The worst part of the day came in low and fast like this...

First, there was Hannity, that all-in-one Abbot and Costello, saying how poorly the president had reacted to the situation in Libya — "pathetic, isn't it?" said the Innanity, and wondered what would it take Obama to see the light, have some guts and take a stand?

Perhaps, he said, 'if the protesters in Tripoli joined the teachers in Madison The Annointed One would do something.'

With that I turned off the radio, got out of the car, went down five flights, and made my way to an Information desk where I was told to 'have a seat for a moment'. After 20 minutes, the girl leads me down to the trailer. The Mustang Ranch, as it were, where they service your wits, take apart your last remaining sanities. You put anything metal in the drawer, save your wedding ring. But your belt, your coat, not your shoes, you can leave those on, which I don't normally do, and now there are two girls — can I do this I'm thinking? — and then they strap you down on the tray and — and you think of executions, but no it's not that, yet something nearly as Sfi-Fi, they move you into the fallopian, and there you go, wearing ear plugs and a face mask, going up stream with the salmon, home somehow, all in the embrace of an acronym, MRI, or you're like a torpedo in a tube, in sinking submarine, or a football player who they think has a neck injury and as they get you on the cart you want to be sure to wave to the crowd, even if just the little finger, give them some sign of life, get a kind word from Ron Jaworski but you can't, and then the clanking begins.

It's the test of mind sinew, of course. Can you delete all your material world files and be a baby Jesus. Be just clean and open and fearless. Or maybe find cultural links. "This sounds like something Philip Glass might like," you think. Or not. After all, how much more koyaanisqatsi can we get here, folks? No, there's just no tempo except once, for a few minutes, as though someone was saying "Tony" over and over and very fast: tonytonytonytony, and soon you're imagining you're a Peruvian miner and then you're the girl in True Grit and the rattle snakes are in the tube with you and then you desperately shuffle through the pages of better thought, noble thought, and there's the enigmatic smile of the buddah statue in the entryway at home.

But hard to keep that smile front and center because of all the clanging and clanking, gonging, and every once in a while they recalibrate, you feel the pulsing on your fingers, they start all over again, and one of the girls is talking to you, the speakers are very bad. Here's this million dollar machine but the speakers are incredibly poor and the she-Hal is saying 'you're doing fine' as though, 'yes, you're doing fine, you're almost dead now, we just want to knock out any remaining life forms, and we'll have you right out of here'.

As Ram Dass once told me, I keep coming back to that, "you'll be dying and I'll be surfing', and that's how life is, and once more you feel the pulsing as the magnetic coils dismember you cell by cell, and you feel yourself becoming no more than a gopher out in a plastic yard hole.

Suddenly, there's the sound of birds, little yellow birds, or else something needs oil, because clearly the valve lifters are coming apart. No, those are definitely birds, what an odd thing, and something about the sound makes you think they're as yellow as sunup. Which brings to mind the mechanical bird, or was it a real bird, on the branch out the kitchen window in Blue Velvet and a whole other train of dark insanities comes roaring along.

Finally, it ends and five years later you can't remember if you ever had one of those, and the girl gives you your belt and your coat, but no kiss, as though there's nothing intimate that's gone on here, they should give you a kiss, no question, something to go with the $50 co-pay and the $1,100 a month, and the fact that you didn't call for help, but no, all you get is the 'attaboy', and frankly I wanted a little more sincerity, because the fact is 42.3 percent of the people who get in the magnetic orgamatron can't stand the pleasure and have to be pulled out of there. They squeeze the little red bag and then endure the humiliation of not being able to do it... The nurse smiles, a grim smile but still a smile. Remember, she's doing 18 people a day. How much affection does she have for you, especially when you can't do it....

So then I rush out the trailer, down the metal steps, into the hospital, through all these metaphors, and up the cement stairs, to street level, like popping up out of the ocean, and you get your ticket validated, up the elevator, I remember the floor on the first try, how sane am I now you frankendocs, and then throw yourself into the car, at 257,000 miles and the permanent scent of Jack-in-the-box, home sweet home, and then you turn on the radio for a little face cream for the mind... Silence would never occur to you.

And for just a fleagasm of a moment you wonder how could that possibly be, what kind of person are you to turn this on, especially at a moment like this, what is it? You haven't a clue, you have this obsession with political fanatics. You're sick. That's why you went to the hospital....

No matter, the on-life switch is on and you're just at the dot of the hour, at the beginning of another resonance machine, it takes a string theory to understand this, but there it is, the ever effervescent, and Mr. Evanescent, Mark Levin, always introduced by the heavy rumble of guitar grunge, and the barker's faux life-in-wartime prologue, "He's here! He's here. Now broadcasting from the underground command post deep in the bowls of a hidden bunker, somewhere under the brick and steal of a nondescript building.... We've once again made contact with our leader....(Grunge dirge up... swell) ....Mark Levin.

And it's all strangely comforting, even the sound of someone so absolutely malicious and vile and, under any other circumstances, bonkers — a recall unit if there ever was.....