Wake Me When Supper's Ready

Burt Bacharach was wrong, of course. Very wrong. The world doesn't need any more love, we got plenty of that. If you ask me what the world needs now is sleep.

That's truly the only thing that there's just too little of.

Take me, for example. Every morning when that alarm clock goes off it's obvious that I haven't slept long enough. It's obvious that I'm in no condition to get out of bed and face the world. And yet off I go, groggy, sleep deprived, wondering why it is that just once I couldn't forget all my cares and spend an entire week sleeping in bed. You know, just once wouldn't it be nice to really get some sleeping done. Real sleep. Not just enough sleep to make it through the day, but sleep that would get all the tired right out of me, sleep that would just get down there and drain every little pool of weariness from my body. Ah, that would be nice - an entire week of nothing but sleep. 168 hours straight, and when I finally got up I'd feel new and refreshed and...

go right back to bed and sleep some more.

It would be nice and also provide invaluable data for my sleep theory (in case you were wondering if there was a point to all this). My research is still in the early stages, mind you, so I don't have anything definitive to say at present, however I will be publishing an important scientific paper about it one day (after I finish my great libretto) so I might as well share what I have so far.

It seems to me that we have this sleep thing all backwards. That is, the science so far has all been based on this notion of "why do we sleep?" That's the way most lay people look at it too, and I say that's all wrong. We should not ask "why do we sleep?" but rather "why do we wake?". Think about it. When you were born what's the first thing you did after you had yourself a good cry? Right! You went to sleep. Babies are no fools. They know that if there's no good reason to be awake then they should have themselves a good sleep. It's just the natural and healthy thing to do.

But as we grow and mature into adulthood we begin to forget all that. We lose that inner child. Face it, there are really only 3 good reasons to be awake anyways - defense, nutrition and fornication. Other than those 3 things, there's no need for us to be up and moving about, fighting traffic, talking on the phone, watching TV or whatever. A person could live quite well by just avoiding danger, getting something to eat, fornicating and sleeping. That's what my theory would call the Ideal State of Man.

But we humans, being the higher order creatures we are, like to complicate things. We let our egos get the better of us and all of a sudden we have all these things to do and places to go and people to meet and schedules and timetables and appointments and clocks and alarms and cell phones and blackberries all hammering at us to keep going all the time, just go, go, go all day, everyday, until finally we are beaten into submission and drop dead of a high cholesterol and a heart attack. Don't you see. We don't have sleep disorders, we have wake disorders. In fact some people's lives are nothing more than wake disorders, one right after the other.

And that's why I believe that it's time for all of us to just go back to sleep. It's time for us to reconnect with our inner child. It's time to turn off our alarm clock and not show up to work or school until we're good and rested. It's time for us to be what nature intended us to be. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. C'mon them, sing it with me

Lord, we don't need another mountain
There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb.
There are oceans and rivers enough to cross,
Enough to last
'Til the end of time.

What the world needs now is ....

On The Beach

I was watching the Travel Channel and this show about Australia comes on, and it was simply amazing. Did you know that Australia was just one long series of empty, tropical beaches populated with nothing but golden-skinned goddesses in string bikinis? I didn't know that, but that's what the TV show said, so I asked my email buddy Sandy about it. She lives down near Melbourne and first I told her about the show and how there were all these empty beaches with golden-skinned goddesses and then I asked her if all of Australia was like that and she said

Yeah, sure. It's an entire continent of nothing but empty beaches and golden-skinned goddesses.

Well you could have knocked me over with a feather, but then as I was about to book my flight it occurred to me that maybe Sandy wasn't being totally honest. I mean she's a great person and I had no reason to doubt her word, but they must be a few blokes around down there, don't you think? I mean they play that weird kind of football and Rod Laver was Australian, wasn't he? It can't all be bronze goddesses. And then I started thinking if they do have blokes down there, then fat chance they're gonna help me find those beaches.

"Uh, g'day there mate. You wouldn't happen to know where I can find an empty beach with golden-skinned goddesses in string bikinis like I saw on the Travel Channel would you?"

"Eh, bugger off. Those beaches are for Aussies, not the likes of you."

"No, you don't understand. I saw it on TV. Apparently these girls stand around in skimpy swimwear all day just hoping to meet friendly American tourists on winter holiday. If you could just point me in the right direction I'd really apprecia-"

"How about I point my fist into your ugly little face."

"Well you don't have to be rude. I was only asking because I saw it on the Travel Channel and I came all the way down here from America to... Look, I even brought scented body oils in case, you know, one of them needed a little rubdown."

"We ain't got no beaches."

"No beaches?"

"No."

And that would be that. Nothing to do but go home if they're gonna cop that kind of an attitude. Damn Aussies. I wouldn't even have bothered if I knew they were gonna be like that. Whole continent full of golden goddesses in string bikinis and they won't even point a stranger in the right direction. No use in going if they're gonna be like that.

So I stayed home.

And I'm not watching the Travel Channel anymore.