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Once again, my own damn fault that I can't sleep at 4:30 in the stinking morning. Turkish coffee and diet Dr Pepper after 10 pm... way to go, genius.

So what do you do when you can't sleep in the middle of the night? Apprehend fugitive bail jumpers in a Trans Am Look up weird shit on Wikipedia, of course!

Tonight's entry: the History of Deep Creek Lake.

No real commentary on this particular subject this time. I have a personal history with this place that has its own points; and the whole area, not just the lake itself, offers a depth and breadth of interest that is more than worthy of investigation... but mostly, you should just come here and relax sometime.

Oh, and I saw a mouse run from under the kitchen cabinets to under the living room sofa at was almost ludicrous speed. I'm going to call him Problem. Until he goes away, that is.

Okay, this time it's all my freakin' fault. I drank about a liter of diet coke from 9 to 11 pm. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So here I am, awake at 4:30.

So what do you do when you can't sleep in the middle of the night? Practice forging Ernest Borgnine's autograph Look up weird shit on Wikipedia, of course!

Tonight's entry: the Hanseatic League.

The Hanseatic League was an alliance of cities and guilds along the coasts of the North and Baltic Seas, toward the end of the Middle Ages. You can read "alliance" as "monopoly" and you're about as correct either way. One of the most intriguing aspects of the League is its structure. While rather fluid in terms of its membership, it managed to control and protect trade routes for decades, even centuries.

It's also intriguing as a model of trade, and because of its rise and fall, and, as ever, because I've been to some of these places. And the name still hearkens to past glory in Estonia; Hansabank (now DBA as Swedbank... ugh) is a large regional bank in the Baltic founded as the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 90's, and I've seen others (though I can't bloody well remember them right now).

A final thought on the League is that it, like most or all such ventures, is ephemeral. Eventually, people get pissed at a monopoly... eventually, some other way comes about. Interesting things to consider for American economic hegemony and our tenuous financial situation these days. A little scary, too. After all, as a middle-aged white man, no one fears change more than I.

so I'm here at 3 in the morning, trying to make sense of it all. I've played games, read miscellaneous prolefeed, written a little... I don't even know why the hell I can't sleep. didn't have caffeine, no serious questions of gigantic moral impacts or proportions are weighing on me...

So what do you do when you can't sleep in the middle of the night?

Look up weird shit on wikipedia, of course!

Never mind. I think I'm tired enough now. I'm going to bed.

In today's issue of up late and can't sleep, instead of venturing down the wikipedia highway, I got a nosebleed.

Now me and nosebleeds, we got us a history. I just get 'em. Always have; always will. I have had hundreds of them, but a few of them have been quite memorable.

In seventh grade, I had a nosebleed that did not stop for an entire day. Well, about 13 hours. I went to the hospital, where they a) gave me a drug called cocaine to stop the bleeding (they said it was "a different salt" than the "regular" cocaine), b) diagnosed me as having blood vessels close to the surface of the inside of my nose, and that I was "just going to get nosebleeds from time to time", and c) pulled out such a disgustingly long and thick serpentlike glob of blood and snot from my nose that I almost vomit thinking about it even now.

In my early teens, I got a nosebleed from the wind resistance while riding a bike down the street behind our backyard. Sam and I were riding bikes down to his house, and I noticed the bleeding when I got to the bottom of the hill. I remember Sam being quite amazed when I showed up at his house, right behind him, face streaming in blood.

In my adult life, I don't have as many memorable ones (thank God), and although they do tend to occur more frequently in winter months, times of lower relative humidity, or when I excessively or violently pick my nose, they mostly come without warning and without demonstrable cause. The only pattern I can deduce from the whole business is that, like an earthquake, if it's happened once recently, it's more likely to happen again fairly soon. Over the years, I've developed a fairly standard method for dealing with them, that has been fairly successful:

1. dry hands and face
2. blow nose
3. tightly pack nostril with strong (if possible) toilet paper (1 sheet of Charmin Strong works best)
4. wait ~5 minutes, repeating packing step if necessary
5. blow nose again, cleanup

Usually one iteration of the whole process is all that's needed. This morning it was not. The packings were soaked through in less than a minute. I resorted to pinching the fleshy part of my nose shut and sticking my face under running cold water for about 10 minutes. It worked, finally, after I had spent a total of 1/2 hour on this nosebleed, which is longer than I have spent on any in quite some time.

Joy.

Words for the day: Epistaxis and Rhinotillexomania.

I don't know if waking up at 5am equates with the normal insomniac aberrations this series of posts usually highlights, but I think all things being equal, I'll take this over 3am any day. So what do you do when you can't sleep toward the end of the night? Compile a complete list of military acronyms Look up weird shit on Wikipedia, of course!

