the clog

Santa Claus converts to Islam...

Ok, what I'm gonna talk about right now has got to be the most surreal experience that I have...erm...experienced in my whole li...week. Anyway, just to build up to the story I would like to point out something that should be painfully obvious to everybody: sleep is very important. And being the idiotic trooper that I am, I tried to make due without it yesterday (completely unintentional, I assure you. I was just chugging along reading up on some things, doing some maths exercises (what, I do study maths! I do! Really!), and generally just wasting time) when along rolls 6am. "6am? Well, I have a class at 11...guess I'll make do without sleep for today". It sounded innocent enough when I thought it at the time. But 11 o'clock is a long time to wait for...I only managed to stay awake through sheer willpower. In retrospect, I don't see why I didn't just sleep until 10 and then make my way to class (which takes around a half hour to get to from my place). If I had done so I would have gotten a coupla' hours worth of sleep and wouldn't have passed out in front of my lecturer (which is not a good idea under any circumstance). It was only for a couple of seconds, but I think he noticed. He kept waving his hand at me to see if I was paying attention after that. I should have slept before I came to class. I'm a fool...such a fool. Anyway, class finishes without any other incidents and I decide to drive to the mosque to perform Friday Prayers. I make it to the mosque in record time. I now have to wait 1 hour before the prayers start. Not too bad since the mosque proved to be a cool refuge from the afternoon heat. Suffice to say, I dozed off. Not too long, maybe half an hour, total (I kinda kept drifting in and out of conciousness....).

But then I started to dream. Short dream bursts (when I actually dozed off). There were a couple of random forgettable dreams between those waking periods. I can't remember much about them and they seemed unimportant so I didn't bother trying. Then I started dreaming about Santa Claus. It was a very short dream (like the others): Santa Claus is sifting through M&Ms deciding whether he should give them to the kids regardless of whether they have been good or not. He decides to keep all the blue coloured ones for himself (I don't know why.... My dreams don't make much sense if you haven't noticed. Why M&Ms? Is Santa really that hard up on cash? And why does he keep the blue ones? Mysteries that may best be unsolved). Anyway, he keeps sifting through the M&Ms, making sure to separate the blue ones from all the others when all a sudden he jumps up, opens his mouth and proclaims: "Allah hu Akbar!".

I'm jolted awake then. It turns out that it was the call for prayers (you know, the one before the sermon). Stimulus Incorporation had once again decided to mess with my mind. Anyway, the point that I'm trying to make is: make sure you get enough sleep. Unless you like having Christian Icons doing things you probably won't expect them to do (I'm just glad that I didn't dream the Pope into becoming a dominatrix...that would probably have a damaging effect on my psyche). I get home feeling exhausted (logical, that). At that point I would have liked nothing better than to crawl up to bed and just collapse into it. Which I proceeded to do. However, it seems like the world just wants to keep mocking me: I fall into bed and I can't fall asleep. In fact, I shut my eyes and actually waited for to fall asleep for a full 15 minutes before giving up. Damn you, Mr Sandman! How long must you make a mockery of my life?! Anyway, it's now 7:38pm and I have not had a wink of sleep. I'm still exhausted but sleep is not forthcoming. Maybe I'm just afraid of dreaming up a Pope dominatrix?....*shudder*....Nobody should have that many wrinkles....