Post-insomnia Open Thread
Bookworm on Jan 21 2011 at 9:20 am | Filed under: Open Threads
I shut down my computer around 2:00 yesterday, and never had the chance to turn it on again. I thought I’d get off to a roaring start this morning but, after an impressive bout of insomnia, my brain is is cycling between sluggish and torporous. Until I get a second wind (or do I mean a first?), this Thread’s for you.
Email This Post To A Friend
51 Responses to “Post-insomnia Open Thread”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Did anyone notice the horror that has been exposed in Philadelphia? This is a case of an abortion provider who would do late term abortions in really barbaric conditions. You really have to read this to fully understand just how horrific his practice was.
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/01/21/the-philadelphia-horror-how-mass-murder-gets-a-pass/
Drudge headline from a few days ago said the feds had a big raid on the mafia. I think they were just trying to eliminate the private sector competition.
I see congressthing Giffords has left Tucson for rehab in Texas. I don’t mean to be unfriendly or anything, but she got an ambulance ride in an ambulance that’s virtually a limousine to the airport, where she’s taking a ride in a private plane from Tucson to Texas, where she’ll be transferred to a nice helicopter for the last leg to her rehab center.
I presume all this lush treatment is covered by Obama-care, the benefits of which she voted to confer on all the rest of us.
Did you ever notice how many positions we get into for which there seems to be no recourse? Seems to be no recourse because there is, in fact, no recourse, I mean. (I don’t have a bunch of links to throw at you, they’re pretty easy to find, but I’m just sort of thinking out loud here.
Things you can’t do anything about. When people in Clark County, NV showed up to vote last November the voting machines somehow magically already had recorded votes for Harry Reid. Complaints were of course registered. The place to go for redress is the County Clerk’s office – he oversees elections. Well, Goddam! In Clark County the County honcho turns out to be Harry Reid’s kid! How the hell about that? But – that was the end of the line. Nothing to be done. No recourse. Nobody to go to who could say to young Reid: “you’re off the case, and there will be a re-vote tomorrow at noon, overseen by someone other than you.”
And speaking of the generally worthless Mr. Reid, now that the congress has voted to turn off Obama’s health care, in the normal course of things it should be voted on in the senate. But in order to protect the 24 democrat senators who are up next year and would have to live with their recorded votes – ol’ Harry is just declines to bring the matter up. Just simply not going to allow a vote! Just as though it’s his senate. So – who do we get to tell the smarmy bastard: “Hey Harry! It’s not your senate – it’s the people’s. And there’ll be a vote tomorrow at noon on this bill.” Who do we get? Why – nobody. There is nobody. There is no position with the power to compel him to do his job.
There’s a guy in New Jersey named Brian Aitken who was in jail for a couple of months. and was looking at several years. He was arrested for having two unloaded guns in cases in the trunk of his car. They were there because he was in the middle of a move from one town to another. he had called up the NJ state cops himself, to try to get some clarification of New Jersey’s Byzantine maze of gun laws regrading how to legally move the guns from the old home to the new home. (He didn’t have a permit to carry, he just had them in his home – perfectly legally.) New Jersey’s gun laws cannot be understood by Jesus Christ – there are exceptions piled upon exceptions on top of exceptions. Aitken refused to accept a plea because he felt he had done nothing wrong. The judge in the case refused to instruct the jury about the exceptions, though Aitken’s lawyers, and the jury itself, repeatedly (the jury. Repeatedly) asked His Majesty to do so. So Aitken got convicted. Chris Christie instantly granted him clemency, so he’s out – but here’s the thing: who is there with the power to pop over to New Jersey and say: “turn in your ball gown, lawyer, because you’re not a judge any more. You have demonstrated that you are temperamentally unfitted to be sitting in judgment on anybody, about anything, so ‘bye.” Who is in a position to do that?
Just a thought. Do you ever feel that we have a desperate need for someone to actually be in charge for a while? A supreme dictator, who cannot be gainsaid, and is where the buck – and BS – stops. Just for a while. Yes, this how Rome went from republic to dictatorship, the people were so goddamed fed up with obvious BS from politicians, cops, industrialists, etc. that they were just longing for someone to come along and just slug somebody – somebody who is obviously disobeying both the law and the Constitution – but cannot be touched, will get away with it, and screw you, citizens! – squarely in the nose. Wouldn’t it be lovely!
