Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Thoughts from the Ass End of the Night

Thoughts from the Ass End of the Night

I hate this particular brand of insomnia. It's hit me three nights running now. I've woken up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, or use the commode, and I end up lying there and lying there after returning to bed, thinking all the stupid and insecure thoughts that my brain saves up for times like this.

"Hey!" the brain will say, "he can't sleep. It's 1:24, let's pick right now to pick apart every minute detail of that that awful, awkward conversation he had with that girl he wants to go out with. Let's especially dwell on the wording that she used when she couldn't go to a movie. Is there any way we can turn 'I can't because I'm going out with family.' into something about his weight? What about his male pattern baldness?"

Or: "Hey, remember how his boss pulled him aside and talked to him about all the things the D.M. wanted fixed in the store? Is there a way we can snowball that into a complete analysis of his competencies, whether they have anything to do with work or not? Seems like 1:42 is the perfect time for such a thing."

Or: "Can we turn the chicken breast we burnt tonight into a spiral of torture that somehow ties in to every rejection letter he's ever gotten for stories his submitted for publication? And tie that in to his mail pattern baldness?"

Or even: "Do you think he roots for the Cubs so that he won't feel so badly about his own shortcomings in life?"

That last one's a personal favorite.

So, the brain's one problem. Both in the tormenting me, and in the speaking in the third person, as if it were a wholly separate entity. I'm working to kill it with alcohol, so I'm thinking it won't be a problem for a whole lot longer.

The lack of sleep will be. The last couple of days, the insomnia in and of itself hasn't been a problem, since I've either worked late or not at all. So what if I can't sleep? I'll just sleep until 10 to make up for it. Which is nice.

However, I gotta open the store in approximately five hours, so the past 90 minutes have been an extremely trying combination of the aforementioned insecurities and that vexing bit of math we all do when you gotta get up, where you have Rain Man like ability to get 3:42 until the alarm goes off out of having to get up at six and it being 2:18 in the morning. I can do that, but I have to break out the ten-key to balance my checkbook.

Eh.

Just stressed.

I look at my blog sometimes, and I wonder just how much it reflects my personality. I've met a couple folks now who've read before they met. I think their reaction was that I'm a lot quieter than my blog would lead you to believe. But beyond that, I haven't really asked.

Looking back at a lot of stuff I've written, I think people think I'm a lot whinier a motherfucker than I actually am.

This post will do little more than feed that perception.

But, whaddaya gonna do? Just add it to the list of things my mind will torment me about when I try to go back to sleep in a few.

Just a couple more notes on things that pop into my head:

The Chicago Cubs thing is pissing me off, this fact that they're 2-12 or 2-13 in one-run games (don't remember what Sunday's loss took them to). Between the bullpen and the lack of situational hitting, I'm wondering whose walls will have more holes in them, mine or Lou Piniella's?

I don't think Lou has a security deposit to worry about, so probably his.

Watched the movie Babel last night (or this night, depending on how you want to describe these things). I enjoyed it a lot more than I would have thought. It's a bit slow, but I loved the way things tied together across three continents. Big props to the girl playing the Japanese deaf-mute--she knocked it out of the park

I also tried the movie Robots, which has one of the best armpit fart jokes I've ever seen in a flick, but beyond that didn't do much for me. There's something about these animated flicks coming out of Dreamworks--they just don't seem to have heart. I say much that same about most animated flicks coming out nowadays, actually.

When is it going to frigging rain?

I'm wondering just how personally I'm going to take it when the Transformers movie turns out to suck, later this summer. And it's going to suck. Mark my words. I wonder just how pissed off I'm going to get, especially considering that I'm sure it will suck, some five weeks or so before it opens.

Do you think Gary Larson ever gets a goofy idea, and gets pissed off that he no longer does Far Side? Or does he still jot them down, in case he decides to release some manner of one-shot collection?

Hey! I just yawned! That's a good sign. Maybe I've purged some of the ugly from my head, and tired my brain out enough for it to let me sleep!

Pray for me, people. Pray for me....

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