It's Hard Out Here for a Slogger

This blog has fewer readers on weekends, but the blogging impulse doesn't follow the clock or calendar. Usually, I'm up and at it early in the morning, powered by Papa Nicholas brand espresso with vanilla ice cream (Esprilla Vanesso), listening to George Noury or Alex Jones on the radio, or music through a headset.

The Muslim call to prayer has a phrase that "prayer is better than sleep" -- and I agree. And blogging is better than sleep, too -- especially since I've started taking Ambien . . . I've been blogging in my sleep! (A new genre I call "sleep blogging" or "slogging" for short.)

This entire post is being composed as I snore away.

My new hero is Stephen Colbert (ColBEAR), who follows Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, a show he calls The Colbert Report with a silent T (like rapporte). I like the way he makes up new words and skewers the political scene with his brand of "Truthiness" (last year's word of the year). He had a segment on his show recently about people who overeat while on Ambien. I think it was Colbert, well, whoever it was, CBS broke the story.

Colbert is sharp as a tack and always on the comic attack. He shamelessly pumps the live studio audience for applause, especially before his pre-guest interview. You'd think he'd just hit the game-winning home run in the 7th game of the World Series the way he gets a standing ovation before he interviews his guests, who generally look on with bemusement at their host, whose speciality is (usually) specious, "devil's advocate" debate against anti-Bush politicians, writers, and media personalities, such as Christopher Buckley, Keith Olbermann or Al Franken, whom he attempts to trip up with "truthy" facts, taken from an extremely pro-Bush perspective -- like Sean Hannity with a brain.

He also insists he isn't gay, despite being the 7th youngest boy in his family. But if Stephen isn't gay, as he insists, then why does he use the phrase "Nailed You" all the time? Perhaps the man who each night gives us The Word -- does not believe that metaphors matter? If so, he must not have ever read I.A. Richards. (Yo, Stephen: "Nailed you! Did I nail you?")

Colbert is also obsessed with media critiques of his performance, in a feature called "Who's Attacking Me Now." The night before last, he telephoned a reporter on the Orlando Sentinel, Commander Coconut, who commented on SC's asymmetrical ears. Stephen told him about the tumor that was removed from one ear and he couldn't hear well out of it, making the Commodore feel small, as small as Stephen's weird ear, but SC was lying, "playing the tumor card," he joked straight-faced to the audience.

Well, Colbert may have made short work of the Orlando Coconut, but what about the Carbondale Dispatcher? . . . blogging in his sleep, a tuppeny nail hammered by the Almighty, driving home the point to the magnificent, magnitesticular, comedian extraordinaire Stephen Colbert.

(Bloggitor's note: I've never used Ambien or known anyone who does. )