I liken a lot. I make analogies, draw metaphors, similies. Some of them are solid and sane and others are really far out there.

Today I was discussing Smaug, the dragon from “The Hobbit”. How he was so powerful and really messed with the lake people just because. He was unbeatable, pretty much like Bloomberg. Then the old thrush dropped dime and the marksman found the chink in his armor and it was small, but he hit it and the fucking dragon went down like the Titanic. There I go again.

So I was saying this, in response to a co-worker’s casual observation that the Yankees had a leaky bullpen. And he actually bumped into my doorframe at work trying to get away from me.

The other day I likened something to a bowl of m&ms with the green ones removed and twice the red ones as usual. It sounded good at the time (and it actually looks good in print) but now I think I know why I eat most of my lunches alone.

I have always taken a circuitous route both when speaking and writing. When I was a kid I wouldn’t shut up. More recently, a friend called Exaggeronimo after my penchant for extending stories in an effort to supersize the punchline.

It’s a kind of mania, I think, for people who can’t use up an economy of oxygen. The thing is, that is my favorite kind of person: the crazy. I am catnip for crazies. But good crazy. Let me stress that, bad crazies.

Don’t get me wrong—I am not exactly (or remotely) an active person, I could lay on an Anguillan beach for about two years. But my mind will always be racing, like the guy who played The Tick in the bathroom at the opening night launch party for the Indianapolis Comic-Con wondering which “superfan” was indeed holding. Or something.

Hey, where ya going, friend?

After months of searching, I have decided to give up trying to find a Tribe of Ba’al to affix my wagon to. It doesn’t exist. While some of his debaucherous tenets were really promising, they were based around an agrarian way of life. Me? I am trying to program a Universal remote while writing this, tweeting with a wily Northern conversationalist and watching Extreme Paranormal—a show so terrible its producers should be molested by Hitler’s ghost after a three-day meth binge.

So I have decided to create my own religion and market it the way that Scientology does; as good, clean fun. For if Scientology was actually conceptualized by a drunken, two-bit science fiction book writer in the back of a NYC cab, I can create mine with a jaw filled Sweet Tart jelly and an alarming habit of heckling the people on The Biggest Loser, as they cry.

After two minutes of careful deliberation, I have decided to name my religion ‘Arthur’—a tribute to George Harrison’s haircut in A Hard Day’s Night. Of course.

Here are the ten basic tenets of Arthur:

1) As long as you are an adult, you can sleep with whomever you want to.

2) Church is once a month and, guess what, it’s in a sports bar and you can drink.

3) You get a cool jacket with a patch. And a nickname like “Spider” or “Red”.

4) We have a pope, only it’s Shirley Manson from Garbage.

5) There are only three commandments: lather, rinse, repeat.

6) No guilt. Not ever.

7) At Christmas everyone gives me a gift.

8 ) If peyote is good enough for the Hopi Indian, it’s good enough for Arthur.

9) Yankees fans will be rounded up and persecuted for their beliefs.

10) Go now in peace. And bring back some Rainbow Nerds.

I have been collaborating on a book project with a good friend of mine and it has really been both a labor of love and a testament to our friendship that we have been able to criticize each other’s work so freely. Because it has been a true partnership, our work has co-mingled to the point where I can scarcely differentiate my own writing from his. And, he says, vice-versa.

We used to work together in the dark ages, and were pretty complementary. And then he left one job before me, and I followed him before leaving the next job before him. Throughout it all, we had both made the effort to stay in touch and have always spoken about how great it would be if we were able to work together again.

But in this day and age, the chances of such things are about as likely as getting triplets into Dalton, a NYC private school for brats. Today, we would settle for both having jobs that do not require the wearing of hats.

Just a few minutes ago we finished with the first part of our work. Hopefully, stage two will commence soon.

And by commence I mean, make us rich.

The champagne barely finished stinging my eyes, I sat for a few minutes to ponder the amazing accomplishment of the New York Yankees. After all, the Angels were a big market team (even though they, like the Twins before them, seemed a couple of guys too few to compete.) And the Phillies are going to be formidable, too, even though they have Pedro Martinez starting game two of the World Series. By choice.

Well, let me tell you, I am no rocket scientist, but when I took the Angels $113 million dollar payroll and added it to the Phillies $113 million payroll, both together were only $25 million dollars more than the Yanks $201 million.

Let me back up over that point: both teams together were one Hideki Matsui ($13 mllion); an Xavier Nady ($6.5 million); and a Chien-Ming Wang ($5.5 million) away from spending the same amount as the Yankees.

Today, I spend a fair bit of time trying to find a Yankees fan who even cared about my discovery. Some were like, “who cares?”; a couple were all about, “you’re jealous” and I even had a “if we didn’t do it someone else would’ve.”

