Thank You

from http://www.edvard-munch.com/Paintings/anxiety/scream_3.jpg

I want to take this time right now to thank all the drug and chemical manufacturers at Bayer Pharmaceuticals for the wonderful mind-altering and semi-hallucinogenic substances that you sell to the general public.

The last 24 hours went by quicker than I thought thanks to your products.

While laying prostrate since late Tues,early Wednesday. . .details are fuzzy. . .I had much time to reflect on how much I have yet to accomplish in Life. I also had some very very strange dreams which is to be expected when it feels like Satan himself visits you and is jabbing your forehead with a laser beam and making you feel like experiencing the ice cream headache from the 7th level of Hades.

I dreamed (by the way. . .I've never done any illegal drugs in my life). . .that the government passed a law sending all Americans back to their 8th grade English class for a semester of remedial treatment. All my grade school friends were there, including their wives, children, and other English teachers (not everyone-some had died). And we spent the day going over gerunds, and dangling participles, and how we should put i before e except after c (and some other word). And I remarked how fat the former cheerleaders were. At lunch, we went to Africa and were standing on a bridge watching a herd of 1,000 elephants drink from a river. I had one picture left and then discovered my camera had a chip that could record 100 more. Then we went to a petting zoo with antelope, springboks, white-tailed deer, elk, moose, sheep, goats, and zebras. One of the antelopes was head-butting a baby goat, then a lion escaped, but nobody paid much attention because we were going to England. In England, we came to a mountain that looked almost exactly like the one I grew up on, except instead of houses there were enormous trains. It was, in fact, a museum dedicated to trains. . .and all the trains were about 100 feet high and painted in bright shiny colors. Then we went to a ski lodge because somebody wanted to rent a jet plane on call up there to 'cruise around a bit.' The pilot was there watching us though none of us knew it, and we were discussing rumors about how much of a drunk he was. Nobody rented the jet.

Then, I met a man who designed a jet-car. I saw him flying through the air over some very high mountains (Pyrenees?), then he ejected in a thing like a rocket and parachuted down to earth in an asbestos and kevlar parachute that felt like one of those scouring pads one uses to wash dishes.

Back to the lodge, we made plans to go skiing next week in West Virginia. I told the guys I went just a few weeks ago forgetting that it hasn't snowed in West Virginia since, oh, the last Ice Age, but somehow I distinctly remember doing so, but it was very muddy.

Then I woke up, drank an espresso, cooked an omelet, and prayed never to go through an experience like that ever again.

You can start psycho-analyzing me now.