It's my habit to go to bed with my earphones on, listening to one of the two XM Radio comedy channels.  It keeps the voices in my head away.  For those of you who don't have XM, and that would be almost everyone, the comedy sets are seamless, bouncing from one performer to another.  The only way to know who's on  is open your eyes, focus binoculars, and look at the teeny window where the name appears.  It drives me nuts, which more or less cancels out the original intent.  I found myself wondering if there was radio for the deaf, that supplied audio subtitles, but that would have to be radio for the blind, wouldn't it? .

Anyway, one guy who comes on quite regularly has a delivery that sounds like a Cajun with a mouth full of potatoes, recovering from a stroke, telling Steven Wright jokes. Finally,  last night, I got up and looked; his name is Mitch Hedberg.  I wrote it down, and just now looked him up. 

Whoa. No explanation about how a guy so young died, but the consensus seems to be heroin overdose, which fits ("I like the FedEx guy, 'cause he's a drug dealer and he don't even know it! And he's always on time"). More perplexing, after looking at his list of appearances, is how he escaped my radar.  Believe me, there is no way you can forget that delivery.  Here's some of Hedberg's stuff.

• I play sports... Wait, no I don't. What the fuck?


• The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how much you play, you'll never be as good as a wall. I played a wall once, they're fucking relentless.


• One time I was forced to go to the doctors because of a sports accident. Herpes.


• You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don't want to eat the fish; they just want to make it late for something. "Why were you late?" "I got caught!" "Bullshit, lemme see the inside of your lip!"


• All McDonalds commercials end the same way: "prices and participation may vary." I want to open my own McDonalds and not participate in anything. I want to be a stubborn McDonalds owner. "Cheeseburgers? Nope. We got spaghetti!...And blankets. But we are not affiliated with that clown, he attracts too many children."


• I like swiss cheese. It's the only cheese you can draw with a pencil and identify. You can draw American cheese, but someone will think it's cheddar.


• I like baked potatoes, man. I don't have a microwave oven; it takes forever to cook a baked potato in a conventional oven. Sometimes I'll just throw one in there, even if I don't want one, because by the time it's done... who knows?...I'll throw a potato in and go on vacation.


• A waffle is like a pancake with syrup traps.


• What's a sesame seed grow into? I don't know, we never give them a chance. What the fuck is a sesame?! It's a street. It's a way to open shit.


• Fettucini alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults.


• Y'know, you can't please all the people all the time... and last night, all those people were at my show.


• I would imagine that if you could understand morse code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy.