Waiting for Art Bell...

...who'll be on the air about 45 minutes from now. I need my fix of extraterrestrials, voices from beyond the grave, mysterious lights in the sky and whatever else Art manages to dredge up tonight. Not to mention those seriously deranged callers from eerie parallel-universe places like Manitoba and Idaho.

This is what it all seems to come down to: after a useless, ceaselessly frustrating day which follows similarly depressing days, weeks and months right back to last March -- broken only by short-lived moments of pleasure that always seem to have bad consequences -- all that's left to me is to listen to the voices in the night.

Fittingly, the first time I heard Art was on a long, long drive across the desert (destination not remembered), at a place where his radio station's signal was so weak that it would fade in and out as the miles went by. Since he was talking about UFOs and the Great Roswell Cover-Up, that seemed appropriate. For all I knew, he could have been broadcasting from a flying saucer that was dipping in and out of the Van Allen Radiation Belt. Or the Gummint could have been jamming his signal....

There is no solace to be found here. The show is seldom lighthearted -- except when Art talks about his cats or a caller strains even his credulity -- and if I fall asleep without shutting the radio off, I invariably get nightmares. Less-destructive ones than those I get at other times, but unsettling enough.

But hearing a voice -- any voice not yammering about politics, or announcing songs I dislike, or peddling phony health scams and get-rich-quick plans -- is all the comfort I can get these days.

I won't tell you any of the things I'd rather be doing, the voices I'd rather be hearing. Just thinking of writing them down is bad enough.

My personal jury is still out on the existence of flying saucers. I don't buy most conspiracy theories, and so far I think there is little likelihood that the world will end in 2012 as the Aztecs -- or was it Mayans? -- seem to have predicted.

Doesn't matter, though. Art is there when I need him. It doesn't get any better than that. For me, anyway.