Insomnia Means Having Delusions While You're Awake

[This postcard from Postsecret has nothing to do with the below entry. It's just so darn cute and sad at the same time.]

I've been waking up in the middle of the night for the past week, usually around 1:30 or 2:00 AM. This happens from time to time and for no reason that I can find. It could have something to do with subconscious anxiety, or absent loved ones, or exercise, eating before bed, the current White House administration, and so on. I'll get sleepy again around 4:00 AM and catnap for a couple of hours.

Here's an unusual blogspot for you. Rated G.

Practically lost in the heartfelt and well-deserved farewells for Richard Pryor is the passing of former Senator Eugene McCarthy, a Washington outsider who helped strip away the hypocritical facade that was the late-1960s government's presentation of the Vietnam War. He drove LBJ out of the 1968 presidential race and into retirement, which may have not been such a bad thing, but that opened the door for old Tricky Dick Nixon (and look how well that turned out). Methinks the president will not be going to Mr. McCarthy's funeral.

Classes are winding down and this has been one suckass experience. Hindsight says I should have taken the semester off. My head wasn't in the game at the beginning, Trina left in the middle, and they wanted to fire me at the end. Strips away the joy of teaching if I were to dwell on it all.

Let me try to capture one of the reasons I like to teach: the spark (aka the lightbulb). A few semesters ago, there was a student who was just not grasping the concepts of the software application we were covering in class. We'd worked together and he understood the basics of what he was doing, but couldn't process the purpose or the "big picture" of the assignment (it was a database thing). Another student was at an earlier point in the same exercise and asked for help. The first student started explaining how he got where he was and as he was talking, you could see in his eyes that he was getting the idea. Some folks call it akin to a lightbulb turning on, but it's more sudden and bright than that. An old philosophy teacher from a class long ago called it the spark of intelligence or something like that. When the students finally "get it" and the light goes on in their eyes, it makes all the crap and headaches outside the classroom go away.

Some thoughts:
- Miserable people live in a universe of one. I've never met a sad person whose mission in life was totally focused on other people's happiness and/or salvation.
- Along those lines, another sign of happiness can be directly connected to how much time you spend outside and away from the electronics. Fresh air burns more calories than blogging. Look it up.
- But I still want electronics as presents. Go figure.
- Pancakes are the best food ever.
- There's a thin line between paranoia and persecution, but a paranoid person doesn't see the difference.
- Robert Heinlein once said that specialization is for ants, not Man. There's a lot more Jack-of-all-Trades collecting unemployment than there are specialists.
- Professional basketball is overrated. College basketball is a snapshot of life.
- Other things people tend to take too seriously: their own education and/or pedigree, football, Hollywood celebrities, and dieting.
- The stupidest and most short-sightedness executives in the five major sports can be found, without a doubt, in baseball. The reasons start with revenue sharing, wander through trade collusion and ballparks built with public money, and end up on steroids.
- By the way, just how many fans and how much respect did they lose in the 15+ years it took for them to respond to steroids?
- If horse racing is a sport, so is NASCAR. And it's got more fans than hockey. So it should be considered a major sport.
- Some of the best movies ever that I can watch repeatedly: The Godfather series, Bull Durham, Major League, The Incredibles, The Best Years of Our Lives.
- Some of the best movies ever that I'll never watch again: Million Dollar Baby, Silence of the Lambs, Full Metal Jacket.
- Movie I should have watched decades ago: Ran.
- It worth saying again: relatives are people you're related to by blood. Family are folks related to you by love.
- And you pick your family, but not your relatives.

It's past 3:30 AM. When I wake up and read this, I'll have no idea what I was talking about. Good night.