I went to see the fourth Harry Potter movie. I liked it about as much as I liked the other three. That is, not very much. There was plenty of good stuff in it, but it never seemed to come together.

What I really loved was the trailer for Happy Feet. I've been watching that over and over as I wait for my stomach and brain to decide if I should try to eat more.

I probably will. I simply cannot resist foods that are stuffed with other foods.

If you enjoy short stories but are not going to DC's site then I will not hesitate to call you a damned fool.

Still here? You damned fool.

Dear, dear Sleep,

I was wrong. I admit it. I was looking at you in the wrong light. Or rather, no light.

You are not the enemy. You are a reward. And as such, I failed to follow your rules and have been rewarding myself without having earned it. I'm like one of those white mice in laboratories that can push a lever to receive food or push another lever to receive some addictive drug, cocaine or something. Invariably, the rodent ignores the food lever entirely, pushing the drug lever again and again until its little heart explodes.

That's a poor analogy. Somewhere there's a rat in a cage glaring at a guy in a lab coat and thinking "I'm in a frikkin' cage here. I don't even have a wheel to run in. Who are you to pass moral judgement? That's what I thought, biped. Now shut up and refill my lever!"

Sleep, I have forsaken you to attend to a few of my responsibilities. I'm not sorry. The laws of thermodynamics should include "No rest for the wicked."

Having said that, this wicked little rodent is about to hit the metaphorical hay for a couple of hours until I have to get up for class.

Thanks for listening, Sleep. We'll see you around.

Love,

Guillermo

PS. This particular form of writing is called "epistolary."

Dear Sleep,

I am leaving you. We have been been spending too much time together. I have been neglecting my family, my friends, and my education. I'm not talking about lock-your-kids-in-a-cage-but-still-give-them-food-and-clean-clothes-neglect. This is like what?-I-have-kids?-neglect.

Sleep, you are the enemy. We go to a land without fault where responsibility is drowned in a sea of delta waves. That was a pun.

Discipline is not donned like a bonnet. It cannot be fastened securely around your chin. Discipline comes like birth, pain and pain and pain increasing until it is a separate little bastard that can be sent to its room without any dinner. That was a metaphor.

I may be wrong, Sleep. Maybe nothing will change but I have to know if it's your fault. Who else could it be?

This is my dog, The Noobers, in possibly the greatest costume ever.

I'm going to look for a Mogwai costume for next year. I am convinced that he is a gremlin.

I went as Marv from Sin City. I nearly got in a fight with some cops, just to stay in character. No, I wouldn't do that. I did speak to a couple of officers when they came to our Halloween party (The Nightmare Off Elm Street). They were pretty friendly. When I first saw them I wondered if they were guys in costume because one of them was named Officer Bacon.

Their weapons looked real enough so I tried to show a little restraint.

The costumes at the party were great. My roommates, Brian, Virginia, and Molly, went as Sin City characters as well: Hartigan, Nancy, and Shelly, respectively. Kelly was dressed (or rather, undressed) as Marv's parole officer, Lucille. There was also a Jack Skelington and Sally, Skeletor and She-Ra, a flamboyant I-Pod with working speakers, Donnie Darko, Ali G, a slew of women in costumes that weren't really costumes but were certainly provocative, and, my favorite, Mike dressed up as The Most Fabulous Rainbow.

I'm proud to have such intelligent, creative, genuine friends that will unabashedly don their wife's formal wear. Brings a tear to my eye, it does.

PS. Blogger's "Recover post" option is one of the greatest ideas ever.

At lecture for my creative writing class, my professor brought up rewriting. "Do you look at something you've written and want to rewrite it?" he addressed us all. There was murmur of confirmation. His eyes darted around the room. "Why is that?"

I raised my hand. "I think that when you first write something, you still hold a lot of the assumptions you've made about the character, the motivations, that sort of stuff. But as time goes by and you grow away from what you've written, you forget a lot of those assumptions you made before and you can see where you might have taken shortcuts or written something out of character..." I trailed off.

"Wow, that's good stuff," he said as I tried not to appear to pleased with myself. "That's pretty deep. Have you taken like an advanced composition class or something?"

I shook my head. "No, but I did take English 102 three times."

The class murmured in laughter.

I contemplated hopping onto one of the long desks and doing a little soft-shoe, but I remembered G-Man's suggestion that it is better to leave 'em wanting more. I took the advice, but I was reluctant. I so seldom have a decent segue into a good soft-shoe.

I didn't finish my story on time. I got an extension. My new deadline is in 4 hours and I am pleased to say that I have just met it.

I was in Los Angeles (the city of Angels, although I didn't find it to be that exactly) this weekend for the wedding of my friends Jody and Ben. It was delightful. I'd never been to a Jewish wedding before. It seems that a little culture goes a long way.

Open bars also go a long way. In this case, from the wedding to the reception hall to the hotel bar to the honeymoon suite until I finally ended up at Verina's home around seven in the morning. Or maybe it was eight. Daylight savings time kicked in that night, so 2 am became 1 am and I had the novel experience of two last calls in one outing.

I must go and make copies of my story. There are many miles before we sleep.