From: mdw@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh)
Subject: I'd Rather Be a Bit of Toast
Followup-To: alt.non.sequitur,alt.prose,alt.fan.gooley,alt.timewasters,alt.geek,alt.newbie
Organization: Cornell Theory Center
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 04:46:04 GMT

I'd Rather Be a Bit of Toast


Sleep deprivation is the harbringer of wakeful hallucination; every fifteen
minutes the attendant enters my cell and chooses from among one of several
unpleasant methods of arousal, up to and including sharp nudges from a
cattle prod, the rectal probe, or the old reliable... extinguishing a
cigarette on my bare skin. I scowl at the orderly and go back to my
psychohallucinatory state, where large blue eels pour from a bottle of
Killian's Red into the lap of a bungee jumping instructor in Maine.
There was nothing I could do; my shift key was held down, and letter after
letter was being pounded into my mind like an ancient impact typewriter,
seriously in need to maintenance. Fortunately the ribbon was going out so
the only letters I could make out on my thought impression were G   F
B UJ   L T. The number of possible combinations was something on the order
of 26 to the 10th power, plus or minus a few significant figures. 

I preferred the soft white pillows in the cell-- but every time I requested
them instead they threw in a few bricks. Bloody bastards, I thought, 
when will they ever learn to recognize the inherent Right to Pillows God-given
to each and every human being? It's one of the four basic civil rights and
needs: Shelter, Food, Love, and Pillows. I toyed with this idea in my mind
for a few hours, turning it over and over like a Rubick's Cube with all of
the stickers removed, trying to make sense of the black plastic bauble, able
to turn in a number of seemingly unrelated ways. I imagined how this all
tied into my recent readings of the Qu'ran, and my growing contumacy towards
the incessant imprudent disturbance of my natural desire for slumber.
The attendant paced back and forth in front of my cell, undoubtedly smoking
some derivative of crack cocaine, and refusing to share any with me. Little
did he know how much THAT would keep me awake.

Needless to say, my imprisonment facility was the ne plus ultra of 
imprisonment facilities, for it was housed in my very own living room. 
I had access to all the commodities of a normal life, such as a microwave,
color TV, VCR, Super Nintendo, Genesis, toaster oven, and even a 
Dirt Devil, but by some incredible consequence I chose to house myself in
this makeshift cell (actually a few stacked cardboard boxes, with bars
cut out for effect) and have my housemates police my sleeplessness 24 hours
a day. This was all by my own volition, and I paid well. In my third year
without sleep I decided that the answer to the Universe's problems lay in the
small unstoppable growth of dirt beneath ones big toenail, but was powerless
to act upon my conviction. In fact, many such realizations had come to me,
and if I had permitted myself to write any of them down I would surely have
published and spent more weeks on the bestseller's lists than "Patriot
Games", or even the "New King James Bible" when it was first released.
I would have been translated into a hundred languages, but the Catholic
Church would have complained and wanted my writings preserved in the
original Latin (to which they were mistaken; all my manuscripts start out
as rough notes in Javanese, only transcribed into Latin at a later date). 

I glanced out of the window that the plumage of a marabou nesting there.
Before long the servant realized that he had missed the last quarter-hour
and came into the cell to poke me with the business end of his static
charge inducer.


mdw
-- 
Matt Welsh    mdw@tc.cornell.edu        +1 607 253 2737
Systems Programmer, Cornell Theory Center
  "Yow! Up ahead! It's a DONUT HUT!!"
Newsgroups: alt.non.sequitur,alt.prose,alt.fan.matt.welsh