Bedtime for Bichirs
Even more interesting than the aforementioned article is this story about how apparently fish experience insomnia. By that, I don't mean that those unwashed dirtbags from the band Phish sometimes have trouble falling asleep after several hours of aimless guitar noodling and nitrous huffing. No, I mean that the article talks about actual fish that have insomnia. I feel bad for the fish, but I also feel bad for myself, because frankly the concept of an insomniac fish FREAKS ME OUT. I'm not sure why, but it does. Maybe it's because the concept is like a Zen koan that's particularly hard to decipher, like "Always endeavor to keep the mind as still as a Flounder that cannot find sleep." Maybe it freaks me out because it makes me wonder what kind of animals fish count when they're trying to fall asleep (Sea horses? Squid? Manatees?)--we just don't know, and uncertainty is always disturbing. Or, maybe it freaks me out because if fish can have insomnia, that might mean that sharks can have gas, and once sharks start farting, we're FUCKED. You know I'm right.
Speaking of sleep: I've been using the same alarm clock for the past twelve years (you read that right), despite the fact that in all that time, I've never, not ONCE, woken up to its dulcet tones to find a naked supermodel laying in bed next to me (thanks for NOTHING, alarm clock). While still remarkably reliable, lately my alarm clock has developed a weird personality disorder. It works like clockwork (HA! Bow before my shitty pun which actually really isn't even a pun at all! Bow, I say!) except when it's set for 7:20 or 7:30. If the alarm is set for either of those times, when they arrive, the clock makes a noise for a split second that sounds not unlike a goat going into renal failure, and then it immediately resets itself to 12:00. It's weird: weirder than a fish that can't get to sleep. This unique type of failure makes me think that it's not really a failure at all, but rather, due to the deep bond that exists between my clock and I after all these years, some type of communique: I think my clock is trying to tell me something. I think it's trying to warn me to avoid being awake at either of those times, this because (a) being up before noon IS DUMB, and, more importantly (b) someday, perhaps soon, I might get up at 720 in the morning to go to the bathroom, but on the way to the commode I might trip and fall, and the fall will make a noise which will disturb a bird perched outside my bedroom window, and the bird will fly away in a panic and shit, and this shit will fall on a squirrel, causing it to run into the street, directly into the path of a dump truck, and the truck will swerve to miss the squirrel and crash into a telephone pole, and the pole will then cause a major Internet outage in the Northern Virginia area, and this will prevent George W. Bush from getting his Blackberry alerts with the latest stock prices, and he'll panic with the thought that Wall Street has been taken over by Bolivian militants, so he'll launch a nuclear strike against Eastern Europe (because that's where he thinks Bolivia is), and the world will descend into anarchy, and Rush Limbaugh will become the King of North America. Yikes. It seems likely that my alarm, by failing to work at 7:20 and 7:30, is trying to prevent World War III. So, I just want to say thanks, alarm clock: I appreciate your efforts to save the world. If only my coffee maker was as concerned about humanity's well-being as you are, the world would be a much better place.