Ahem. So I thought about it for a while, and developed a compromise. Then I faxed my idea over to the MLB offices this afternoon, to give them a chance to mull it over before Wednesday night’s game. It was called the “Even the Playing Field” proposal”—get it?

Here’s my idea in a nutshell: when the boys in Pinstripes take the field on Wednesday, these are the players that will face off against 25 National League champions:

A-Rod $33 million

Jeter $22 million

Texeira $21 million

AJ Burnett $16.5

CC Sabathia: $15.3

Three-eighths of Rivera: $7.5

I promise I will belabor this point no further. I just spent ten minutes doing the research and didn’t want to be wasteful with the information. I care about the environment even more than Yankees fans care about equity in sports, which is to say, not much at all as it turns out.

Next week I am going to tell some people what I think about premium booze. No really. They are meeting me at my apartment, I will pontificate for an hour or so about my perceptions of how booze is being peddled to folks such as myself and then we will retire to a local drinking establishment for a couple of pops.

I am rather looking forward to it because, as you know, I like offering my opinions up to anyone who either wants them, or doesn’t. I don’t discriminate. And I am also super-interested in how the perception game can both help and hurt consumer products.

So, a few weeks ago, someone called me and asked me some questions about political candidates. I threw a bunch of mud at one of the weaker ones and managed to make the interviewer laugh a handful of times. Really sophomoric stuff—I was curious as to, if her last name was Weiner, would she pronounce it like the hotdog or the crybaby.

I felt kind of bad because our phone call was being recorded and it would be just my luck to get someone fired. And not the someone that I want to get fired.

But tomorrow I have made a promise to myself to be helpful. Really super helpful. I have decided to jettison the eyepatch I was planning to wear and, at GG’s insistence, I will not dress like Captain Morgan’s husky first mate. As a gag, you understand.

In all seriousness, I do drink a fair bit of liquor (not a ton, or even too much—but a fair bit) and I have been very interested to watch how vodkas, beers and the like have extended their brands to include all kinds of flavors. And how about wine? Don’t get me started.

Okay, get me started.

Do you dream a lot? I ask people that. I usually don’t, mostly because I am never really so deeply asleep that I will fall into one. You could speak to me while I was sleeping and I would immediately be able to carry on a conversation with you. Then again, it’s not like we would ever have such an occasion because I think that would creep both of us out.

But the other night, doped up on cold medicine, I fell asleep deeply. And I had a very vivid dream, which seemed to last much of the night, although you can never be sure when it comes to matters of the unconscious.

Yet when I awoke the next morning, I was exhausted and had a tension headache. And I blame it on my dream, which I remembered vividly. I am telling you the plot so that you can see the kind of deck that I am dealing with.

I had written a screenplay that I was sure was the most groundbreaking thing ever written. It was going to be huge. And as I sat in my apartment—which looked surprisingly like my high school bedroom–I was preparing for my pitch meeting with a big studio the next day, outlining the reasons as to why I was to be the next Orson Welles, only better.

My movie was called “Vampire Croissant”. Now, I do not remember much of the plot—it was an existential treatise featuring Bond actress Olga Kurylenko, me and one or both of the Fiennes brothers. (I can’t remember, as I was sleeping.) It was funny and scary and clever and a bit maudlin. Much like its author.

But I do recall that there was a reason that the name was so spectacular. And so, as I slept I racked my brains as to the reason, before my big meeting. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember. And so much of my sleep time consisted of my mind grasping for threads of coherency amid a vast wasteland of nothingness.

“Vampire Croissant”. Don’t steal my idea, or else.

Sometimes I wish that my mind had an off switch. That I could just sit and watch TV without writing to you; or writing silly poetry; or angry letters to corporate entities that I never send. Or reading and Twittering. IMing, emailing, making stupid playlists with names like “Happy Bird Day” and “Ghostface meets Springsteen meets Carole King”. Whatever else I can think of. I feel as if my brain is a coal engine and I need to keep feeding it endlessly. Sometimes good things come out of it, though. And other times?

Picture, if you will, a croissant, being eaten by Olga Kurylenko, while the camera slowly pans across the room to reveal……..

Never mind. You get the idea.

I’ve been pretty on-my-back sick for the past few days and yesterday I went to work—as I am no longer contagious—but was immediately confused by a pretty simple task. I couldn’t focus on what I was doing. I was reading my emails and was having trouble figuring out what people were asking me, or what they needed, or even what they were telling me.

As I sat in my office scratching my head until my hair looked like Russell Brand’s, my friend came by genuinely concerned at my condition. Then, curious, I checked the side effects of the antibiotic I am taking. It’s a little pill called Levaquin. Twice a day for ten days. And this is what it said, in part: “side effects may include confusion, hallucinations, unusual thoughts or behavior.” (P.S. Reading that fine print took a good twenty minutes.)

