Time for another one of those “stuff hanging around in my browser and getting all too comfortable and leaving little brown rings on the furniture because they are addicted to Starbucks and never heard of a god damned coaster” posts. I have a bunch of lynx links to share with you fine folks tonight, with subjects ranging from politics to life advice to sleep, and I just can’t wait to share the bounty of the Web with you, my audience, who by reading these words breath life into them, and encourage me to write on, and construct still more long, rambling sentences.

An Interesting Suggestion

Recently I came across an article on Psych Central with an intriguing and mildly provocative title : Problem with Procrastination? Try Doing Nothing!

“But isn’t that the problem?” you ask. Of course it is, and the title is slightly misleading. The suggestion in the article is that in order to overcome the conflict inherent in procrastination, change the message in your mind from “I have to do X!” to “I don’t have to do X. I just can’t do anything else.” It seems like an almost silly suggestion, but I think it might work.

The problem with procrastination is that the more pressure you put on yourself to do X, the more frightening or unpleasant X becomes in your mind and hence the stronger your aversion to doing it. This leads to the all too familiar gridlock.

But if you just switch it to “I can’t do anything but X for this period of time”, eventually you will become bored and do X simply to relieve the boredom. But at any moment, there is no direct pressure to do X right that very second. You can remove the tension from the gridlock, and release it.

And them boom… productivity!

Rich Santorum Hates The Troops

Specifically, the veterans.

I mean, why else would he screw the nation’s largest veteran’s home out of a hundred million dollars?

Here is the basic story : the Armed Forces Retirement Home was in desperate need of money. The fifty cent per paycheck deduction from every active soldier’s paycheck was simply not enough money to keep such a facility going in peace time any more.

It had some land it planned to lease (not sell!) in order to get this much needed cash infusion. In the original deal, the land, worth $45 million, would be leased for 35 years for a total of $120 (or around $3.5 million a year). And of course, they would retain title to the land.

But apparently the Catholic Church coveted that land and did not feel like paying that much for it, so they called up their pal Senator Rick Santorum and he put an amendment into the bill authorizing the deal that forced the Armed Forces Retirement Home to sell (not lease) the land for $22 million, half of its market price.

Result : hundreds of veterans living in conditions too squalid and nightmarish for me to describe here.

What a swell guy, huh?

Perchance To Dream

Then there’s this intriguing article which puts forth the idea that expecting to sleep for eight hours in a row is a relatively modern phenomenon.

The contention by the subject of the article is that before the advent of gas light and later electric light, people slept in two periods, with an hour or two of wakefulness in between.

He backs up this contention with a host of historical references to “first sleep” and “second sleep”, and what you might do in the time between them. People did things like read, pray, chat, or make love to their bedfellows in between sleeps.

It makes sense. Back in the days of the candle, there was not a lot you could get done at night, and so spending a total of ten hours on sleep was no big deal. What else were you going to do?

But the idea that our natural sleep cycle is two four hour sleeps is a comforting one to me, because I have not slept for eight hours in a row since I was a child.

Another way in which modern life has forced the people to fit the machine and not the other way around.

Why Sleep Alone?

And speaking of bedfellows, this article claims that 35 percent of UK residents sleep with a teddy bear of some kind.

This result comes from the British hotel chain, who became interested when in the process of trying to reunite thousands of accidentally forgotten teddy bears with their owners, discovered that a lot of said owners were not, in fact, children.

So they did a survey of their customers, and found that over a third of UK residents claimed they slept with a teddy bear, and that includes a quarter of all men.

I find that a little hard to believe, but then again, perhaps the UK is more in love with the teddy than we are here in Canada.

I, of course, being a fully mature adult, do not sleep with such a childish and immature thing as a teddy bear doll.

I sleep with a fox plushy. Much better. Sometimes I cuddle him, and sometimes he is just there, watching over me, keeping me safe while I sleep.

Of course, I own two teddy bears and assorted other plush animals.

But I don’t sleep with them! Much. Very often. Lately.

Of course, now I kind of miss them….

End of Line

That is all the goodies I have for you tonight, my dear readers. Thank you once more, from the bottom of my heart, to all you people who make this possible by reading me.

Stayed tuned to this obscure blog for more interesting links, grandly random ramblings, deep personal soul-digging self-analysis, off kilter humour, sparkling bits of wonderful science, bitching about my shitty shitty sleep, and other such things tomorrow, and as far as I know, forever.

Well, I suppose when I die, I might have to take a bit of a break.