When one finds themself on the forefront of writing internet humor (or, in my case, being extremely adept at stealing material from others who are on the forefront of writing internet humor), you eventually have to face the realities of that position, the responsibilities involved.  There is a certain duty that you owe to others, your readers, to provide and maintain a constant level of funny regardless of your personal situation.  Through the past half a year and almost 100 updates, I've managed to accomplish this, albeit somewhat sparingly at times.  But not now, not this time.  I've lost my creativity; my muse taking a well-deserved vacation as it tours the beaches in Australia.  Some say that it can't be helped; that you had your five minutes of fame and now it's time to move on.  Go sell vacuums door-to-door or something.  I've never been much for sales and my unholy fear of vacuums would only hinder my success.  No, this time I play Stella and I am on a quest to get my groove back.

No one seemed to care that I had fallen off the face of the Earth.  I was living on the streets; sleeping with priests for a night or two of warm shelter and companionship.  My hair had grown long and dishevled, my untrimmed beard looking like something out of 1972.  It was all I could do to not join the other homeless in drinking myself to sleep or picking up a rusty syringe in hopes that I would contract some virus born not from this world and it would all end quickly.  There are only so many nights that crying yourself to sleep actually works.  To be honest, there was no way to dance around ths subject: I was a loser and a washout.  The future was bleek and like dot-com era stock options, I was worthless.  What I needed was help -- salvation -- and I found it in the most unlikely of places.

I was awakened from my afternoon nap in front of Bank of America by a thunderous roar; the sound of thousands of angry people shouting out at once.  Of course I thought I was still dreaming, perhaps the aftereffects of eating some bad fish from a dumpster the night before, but after the sound failed to dissapate, even this old homeless brain of mine knew something was up.  Getting to my feet as quickly as I could, which is to say was at a pace slower than an elderly person with a broken leg, I lumbered as best I could towards the commotion.  As I rounded the corner, I was in awe at the sheer sound wave that assaulted my ear drums.  Thousands of people, marching in circles and waving various signs, were chanting in unison protest over the need to institute a seven-day waiting period the purchase of household pets.  Cries such as "Guns don't kill people, pets kill people!" and "Make atomic bombs not animals" were among the more popular.

Perplexed, I spotted an older man wielding a megaphone and wearing a foil crown.  Thinking that he might be the one responsible for this ruckus, I approached him and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, sir," I pleaded, "you're interrupting my afternoon nap."

Turning, he shouted, "Ban the animals!  Can't you see the danger they pose?"

"Hey, you're Steven Tyler from Aerosmith!"

"That's right.  Ignore the video game revolution."

"Hey, could you maybe move your little protest thing up a few blocks?"

"No one understands, man.  Music, it's not about music, man.  The animals, they've got us.  They've got us all."

"Steven," I said calmy, trying my best to keep my composure, "you're not making any sense."

"Oh, I am brother," Steven said, clamping his hand down on my shoulder.  "You're just not listening hard enough."

"Why are you wearing that foil crown?"

"Dominance, man.  Dominance."

"Dominance?  Over who?"

"The ghosts!  We're out here protesting because it's far too easy in America today for children to go out and purchase pets.  There is no regulation or waiting period.  Pet shop owners sell to felons and females without even bothing to check for identification.  Immigrants come over and purchase pets all the time just to smuggle them back across the borders.  It's an epidemic!"

Now, you'd have to understand that this is all quite a bit for my feeble, sleep addled brain to take in at once.  I mean, imagine meeting Steven Tyler and finding out he's crazy all in the span of 30 seconds.  And that's when it hit me.  Well, more correctly, that's when he hit me.  Steven Tyler reached out and punched me in the chest.

"You know too much about flying saucers!" he screamed.

"Ow," I gasped.  My chest felt like a fat man was using it as a chair after a long marathon session at the buffet line.  "What the hell are you doing?"

Steven's eyes narrowed to mere slits and he glared at me with fire in his eyes.  "You ask far too many questions.  Is daddy Steven going to have to punish this bad little boy?"  As he reached out to grab me, I sidestepped, recalling the moves I used to put on the floor when I was a bowler in college.

"What the-- in the name of all that is righteous and-- sweet Jesus, stop it.  You're friggin' crazy."  I recall a certain moment of clarity at this point for I do believe that is the first time that I had ever spoken the word "friggin'" to anyone outside of my psychologist.

"Oh no you didn't," Steven said, snapping his fingers in a z-like motion through the air.  "Lord, I know he didn't just call me crazy," Steven said to no one in particular.  "Did he just call me crazy?"  It was at this point that I realized for the first time that he was wearing a dress.  "Oh, it's on girlfriend."

"Steven," I said with a hint on defiance, "you can't fight me."

"Why not?"

"I invoke the power of Mick Jagger."  I figured if he was going to play a crazy card, I could try and match his train of thought.

"What the hell is the power of Mick Jagger?"

"Well, it's kind of like the yin to your yang; the black to your white."

"No it's not, man.  Now it's you who's talking crazy."

"Maybe I am," I said flatly.  "Maybe I am."

I could see that my thoroughly crazy logic had momentarily stunned him.  His eyes glazed over while he tried to stoop to my level in order to figure out what the hell I just said.  I figured that it was as good a time as any to make my escape.  I tried to turn and run but my feet were moving in slow motion, similar to watching the 100-yard dash at the Special Olympics.  My window of opportunity was narrowing as I could see that Steven was near to solving the problem I had given him.  If he was to wake up before I got out of there, I was a dead man for sure.

Without warning, it began to rain.  The day was still warm and the rain was even warmer.  That's odd I thought to myself.  Well, no more odd than the day I was already having I guess.  Suddenly, like a slumbering bull, Steven awoke with rage in his eyes.  He began to charge at me with all his speed; his lips dragging on the ground behind him.  As he neared, I struggled once again to will my feet to move anywhere; go any place but here!  I could feel the ground rumbling beneath his lumbering charge and it seemed to take an eternity to close the meager gap between us.

Soaked from head to toe due to the surprise rain, I finally gave in.  There was nothing else I could do but wait.  And wait because, damn it, he was still running.  I swear that we were only like five feet apart.  Dragging his club-like arm from the ground, he took a swing at me, his rage boiling over.  But he didn't hit me.  It's not that he didn't have the distance but because I wasn't where I was when he started swinging.  I was moving!  Downward, yes, but moving.  I was falling backwards, propelling myself closer to the ground.  With a thud, there was impact.

That's about the time that I woke up and realized two things.  One, it had all been a dream and two, I had pissed all over myself.  Not cool.  As I got up from my nice bed and stripped the sheets, I began to think about all the lessons I had learned from the dream I just had.  Being funny isn't something that you can just make magically happen.  It's something that requires a lot of work and dedication.  Baby steps, if you will.  Like babies, sometimes you falter and fail but you just have to get right back up and keep trying.  I can't always be a reservoir of funny, ready to supply humor at the drop of a hat.  If you cut me, do I bleed funny?  No, stupid, I bleed blood.  Otherwise I don't think it would be called bleeding.  If I bled funny, wouldn't it be called "fleed?"  Who knows.  I donated some funny to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  Do you think it's too late to ask for it back?