All you really need to know about me.

I'm not a morning person.

I'm so not a morning person that That Stud Muffin I Married (who is a morning person and awakens spontaneously at El Cracko del Dawno) does everything he can to avoid awakening me until he absolutely has to. Even then, he usually approaches the bed on tip-toe, breathing as quietly as he can, and bringing a cup of tea to appease the angry goddess.

But lately, TSMIM has been way busy with a trial, and this week he's out of town. So I have to get myself up, via alarm clocks and clock radios and such.

So yesterday morning I woke up to the clock radio playing All Things Considered or whatever the morning news show on National Public Radio calls itself. (Sure, they announce the name, but I'm comatose when that happens, so excuse me, I can't remember.) Usually I lie there listening to the news feeling like a hermit crab who has been forcibly evicted from the shell he's been renting, tossed around roughly by a Category 3 hurricane, and left abandoned on a rocky, cheerless shore.

But yesterday morning the first thing I heard was that the Vice President of the United States had shot some elderly Texan attorney while they were out hunting.

I burst out laughing. I laughed so loud I woke up my children, who, unaccustomed to displays of merriment from their mother so early in the day, came to the doorway of my bedroom and wondered aloud at the source of such undue mirth.

I tried to explain the joke: "Well, Vice President Cheney was out hunting ... in Texas ... with this other old white guy ... they were probably dressed in those doofusy hunting togs that are printed with leaves and bark and stuff ... and the old white guy went into the bushes to flush some quail or something ... and the Vice President shot him in the face with a load of buckshot ... BWAHAHAHAHA!"

My kids stared at me, puzzled.

At times like this, I wonder--again--whether I brought the wrong babies home from the hospital. I know it's not likely to happen--especially twice--but honestly. Have you ever seen those catalogs of equipment for hunters? Can you imagine a fully-grown man swaggering through the brush, dressed up as a tree, speaking softly (yet carrying a big gun) and peppering his pal (and probable political supporter) in the face with buckshot? And the perp is second in command? A heartbeat from the Presidency?

Either it's funny or it's tragic. I choose to laugh.

p.s. OK, I heard about the other guy's heart attack, and it isn't as funny anymore. All right? I mean, I'm not completely depraved. Just slightly.