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I'm really really tired. I mean like I'm all yawning and rubbing my face. People tell me that babies do that, I guess
like grown men aren't supposed to? But it's not a decision I ever made, it's just something I do by instinct, like when a
dog runs after a cat and doesn't ever really seem to think about it or go through any kind of decision-making process. In
fact, the entirety of its thoughts at the time seem to be along the lines of, Hey, there's a c....
bark
bark bark!
barkbarkbarkbarkbark!
Anyway I can't sleep. I lay awake here staring at the walls and the ceiling and thinking about all the things I could
do if I never needed to sleep. I could write a book or take up skydiving or help the poor. Or something that requires a lot
less effort. I mean a lot less, like video solitaire.
But I think when people don't sleep they go insane, don't they? I think that was an episode of The X-Files.
I'm not sure because I never really got into The X-Files, because it just seemed like that guy on there just believed
in everything, and that never seemed to me a good quality for a detective to have. Or anyone who carries a gun, really.
Sometimes I sit awake and I think about how old I am because I just turned 36 and sometimes that seems really really
old to me, but then I think that if I was running for President it wouldn't seem that old, and people would all joke about
how young and inexperienced I am.
So maybe everything's relative, like Einstein said. But then, I've always heard that Einstein failed at math. I've always
heard that stated with a great deal of irony, too, like it's a big surprise that a guy who believes that everything is relative
would fail at math.
Albert, what is two plus two?
That all depends.
Anyway, I don't think Einstein thought everything was relative. If he did, there really would be no math, or
chemistry, or science of any kind. No months or years. People wouldn't weigh themselves. I wonder if there would even be money,
because you could never tell what anything was worth, at least not without first doing a price check on every other item in
the store, and every other store in the area, and what the weather was like and what kind of mood the cashier was in and what
time of day it was. Because if everything's relative, then everything is relative to everything else, right?
It's a good thing Einstein wasn't an economist, now that I think about it.
Einstein also said there was no such a thing as time, and that the past, present, and future are all happening simutaneously.
So I guess even though I'm sitting here not sleeping, in the past, I'm sleeping. That makes me feel a little better, even
though it's not helping me sleep.
Golly, that means that right now in the future I'm dead. I wonder how I died, and if someone killed me, and if maybe
it was one of the enemies I've made in my secret superhero identity of The Claw!!! I hope they catch the son of a bitch. I
wonder if my sons have put their lives on hold and dropped out of college and postponed their weddings so that they can go
to Tibet to study Kung Fu and hunt him down and kill him like a pig in hell. I better tell them to be careful.
It also means that right now, in the past, I'm being born. That's totally weird. And totally disturbing. I mean, people
always talk about how difficult and traumatic it is for the mother, but just think about the poor kid, just kind of floating
there sucking his thumb, and then his mom starts screaming and his head is jammed into a little hole. It's no wonder we block
it out the rest of our lives. It would kind of overshadow every other pleasant childhood memory we might ever have.
Like this one time when I was probably like 4 or 5 years old I had this great-uncle who came to visit and it was in the
evening and he was walking with me up to the store to get some candy or ice cream or something, and I asked him how come the
shadows on the ground were bigger than us, and how come our shadows don't have ears. That has nothing to do with my insomnia,
but it's a pleasant enough childhood memory that might not seem so pleasant when set alongside the trauma of the birth process.
None of this is helping me sleep, though, or even making me feel any sleepier. In fact, right now I'm thinking about
running for President, Einstein, and how cool it would be if our shadows really did have ears. Maybe I should run for President,
then get a bunch of physicists together and have them develop a new kind of shadow that has ears. It would probably be radioactive
though.
Maybe I could get to sleep if I just stop thinking. But if I stop thinking, how will I know I stopped thinking? If I
could totally stop thinking, and then I was all "Now I've stopped thinking" isn't that itself a thought? Hindus must drive
themselves crazy doing that. Maybe we should see about getting the bomb away from those folks over there.
Maybe I should try it though, even just to stop thinking for like 2 seconds. But what if I do, and I cease to exist?
Or what if I wake up in a parallel universe? That might actually be cool. Except with my luck it'll be a universe ruled by
talking cows, or where I'm reviled like Hitler, or just a universe where all the socks go when they disappear from the dryer.
It'll just be me and a bajillion socks.
Or what if it's a parallel universe exactly like the one I left? O my gosh, what if it's happened already? What if I'm
in a parallel universe that's exactly like my home dimension, how will I ever get home? Who will ever believe me? What is
my counterpart doing to screw things up for me in my home dimension?
This isn't funny, stop laughing.
Anyway, thinking about stuff doesn't keep me awake, usually. In fact, sometimes it's how I get to sleep. Like I imagine
if I was king of the universe, what would I do and where would I live? Like maybe I would live in a huge treehouse or a giant
submarine and throw great big parties all the time. That's always fun.
Well, I'm still not sleeping. Thinking doesn't help and I'm afraid to try not thinking because of the parellel universe
thing.
On TV, people always say that warm milk helps. I've never seen anyone drink it, even on TV, but they always talk about
it. To me it sounds disgusting, though. I don't think I could get that tired.
I wonder if other people have this problem. Of not being able to sleep, I mean. By "other people" of course, I mean made
up people on TV and in the movies. I keep thinking of Rip Van Winkle and Sleeping Beauty, but of course they both had the
opposite problem. Remember that old Disney movie Sleeping Beauty, where Princess Aurora went to sleep for a number
of years til Prince Charming woke her up with a kiss? Cool movie. It kind of reminds me of that episode of Law & Order
where the comatose woman got pregnant and they arrested the male nurse, which was kind of the same thing except that the male
nurse went to prison and the comatose woman never woke up and if she had she would have been confined to a wheelchair because
her muscles would have atrophied and she would have required extensive physical therapy. But kind of the same thing.
Maybe if I drank some water I'll feel better. I love water. It's just the right blend of hydrogen and oxygen. It's weird
to think that you need oxygen to have fire, and hydrogen will explode, but if you put them together you get water and you
use that to put fires out. I'm sure there's a deep lesson in there somewhere, but I don't know what it is yet.
Something else weird to think about is that we breathe in oxygen from the air and breathe out carbon dioxide, but fish
breathe in oxygen from water, so how come they don't breathe out huge clouds of hydrogen?
O wait that was real boring. I think I'm starting to fall asleep.
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