“Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.”

- Fran Lebowitz

I couldn't sleep the other night. I tossed, I turned; yet no amount of fluffing the pillows would help me find that sweet spot that would allow me to drift off.

I even tried doing some middle-of-the-night-mathematics in my head. For those who have never had the pleasure of this nocturnal accounting system, it goes like this: You look at the clock and figure when you need to wake up. If by some miracle you drift off at that moment, you'd get so many hours of sleep. Never works; but for some reason I find myself doing the equations for hours at a stretch.

I became annoyed with my calculations, so I decided to go into the living room and watched some television.

At 3 a.m. the only thing on is infomercials. I am sitting there half-zoned out yet totally captivated by some guy who reminds me of the Swedish chef from the Muppets cutting a soda can in half and then slicing a tomato into see-through sheets.

And if I call right now I'd get not just one, but two, of these indestructible knifes. My only question is; if they are in fact so indestructible, why would I need two of them?

Watching this guy is sort of like viewing a low budget horror movie, because when he's done doing a number on the can, he picks up a hammer and tries filleting it, then he's onto a slab of marble.

The only thing stranger than what he's doing is how excited he was to be doing it. I mean he's having the time of his life with this thing.

The next “show” was even better. A man who looks like Jimmy Carter on Valium starts telling me how I can own my own home with no money down. Not only that, but because I was blessed with this insomnia I can now learn the secrets of getting rich. It seems all I'd have to do would be to send him several low payments of just $49.99.

Not only that but as a bonus, he'd throw in his special DVD on how to make money quickly.

I'm sure it has something to do with having people send you low payments of just $49.99. My favorite part of these infomercials is the testimonials.

Here's Cleatus and Tammy-Rae, and they're just pleased as punch that you want to be a millionaire just like them. He told me that operators were standing by, but I was ready to go back to bed.

As I put my head to the pillow, I wondered what it would be like to actually be a millionaire.

There is an old phrase that money can't buy happiness.

While this might be true, I'm sure that with a cool million, if I couldn't buy happiness, I could at least make a good down payment.

And you know the first thing that I'd get? A knife that can cut through a hammer ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Auburn native Bradley Molloy's column appears here, each

Sunday, in The Citizen.

He can be reached at lovonian@hotmail.com