My enjoyment of the outdoors these hot, muggy summer nights is greatly tempered by the throngs of winged death monsters congregated outside. They lurk in bushes, grass, shadows, and seem to materialize out of the air around me, ready to consume my tasty Vietnamese flesh. I must douse myself in Off! Skintastic or risk getting devoured, even if I am to go outside for a mere minute or two. To make matters worse, I appear to be particularly sensitive; within seconds, the bites on my skin turn into angry red welts, rivaling the vermilion shade of wrathful supernovas.

Even the inside of the house where I am currently staying does not appear to be safe from these foul creatures. I don’t want to coat myself in toxic chemical residue every time I leave the house, but I also wish to be rid of this constant torment. Anybody have any effective home remedies or other suggestions for a suffering blogger? I’ll eat nothing but pickles and okra (blecch) for a week straight if it means I am no longer a delicious and cheap buffet line for every mosquito within 1 mile radius of Lawrence.

Does it count as Kafka esque, if it actually features Franz Kafka?

Last night I had a dream about trying to save Kafka’s life. Only Kafka was a middle aged, prunish looking woman instead of a German man. There were about three or four of us living in a ramshackle Victorian house. I was puttering around downstairs, minding some business, when I heard from upstairs a commotion, and someone shouting “needles.” The shout evoked some sort of prescient memory (like in Dune, where the guy “remembers” events from the future (nerd alert!)) - everyone who lived in the house knew what that shout signified, and it meant that Franz Kafka was about to die.

“It’s inevitable!” shouted one of the others, a woman (Dora Diamant, perhaps?). The other two were a middle aged man and a teenage boy. Kafka hobbled down the stairs, dressed in school matron garb, blood pouring down the sides of her face. At some point, in spite of said inevitability, we decided it was our duty to put our best efforts into saving his / her life anyways, Kafka being such an important figure in history (dream Kafka also had political clout of a murky nature).

I had the only means of transport, so I loaded the bloodied Kafka into my trusty Toyota Corolla, and headed off towards Lawrence Memorial Hospital. Kafka was losing consciousness, and I had to work fast - I labored against time and history. As I drove, the streets shifted and changed positions. Upon approaching the hospital, the street would change and the car would end up driving in a different direction, or on the other side of town.

Frustrated, I turned the car around in a parking lot and, speeding, attempted to exit the wrong way. The headlight beams of a monstrous SUV were the last thing I saw before I awoke.