FLOOR DIRECTOR:  ... in five... four... three... [silent gestures: two fingers, one finger...]

TALKING HAIRDO:  People in low-laying areas all along the mid-Atlantic Seaboard, north, as well as hundreds of miles inland, are being asked to look at their buttocks in their household and workplace mirrors and then wave to them -- buh-bye, kiss-kiss.

ANNOUNCER:  Oh, er, ahumph.  We interrupt our coverage -- wait.  Sorry.  Hold on a sec. Yes.  Our apologies.  We've been informed that announcement's a bit premature.  Willard Romney has not yet been elected President of the United States of America, although we understand those arrangements are now underway.

However, just as soon as we receive confirmation from RomneyWorld and GOP world "Manipulate the Vote!" headquarters that the fix is not only in, but an actual done-deal, today's announcement regarding the status of your buttocks will be repeated, along with suggestions how you can best wish them good-bye, along with tips on how to make do without them.

We now return you to our ratings-pumping, product-pimping, revenue-geyser we like to call our 24-7, Action News Team's Special Apocalypse, Weather-Tracker SWAT Unit's Armageddon Alert 2012 Newsflash Headline and In-Depth Mobile Coverage First-Response Broadcast-Elite Shock Troops, always the first at Channel One with boots on the ground in your neck of the woods, whether your woods are standing or flattened...

It started out like a regular day, as I think back on it:  Waking up, stumbling and side-stepping over the dogs on the way to the bathroom, then bumbling out to the kitchen to make coffee.

If I'd been more awake, I would probably have caught the first clue that something was out of whack somewhere... and that someone had better order more whack right away.

OK, so I'll keep to the facts -- you say everyone's a comedian, I say everyone's a critic.

So, anyway:  To notice the coffee maker was a slightly different size and shape right then required more lights on in the head that I had at that point, you know?  To have noticed that the one on the kitchen counter was blue, and not black and that fake chrome -- well, that would have been just showing off, that early in the morning.

Plus, there was the usual morning blur to contend with -- dogs needing to go outside and back in, my partner getting ready to go off to work, the normal, choreographed chaos of morning -- a sort-of breakfast while sort-of making a lunch while sort-of listening to the half-tuned-in radio, while the dogs twirled below, happy to again see the stainless steel bowls of kibble hovering overhead and then become floorbound...

One drawback to having many interests is the sense of always sampling, but never really eating a full meal -- just wandering around in circles with a tiny appetizer plate that would struggle to accommodate half a grapefruit, looking for odds and ends and bonus grazing spots, trying to avoid being stuffed full of any one thing.

Only rarely does the thought emerge, "You know, I'd like to take a very long time out and not check the news for the next year or two."  That's tantamount to treason for the inquisitive, right up there with the infamous "to be or not to be" question.  Curiosity -- the hunger to know -- demands sating, even if one has been packed to the gills and overfed on a dish or two.

To paraphrase an ancient joke:  "Take politics and religion -- please!" Especially the combo platter on those.  Tow them away, if you don't mind.  Thing is, it's a reach to November 6 -- now more a battered low crawl than a sprint down the ol' home stretch.  The urge to grasp is much reduced.

Trick question: How do you offset the whirlwinds, windmills, and tornadoes of lies from a Republican presidential candidate, running mate, and from all members of their party -- people who hate 'Gummint,' want to drown it in a bathtub, yet are desperate, just dying to run the whole show, including YOUR life?

Trick answer:  You bring in bigger, bolder, brighter, and broader lies for distraction and comparative perspective -- you bring in religion and other such long-inflamed sores and assorted soreheads for diversion.

Now, before you light up like the Griswold's house finally does in National Lampoon's "Christmas Vacation," imperiling resources at the regional nuclear plant, most people -- even your idiot servant here -- acknowledge some creative force in the universe larger than themselves.

Anyone else plagued by a persistent, deep foreboding... the sense that the fix is in?

This sensation's become the occasional, droning companion to my thoughts, a mosquito I can hear but somehow not quite swat.  It is not yet an epic tale, but it feels like we're getting there, we're getting there.

Closest I can come to explaining the goose-bumped phenomenon:  It's akin to The Feeling That Descended Like a Cloud of Ice Fog in 2000, when SCOTUS suspended the Constitution, and Our Democracy, and installed its own choice of president to power.

We yawned, shrugged, scratched, stretched, and embraced that decision -- which should have been cause for another round of hair-raising alerts.  It was suddenly clear that we would accept anything.

That mosquito whine continues -- distantly heard, as in half-awake sleep, triggering the willingness and readiness to slap oneself black and blue, all over, trying to get it, trying to make it stop...

... If it makes any difference at all, it's probably not the Halloween stuff at the stores and at home, even though the kids always go nuts for this "creep out" stuff.  More and more adults, too, looks like -- some say it's the second-biggest holiday of the year, if not THE biggest.

Ca-Ching, goes the cash register, and another angel costume gets its wings bent, straight out of the box -- isn't that how that one goes, from that "It's a Dunderheaded Life" movie they always play this time of year?

Sorry, I know what it's really called, it's just that life has pretty weird lately, and you know how we always joked around about movie titles, like the...

What? Yeah, Bedford Falls and Jimmie Stewart -- always such a great story.  My favorite actor, too.  Did you ever see him in "Harvey," about that big rabbit -- or "Arsenic and Old Lace" either?