Archive for Sleep Depreivation

Of Bedtime Rituals, Beta Tests, and Ass Dancing.

Posted in Entertainment, Gaming, Life, Writing with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 30, 2012 by urbannight

I wanted to make this more general and less about me. But it is too much about me and I couldn’t keep it to a minimum. I blame it on sleep deprivation. If you want to know about it, or you just want to get to the part about ass dancing, read on.

It seems like today will be a very long day. I’m exhausted and back, shoulder, wrist, hand and ankles hurt. I feel like I spent an entire weekend gaming but it was exactly opposite of that.

My roommate preordered Guild Wars 2. This weekend was the beta event. But it took more of the weekend to download than he had left to play. He stared it Friday and it wasn’t finished until Sunday morning. Paying for a fast download speed is irrelevant if the server it comes from is sending at a slower rate and is very busy. This meant I couldn’t do any online games, WordPress would never load, and my email, home page, and FB loaded very slowly. Online stuff was out of the question. So was Netflix.

So I treated myself to a Firefly marathon Saturday. I also got a lot of stitching done. I got a lot done but didn’t quite make it to Serenity. Really great progress was made on the Elegant Pumpkins. Normally, stitching does not produce the same type of hand and wrist fatigue as gaming all day does. My my hand and wrist feel awful. Right up into my shoulder.

Which reminds me of something. Isn’t it odd how in formal writing we object to the incomplete sentence. But it is very common in novel-writing. And in natural speech. We say something, stop, and then add something to clarify. In writing, one sentence might give the impression that there was no pause or only a slight pause. But the reality of natural speech is that it is often a much longer pause. And novel-writing tends to reflect a more natural mode of speech than formal writing. We want people to really feel as if they are seeing and hearing the novel rather than reading it. Show us don’t tell us.

So, my weekend was a marathon of television and stitchery and not much of anything else.  Although I did play two hours of the Beta Test before bed. Not something I planned on. But it was going to end and there is still no release date for the game. So I figured if I was going to try it out, that was the only time to do it. Still, it wasn’t enough of a gaming stretch to bother my joints. At least, it shouldn’t have been.

Instead of getting ready for bed and relaxing at 9:00 I didn’t get started on that until 11:00. My normal routine is to get ready for bed and lay down on the couch and watch a cartoon. In the past, this was not an effective ritual. At the time, I was staying up later than my already late bed time so I could watch an hour and a half of Disney Channel Cartoons. Emperor’s New School, Replacements, and Kim Possible. These were great cartoons but boy were they on late at night. Saying up until 1:30 am is not an effective bedtime ritual.

After they canceled them, I tried to find some online versions of them. I discovered a good reason not to make a teenage cartoon for middle school kids or younger too sexy. There is a massive amount of Kim Possible porn out there.

But I did find a show that worked great for helping me relax and I almost always fall asleep during. Not because it is boring but simply because I’ve seen the show SO MANY times. Shin Chan. It is amusing, entertaining, short, mostly light, and once you know the show by heart, easy to unwind during and fall asleep with it in the background. Eventually, I watched it SO many times I wanted a bit of a break. Invader Zim is not so go for unwinding and falling asleep. But Phineas and Ferb is fantastic. The show is cute, the characters interesting, the format is always the same, each episode is two separate segments.

It is perfect for slowing the brain down to sleepy time levels and drifting off in the middle of the program. I wake up later, momentarily, to stumble into bed and fall asleep before I know it, with none of the tossing and turning that normally happens. Like on Friday and Saturday when I didn’t have my bed time cartoons available.

Recently, my roommate saw that I wasn’t watching Shin Chan anymore and asked my why. I told him I needed a little variation and P & F worked just as well. He said I must be waiting for Ferb to drop his drawers and ass dance. No, I’m not. He seems to thing that is the entire purpose of my watching Shin Chan. This is not true. It is amusing. But I don’t watch it for that. Although the episode totally devoted to butt cheeks is one of the best episodes.

Mitzy buys some dolphin goo for her face. Shin happened to see the commercial for it when he was at home while she was out shopping. He overhears a conversation between Mitzy and the neighbor lady and totally misunderstands. He thinks his mom is planning to use Hima’s (his little sister) skin to replace her own skin so she will look 5 years younger and have the skin of a baby. He and Hima then have an ass dance dance-off in which Hima can’t keep up but she wins because her butt skin glows and shines with divine baby light. Shin sees the bag for the dolphin goo and recognizes it and remembers that the commercial says it will take 5 years off. Since he is 5, he will have the skin of a baby too. He can save Hima. Mitzy walks into her room to see Shin in front of a vanity pouring the last of the entire bottle of lotion on his butt. It is very very funny. I’m not sure my description does it justice.

Which brings me back to last night, where I lay down at 11:10, put on a 20 mintue episode of Phineas and Ferb, both of whom are too smart to find ass dancing a good use of their summer vacation. I drift of to sleep. Then I half wake up and go to bed. I wake all the way up at 2:00 am and can’t sleep. I end up being up until 4:30. I want to run screaming out onto the balcony, ripping at my night-shirt, yelling,”WHY? WHY?”, Marlon Brando style, which would look a little funny coming from me. I’ve been working really hard getting myself to go to bed earlier and get eight hours of sleep at night. Instead I had a 3 hour nap, was up for 2.5 hours, and then got another 1hr 45 mintutes of sleep.

I was glad this wasn’t a Monday where I had to drive to work. I wasn’t sure I was awake enough for driving. I was really looking forward to a good hour to 90 minute nap after work before gaming. But now I have to go do some emergency dog siting for a couple of hours after work as the one owner is out-of-town on an emergency and the other owner had finals and couldn’t get home between work and classes.

I’m glad I stopped at the gas station to pick up Rooster Booster slushy and two 5 hour energy shots. I just may survive today after all. Hey, where’s Perry?