11:37 a.m. I'm going to start practicing what I preach. Get up, do my most important work when I'm at my most potent. The rest of the day will take care of itself.

12:26 p.m. Well ha, ha, ha. I guess there's no more use in preaching the gospel of writing if I can't even practice it. Plus, I have a really low image of myself as an artist and an unwavering belief in deadlines and paychecks, so I've thrown myself into my paying work -- who could blame me? I am so amazingly out of harm's way when I'm working for someone else.

So here I am at the end of the day and my eyes feel all bulged and burning, my back aches, my wrist aches, and the contracted pages I've poured and laid out are stacked in a nice, glowing pile of righteousness beside the scanner, which has not been turned on even once today. I'm drinking fresh orange juice. I've got to pay for it somehow, right?

But I have found an interesting topic for today, so all is not lost.

I am really really lousy at telling jokes. It's such a shame because although I appreciate and love jokes, I can never remember them -- and were I to remember snippits, I'd inevitably rewrite them in my head before I ever got around to telling them again. I also have a terrible time memorizing anything; I can remember the Pledge of Allegiance and the Hail Mary and that's about it. The all-important Apostles' Creed -- I forget salient parts of it. And for a Catholic this is no laughing matter because if you want to try to slip into heaven through the loophole of Perfect Contrition, you have to remember the Apostles' Creed, and perfectly, I would imagine.

I really don't know how actors manage to memorize. It's a deep and profound mystery to me.

So anyway, you may have already heard the one about about the person who had these words engraved on his tombstone: "See. I told you I was sick." (See, I told you I can't tell jokes.)

Well, in today's obituaries there is the story of this poor woman, Wendy Scott, who has just died. She was afflicted with Munchausen syndrome, which means that she liked to pretend she was sick so that she could get attention. Before she actually did get sick, she spent 12 years traveling all over Britain and Europe, dramatically moaning and groaning and generally pretending.

She had 42 operations, neally all of them unnecessary. Weird, eh?

And like the boy who cried wolf, when she really did get sick ... well of course nobody believed her. Ironic, eh? So by the time she could convince a doctor to see her, she had advanced intestinal cancer and she was a goner.

And I can't help but wonder -- was she blissfully happy there at the end? I mean, after a lifetime of feeling like a fraud, here she was -- suddenly and indubitably the real thing. Did that count at all? Did she die a self-fulfilled woman?

And ... isn't she the perfect person to be buried under that particular tombstone?

And speaking of unusual women, Ally McBeal is back and once again I don't really want to watch, but I watch. I know there's an important diet secret in this show somewhere, and I am determined to ferret it out. I am convinced that since her every action on every show is pretty much the exact opposite of what I would do, it's perfectly clear to me.

That's why she's thin and I am not. She always comes first. Her feelings matter most. She wants it -- she gets it. She doesn't want it, she pushes it away. Simple. Clean. And no nasty leftovers to worry about.

And so now I must stop pretending that I'm working and go back to work. I am nothing more than a Munchausen writer, I'm afraid.