“You want to know if NASA can drive the Mars rover over to where the astronauts planted the American flag, do you,Ms. Jackson Lee? You’re too stupid to be allowed out in public without a keeper, let alone be a member of a governing body. Good-bye, ex-congressthing, you’re not a member of congress any more on ground of exceptional dimness.” God! Lovely!
I recently found an interesting take on the years 1929-1939, published in 1939. (SINCE YESTERDAY THE 1930S IN AMERICA : FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN ) It can how be terrifyingly current, such as the section describing how Hoover called the bankers into secret meetings in Washington to devise a bailout and hide the bad banks.
One section on magazines of the era and their avoidance of controversial subjects is also timely. As is the irony that Time navigated the era quite well by providing well researched and objective information. To bad they forgot their past. Another is the fear that office-bound magazine writing would kill free-lance journalism, which it did of a sort. But that seems to be reversing with the office bound failing while free-lance journalism is flourishing with bloggers.
<blockquote>In the magazine world if one excepts such liberal
weeklies of small circulation as the New Republic and the
Nation and such organs of the solid intellectuals as Harpers
the tendency was toward a very timid discretion in the
treatment of public affairs. This discretion was relaxed
somewhat in 1932 and 1933, when readers clamored to
know what was wrong with the management of American
business and the upholders of the status quo were too bewil
dered to offer confident resistance, but reasserted itself
after the New Deal Honeymoon. Among the big popular
magazines with circulations of two or three million the
only sort of militancy likely to be manifest thereafter was
a militancy such as that of George Horace Lorimer of the
Saturday Evening Post, who risked considerable losses in
circulation (but, of course, few losses in advertising) by his
incessant hammering at the Roosevelt Administration.
Otherwise these magazines particularly the women’s magazines
touched controversial issues timidly if at all and
confined themselves mostly to highly expert fictional enter
tainment and to the discussion of matters to which neither
their owners, their advertisers, nor their more tender-
minded readers could conceivably take exception. When
an attempt was made to provide, in Ken, a liberal-radical
periodical of large circulation, advertisers held off and thus
condemned it to an early death. But on the whole it would
be inexact to say that direct pressure from advertisers af
fected very largely the policy of the successful big-circula
tion magazines. What chiefly affected them was the desire
of their owners to see their own opinions echoed, to make
money by pleasing and flattering their advertisers, and at
the same time to provide agreeable and innocuous enter
tainment.
That there was money to be made nevertheless by the
sharp presentation of facts, and particularly of facts about
America, was shown by the growing success of Time an
expertly edited, newsy, and withal irreverent (though not
at all radical) weekly and its younger sister Fortune
(founded in 1930), which although edited by liberals for
the benefit chiefly of the rich, developed such a brilliant
technical team-research and team-authorship and trimmed
its sails so skillfully to the winds of conservatism that it not
only became a mine of factual material for future histo
rians but subtly broadened reactionary minds. None of the
other periodical successes of the decade promised to have
so acute an effect upon the status of the writer as this adventure
in writing a magazine inside the office; there were
those who saw in it a threat of extinction to the free-lance
journalist, a threat of the coming of the day when the
magazine writer would have to look for an office job or be
shut out from publication.[emphasis mine]</blocquote>
Bookworm,
I suffer from insomnia. have for decades.
I’m taking 3 – yes three – medications to fight my insomnia but still very rarely get more than 5 hours of sleep.
I’m going back for a second sleep study test at Mount Sinai hopital next may.
Doctors can’t find an explanation for my insomnia, I have my own which most people would laugh at.
Randall Woodman – I live outside of Philly. The news cycle on this house of horrors, has been non stop. I was actually shocked and surprised that the local liberal media highlighted the story on the radio as well as local television.
My favorite Drudge headline below. The nicknames are worth the price of admission. I think it’s high time we give some politicians there due and give them a decent mob name. After reading jj’s delightful rant (I really do enjoy them). I am sure we can conjure up a few.
‘Vinny Carwash’, ‘Tony Bagels’, ‘Johnny Pizza’, ‘Lumpy’, ‘The Bull’, ‘Meatball’…
oops ‘their’ due.
