Due to a lack of proper nappage during the workday over the last month, my weekend nights and afternoons as of late have become nothing more than a series of outlandish and tiresome dream sequences the color and rhythm of battle scenes in the new HBO mini-series "Band of Brothers," minus any appearances by David Schwimmer, thank god.

Take for instance, Saturday night I had a nightmare in which my Honda Civic was actually a shopping cart I'd stolen from the local Ralph's grocery store, and every time I had to shop for milk or eggs the store's security guards chased me through every aisle with a fervor not even possessed by Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive." Bombs shattered asparagus and cantaloupe, sending stalks and sticky melon fragments into condiment displays like fiery shrapnel. General Mills cereal, so cleverly arranged near the Quaker Oatmeal, lulled me with its nutty clusters into human-sized mousetraps clamping over my neck and arms in shimmering metal grip horror.

Luckily enough for my roommate this unconscious war didn't include any spoken battle cries or fits, no yelps or kicks, no pounding of the mattress with my elbows. And that is unusual. I'm normally quite vocal in my sleep, crying and laughing and screaming loudly enough for neighbors in the apartment building across the street to witness.

Indeed, I'm a veritable sideshow in my slumber, as confirmed by my roommate and the normally social pug dog next door who now cowers in absolute panic when I bend down to greet him with a screeching "coo-chee-coo-chee-coo." Recent nocturnal outbursts include:

"You can't say a damn thing about it, Aunt Lola!"

"No, no, no! You will not ignore me, you will obey me!"

"Well that sure set the tone of the meeting."

"Die you fucker!" (with accompanying kicks to the buttocks of he who sleeps next to me)

"No I'm not okay! Do I look okay?!"

"Stop using all the salt!"

"Error! Error!"

"But I love you, Bono!"