Oh, okay. I am taking a crazy pill. That’s good. And for another week. Awesome, It’s not like I need to be able to think, or anything.

The whole side-effects-of-medication angle is scary; there is an acne medicine that may give teens thoughts of suicide and sometimes erection pills make some guys fall down and die. (Hey, I watch football; I know the deal there.)

You have to wonder what people did before they began pumping their bodies filled with crazy chemical cocktails that sometimes solve one problem, while creating another, albeit temporary one. And then I realize what they did: they died, slowly and surely.

Okay…so where was I?

Last month I had an important, potentially life-altering decision to make. My contract with Verizon was ending, and so I was finally free to move to the iPhone if I had such a desire. Most of my friends have them, excitedly showing me their light sabers and flashlights and all sorts of do-hickeys that obscure the phone’s propensity to drop calls like they were profanity at a bachelor party.

Everyone is app crazy. Some, like the GPS ones, are useful. But the one that you shake the iPhone and it chooses where you are going to eat dinner? I have a better idea: they should make one that looks like a dunce cap and then people can….aww, never mind.

I plan to get the new iPod touch at Christmas that has a camera and makes French toast, but I rather like the fact that my Blackberry doesn’t drop calls. Since I have had Verizon, I have not had one call disconnected on my end. Not a one.

When my AT&T’ed wife calls me, it is often like we are speaking through soup cans. Ship-to-shore. We try and get the important business out of the way early. So when we do get disconnected, I have a general idea of when she will be home and the nature of the crazy stories she will be telling me.

I’m not smart enough to know the logical reason that AT&T is so crappy—believe it or not, one out of three dropped calls has been deemed “acceptable” by the company—and therefore the reasons behind the inescapable fact that the phone part of the iPhone is such a wet noodle.

I just know that by the time I get take the plunge, it will be because Verizon has muscled its way in. Or perhaps those Apple braniacs create one that does something useful like counterfeit money or take x-ray photos. Or, at the very least, let me have a normal conversation like a human being. Whichever comes first.

Today was a Dickensian dark day indeed for my circle of friends: one said goodbye to her job that she was so good at, while another was preparing to say goodbye to his father who is slipping away into the fog of Alzheimers, as wretched and pointless a condition as has ever been foisted upon mankind.

It has gotten to the point where consoling has become like a second job for many of us. It isn’t like I was an unsympathetic lout before, or anything. I just always figured that I was able to turn coal into diamonds on my own, without well-meaning budinskis. And just maybe others should be afforded the same opportunity.

Yet now, after twelve up=and-down months, I feel much more deeply for people, I think. These days, I am ready to sit shiva at a moment’s notice. Whereas before, I felt as if I was invading someone’s space, these days I am all up in their grille.

I was reading about Aspberger’s Syndrome, which is a kind of autism, and how one of the symptoms is a lack of empathy. That stopped me dead in my tracks. Imagine that: being unable to recognize the moments when you should say a comforting word, or offer a hug. How that would be a terrible affliction to both the person suffering from it and those witnessing it.

GG is pretty upset about the day’s events, springing into action like a multi-tool: making calls, sending emails, texts, what-have-you. She is as loyal and good a friend as there is and I have learned from her  that it doesn’t embarrass people when you let them know that you are upset for them. (I always thought it did—how ridiculous.)

My message to my friends has been cut down and refined to six simple words: hang on and hang in there. And by all means call me if you need me. But hopefully you won’t.

Hopefully.

I have never mustered up enough vitriol to actually write you a letter. You were a frivolity; a flash-in-the-pan. A couple of diminutive donuts here, a few Body-of-Christ sized pecan sandies there. I figured that you would just go away on your own, without a nudge from me.

I would laugh at you when I strolled through the cookie aisle, enraptured in the majesty of the half-acre of Pepperidge Farm pleasantries. You offered fourteen crumb-sized Cheez Nips huddled together in a cellophane package, like shipwreck survivors on clinging to a life raft. You were a peon squatting in the valley of kings.

But similar to rabbits, or roaches or rats or some other rapidly multiplying organism—amoeba, perhaps— you have taken over store shelves like a stoned Oprah advancing on a sheet cake with a serrated knife.

Yet, really, you are nothing more than a tease. Never enough to be considered a snack. You are almost like a pre-snack. So, in effect, you are like a hundred-calorie chapeau to an actual snack. How nice of you, microbe-sized crumb cakes: tricking the hungry and desperate into thinking they are being good. When really, they aren’t. You know it. You know it and yet you do nothing.

So I hear that you found out about the letter I wrote to headquarters proposing the 275-calorie pack. I gave them my rationale: humans could eat about that much of a snack and not feel completely violated. We’ll see what happens.

That’s it. Go back to your sad little factory, churning out soulless, tasteless, mindless even, varieties of loathsome little cupcakes and sad, puny pretzel sticks. You runt.

Yrs,

Tony