You dream.

The clouds fan out above you like a giant cotten blanket, wisps and curls of vapour erupting here and there, geysers of mist that swirl in ever decreasing circles until they fade into nothingness.
The sand at your feet is warm between your toes, the rolling dunes like waves of the sea, endlessly repeated off into the distance. The patterns on the dunes look almost like fingerprints, each dune is unique as a hand until the wind whips the sand up to blow it away and shift it into another shape.
A glowing ball of malevent red squats on the horizon, shimmering edges of fire burning into oranges and yellows; the whole skyline a rolling, shifting blur of melting and twisting colours.
Nearby the sandblasted rocks stand, like some Dali-esk sculpture of impossibility and fantasy. Their shapes and outlines hinting at hidden faces, animals and eyes.
The wind blows on, biting grains of sand pepper your skin as you stand there, your eyes watering from the heat and dust. There is no sign of anything save for the rocks and the sand, the desert seemingly endless in all directions.

ZZzzzzzzz

I have this love/hate relationship with sleep, I've decided. It tickles my nose, it puts sand in my eyes, it makes my nose emit bizarre and loud noises and occasionally it makes me mutter about things I have no control over. Not only that, it never wipes it's feet when in comes in the front door.
Rude I tell you, it's just plain rude.
Considering I'll be spending approximately 1/3 of my life asleep I really ought to get on with it, or rather with the person I am when I'm asleep, because it's not me - oh no. I have control over what I do, I react with thought and logic (well, sometimes anyway) and when I'm asleep I react in ways I have no control over, which scares me in a way. I am a control freak. Or more exactly I am a control of me freak, I like to be in control at least in part of everything I do, to carefully filter or examine everything I say. Or at least to be vaguely aware of what I'm doing and have memory of it all, until my brain¹ steals away the memory of it all and sells it at the local flea market, the swine.
So what’s the big deal with sleep; and why love and hate. It's quite simple, I have a problem with the fact that 1/3 of my life I do sod all² that is constructive, fun or indeed anything except restful. "You need your rest for strength." old grannies would probably queue up to say to me at this point, waving their brollies and wearing their carefully knitted tartan hats. I know, I've seen them waiting for this point, they live for it.
In the evenings I resent sleep, I don't want to sleep, I want to stay up, to live more to use every second somehow. Even if these seconds are just spent lazing around, they're still my seconds, not the asleep me's, he can sod off, I want those seconds dammit.
In the morning I like sleep, or at least that fuzzy half awake sense of vague awareness where the world has not yet come into being or even focus³ and everything is just a dim memory about three feet from your nose and well out of reach of your duvet, and therefore of no consequence⁴ whatsoever.
Anyway, that's why I don't like sleep, besides it stuck bubblegum on the bottom of my shoes this morning - I'm sure of it - why else would my feet feel so heavy?


1 My brain is also annoying at times, I'm sure it works for some secret government agency behind my back.
2 The other 2/3 of my life I may well do sod all as well, but that’s not the point.
3 Usually as I don't have my glasses on yet.
4 The consequence of blankets and their effect on gravity and space/time was not lost on Einstein whose great paper "The warping of reality from my duvet" was sadly never published.

Widescreen life

Okay, so my TV exploded. And then some eeeevil person mentioned the word 'Widescreen'.
So, erm, any recommendations out there for places to look?