If anyone can find the gong, I would like to strike it now.

Today I had a doctor's appointment. I bike there furiously, feeling awesome, because I am riding very fast on my tough-looking mountain bike, and I am wearing an Army jacket, tight pants, and a skateboarding helmet. I am so fierce!  Also, I am lost! Where is the office? I look at the address I have written on my hand. Then I look up at the abandoned building in front of me. The addresses match. I check the one on my hand a few more times, just in case anything changes. Further confirming the building's abandonment is the construction paper over the windows, highlighted by the "For Lease" sign.

Rejected now, I stare aimlessly. I call two friends. I hop on my bike. I ask a woman with a baby carriage. She kindly gives me directions to a random clinic that is not my clinic. By the time I find the actual office, I am very late for my appointment. Grateful, I push toward it, noticing a car speeding toward me at the last minute. As I propel backward to get out of the way, I hit a curb and fall down. I am sprawled out on the pavement. A group of men with scavenging carts across the street laugh. The driver stops and says, "are you OK?" I reassure him — it is a question not worth asking.

In the waiting room, a girl sitting near the windows slides over until she is sitting next to me. I assume this is because there is an appealing women's health calendar or snappy magazine to snatch up, but when I look over, she is actually reading my health forms. I decide she has every right to know about my medical history. And anyway, the people at the clinic are rad upon taking my forms, but I am still late, and my appointment is canceled.

As I ride home, an SUV pulls up next to me; the driver, a man in a suit, rolls down the window and passive aggressively tells me to "be more careful." I am not sure what he is talking about, because I am stopped at the red light like a law-abiding citizen. But still, because my last conversation was about pelvises, I appreciate his overall concern. Bolstered by this citizen support of my personal health and safety, I decide to ride straight home, which is where I remember how all my furniture is covered in tin foil because my cat is incontinent.

The Science of Sleep

Occasionally I have trouble falling asleep at night. I'm not sure why, but I've a feeling it goes beyond the fact that I let strangers sleep on my couch, or because I accidentally eat lots of Adderall before bed — I can explain those things! Besides, this is not a platform for whining. People who share beds with large and confused somnambulists would rightfully find this kind of insomnia inconsequential and unadventurous — assertions to which I'd acquiesce politely by averting my gaze from what can only be described as their attention whoring black eyes and butter knife lacerations. Then, once everyone has calmed down and lowered those heavy pewter desk lamps, I would agree that sleep is one of the best activities on the planet — anything that interrupts it is an enemy to be squashed!! That's when I pull out a large sheet of butcher paper from my backpack and walk them through a series of my favorite sleepytime brain games.

REM = Ridiculously Exhausted Man

First, sleep-inducing strategies should be detailed and repetitive. In this game, I like to pretend people's initials are actually acronyms for random phrases. For example, my initials are E.A.B. While waiting for sleep, I might imagine the following:

1. Ecstasy-addled bowlers
2. Erratic anthropomorphized badgers
3. Excited adolescent boys

Next, I would use the same initials to explain how these subjects are:

1. euphoric about bicycling
2. enraged around bagels
3. excluded at Bar Mitzvah

Finally, I round out my setting or plot line by manipulating the subject to:

1. exit a brauhaus
2. enter a bakery
3. examine adult's boobs

By the time any erratic anthropomorphized badgers enter a bakery and go crazy due to their overwhelming hatred of bagels, you'll be fast asleep. Later, when your sleepwalking partner wakes you on his way to pee in the closet, you'll be thankful, because you were just having really scary nightmares.

How Mary Magdalene Got Her Hot Beach Bod

Frequently, I receive mail not intended for me. When I first moved into my second apartment in Chicago, I became the recipient of several glossy male underwear catalogs. Upon delivery, I would conceal these items between direct mailers and electricity bills and expedite them to the recycling bin, where they would hide amid empty yogurt and takeaway containers until it was time for them to be shredded and tossed in a dumpster. It's not that I don't appreciate a good man relaxing in underwear—but intense male models posing in tight boxer briefs make me feel uncomfortable and insulted. The last time I saw an Abercrombie & Fitch shopping bag, I screamed.

Recently, I've stopped receiving Boxers, Briefs, and Sass!, but did acquire a Star magazine that belongs to someone named James. It is a delivery error that will be corrected immediately, right after I read about a new appetite suppressant mouth spray tested and developed by, respectively, European women and "scientists who want to know the latest news." (You only have to ingest three sprays via "your mouth" five times a day, and "it even tastes good!") I'm excited about this radical new diet drug, as it's time someone noticed that solid food on a plate should only exist in still life paintings. For example:

Delicious!