Sleep is ambrosia.

I thought I was losing my shit last week, but then I got a solid night of sleep and by contrast was able to better gauge the depth of my exhaustion: total. My ability to think frays and my patience crumbles. I lose appetite. I awake with the taste of yesterday still in my mouth.

That night of sleep restored me but also teased me. It was cruel to know the spring in my step would melt unless my rest were reinforced, which remains unlikely most nights. I become hungry for unconsciousness. I see pictures of sleeping people and I want to kiss them.

I am willing to pay good money for sleep; to commit foul deeds for sleep; to pray for magic intervention to grant me sleep.

Alas, alas -- it is not to be.

This is the eighth in a multi-part series on the subject of the various great and memorable enemies I have had the pleasure of knowing over the years, from the earnest gibbering of schoolyard bullies to the courtly dance of the merely ritualistic antagonist.

This week we encounter a veteran of pushing people around whose expression of homicidal surprise upon being roundly trounced by a teenage cheeseburger is a treat sweeter than any candy.

Please see also Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI and Part VII.

This is the fifth in a multi-part series on the subject of the various great and memorable enemies I have had the pleasure of knowing over the years, from the earnest gibbering of schoolyard bullies to the courtly dance of the merely ritualistic antagonist.

This week we turn our focus away from those would make us victims of intimidation to those who those who give us a profound sense of the most morbid kind of heebie-jeebies -- a visceral unease that means their presence cannot be entertained for fear of nausea, their personalities cannot be endured for fear of discovering more about them.

Please see also Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.

This is the fourth in a multi-part series on the subject of the various great and memorable enemies I have had the pleasure of knowing over the years, from the earnest gibbering of schoolyard bullies to the courtly dance of the merely ritualistic antagonist.

Today's installment forces this cheeseburger to come to his own defense, when all allies fall by the wayside -- through which process he gains his first inspiration for storytelling.

Please see also Part I, Part II and Part III.

The solstice has come and gone and now we coast through the dead days between Jebuspalooza and the Western New Year. It is neither quite last year nor next year, a period of circumannual ambiguity recognized by calendar makers throughout history from Tenochtitlan to Sumer, but ignored by the more sober intellects of Christendom's seasonal accounting.

I have a lot of gas. Must be something I ate.

In which we attend a village Christmas party.

The Caribbean hurricane season is done for another year, so my step-father flew down to put his boat back in the water. He brought my mother. My mother brought her friend, so that she'd have somebody to pal around with during the boring parts.

In the course of this adventurette they managed to spend $120 on cheeseburgers.

I have made two new things.

My brother showed me how to poke a little hole in my firewall in order to let BitTorrent scream through without tripping my ISP's peer-to-peer detection system, which caps suspect downloads down to a trickle. Because of this development my wife and I are now watching a lot more television than normal.

(If the connection between these two phenomena is not readily apparent, please check your generation.)