It is intimidating. A blank white screen staring back at you. That cursor blinking steadily, patiently, waiting for your touch to send it careening across the screen...and hopefully not all the way back as you delete it.

It's interesting, this canvas. You can throw out ideas and watch them stick, or, more often, watch them slide slowly down and disappear into wherever it is that unfed ideas go.

So you sit and you stare and you hope but you know that unless you do something soon, that blank screen is going to just flit away into the blackness of the screensaver that you still haven't put in the necessary 30 seconds or less it would take to change it into something half-way interesting.

And of course, you're waiting for "it."

That one event from your day or week or maybe even years ago that has been turning over and over in your head and is now ripe to come out as an entry into your electronic link to the rest of the world.

"Should I write about going to the club with Kiki, Dana, Amy, and their newest roommate, Marissa?"

Because I could, and I know I would enjoy remembering it. For instance, when we had gotten out of the car and were all walking towards Club Buzz and Marissa said, "Follow the white line," (referring to the painted lines in the parking lot) and I thought she meant Kiki, Dana, and Amy who were walking single-file in front of us.

Then there is the odd instance in which you actually took the time to jot down what was on your mind earlier in the day in the hopes that it would give you some ammunition to attack with later in the evening.

So you check...

And you've scrawled a few lines of dialogue:

"Do you always try to sound intelligent?"

"I am trying to sound different than I usually sound, and yes, that would mean sounding intelligent."

Nothing else, just those two lines. It was probably something someone said to you, and then later (possibly hours later) you came up with a retort and wrote it down because that person was nowhere to be found.

And here, there's something else:

Dream: syringe, roommate. Fear of needles, in them.

And it all comes rushing back...but first:

A dream is a difficult thing to relate. It is a good way to kill someone's interest in what you are talking about, in much the same way it is said that acoustic guitars kill parties. Having said that...

In my dream I woke up and my roommate was standing in my room with an incredibly evil grin and a syringe. She is small, downright diminutive, and so I pluck the syringe out of her hand and throw it away. She then produces more syringes from somewhere and now she is holding two.

I debate snatching them away as well but I am getting a definite Hydra vibe (you know, Herakles cuts off it's head, two grow back, cuts of the two, four grow back, and so on) so I just run off in my underwear down the hallway.

And that's it for the dream.

The rest of the note was just to remind myself to point out that I am not afraid of needles, just of what might be in them.

And partially because there is nothing else I wish to speak of (but mostly because I just went back out to my car to get a Fat Tire out of the cup holder), I present to you a challenge:

If there is anything more perfect than Tempe at 4:00 in the morning, bring it to me and I shall cut off my left hand and trade you for it.

Bring it on.