Just when you think reality is as strange as it possibly can get, it suffers an outbreak of plaid-encrusted chicken pox all over its face.

Which is another way of saying that I awoke up this morning convinced that I'd just had sex with Marilyn Monroe.

I found this very discombobulating.

I do not enjoy my feelings of certainty attaching themselves to patently impossible things.  The ease with which such feelings can attach themselves to such things when I'm not looking is deeply  troubling.  In fact, it's prompted me to stop talking to them.

I also do not enjoy the thought of Marilyn Monroe intruding into my mind in the best of circumstances, let alone when I am trying to sleep.  I've never liked Marilyn Monroe, I doubt I ever will, and I'm insulted that her dream shade made me wait 41 years to have sex with it exactly as if I'm  actually the one who's dead and must settle for whatever they can get.

It really wasn't much - just a quick encounter on a couch, apparently prompted by my sudden desire to do her a favor - and still I had to wait 41 years?  For THIS??  Please.

If Joe DiMaggio shows up in my dreams tonight to beat the hell out of me, I'm gonna be outright pissed.

Really, though, the fact that I've always found MM to be a grotesque caricature of femininity, and yet some part of my brain is obviously attracted to that caricature, just makes me lose what little self-respect I had left.

Maybe my sleeping mind merely mistook her for a sock puppet or Gene Shalit?

Now THAT I could live with.

Ok, enough about this particular patch of plaid pox.  A second involves my cat, Jester.

Yesterday's newspaper carried a front page story about a Sandusky, Ohio, woman who left her $325,000 estate to her cat, Sinbad.  Fourteen relatives sued to be given the money instead, but no - a jury decided that the woman had acted appropriately and rationally.

Which prompted Jester to ask me this morning what he could look forward to getting when I appropriately and rationally kick off.

"Ummm, maybe $1000 - give or take," I told him.

Jester has been on the phone trying to convince Sinbad he's his long-lost brother ever since.

Which - for no apparent reason whatsoever - brings me to my third and final patch of plaid pox.

Yesterday was trash day here.  Every Thursday, I wheel our big green Waste Management can out to the curb.  After men come and empty it of another week's worth of cat shit and sundry other items we've learned we can't give away as Christmas presents, I go out and wheel this can back to the garage.

Well, I always check to make sure the can is actually empty before I wheel it back.  Yesterday when I checked, I noticed part of the plastic packaging a new window blind had come in was stuck in the bottom.  Ok, fine.  No problem.  I just wheeled the can back to the garage and proceeded to get this part out myself instead of waiting for the Waste Management truck to go by again, flagging the driver down, and lecturing him on how the American economy these days requires better workmanship if it's going to survive in an increasingly competitive global environment.

Only a funny thing happened when I opened the lid of my can and attempted to get this errant plastic part out with a broom: The broom didn't work.  The part kept slipping out from under it and falling back down.

So I tilted the can on its side and manfully proceeded to go in after the plastic part armed only with a hammer.

And THAT'S when it happened.

THAT'S when I noticed the smell.

The smell of old, dried garbage.

It wasn't a bad smell.  And it wasn't an unexpected smell.  But as it filled my nostrils with its full-bodied aroma redolent of cut grass, kitchen scraps, and dryer lint, I was immediately transported back to the much-admired homestead of my much-respected landlord, circa 1964.

And for the first time it hit me: The magical scent of that landlord's back yard area that I spent so much time enjoying as a kid was nothing more than the aged, ghostly odor of garbage.

To review: My mind sometimes is certain I've had impossibly bad sex with long-dead women I don't even like.  My cat is attempting to forge documents proving he's the brother of Sinbad.  And Proust hogged all the madeleine, leaving nothing to transport me back to my childhood but trash.

How's YOUR week going?

 
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(©Now by Dan Birtcher with one hand while placing a
"I can lap milk, shed, and purr for $325,000, too!"
personal ad with the other)
 

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Important Notice

The FDA has just approved BS-486 for use as an
after-journal head decongestant.  If you do NOT want this
entry attaching itself to your brain and developing
into a full-fledged memory, contact your doctor at once!
 

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 HAPPY MICHAELMAS!

"If you eat goose on Michaelmas, you never want money all year round."

John Dollison, "Pope-Pourri," p. 71.
 

"If you eat goose around me, don't be surprised if I make loud honking sounds until guilt makes you vomit and devote the rest of your life to proper animal husbandry."

Me, right here, right now