Eureka!

A ha!
I'm back!
I emerged from the stark wasteland of my creative drought this morning, my writer's psyche positively dashelled by inspiration. I leapt out of bed like Archimedes out of a bathtub, eyes alight, dong flapping wildly.

To begin with, let me relate my most recent whack-ass dream.

So I found myself, along with my brother, Sam, in some unnamed Scandinavian country. Sometimes I thought it was Greenland, sometimes Iceland, sometimes Sweden. The closest I ever came to an actual title for the land, though, was "Ericson."
We're wandering around the first floor of a mall of some sort. All the people in this country speak very softly and use a lot of body contact, touching and caressing.
We make our way up to the top floor, the third floor. It's all a bank. The whole floor. Which, granted, is much smaller than the lower floors. I got the impression that the building tapered like a pyramid.
Sam repeatedly tried to take the elevator to a higher floor, despite the fact that there was none. I told him so, and eventually persuaded him that we should go and get a cup of coffee.
Just then, a man behind us whom we took to be a native approached and revealed himself to be an American. He told us where we needed to go for coffee, apparently a combination cafe and strip club. He gave us detailed directions to the establishment which rapidly devolved into detailed reminiscences of his visit there. For example:

-Take Main Street to Jerome Avenue
-Make a left
-Walk through the third door on your right
-They sat me in a chair
-The girls came out
-The lights went up
-Cue the glitter

So Sam and I decide this is definitely the place for us.
We quickly descended to the ground floor and began to make our way outside. I stopped at the bank (the same company as occupied the top floor, but a smaller branch, on the ground floor) to get some dollar bills for the ladies. Sam was off and runnin', however, despite my pleas for him to stay.
I was stuck in line behind two tremendous brunettes, who were chatting about their experience at a hair salon. The one nearest me kept leaning in and forcing my head into her lustrous locks, telling me to smell her hair.
Eventually I got the money and returned to the ground floor, which, I should say, looked like the main concourse of Grand Central Station. I stopped at a newsstand only to find my friend Andrew. He was employed teaching, but in this European country instead of Utah, as is the case in real life. He began to force upon me stacks of mail for the folks at home. I inadvertently ruined a book he was sending to a friend in the States and proceeded to ransack the mall looking for a replacement.
Sam showed up and we both wound up detained by the manager of the mall, who threatened us with charges.
We tried to blackmail her with a sex tape we somehow had.
We watched the sex tape.
She was reclining on a couch amidst a small knot of people, all of whom were masturbating around a rubbish bin. The video had the blurry, cheesy look of '80's porn. You know what I'm talking about.
The crowd moved away from the trash can and suddenly the detritus within began to shiver and shake. A baby emerged. Or, rather, a toddler. A golden-haired, cherubic boy-child. Somehow their combined ejaculates created life in the garbage.
Just then, the camera whipped around to focus on (stay with me here, it gets wiggy) Kevin Spacey in a monkey costume, perched in a tree, brandishing a staff and haranguing the naked assemblage. He said that they were misusing the gifts the gods had given them. A large black dog was nipping at him from the ground. Eventually he slipped and the dog devoured him.
Cut back to the concourse.
I lean into Sam and say, "Y'know, we might not have as solid a hand as I thought, in terms of blackmailing the mall manager. This is Europe, after all; she might be given a promotion if this gets out."

Even in my dream I can be witty

Messed up, huh?
I think the caffeine was dampening my creative subconscious. I am back now, though. I have shrugged off the yoke of my coffee dependence.

Speaking of which, the resolutions are progressing only so-so.
I think the problem with my resolutions is that they are open-ended. I did not set attainable goals for myself.
I shall rethink them.
A new resolution, for instance, is to finally finish Barbara Tuchman's entrancing work on the 14th Century in Europe, A Distant Mirror. See? I can actually finish that one.
I have kept up with the no coffee, and gym every day. And obviously the blogging. The others have proven difficult.
I shall struggle on, however. For my own betterment and for your entertainment, dear reader.

Well, I grow weary.
I kept breaking from my composing to watch Californication. Perhaps my favorite program currently on television. I highly recommend it.

So I bid you adieu for the nonce. But I'll be thinking of you, anonymous potential readership base, when I feel all hot and bothered.

Goodnight, everyone.