Feel good story of the day. Black conservatives are forming a Tea Party to address the problems of inner city Houston.
Our primary objective is to break the cycles of dependency and decay that continue to anesthetize and hold captive too many Black families and neighborhoods. We provide continuing series of speakers, seminars, training and practical business support services designed to help Blacks fully assimilate into and be competitive in American society.
The rest here and the rest is well worth reading.
http://patriotstatesman.com/2011/01/1491/
Friend:
My insomnia seems to be a product of stress and aging. Usually I manage about 5 or 6 hours a night of sleep, but last night gave me 2 hours, and that was just too little.
I can usually fall asleep; I just can’t stay asleep. I might fall asleep and wake up 10 or 15 times during the night.
Sleeping pills help me sleep, but they don’t help me wake up the following morning!
I’m hoping this resolves on its own with time.
I find that enough beer helps me sleep but it’s kind of rough the next morning. Especially during the week.
Sadie…
I hate the idea of a Black Tea Party. Nevertheless, US blacks need to “heal”, and there has developed such distrust of whites that the only way it’s going to happen is if they can help themselves. It’s like watching a teen going through the struggles of immaturity. You know the answers, but you might as well talk to the wall.
I hope it works. I hope the ideas take hold and a year, or five years or even ten years down the road, someone in the black community says…this is dumb – we should all be one group!
That’ll be a _good_ day!
Sleeping pills help me sleep, but they don’t help me wake up the following morning!
Have you tried varying the drug dosage so that it only lasts around 6 hours, not 8?
What about drinking a lot of water in order to speed up the process of metabolizing the drug, before you sleep?
If you can purge the drug from your system before you wake, it shouldn’t be an issue. You will still benefit, mostly, from its effects during the night.
The issue with waking up all the time is that your sleep cycle is being interrupted and you’re never dipping into the deep sleep periods.
Try a self-hypnosis technique to NOT focus on the time or when each hour passes. Do you know how to create a self-hypnotic suggestion before you sleep?
Suek, did you watch the Tea Party Express? Blacks were speaking some truth to power on that little tour. It totally fracked up the media when they started trying to press the conservative blacks on racism and slavery and Republican segregation. They got slapped back to Pluto I tell ya.
Y…
I think you’re appreciate this article…
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/01/battle-next-time-brief-history-of.html
Oooops…
>>you’re>>
_you’ll_
For insomniacs, have you tried melatonin?
Melatonin gets me to sleep, but it doesn’t keep me asleep. And calibrating sleeping pills has proved too random to be useful. I also don’t like relying on sedatives. They’re too seductive to someone as high strung as I am.
A black Tea Party has to begin somewhere and address more social issues. I think it’s an excellent start.
A few words about insomnia – IT SUCKS! I was an Olympic Medal Winner of Sleep until I was around 50. At 50 and the onset of menopause, the insomnia menace attacked and meddled with my rem cycle of slumber. I’ve tried the pills and melatonin and exercise and no caffeine and no this and no that. I am so ever grateful that I don’t have to be up or functioning in the mornings. I’ve capitulated and accepted that I sleep in shifts.
Bookworm, my only suggestion is a therapeutic foot massage. The days that I have indulged myself, it has rewarded me with glorious uninterrupted sleep.
One quick Sadie side story about reflexology.
I worked with a young/er woman in Tel Aviv. She was married 10 years and was unable to conceive, even after going through all the medical machinations. Her mom suggested she try reflexology. BINGO. Within several months pregnant with her first (several years later another). Okay, Bookworm, you don’t have to get pregnant – you just need a good night’s sleep.
I, too, have greatly suffered from insomnia. Often, I sleep in 4-hour units. I have found that taking Benadryl knocks me out for a good 4-hour sleep and it works much better than (and is cheaper than) other sleep aids.
Although I think some of it can be attributable to my high-stress business life, I think much of it is due to aging: it is my body adjusting to a new and shorter sleep cycle.
If I remember correctly, Sadie, “pregnant” and “good night’s sleep” were mutually exclusive. For me, it all went downhill with the first pregnancy, and it’s stayed downhill — only getting worse — in the years since then.
Aging, hormonal changes, stress . . . you name it. They all add up to days when I’m just too tired to process a whole lot of thought.
The ‘rem’ cycles do shorten with age. Add shorter attention span and damn it, shorter too!
