For the past several months, I’ve had the exact same dream. What’s worse is, I have no idea what it means or how to make it stop. Here’s as much of it as I can remember:

There I am, sitting at a secluded table, with Scarlett Johansson as my date. She’s wearing a black strapless dress and her hair’s up in some sophisticated way. And for some reason, in her left ear, there’s a single pearl earring. I mean, she’s Scarlett Johansson. Can’t she afford the other one? In any case, she looks amazing. And that’s when it hits me: I’m having dinner with Scarlett Johansson!

“Holy shit,” I say. “Scarlett Johansson. The Scarlett Johansson. I can’t believe I’m having dinner with Scarlett Johansson.”

“Oh, Smivey,” she says. “It’s no big deal. Just try to relax and eat your salad.”

And so I do. I try to eat my salad. But every time I look up, Scarlett Johansson is sitting across from me.

“Fuck. Scarlett Johansson. This is fucking amazing. The Scarlett Johansson. Why would Scarlett Johansson ever want to have dinner with me? I’m so much older than she is.”

“Would you stop talking about me as if I’m not here? You know why I agreed to go out with you. It was that letter you sent me almost a year ago.”

“Yeah, I still can’t believe you actually read that.”

“Oh, I read all of my fan mail. Usually, they’re just requests for my undergarments, but yours was so different, so special.”

“Oh, stop.”

“No, really. I still carry it with me wherever I go.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I do!”

“Uh huh.”

Scarlett digs through her Prada bag and pulls out a neatly folded piece of paper. She unfolds the paper, because it’s much easier to read that way, and then proceeds to, duh, read it:

“Sweet Scarlett,

I realize you probably get hundreds of letters every year, but this one is very special and you will, undoubtedly, hold it dear to your heart. After you read it, you will become my girlfriend and then we will stay at home and watch DVDs on my home theater system with 5.1 surround sound.

Holy shit. Scarlett Johansson. I can’t believe I’m writing to the Scarlett Johansson. This is fucking amazing. The Scarlett Johansson. Why would Scarlett Johansson ever read my letter?

Oh, I have to go. My Pillsbury Toaster Strudel is ready. It’s important to frost them while they’re hot. Otherwise, the frosting won’t be all gooey and runny the way I like it. Do you like toaster strudel? I need a woman who likes toaster strudel.

Anyway, please give me a call. Better yet, IM me. I’m always online. Always.

Yours, very soon,

Smivey”

“OK,” I say to Scarlett, “will you put the fucking letter down and eat your salad? You’re embarrassing me.”

“Sorry. It’s very dear to my heart.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Honestly, I think you should know, I sort of knew about you before you even wrote to me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, I kind of heard about you from a friend of mine and I decided to check out your blog.”

“You used to read my blog?”

“I still do. It fucking rocks.”

“My blog?”

“Sure.”

“My blog??”

“Smivey, you really need to do something about your self esteem.”

“Maybe.”

“Isn’t it cool that I was a fan of yours before we even met?”

“Not really. Actually, it kind of freaks me out.”

“Freaks you out?”

“Yeah, I feel a little violated here.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Do I need to spell it out for you? I don’t like the idea of some woman obsessing over me. It’s like you were cyberstalking me or something.”

“Oh, suck it! I wasn’t cyberstalking you. I just read your blog occasionally to see what you were up to.”

“Yeah? Well, that’s fucked up.”

“Are you insane?”

“No, I believe you’re the one who’s insane.”

“Look, can’t we just finish our dinner and talk about this later? I don’t want to cause a scene.”

“Here’s a better idea. Why don’t you get the fuck out of here?”

“Ha. Yeah, right. Very funny.”

“You think I’m kidding? If you’re not gonna leave, I will.”

“Smivey, are you serious?”

“Deadly.”

She stares at me for a moment. “Fine!”

She throws her napkin at me, gets up, then pours what’s left of her wine onto my head. I watch her as she storms out of the room, her long, slender middle finger extended out just for me. I casually pat my face dry with Scarlett’s discarded napkin and then go back to eating my salad. That’s when it hits me: Fuck. Scarlett Johansson. I can’t believe I just got into a fight with Scarlett Johansson. The Scarlett Johansson!

But wait, here’s the strange part: The salad has honey-mustard dressing on it. I hate honey-mustard dressing. But in the dream, it tastes pretty damn good and I end up devouring it. How fucked up is that?

Normally, I hate people who make resolutions at the end of every year, but I felt I really needed to make some changes in my life. I mean, it sucks the way people have to make promises. Sure, you need to make changes in your life, but why can’t you do that any time of the year? Why not January or April or May or September? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s pretty perplexing. But, still, we do it every year, don’t we? Every time, when the end of December comes around, we’ve got a new list of things we want to change about ourselves, things we’d like to be different, things we wouldn’t mind altering. Well, this year, I have a couple of my own. Yes, two resolutions, two vows I must keep, two promises to myself, oaths, if you will. The first one is probably one of the more difficult ones. I’m listing it first because it’s most likely the hardest to make happen. I don’t know why I’m even bothering to try, because it’s unlikely I’ll succeed. But here it goes: I vow, from this day forward to stop rambling and just get to the point, so that people will understand more quickly what it is I’m trying to say. The other resolution of mine, for myself, is to stop being so redundant and not repeat myself so much. But that one’s easy. I could do it with my eyes closed.

