This is exactly how I remember it.

I dove deep into the dark water, fighting for the light and life of the surface even as white-coated people below tried to drown me. One had me by the throat, holding my face still, as another forced water up my nose.

I was all so horrifying and obviously nightmarish that I decided I must be dreaming. So I tried to wake up. But I couldn't. I tried all the tricks of lucid dreaming. None of them worked. The last thing I remember thinking as I choked for air was, "From some dreams, you just don't wake up."

That's exactly how I remember it. I was later told I yanked out four nasal tubes before the white-coats stopped trying to insert one.

I feel fine. I just have a touch of stage four cancer.

When people ask, as they do in passing, "How are you?" I want to answer, "I have cancer, how are you?"

But I don't. I just say, "Fine."

Still, I wonder if my cats will outlive me.

So on Tuesday a surgeon will go where no man or woman has gone before: deep into the bowels of my bowels, with a knife.

The adventure continues.

BABY GET YOUR GUN

The Oklahoma State House is taking up a bill that would allow licensed 18-year-olds to carry concealed weapons. The minimum age now is 21.

Representative Jerry Ellis says, "In my district when you turn 18, you already have 16 years of experience with a gun."

Armed two- year- olds. You heard it here. Pardon me while I take cover.

(Tulsa World)

Virginia has made all organized animal fights illegal. The law applies to all animals: pit bulls, cockfights, fighting crickets, whatever.

Organized human fights, however, are exempt from the law.

HELL'S ANGELS AT SEA

It's now been revealed that the Hell's Angles plotted to kill Mick Jagger in 1969 because he bad mouthed them after Altamont. They tried a sea assault on Jagger's Long Island home, but a wave knocked the avenging Angels overboard.

Stick to the bikes, boys.

DEJA VU

Funeral arrangements were being made on Friday for 35 Pakistanis blown up by a suicide bomber at the funeral of a policeman who had been blown up by a suicide bomber earlier in the day.

(AP)

TASTY NIBBLES

Marcus Groh went with a dive group last weekend to see the sharks in the ocean off Fort Lauderdale. To make sure there would be sharks, the tour leaders baited the water with fish guts. And it worked. The sharks came. They bit Marcus to death.

Who could have known?

SCHRODINGER LIVES!

An update on my colon (see earlier story): Today I am existing in two states of being simultaneously.

The doctor found a tumor. He says it is likely to be malignant. It is also likely to not be malignant.

So today I exist in a cancerous state as well as a non-cancerous state, both at the same time. And it won't be until later this week, when the testing of the biopsy is complete, that my two states will collapse into one. I will then be either cancerous Marc, or non-cancerous Marc.

This will be interesting.

WWJD

Two Oregon teens were suspended from school for wearing crucifixes. The principal said the crosses were gang symbols.

The Jesus gang?

AND YET IT MOVES

While waiting for my colonoscopy, I thought of the astronomer Galileo.

I was lying on my side on a gurney, wearing a gown that opened in the back, and my mind was numb with the terror of the occasion. There on a tray sat a device consisting of several instruments connected by black hoses. I surmised that one of those hoses was going to go some distance up a private orifice of mine, and I did not like the idea. That's when I thought of Galileo.

After the church charged Galileo with heresy for claiming that the Earth circles the Sun rather that the other way around, they tried to get him to renounce his theory. Evidently believing Galileo to be a reasonable man, before resorting to torture they first displayed for him the instruments of his torture.

He renounced his theory.

I can see why he'd do that.

An Idaho teen was arrested for faking his kidnapping and then trying to get his friends to pay a $3000 ransom.

Friends? This guy has friends?

There will always be an England. It just won't be on the radio,

You know that image from the war movies, people huddled together in the dark and lit only by the faint glow of a short wave radio, listening to the BBC World Service for the latest news of the Allied front.

But no more. The BBC has stopped transmitting to North and South America, and the last broadcasts to Europe ended Monday.

The "Beeb" issued a statement saying that after 75 years, the service could no longer be justified because so few people were listening amymore. You know, ratings were down.

The BBC World Service will continue serving underdeveloped nations in Africa and Asia. The rest of us can still catch it on the Internet.

