Sleep Cycle

Have you ever slept in really late, and felt tired the next day, and then you mention it to someone that day, and they're like "Wow, buddy, sounds like you overslept, heh heh,"? And then all you want to do is to start vomiting because the universe feels like its crumbling under your sweaty ass? Because dude, it doesn't make sense. You sleep a little, you feel tired. You sleep a lot, you don't feel tired. Simple. You sleep 14 hours a day, those precious 10 hours you're actually awake should feel heavenly. Like a total and continuous orgasm. Gee guys, I'd like to go out tonight, but I have to wash my soiled underwear. And they'll understand because you're the sleeping beauty. You sleep more than a heroin addict, just because you can. It is like a short hibernation. I've heard that when bears hibernate, their rectums plug up with feces. That would explain why they don't wake up in a crusted, flaking bed of poop. Or at least I can only assume that this is the case. Of course, it's not as if they are eating while they are hibernating, so they only have to worry about the food currently in their bellies when they go to sleep. If you crapped out every last bit of stuff in your digestive system right now, you'd have a big mess on your hands, but it would be manageable. So even if the bears let it slip, their poop bed wouldn't be king size. It would be a twin at best.

So can someone please explain to me the biological reasons why we supposedly feel sleepy if we've overslept? It just doesn't make sense. Because that's my problem. I sleep a lot when left to my own devices. It's not unusual for me to get up at 2pm, then go back to bed and get up again at 6pm. Then drink a bunch of coffee and stay wired until, ohhh I dunno... say 4am. But considering that I slept until 6pm that day, I SHOULD be wired until at least 8am or so.

I get the feeling that we really weren't built for a 24 hour cycle. More like a 14 or 28 hour cycle. Or perhaps a cycle which shifts in size depending on the current lifestyle/psyche of someone. Perhaps, instead of evolving from simpler organisms on planet earth, humans were transferred from another dimension (the 4th, perhaps?) where the daily cycle is much less consistent.

Stupid theories aside, I just want to know the secret to the perfect night's rest. I hear a lot of shit about how our bodies need structured days. We should go to bed at a set time each night (even on weekends), and get up at the same time in the morning. Of course, having a job, or going to school, this tends to become a necessity due to regular business hours. A regular night's sleep of 8 hours often comes up as the ideal time one needs to rest up for the new day. But I know a lot of people who simply can't sleep more than 6 hours a night. I, on the other hand, really don't feel refreshed unless I've had at least 9 hours of sleep. Irregardless, even when on a regular schedule, I'm usually pretty tired during the day. Especially when required to partake in mentally taxing activities; coloring/pasting.

So, even though our technologically progressive society tells us that all we need is 8 hours of sleep and regularity, I really don't think this is right. I think the Latin countries might have it figured out. They have Siesta. Businesses close in the late afternoon so everyone can go home and relax for a few hours. Then, in the evening, they open up shop again. Since everyone does it, it's not like people are lining up around the block during for burritos at Taco Bell during Siesta. Just go home and pick your balls for a while. We'll be back soon.

Still, even with socially mandated naptime, my problems wouldn't end. Why do I sweat like a pig when I nap? I mean, it's profuse. I'll wake up and have to peel the sheets off my body. Pools of sweat form around my giant ass and I have nightmares of drowning in my own filth. I drink a gallon of water every time I nap, just so that when I wake up, I'll still have enough fluids to keep my heart beating. You know you're dehydrated when your lips crack with an audible crunch.

I've read that when you enter REM, your heart beats with the rhythm of your eye movement. The faster you move your eyes, the faster your heart beats. If you're like most people, and you have slow, 40 bpm REMs, you have nothing to worry about. Your heart is not being stressed and it is highly unlikely you will die in your sleep (assuming you are young and fairly healthy). But if you have REMs which register in the 140-200 bpm range, your heart is being overworked and you run the risk of heart attack while sleeping. Statistically, many cardiologists believe that this is a prime killer in young people, unfortunately much of the time the cause of death is misdiagnosed and blamed on drugs or other problems. If you have High BPM REM, or HBR, it often goes unnoticed for much, if not all of your life. One day, you could wake up dead, and no one knows why. There are warning signs, though. One of them is hives. The other is the sweats. If you find that you sweat a lot when you sleep, you probably need to get checked out. Looks like I'm in trouble.

Of course, I just completely made up the last paragraph. But still, sweating in my sleep is pretty annoying. I mean, one of these days, I'm gonna actually have someone in my bed, and they're gonna be all disgusted that I'm a sweaty pig and I'm gassy. Gassiness really has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. It's just another nicety this nonexistent female will have to look forward to. Also, I punch and kick in my sleep. I've known this since I was a small child. My parents noted that when I slept in my crib as a baby, I would often bruise my toes and fingers against the bars. Then, when I was 12, I actually broke a hole in the giant chest I slept in. This time, I broke several knuckles on my right hand. Thankfully, I'm left handed, because, as my parents claimed, insurance didn't cover me unless I was dead, so now my right hand is gnarled and arthritic. I only have to hold my permafist in the air to see if it will rain, or not. Really, it can go either way. It just hurts really bad all the time. I remember when it was healing, my knuckles turned black, and then kind of greenish. I begged my mother to take me to the local free clinic, but she insisted that gas prices were far too high to warrant such silliness. At the time, OPEC had come upon an unusually high amount of crude oil in the mid-east, and unleaded gas cost roughly $0.65 a gallon. The next day, my dad drove his Jeep Cherokee across the state to buy his favorite bagels. I think the free clinic was 3 miles from our house. I would have walked, but my ankles were still weak from pulling the horses out of the fresh street tar. They say you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. I say you can't pull a three-legged horse out of hot tar unless you have a shotgun to your head. And then what did they do with the horse? The shot it instead. They were like "Who the hell wants a lame horse, anyway?" But I don't question their motives. My parents always wanted the best for me. That's why they held me back for 7 years in elementary school. So I could build character in the Nike sweatshops in Chinatown. I learned a lot in those factories. Like how to break an arm using only the weight of your attacker. Or how to sew scraps of shoe-leather to the inside of the back of your shirt so that the whippings don't cut you as badly. The trick is to sew along the regular seams of the shirt, so they can't tell it's there. You know, this was all stuff that we needed to know in the real world, but no one wanted to teach it in school. It was an education in life.

So, do you have dreams? I sure do. Sometimes, I have dreams where I do stuff that I swear is real. Like screaming really loud. Or crying like a baby. You know, like when mommy pulls out the huge wooden spoon and you know its all over and done for, because you've been a bad, bad boy and it's red bottom time. Or your hamster just died again for the 30th time and you just can't take it anymore. The swelling begins in your throat, and it takes a while because you haven't done this in a while. It's almost painful, but you don't want to hold back because you swear it's been years since this has happened. But then again, you're not sure because everything seems so vague. Recollections end at five minutes ago and everything else prior to that just doesn't make much sense. So you start bawling. Really bawling. Just letting it out and spilling tears all over your face and neck and shirt.

But then you wake up, and you're not sure if any of it really happened. You think the dream occurred only moments ago, but you're not sure about that either. You check your eyes and neck and shirt and find that there is no moisture. Not even crustiness.

Now change that whole scenario around a little, and replace crying with masturbating. Anyway, both of these dreams have happened to me and I can never tell if they I was really doing these things. I guess it doesn't really matter whether or not I did. In my mind, they happened, and that's what matters. I can admit that its nice to cry once in a while, even if it only happens when I sleep.

In summation: sleep is good. I suggest you try it once in a while.

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