Dude…That’s Messed Up…

I used to have terrible insomnia.  Until my late teens, when I discovered that alcohol makes you go sleepy-bye, I pretty much slept every other night.  I had a helluva (okay, time to stop and talk about the spell checker again…this time I spelled “helluva” as “hellova”…strangely, it steered me back to “helluva,” which, to my knowledge, is still not a word.  It also offered me the choice of “hell-ova” which webster defines as: “What the fuck are you talking about?  Are you high?” However,  “Huelva” is a Spanish province off the Gulf of Cádiz.  Unfortunately, this spell checker says “Huelva” is not a word and suggests that I spell it “Helluva”…and we’ve come full circle. )  time in in high school.  I can remember many, many nights that I would finally nod off only to be awakened by my dad’s alarm clock a few minutes later.  I often wonder what my GPA would have looked like had I been, you know…awake.  I used to have to schedule a study hall in third period because I would invariably fall asleep with my head on my desk at about 10 o’clock every day.

The only good part about all this sleep deprivation craziness was the infomercials.  I really believe that my high school years were the golden age of infomercials.  We had the flobee and it’s owner, Rick – the guy who looked like he cut his hair with a vacuum cleaner and was completely unashamed by his giant porn ‘stache.  We had the hair in a spray can, the drunken bald chick that always made me feel bad about myself because I was fat, but better about myself because I wasn’t her.  Finally, we had bearded women hawking jars full of nads.  Oh yes, it was an exciting time my friends.  It was especially fun when I would doze off while waiting for Conan to come on…I’d fall asleep because that piece of shit hack Jay Leno was about as funny as paper cuts on my chode and can’t even read a teleprompter, only to wake up to the chick from Three’s Company strangling some strange piece of metal between her legs.  It was a wonderful time – heavyweight fighters cooked meat into the wee hours of the morning – legendary cornerbacks cooked hot dogs – that old guy pulverized fruit into juice and then did a bunch of pushups and everybody clapped like so many lobotomized monkeys on LSD.  I almost didn’t mind the walking zombie state in which I spent most of my formative years.

Then something happened – the hot dog cooking cornerback was replaced by that squeaky-voiced real estate bitch.  The drunken bald chick finally fell over and was replaced by those P90X guys and I no longer had any reason to feel good about myself.  The juice guy was replaced by the fucker that claims he makes millions writing google ads.  In short, people went from selling stupid crap to the gullible to selling lies and scams to the stupid.  It just wasn’t fun anymore.

Fortunately, by this time I had discovered booze and crying myself to sleep – I slowly began to lose track of all the infomercials.  I honestly couldn’t tell you if old juice-making-pushup guy is still alive or not.  I am totally out of the infomercial loop.

So I got home late last night after driving through three states in pretty crappy weather and I was hopped up on adrenaline.  After getting shot down (again) by my lovely wife, I tried to lay down and sleep next to her.  You might as well have asked me to perform heart surgery on roller skates.  It just wasn’t gonna happen.  I cussed, grabbed my pillow and went out to lay on the couch in the living room and watch tv.  I flipped through the channels and found nothing.  Eventually I decided on the lesser of all evils, a show on the science channel where scientists were arguing with each other about why the dinosaurs aren’t here anymore.  Apparently, they’ve been arguing for decades about asteroids and ice ages and communicable diseases.  I eventually drift off wondering why they care so damned much about it in the first place.  Then something magical happened…it was like a wonderful Christmas surprise.  I woke up to ugly women nodding furiously with little bits of plastic shoved between their chins and upper chests.  I stared at the tv with a puzzled look on my face.  Was this some sort of newfangled Japanese game show?  Then I flashed back to the thigh master.  This was a thigh master for your ugly face!  I’m not ready to call it just yet, but it appears that the golden age of infomercials might be back!  I am seriously considering taking up insomnia again!