One thing you might want to look into, Book, is your vitamin D status, which can really affect sleep and overall tiredness.
There is a major Vitamin D crisis in this country. This is largely due to lifestyle changes. We get the bulk of our vitamin D through the interaction of sun with our skin, which converts the vitamin D precursor and cholesterol-derivative (7-dehydrocholecholesterol) to vitamin-D.
Right now, it’s winter (so sun intensity is very low) and most of our activities are indoors, so people tend to be very sun-deprived. I started taking about 1,000 IU (International Units) per day this winter for the first time and it is the first winter I recall in a long time not being constantly tired.
It may help.
Danny…
She lives in _Kalifornia_…!!
Although she’s in foggy country.
I’m close to Santa Barbara. As I’ve said…we own a lighting store – we sell light bulbs, not fixtures particularly. It _kills_ me when people come in and want the various full spectrum bulbs that are supposed to help counter S.A.D. – Seasonally Affected Depression. We’re always happy to help them – it’s a sale, after all – but I always wonder why they don’t just go outside and take a walk. We have sunshine about 335 days out of the 365 days a year!
If that is S.A.D what is B.A.D.?
May I suggest Say Goodnight to Insomnia, both for its good suggestions and for its full-blown six week program. The suggestions are worthwhile even if you don’t choose to do the program.
Suek, she lives in the Bay Area. It can be very cloudy, foggy and cold.
No no no…
Marin County is _not_ the Bay Area…! Marin is _beautiful_! Of course, so was the Bay Area once upon a time…but then was then, and now is now. Gosh. I remember when the Presidio was still military. It was terrific.
Yeah…it’s also coastal, but not the same.
Besides…do you suppose the “cloudy, foggy and cold” description is responsible for the mentality of the Bay Area??? Book is _obviously_ out in the sunlight!
Bipartisan
Affected
Depression
???
Black Tea Party in Texas and now Bernice King wants no part of SCLC – a clarion moment, perhaps.
“As a steward of the King legacy, I must shift my focus to further advancing its growth and perpetuation overall,” she continued. “Specifically, I will be devoting my energy towards developing my mother’s legacy, Mrs. Coretta Scott King; preparing to work with the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference alongside Reverend Samuel Rodriguez; and laying the groundwork to launch a ministry initiative. I will continue to pray for SCLC’s growth and resurrection and wish the organization great success in its mission.”
http://www.theroot.com/views/sclc-says-it-will-go-without-bernice-king
King was elected SCLC president in 2009 but never officially took office. A federal investigation looking into about $500,000 in misplaced funds
Interesting story, Sadie. Hits close to home.
The King family is pretty dysfunctional given things. Then again, the children of rich and famous people (Like Reagan junior) are replete with guilt ridden complexes and crash course failures.
Then you have Sarah Palin’s family. Something else going on there. Keeping it real, means avoiding insanity in the public eye.
It seems that the great bugaboo of modern life is organizations and institutions that outlive their usefulness, or exceed their mandate, or just pile on the weight, thanks to their taxing power. The federal government is grotesquely large and needs to have several of its body parts hacked off. Private organizations like the NAACP, or Southern Poverty Law Center, or Amnesty International always reach the point where any good they ever did becomes subordinate to the need to keep their executives living in high style.
I can’t think of any organization or government that doesn’t do this, unless perhaps the Swiss cantons or small towns. I also can’t think of any solution to Brobdingnagianism. Any ideas out there?
Charles Martel
What a loaded question. Can I still say that? I initially thought that the exception would be the Armed Services. BUT…then I thought about the Russian and Chinese armies and nixed that idea. I’ve come up blank, unless some charities or organizational leaders take a vowel of poverty.
Brobdingnagianism – I give – what is it? An alien lilliputian life form with a Welsh accent?
Subject: Accounting Tweaks
Question: What is the difference between a tweak and keeping a second set of books, when even the first set is not solvent?
All that comes to my mind is Wimpy:
“I’ll gladly pay your Tuesday, if you buy me a hamburger today.
