LIFE WITHOUT DRUGS Most days of this month I spent between -3 and 0. (For context -- before I got depressed, I lived all my life between -10 and +10, usually between +3 and +6. The early months of depression were -100.) I'm not in the deep black pit of depression; I'm in the annoyingly off-white waiting room of being not very happy. Not unhappy enough to resort to artificial happiness-increasing chemicals. That kind of sucks, doesn't it? It would be nice if I were happier; or if I were less happy I might use drugs to get happier. As it is, I think I'm finally in a position where things like exercise and sunshine can make a difference. (Unlike four years ago -- when I was at -100 and people were telling me that sunshine would make me feel better, I just rolled my eyes and thought, "You don't know what you're dealing with here." It might have improved me to -98....) My sleep needs have been volatile for these four years, and that continues. I would go through a few months of needing 11 or 12 hours a night, then 9 or 10 hours would do for a while. The situation got confused last month -- while I was weaning off the drugs, and simultaneously doing some fasting and detoxing, I went through a week where I needed less than 8 hours. I developed the unfortunate hypothesis that eliminating processed sugar from my diet made me need less sleep. Well, if you're going to test a hypothesis you might as well test it in a robust manner. So the first week of April I hit a 75%-off post-Easter candy sale and generally ate as much sugar and fat as I could get my hands on. I felt fine on 8 hours of sleep for the first five days, but then I started getting fatigued. So then I went back off sugar, and nothing changed. Now I'm needing 9 or 10 hours, but I have no evidence it's related to diet. Post-paxil Bob is too mushy to be a wedding videographer -- watching my own stuff makes me cry (like Kathleen Turner in the opening sequence of Romancing the Stone -- "God, that's good."). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "TIME BEGINS ON OPENING DAY" -- Thomas Boswell After playing 11 games, the Tigers were 10 1/2 games out of first place (they were 0-11 and Cleveland was 11-1). "It gave me a chance to listen to Vin Scully." -- Padre manager Bruce Bochy, ejected in the 1st inning at Dodger Stadium BASEBALL NEEDS PARITY: Last year, Chuck Knobloch was the Yankees' worst player. This year he's Kansas City's best player. -- Dodger pitching coach Jim Colborn on Odalis Perez' 1-hitter ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Memo to Ralph Nader -- if you really want to be a consumer advocate, why don't you do something about the outrageous price of inkjet replacement cartridges? Maybe you've seen those kits where you can recharge a spent cartridge by squirting new ink into it with a syringe. Maybe you thought, "I'm not cheap enough to buy one of those, but I bet my friend Bob is." Here's the skinny: it more or less worked but the ink was of inferior quality. It would be OK if you just print stuff for yourself but if, for example, you run a small business and your reputation is in any way dependent on the quality of things you print, it's unacceptable. So off to Staples I went for a $45 cartridge. Thanks to those of you who responded to my request for advice. You unanimously believe I should do what my friend wants even though I think it's morally wrong. Obviously I have some sympathy for this position; if I didn't I wouldn't have termed it a moral dilemma! I suspect this is not generic advice you are giving me; you just think I'm out of line for considering global warming a moral issue. Anyway be happy I'm living by your advice! (a) go to a poorly-designed website. (b) get so incensed at the moronic design you decide to take a few minutes to write an irate letter asking them to get a clue. (c) find the `contact us' form is coded so ineptly you can't get the hostile letter posted to them. (d) pop a vein. Thank you for this experience, efax.com. BOB NOLTY: MAD COW DISEASE THREAT: Because I lived in Italy in the past decade, my blood is as acceptable to the Red Cross as that of a heroin-addicted hemophiliac Haitian gay prostitute with jaundice. "Our orgasmic creamy toroids" -- a Caltech newspaper columnist loses all sense of restraint while describing the Donut Man experience A music equipment chain turned me down for consumer credit -- infer from that what you will about my financial health. -- DISCLOSURE: Ralph Nader doesn't really read the Bobologue.