I ended up having a late night last night, as a bit before I was about to go to bed I discovered that IFC was airing the bizarre movie Bubba Ho-tep, an odd little B quality movie about a ramshackle nursing home in a small town in Texas that was the unsuspecting home to a still-living Elvis Presley (played by current TV commercial superstar Bruce Campbell), and the equally alive President John F. Kennedy, who, as part of the vast JFK conspiracy, had not been killed, but rather had his brain transplanted into the body of a black man (Ossie Davis).
The two geriatric and presumed-dead luminaries team up to save their fellow nursing home residents from an ancient Egyptian mummy accidentally loosed on the sleepy town years earlier who was feasting nightly on their souls (which he was sucking out through a particular bodily orifice).
As I said, it was bizarre, but it was also oddly compelling, and so I sat up and watched it to the end.
Despite the late night, I woke up at the usual time this morning, but was pretty tired, so, after doing a lot of nothing in particular following a phone call from my mother, I took a nap, despite the best efforts of that stupid new dog downstairs to keep me awake.
(I haven’t heard much from stupid old dog upstairs. Either he’s never being left alone, or he’s dead. I don’t really care as long as the barking and whining have stopped, though with what I’ve put up with since I’ve moved in here, I must admit that I’d be a little happier with the latter. Not that it matters, since stupid new dog is just as annoying and is filling in the annoyance void left by stupid old dog upstairs.)
As of this past Thursday, The Office is done until next season. As I’d been having trouble sleeping on Thursdays anyway, earlier this year I’d opted to stop recording it (and My Name is Earl), and simply stay up to watch it.
Now that the season is done, I can’t help but wonder what I’ll do with that time.
Try to go back to my ridiculously early bedtime? Maybe, but that didn’t work before, and probably won’t work now.
Watch more porn? Meh.
Get into watching midget porn? Hmm…nah.
Write Thursday evening Threshold entries? Pfft, dream on, losers.
Get hooked on a summer reality series and maybe find out just who can dance? What am I, a retard?
In any case, you now begin to see why it is that I have such a ridiculously early bedtime in the first place.
I mean, I have to get up early in the morning the next day, there’s not enough time to accomplish anything worthwhile and still get to bed at a decent, less ridiculously early hour, so why not just call it a night?
Sure, I could stay up later and function on less sleep the next day, but why bother? Why settle for 7 or 8 hours of sleep when I can get 9 and a half?
As many people who have worked the shift can attest, it’s not easy sitting at that desk all day long and staying awake even when you’ve gotten enough sleep, so why make things worse when there’s no good reason to?
Throughout the years there have been people who seemed to be personally offended by how early I go to bed on work nights.
“What?! No, no, no, no! That’s too early! How dare you!”
It’s not like I’m telling them that they need to go to bed that early. Stay up as late as you want. What the fuck do I care?
But even the assumption that I’m advocating – or demanding – that people go to bed at a ridiculously early hour isn’t what really seems to bother them; it’s the simple fact that I go to bed so early that bothers them.
Why? I have no idea. It’s as though they feel I have a responsibility to stay up as late as possible, as if I owe it to…someone. America? Jesus? That little boy dying of cancer in the hospital whose sincerest wish is that I would stay up until at least 10 PM on work nights?
I’m not sure who it is I’m letting down, but I will continue to unrepentantly strive to get plenty of sleep on work nights, and not care who I’m letting down, or how much it makes me seem like senior citizen.
But if it’s any consolation, I don’t get much sleep on my days off.
That should count for something.
In any case, it’s taken me like 8 hours to finish writing this, so I suppose I might as well post it.
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