Hitting the snooze button for all humanity
08.10.2003

Sleep gets no respect.

I love sleep. I think sleep is grand. Frankly, sleep is the best thing that evolution came up with this side of sex. In fact, in some respects it's even better. After all, the worst you'll contract from sleeping too much is a nasty case of bedhead and perhaps a few pillow wrinkles on your cheek. There are no condoms for bedspreads. You can sleep in a variety of beds owned by all kinds of people, and you may get lice, or maybe a cold. That's a far cry from the kind of spontaneous combustion that can result from waving your genitalia around and sticking them into whatever's handy, or getting them stuck, depending on your bits. What's more, you can fall asleep almost anywhere and never get arrested. You can't say the same thing for sex.

I'm not knocking sex, mind you, but I think sleep has more going for it. I mean, how often do you have a wet nap during sex?

(I did. Once. He looked annoyed when he woke me up. On the other hand, I looked quite refreshed.)

I think it's a cultural thing, this disrespect of sleep. You don't see a Spaniard spitting on sleep. Hell, any country that can coin the word "siesta" is OK in my books. We North Americans, though, we're narcophobes. In this work-work-work-productivity-is-god environment, there's no catching 40 winks between breakfast and lunch. And no sleeping in. No way, no how. You're fired, you lazy-assed slug.

This does not bode well for Canadians. Considering that Canada shares 6,000 km of border with the rabid Great Dane of capitalism, the United States, and considering that Canadians follow the Americans around like developmentally delayed cocker spaniels craving economic attention, there's a tendency for Canadian businesses to mimic the trends of our southern neighbours. This is purely so that we can keep up with the 260 million Jones' on the other side of the fence.

What does this have to do with sleep, you ask? Why, everything! quoth I. You see, for about 4 months of the year, the cumulative amount of sunlight to be found north of the 49th parallel is approximately equivalent to the total energy required to power a pocket calculator. On the other hand, during the 4 months leading into, being, or leaking out of summer, the average Canadian is screwing sheet metal over the windows just to get a few hours of blessed darkness. This means that we always want to sleep, either because our circadian clock is telling us it's 2 o'clock in the morning all day long, or because our circadian clock is begging us to find 2 o'clock in the morning just once, anywhere, just for a few hours, please please please oh god please let me sleep in relative darkness.

I think, just as an experiment, we should all agree to sleep in. We'll go to work when we're damned good and awake to. No alarm clocks. Alarm clocks are illegal. As are wake-up services. Fido wants his kibble? He can get it himself. We're sleeping.

Now, if someone tells me productivity will drop, I'd like them to look me straight in the eye and deny they spent their workday playing solitaire and instant messaging their sweetie on the sly because they were too flibberty to work. Why were they flibberty? Why, because they hadn't slept well.

Medical visits would plummet too. After all, we heal when we sleep. I must admit, though, I'm suspicious that if I really, truly slept as much as I seem to want to, I'd wake up one morning with an extra arm growing out of my forehead or a new head on my shoulder. Sure, I could probably find a good use for the extra parts, but getting a new wardrobe would be a bitch.

The one real disadvantage to sleeping is waking up. I loathe waking up. If I could spontaneously leap from "asleep" to "awake and oh boy, so excited to be here", life would be great. None of this groggy, half-assed sleep/wake shit. Waking up is the brain's version of a barium enema. Sure, all kinds of gunk gets flushed out of various orifices and the end result is a cleaner, less stinky animal, but why does the gunk have to be there in the first place? Why is it I must wake up with what feels like rubber cement coating my eyeballs and a piece of peed-on bedbug-infested flannel for a tongue? Why must my bladder be achingly full? Why do I have to get up?

(Note: I await anxiously for the public release - no pun intended - of the Casual Catheter �.)

I think a Wake-Up Wonder Box should be invented. This box would detect the EEG patterns of your brain and discern just when you're about to emerge from unconsciousness. At that very moment, it would anaesthetize you, envelop your entire body, give you a good sonic cleansing, comb your hair, style it, brush your teeth, spit, get a pair of clean undies, and so on. Once every annoying wake-up ritual had been fulfilled, the Wake-Up Wonder Box would regurgitate your fully-clothed, spit-and-polished person in a perky, upright position, with the help of some artificial stimulants injected directly into your bloodstream. *bling* I'm Awake!

Or I could just sleep on it.


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Last 5 entries:
01.14.2007:Finally, a support group we can all get behind
01.09.2007:The City That Ever Reeks
01.08.2007:Waiter, there's a uterus in my soup
01.03.2007:Long Lost Mummy of Nefertiti Found in Smoog's Apartment
12.30.2006:New Year's resolutions we can actually keep



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