Those late-night pickled garlic snacks sure do make a difference … by the way, it’s a city council Thursday.

In a startlingly vivid dream last night, my wife and I were in a large, sparsely decorated church somewhere in New Albany, and as we sat on a hard pew toward the rear, we listened as we both were publicly denounced and threatened with irrevocable excommunication.

Taking large roles in these somber proceedings were two wildly disparate local citizens, at least in their relationship with me. It wasn’t a surprise to see the first one, 3rd district councilman Steve Price, playing a lead part in the prosecution.

But the second person was my old friend and attorney Lee Cotner, who once was responsible for marrying me, although not to the same wife as now. Of course, Lee’s presence can be explained only by the need for proper legal counsel in the church’s decision to oust us, but it’s okay, Laszlo. I know it was only business, not personal, and we can still be pals.

What sums it up for me is that throughout the dream, we were laughing aloud. Gut laughing. Hard and continuous. Deep. From the very soul. Exceedingly funny.

Now that I’m awake, I’m still chuckling over it. While Gary Shteyngart's recent and much praised novel, “Absurdistan,” purports to be about an imaginary and chaotic post-Soviet nation in Central Asia, the title of the book sometimes far too closely describes life in New Albania, where the old models never worked even when they were youthful, and proposals for new modes of thinking are waved away and heckled by small minded people who insist that their own past failures somehow predetermine the fate of any future efforts.

It’s a theology of despair, all right, and so it makes perfect sense that in the real world, just as in a dream, there always will be the possibility of being voted off the island. Imagine that. Exile to a place where things actually work.

Say it ain't so, Steve.

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Don’t forget that at 7:30 p.m. this evening, it’s opening night for the 2007 city council season. The agenda is available here. As if we needed another example of New Albania as real-life Absurdistan, take note that 1st district councilman Dan "Bazooka Joe U." Coffey has been given the task of introducing a “Resolution to fund Community Montessori Charter Public School.”

Absurd ... and so totally New Albany.