And of course, there'll always be an Internet.

Mohamed al Fayed, whose son Dodi died in a Paris car crash with Princess Diana, testified at her inquest Monday in London. Here are some highlights of his testimony.

• Prince Phillip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, directed the plot to "slaughter" Dodi and Diana.
• Prince Phillip is a "racist" and a "Nazi."
• He added, "It's time to send him back to Germany, from where he comes." (Phillip was born in Greece.)
• Fayed said of Prince Phillip, "You want to know his original name? It's Frankenstein." (Actually, it's Mountbatten.)
• Phillip had the couple killed because he didn't want Diana to marry a Muslim, "someone who is naturally tanned, with curly hair."
• Prince Charles wanted Diana eliminated so he could marry "his crocodile wife," Camilla Parker Bowles.
• Diana told Fayed that Prince Phillip wanted to kill her. (She apparently never confided this to anyone else.)
• Diana told him that she was pregnant with Dodi's child. (Again, she never told her friends.)
• MI6, the CIA and the NSA were bugging Diana's phone.
• The British and French secret intelligence services "executed" Diana and Dodi.
• The CIA also helped.
• The couple's driver, Henri Paul, was in on the plot. (Paul also died in the crash. Two previous investigations by French and British police found that he was drunk and speeding.)
• A paparazzi photographer, who later committed suicide, also helped kill the couple. (That photographer, James Adanson, was 177 miles from Paris at the time.)
• Also in on the plot were former Prime Minister Tony Blair "and his senior henchmen," Britain's ambassador to France, French medical and forensic experts, Scotland Yard and Queen Elizabeth's private secretary.
• Mohamed al Fayed said his proof is in the secret MI6 files, which he's never seen.
• Fayed said, "I will expose those gangsters, not only for me but for the ordinary people of this country."

I'm waiting for the movie to come out.
(USA/NYT)

Here is some of the wit and wisdom of Arizona Senator John McCain.

• "Only an asshole like you would put together a budget like this," to former Budget Committee Chairman Senator Pete Domenici in 1999.
• "I'm calling you a fucking jerk," to Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley.
• "Fuck you. I know more about this than anyone else in the room," to Texas Senator John Cornyn during a meeting on immigration legislation.

Ya gotta like this guy.

(AP)

The town of Obama, Japan is supporting its American namesake. There are "Go Obama" posters, "I love Obama" T-shirts and bean cakes with Barak Obama's picture on them.

Remind me, how many delegates does Japan have?

(NYT)

GOD LOVES NUKES

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says God will punish Iranians who don't support the country's nuclear program.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

(AP)

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization will search a wilderness area of West Virginia in April, looking for Bigfoot.

They last searched this area in 2006. They didn't find him then, either.

(USA)

IS THAT A VIBRATOR IN YOUR POCKET?

Just in time for Valentine's Day, a federal appeals court has overturned the Texas ban on sex toys.

But watch out, a dildo can still get you busted in Alabama.

What's up with Valentine's day? When did the observance become so cynical?

Yesterday I reported on un-Valentine's cards, candy, T-shirts and background checks.

Now I see in the Wall Street Journal a special Valentine's piece on how to have a good divorce. Some advice: Try coming to terms without a lawyer, be prepared for a major loss of assets, and treat your ex as a business partner rather than as someone you loved.

USA Today reminds the soon to be divorcee to purge the e-mail archives of damaging evidence so you're not caught out like the mayor of Detroit. And don't forget to clean up your Facebook profile.

And a West Virginia radio station is giving away a free divorce for Valentine's day.

Maybe it's always been like this, ever since Saint Valentine was tortured to death on February 14th, 496AD for secretly marrying young couples.

But at least the Tulsa World had something positive: How to make love last. The answer: put the flowers in a vase of sugar water with a drop of bleach, and cut the stems on a diagonal.

Even war-torn Kenya remembers Valentine's Day.

Kenya grows 25% of the Valentine's flowers, mostly roses, sold in Europe. It's the number one export. And Cupid waits for no civil war. So the flowers are being transported in police convoys and flown out of the country.

It's good to know that even as opposing tribes are hacking each other to death, there's still time to stop and smell the roses.