THE GREAT GADFLY:

Poppies

Here's how bad it is: I fell asleep during the last ten minutes of "24" last night. I woke up half an hour after the show ended and had a glass of DiCoLem in hopes of staying up through The Daily Show. I got through about ten minutes of Jon Stewart before I was flying through snoozeland once again.

Here's how bad it is: On my walk to the train this morning, my eyes filled up with sleepytime goo. While I was walking in brisk Chicago winter weather, headphones strapped to my head pounding Big Daddy Kane, not only did my eyes crust up with sleepygoo, but that little temptress voice in the sleepy-bear part of my brain started in with its "wouldn't we all be better off if you were buried under several layers of blankets and fast asleep?" lecture.

Seratonin, melatonin, dopamine, whatever the hell is going on in my body, I have a mental image of Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory as metaphor for my wintertime internal sleepytime command center.

I wake up at 5 a.m. every morning, unable to force myself out of bed but also unable to force myself back to sleep. I watched TV morning news shows this morning. Did you know Michael Jackson got bit by a spider? Well, that's what he told reporters yesterday. Yeah, ol' Daddy Dangles is on crutches again, because he said he got a spider bite that made his foot too big for a shoe. He thinks it was a black widow. He's deathly afraid of spiders, you see. But he likes tarantulas. Then he went into the courtroom and made faces for the cameras, my favorite being the two-fingered quote mark hand signs he made on either side of his head, as if he were asking, DO YOU LIKE MY "FACE"?

Oh, and apparently there's something going on in Iraq. Couldn't be bothered.

Meanwhile, here's a sneak snippet of tonight's big whoop-de-doo Whitney interview:

Dianne: Whitney, the world wants to know - are you a crackhead?

Whitney: Oh holy crap, Dianne, YES! I love crack - love it!!! Crack in the morning, crack in the daytime, crack at suppertime! I just think crack is the cat's meow! The pig's pyjamas! The bee's knees! What's not to love about crack? Crackety-crack-crack! I simply adore it. I dress my crack rock up in a little bonnet and sundress and show it off to all my friends. They just giggle! I eat Cracklin' Oat Bran for breakfast every morning. My favorite book is "The Mirror Crack'd". I buy all my assistants and domestic help a big crack sampler every Christmas - they're worth it, they really are. And look at the ring Bobby bought me - that's a real 14 karat crack rock! In fact, after this interview, we're going to slide down our crack poles into our secret underground crack cave, jump into our crackmobile and jet on over to Crack E. Cheese's for some deep dish crack rock pizza! Get with the times, Dianne, we ALL do crack in THIS house.

Dianne: Do you think you have a problem?

Whitney: No.