The Consolation Of Philosophy

I keep dreaming about Rachel Maddow. But just when I snap on the rubber gloves, the senior gynecologist slaps my hands and orders me back into the hallway to mop the floor. When I get there, there's a huge, leather bound volume of Boetheius's The Consolation Of Philosophy waiting on the bench outside the door. I randomly open it and read the following:

'To pleasant songs my work was erstwhile given, and bright were all my labours then; but now in tears to sad refrains am I compelled to turn. Thus my maimed Muses guide my pen, and gloomy songs make no feigned tears bedew my face. Then could no fear so overcome to leave me companionless upon my way. They were the pride of my earlier bright-lived days: in my later gloomy days they are the comfort of my fate; for hastened by unhappiness has age come upon me without warning, and grief hath set within me the old age of her gloom. White hairs are scattered untimely on my head, and the skin hangs loosely from my worn-out limbs.

Then a bucolic old black man comes shuffling down the hall. He's a cross between Scatman Crothers and Red Fox. He pats me on the shoulder and says, "Cheer up, son, monogamy was invented by people whose lifespan was only thirty years." Then he wanders off, his cackling laughter echoing through the empty hallway, and I continue mopping my way towards the exit.

Then I wake up, and everything is the same as it's always been.