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It's four o'clock in the morning and I'm lightly kept in the hold of a soft sleep. As is typical of this time, the slightest tremor to the still early morning could pull me awake in a groggy, torrid state. So, naturally, Ethel Merman begins to belt out her greatest hits across the street.       Split from a dream I'll never remember, I'm suddenly wide awake taking in "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend". Immediately I begin to curse my neighborhood and its magnetic pull to all the crazies in the City. But slowly, my annoyance dies down as I realize that the guy across the street singing for three blocks to hear, is actually pretty damned good.       Curiousity overcomes any immediate need for sleep and I claw my way out of the covers that fend of this cold December chill. I stumble in to my living room only to nearly kill myself on a pair of shoes I had left by the heater to dry after walking home in the rain the day before. Ironically, they were still wet because I had forgotten to turn the heater on despite the surrounding cold.       Recovering from what will most certainly be a bruise from the edge of my dining table, I make it to the window and there in the doorstep of an apartment building across the street is 'Ethel'. His tune had shifted to 'These are the Days' which I'm told is not an Ethel song, but it is 4AM, so I'll cut him some slack. Gently he rocks back and forth on the step like a summer hammock someone has just left. My thought of summer is obviously telepathetic as he starts to shiver, all the while belting out show tunes.       But, as is usually the case with these characters, he seemed to feel that there were others, like me, looking out their windows to see who was the source for this Fountain of Ethel. And with that, he quickly got up, not breaking a lyric or a note, and walked down the street. As I lost sight of him when he turned the corner on to Larkin, the last few discernable notes from, 'The World is Your Balloon' were bouncing off the cold fronts of the buildings.       With that, the morning was quiet again and I realized that I was still incredibly tired. Back to bed I went to try and cling on to any bits of warmth that were still trapped in the covers.

There are times when the whackos of Berkeley give me a real lift in life. Such was the case last week.       I see this guy in the picture on the right riding the Bart and getting off at the Downtown Berkeley station, which is where I got off. I thought nothing of him; just an eccentric. I went to my class and thought nothing else of it.       During the duration of my class he either: found, was given, or dug up, a frozen turkey from somewhere. It wasn't with him when he got off the Bart, but when I was walking back, there he was walking around with the damned thing cradled in his arms going, "Blah blah blah. Blargh!" I kid you not. That really was what the guy was saying.       I didn't have time to bust out my 100-300 lens to get a closer shot of him, but I feel this one shot that I did get made life worth living.