“Could the Fed go broke? The answer to this question was ‘Yes,’ but is now ‘No,’” said Raymond Stone, managing director at Stone & McCarthy in Princeton, New Jersey. “An accounting methodology change at the central bank will allow the Fed to incur losses, even substantial losses, without eroding its capital.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41198789
BW,
You might try something like this: http://www.thepath.us/services.html
I met this bodywork practitioner at a class a few months ago. She is very well trained. I think something like Craniosacral therapy might work for you. Or, she may have something else that will work better.
I suppose the federal government will never go broke so long as they have people to tax. They might end up having to grab the money and run overseas, though.
Ymar
The thing is they are broke. I mean if the debt is $14 billion, there’s simply not enough people to tax. If the feds are broke, doesn’t that mean our dollars are kinda worthless, too. Sure, I understand that we can buy and pay for things with the greenbacks and I am paying more for food and gas and they still take the dollars (what choice do they have, really). But I get the sense, it’s like playing with Monopoly money. The entire system just feels like it running on fumes and it stinks. I am feeling very cranky about it all. I was listening to the radio about the incredible sums of money that are given to ‘emerging’ nations and how much of it is wasted, corrupted or stolen. They just place a sticker price on the losses and hope to recover millions from billions. I think of all the decades of this waste and sit here shaking my head and fist wanting to shout from the top of my lungs – CUT THE CRAP – ENOUGH ALREADY. It’s not as though the feds don’t know, who kept most of the money and where it is. There are basically 3 places, Switzerland, Luxembourg or is it Lichtenstein and the Cayman Islands – none of which have a real army. Hmmm…..I am thinking how nice it would be to invade and not leave until we get the money back. Betcha there’s an easy $14 billion sitting in vaults.
“Brobdingnagianism – I give – what is it? An alien lilliputian life form with a Welsh accent?”
Close, Sadie. It refers to Tom Jones’s formidable “shorts enhancer,” which, apparently, many of his lady fans have pursued avidly, much as medieval knights pursued the Holy Grail. (Jones, as you know, is a Welshman.)
SADIE, with all due respect: I’d opt for Switzerland..
Switzerland has one of the world’s largest armies. It’s one of the world’s best-kept secrets. Virtually all of the adult male population is in the reserves. They train all the time. It’s also a beautiful place to live.
Danny,
Thanks for prompting my memory. Once upon a time, I actually would have recalled that fact. Switzerland is beautiful (a brief visit many years ago) but since winter began, quite early in December and tomorrow’s high will only be 14, I am leaning towards the Cayman Islands and invasion wearing my flip-flops.
Charles Martel,
Speaking of flip-flops and definitions ..ahem…. Brobdingnagianism. Could this Welsh Holy Grail object be found in a 1975 Sears Catalog or would I more likely see it in a National Geo special with a group of village elders wearing carved gourds , sitting around a camp fire or perhaps hunting for something that would in no way come close to being identified as kosher.
SueK had a link above to Mark Steyn’s latest brilliance, “Dependence Day”.
It’s really good. Here it is again.
Mark Steyn, “Dependence Day”
Book occasionally posts about how England seems lost. After you read this, the reasons get a lot clearer.
$14 trillion, Sadie, trillion.
Y’all will be happy to know that I slept 12 hours last night. I don’t know when I’ve last done that. I know that it’s been more than a decade, but I don’t know how much more.
I feel a little muzzy, but more human than I have in weeks. Let’s hope that catching up on my sleep deficit also helps me catch up on my blogging deficit.
DQ – good catch. Yes, trillion. Yes, leaves me shrilling ;
That’s ok, Book. We’ve managed to keep busy…!
Glad you got your beauty sleep…
Lack of sleep can be truly frazzling.
Whenever I can’t get to sleep, I pull out my trusty Marx or Chomsky and usually am droopy-eyed within 90 seconds.
suek – excellent choice of reading material (Steyn). Thanks for the link.
Keep it up Book.
SOTU (sneak preview to Tuesday and the next two years)
Infrastructure, education, research and of course, new spending!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704754304576096171216582908.html
You’ve been very gracious in allowing this visitor to comment. Hopefully we learned a bit from each other. In particular, try to look at each of your positions skeptically. A willingness to support your claims will make you more careful when making them. Carefully consider why some assertions are disputed by others, and whether this is due to facts (which might be substantiated) or differences in values (where you may try to find common ground). Question authority, but don’t reject it without proper cause.
We may drop in from time to time. Good luck to you all.
Zachriel