You just can’t keep throwing good money away like that. An employee who shall remain nameless said, “This neighborhood’s gone to shit. Everybody is white and tight.” I’ll miss the staff there and being able to walk down for whatever ingredient I was missing, even if it was just a good anecdote.

I saw Dave, the meat counter guy, last night at a different grocery store. He just started at Straub’s in Clayton and likes it. He was worried when Mike decided to close that he wouldn’t find anything right away. So join me in a collective sigh wishing him well. If I was dumb enough to shop at an overpriced grocery like that I might drop in and say hi from time to time. Straub’s is where you shop if you’re under the misapprehension that price equals quality. If you just don’t trust a can of soup under three dollars, then Straub’s is for you (or if you want a good cut of meat that you’re willing to pay for from a guy like Dave, who really knows what he’s doing).

It looks like my part time gig is going to go full time in the new year, so that’s big good news – I’m branching out of the composition territory and teaching an ethics class. You see, that philosophy degree will get me a paycheck or two after all. It’s just odd that I’ve been getting this M.Ed. degree ostensibly to teach at the high school level and I may not be in that market for some time, if ever.

I’ve been feeling like the Ph.D. needs to come next. As long as I am on a roll with school and don’t have a family to support, it stands to reason that I should get as far as I can get. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking. This may sound crazy, but I think I’d like a doctorate in something related to my content area and in education. That’s right kids, two of them to go with my two M.A.’s and my double undergraduate (English and Philosophy). I am a Gemini after all. Each of the undergrad degrees is bifurcated as well. The English has a double focus in World Literature and Linguistics. The Philosophy degree is actually a Philosophy and Religion degree with emphasis in Eastern Religion and 20th Century Continental Philosophy. This is why I am so often out of work.

The thing is, if I ever hope to pay off my debts I am going to have to go into administration so I might as well start getting qualified for that too.

I read a review of my blog on a British web page during the last election cycle. They said my posts were too long, but occasionally worth the read. If you’re wondering about tonight’s long post, I am just killing time before I meet Jes up at the Tivoli for the 9:30 of Mirrormask – the new Neil Gaimen/Dave Mckean/Jim Henson productions film that is supposed to be the best remake of Alice in Wonderland since Labyrinth. I might blog about how it was tomorrow – give you the old Karlito review.

I went and saw The Aristocrats last night by myself. I laughed a fair amount, but it wasn’t as good as it had been hyped. It’s an hour plus of diarrhea spurting pustule jokes, so if you like that sort of thing then this film is for you. It’s sort of contest among comics as to who can tell both the longest and bluest version of the joke. Bob Saget wins, with Gilbert Gottfried coming in a close second.


I have a philosophical question I’d like to pose to myself: “Where is your A game Karl?”