I'd like to be sleeping right now, but they've been at it outside with the jackhammers for the last hour. I wonder if what they're doing is part of an intricate scheme to take over the world or otherwise upset the foundation of society. Or is it all in my head? It's giving me a fucking headache. And since I can't really do anything that requires much concentration -- and therefore a certain measure of quiet -- I'm writing another blog entry.

Question for the creative types: How often do you have ideas for projects for which you think, if you were able to complete them (and the public actually paid attention), people would violently attack you and even try to kill you for vocally expressing so contrary a point of view? Because maybe I'm just paranoid, or overestimating the uniqueness of my own ideas, or underestimating the capacity of people to tolerate, understand, and even accept new and differing ideas (as opposed to simply ignoring them; I can't even get people to publish my fiction, with "too didactic" being among the primary reasons cited for the rejection of my work), but I think I have ideas for enterprises like that at least twice a week.

And if you do have ideas of that nature, I ask, how realistic is the possibility of your realizing them? For my part, completion of these endeavors would be all but impossible. You see, their execution would require the compliance and assistance of other people who were prepared to be martyred alongside me for my ideas, and I don't think most people would be willing to take the risk -- especially since they probably wouldn't agree with me. No one agrees with me. No, they'd have to be compensated quite handsomely for them to even consider signing on with one of my idealistic missions, and I lack the funding even to tempt them to give up their security and possibly put their lives in jeopardy.

I had a dream the other night in which I was hoarding candy bars -- lots of candy bars -- for no apparent reason. I ate a handful of Baby Ruth bars and woke up feeling full.

And last night, on a whim, I registered ratlantis.com. What goes there -- when I get around to setting it up -- will not be one of the idealistic projects abstractly discussed. It will, however, be a decidedly twisted undertaking.