Tuesday morning and I'm paying for three nights of near sleeplessness again. One day I'll do something about this insomnia, but in the meantime, I'm forced to deal with the ghosts that haunt the night. One strange side effect of many years of troubled sleep is the fact that I can't even begin to think of drifting off without some sort of noise in the room. More specifically, I must have the radio on. And it can't be music. Music is too distracting; I find myself listening and enjoying and the end result is a head full of songs at 3 AM. Instead, I tune the alarm clock radio to a talk show, and who better to listen to at the wee hours of night than the King of the After Dark, Art Bell.
Saturday morning sometime before sunrise, I stared up at the dusty ceiling fan as Bell talked about attending the premiere of "his" movie, The Day After Tomorrow. That's right, this disaster movie, which looks like a cross between Twister and Independence Day, is loosely based on a book written by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, a former fill-in for Bell during one of his many recent retirements. If you thought that Bell only concerned himself with chemtrails and UFOs, you're wrong. He does spend numerous shows talking about the coming superstorms that will put an end to this planet as we know it. This night, he interviewed a man who has written extensively on the possibility of an Ice Age in the near future. One of the more disturbing parts of the interview was a discussion on the potential for a mega-disaster if (when) Yellowstone erupts. According to his guest, everyone in a 600-mile radius of Yellowstone would die within minutes, lava would shoot 150,000 feet into the air, and the temperatures on earth would plummet 20 degrees for an extended period of time.
Maybe it's time I try something new to generate my twilight whitenoise. Perhaps I should give one of those recordings of rainfall or of rain forests a try. Art Bell's voice can do wonders, but his content can have me wide-eyed in a cold sweat wondering when the sky will fall on top of my sleepy head.
You definitely need some sleep. You missed a whole month.
Posted by: Deborah | June 01, 2004 at 04:30 PM
Geez, you're right. What would Rip Van say? I'm on it, thanks.
Posted by: Jeff | June 01, 2004 at 07:10 PM
dude, art bell is back? i had given up when ol whitney strieber came on. i mean he wasn't horrible but he wasn't art. woo hoo late night AM here i come.
ps ask yr girl for somtin put chu straight to bed :>
Posted by: lucina | June 02, 2004 at 11:31 AM
Art is doing weekends only.
Posted by: Jeff | June 02, 2004 at 07:54 PM