Insomnia Is Nothing To Lose Sleep Over

If you are currently sitting at your screen because you can’t sleep, I have some good news for you: you might not be in such a bad state as you think.

Oh, you’ll be tired and listless, all right. Up too late when you think you should be sleeping soundly and fearful of how bad you’ll feel in the morning. Worried about not sleeping and then worried about the worrying. Not a pleasant prospect.

Note that I separate insomnia – an internal wakefulness – from those nights when you can’t get to sleep because some pest is watching soccer at 2:00AM or the neighbours are hosting a drunk. What you do about the latter two circumstances is between you and the man down at the gun shop. Remember murder is not legal, but rat shot is generally not lethal.

What you do about internal insomnia is…wait for it…nothing. No warm milk, sleeping tablets, meditation tapes, essential oils…nothing. Because all these are just chemical or physical rituals – they don’t cure anything. Possibly because there is nothing to cure.

If you are awake at 1:00AM, you are awake. If it is because you are cold, or sick, or hungry, go get a blanket or an aspirin or a sandwich. Don’t expect this to be an instant cure, but at least it means you are not lying there in the dark being uncomfortable. If you own a Siamese cat don’t expect to lie there comfortably anyway. But if you are lying there, awake, make the most of the physical comfort and then let your mind be free.

It may be free to sleep or it may be free to think. If it is a nasty little mind it can think nasty little thoughts  – otherwise it can have quite a good time remembering, planning, designing, telling stories, or anything else it wishes. It will know when to switch off and sleep, but when it is awake in the dark, the rest of your body gets about 85% of the physical benefit of sleep anyway.

Think of it like your computer when you shut it down – sometimes it runs on for a bit as it finishes off programs. Don’t panic about how you’ll feel in the morning. If you haven’t given yourself a drunken hangover you’ll have at least 85% of the health you need.

The Sex Lecture

I plan to give a lecture about sex.

Not here, mind. This is the internet and not a place where one discusses that sort of thing. This is an electronic hall of decorum and a temple of digital chastity. The authorities that control the World Wide Web would never allow unseemly topics or unsavoury images to be displayed. I think we can all be grateful for this sort of moral decision.

No, I am going to hire a hall and put up posters on the local supermarket bulletin board as advertisement. I may make a few paper wrap-arounds for the street lamp posts in the town. These, and some cardboard boxes with spray-painted arrows at street corners, should serve to direct the audience to me on the night.

I think it would be best to do it during August when the weather is the coldest. That, and some rain, should serve to control the raging lusts of the people who attend the hall. This sort of presentation can be risky if it is done in hot weather, particularly if there are dark spots in the shrubbery around the back. I don’t want to be responsible for people taking things into their own hands…or allowing other people to take their things in hand…In fact I shall insist on seeing all hands at all times.

It will be a lecture suitable for all ages – from those who have no idea what they can do to those who have no idea what they have done. I will have medical and religious professionals in attendance to cope with any outbreaks of curiosity, and no effort will be spared to provide complete and accurate explanations for swellings and discharges. Daemons, phlogiston, and the evil eye have always been popular. Also fish-net stockings, long gloves, and whips.

No lecture is complete without audio-visual material. To that end we have engaged the services of a trained team of athletes and actors to pose in correct sex postures. Magic lantern slides of this will be projected upon a sheet stretched at the front of the hall. If we get enough interest, the sheet will be horizontal instead of vertical and participants may use the projected images as a form of planning diagram or Twister game.

The charge for admission to the lecture will be modest: $ 15 per person should cover the cost of the entire show and use of the towel afterwards.

I’ll be announcing the venue as soon as we secure the necessary third-party insurance to satisfy the council. This is a nuisance but you know how fussy people are these days about pubic liability.