She seemed to appear out of nowhere, a mysterious figure in the night. A moment ago, I didn’t know she existed. But now, there she was before me. I had to get her attention. My mind began to race:

Should I flash her? Might she acknowledge me then? Would she appreciate what she sees? Would she thank me forever?

Perhaps. But there was a better solution, one that would leave no doubt in her mind of what I longed for. I approached her cautiously, and once I was near, I turned towards her, took a deep breath and shouted my wants and desires:

“Turn on your headlights, you fucking idiot!”

And with that, I sped off, leaving her in the dark. But only for a moment. Within seconds, her headlamps came to life and her car horn blared. I glanced in my rearview mirror to find her waving at me. Ah, a gesture of good will. She had recognized her absent-mindedness and wanted to thank me. . . No, upon further inspection I realized the hand she was waving had only one finger extended—and it was not her thumb. Alas, my assistance was not met with the gratitude it deserved. What a bitch.

hello. notice anything different about my writing? well, you should because im not actually typing it. cheryl is. :-) who is cheryl? only the hottest girl i know. hey, what are you typing? i haven’t said anything. stop typing! let me see. i didn’t say that. delete it. im not kidding! apostrofy M. that’s not how you spell apostrofie damn it!

My apologies. I never should have let Cheryl type for me. She’s a good nurse, but that’s about all I can say for her. Fortunately, my friend Steve was kind enough to take over the keyboard. He knows how to type. And more importantly, he knows how to spell.

So why do I need anyone to help me type my latest blog entry? Well, it’s a long story. But I’ll try to condense it into easy-to-swallow paragraphs.

I guess it all started last month when I was on the toilet having a pee. As I was sitting there, reading the latest issue of Soldier of Fortune, I began to feel a familiar sensation in my legs: they were falling asleep. Why? It might’ve had something to do with sitting on the toilet for over an hour. But, no, there was something else. It was my posture. It was awful. I was all slumped over and my legs weren’t bent at a comfortable 90-degree angle. It seems, today’s toilets don’t provide the best support for people with longer legs. My solution: build a better toilet.

So how does one go about building a better toilet? I started with the basics. Obviously, it would have to have a hole in it, yet at the same time, it would also have to be able to hold water. A receptacle that holds water, but has a hole in it. How the fuck did anyone figure that out? It seemed impossible to me. And it was, to me. I decided that instead of building a better toilet, I would simply modify my existing one. But unlike most toilets that are one-size-fits-all, mine would be . . . adjustable.

That’s right. The first adjustable toilet. Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before? It was brilliant: a toilet that could be raised or lowered to accommodate the person who used it. Of course, making the toilet raise and lower was a little harder than it sounded.

The first problem was that the toilet was actually bolted to the floor. This made it very difficult to raise and lower it. My solution: Have the entire floor raise and lower with the toilet. Fortunately, somebody explained how stupid that idea was before I started to tear up the floor. Instead, I went with Plan F (plans B through E were too embarrassing to mention. In fact, after mentioning them just now, I am embarrassed.).

So what was Plan F? I’m glad that I pretended you asked. It was quite simple, really. The toilet would be built on a platform and that platform would then be raised and lowered using a pneumatic lift, similar to those used in automotive-repair shops, mainly because I bought the lift from an automotive-repair shop that was going out of business.

Although I don’t consider myself a handyman, it didn’t take long for me to figure out how to pick up the Yellow Pages and find someone to build my invention for me. In a matter of no time (Actually, it took a lot of time. That’s just a figure of speech), the project was complete and the toilet was ready to test out. Unfortunately, it was bad timing, since I had no desire to pee. One-and-a-half hours and 32-ounces later, I was ready to give it a go.

Upon sitting down, I quickly realized a flaw in my design: Since the entire platform lifted up with the toilet, the user’s legs would not extend as the lift was engaged. What a fucking waste of time. In anger, I slammed my hand across the lever that activated the lift, which somehow caused a short in the wiring. Before I could react, the toilet platform was hopping up and down like a lowrider show car, slamming me into the ceiling over and over. What’s worse, I couldn’t reach the lever to stop it. The toilet probably would have continued to abuse me, if it wasn’t for my upstairs neighbor who sensed something might be wrong after my head came crashing through the tiles of her bathroom floor.

By the time the fire department broke the door down and recovered from laughing, the damage was done. Fortunately, my spine was miraculously OK. Every other bone below my neck, however, was not so lucky. And so I sit here in a full body cast, dictating my story while I listen to the contractors working away at removing that fucking evil contraption in my bathroom. Of course, being incapacitated, I’ve had a lot of time to think, and I realized that I was going about this whole toilet thing the wrong way. Rather than lift the toilet up with a pneumatic device, there was a much simpler solution: suspension cables. Yeah, with a good pulley system and some heavy gauge cables, I can be certain my legs will never fall asleep again—after all the bones heal, I mean.