Tonight's entry: Kabuki Dance (and subsequently, Kabuki).

The Kabuki is a stylized dance and drama that has unfolded over centuries in Japan. It began with strictly female casts, portraying frequently suggestive, even ribald dramas. Oh, and the enthusiasm for this was often supplemented with a little play for pay thrown in after. Hell, who *wouldn't* want to go to the theater, right?

After this got out of hand, the authorities banned women from performing in kabuki, and soon there were all-male ensembles performing the same suggestive, ribald plays. And yep, you guessed it, prostitution stayed in the picture. Although, as the article suggests, this perhaps was focused on a particular typecast performer for particular roles... not sure if that makes it any better or any worse.

But soon it evolved into a set formal structure, with archetypical characters and plot lines (I can't help but think of Commedia dell'arte at this point; although that's more an improv performance, it had set plots and established character types).

It's this formal, stylized, and elaborate structure that brings us to the next point, the phrase Kabuki Dance. The phrase evidently refers to a elaborate, detailed process that leads to a predetermined outcome. Wikipedia cites the US political party conventions as they exist in these times as a Kabuki Dance.

All of which interests me because at work, some of us use a phrase, Kabuki Dick Dance, which refers (at least as I understood it) to an elaborate set of formalities, hoops, requirements, etc, which are necessary to the completion of a task. While I'm certain that it derives from Kabuki Dance, the Dick Dance emphasizes more that the performance at hand is elaborate, even baroque in its detail, but also that it is inherently ridiculous. And in no way have I understood that the sense of Kabuki Dick Dance means that the outcome is predetermined.

And even more interesting is that searching the term yields a few other results as well: from the inside yields the following definition:

Deceptive movement technique and/or creative verbiage used in explanations designed to baffle enemy forces as to the main axis of advance as well as perplex higher chains of command on what the true purpose of your mission really is. Common most among the Field Artillery.

...which, I'm certain, is also correct, and applicable to my work environment as well, and may in fact have been the intended meaning behind its usage in every instance. Hard to say in an environment where there is so much formal process and I find so much of it useless. Of course it could be my misinterpretation.

I have no idea where all this takes us; and yes, you've just read what amounts to ten minutes of random prattle-- but I can't apologize. I loves me my English language. Or maybe... this has all been an elaborate distraction, leading up to: KITTIES! (this being the internet)

Unnngggggh... three-forty in the bloody morning... this is not fair, I drank zero caffeine after six pm tonight... Morpheus, Hypnos, wherefore have you forsaken me?

So what do you do when you can't sleep in the middle of the night? Practice your Gary Coleman imitation Look up weird shit on Wikipedia, of course!

Tonight's entry: Crazy Horse.

There is perhaps no figure that stands forth so strongly from the bloody history of the US and its dealings with the native American peoples as does Crazy Horse. A warrior of the Lakota during the conflicts of the 1860s and 70s, he was by all accounts a brave and extremely capable war leader. His surrender and subsequent death are marked by controversy, and his life stands out as a symbol of the spirit of the native peoples: free, wild, defiant.

At least that's how it looks to an aging fat white guy plinking on a keyboard in his underwear in the middle of the night.

Anyway, nothing sarcastic to add here... this land's history is riddled with turmoil in many ways. Resolutions are slow, slow to come.

ed: Okay, I lied-- one mildly irreverent thing to add. I am so sorry that we don't use the native custom of earning descriptive names for ourselves. I mean, look at what we're missing out on in the Crazy Horse article alone: Rattling Blanket Woman, Black Buffalo, White Cow, Iron Cane, Iron Between Horns, Kills Enemy, Conquering Bear, No Water, Touch the Clouds, Spotted Tail, Black Shawl, He Dog, Iron Crow... all these are names! Now granted, my habits certainly wouldn't gain me a name with any sort of cool warrior awesomeness, but damn, you'd learn quite bit from just an introduction, wouldn't you?

Possible candidates for my name:
Sits on His Ass
Pees Too Much
Only Khaki On Legs
Can't Shut Up (or Afraid of Quiet)
Buys Cheap Shoes
Loses to Cats
Drives In a Cloud
or maybe just the simple... Wide Target.

3:50 am, Friday morning. Athough I maintain that if you haven't finished sleeping, it's still the day before, so I'm calling it Thursday night. Stupidly pedantic? Yes. Counter-intuitive? Yes. Works for me? Probably not. Do I care? No.

So what do you do when you can't sleep in the middle of the night? Review the latest changes to the bylaws of the Modern Language Association Look up weird shit on wikipedia, of course!

Tonight's entry: the Ming Dynasty.

I love broad, sweeping historical swaths like this article for several reasons: they are chock-full of info neatly encapsulated into the context of one thing; they give you just enough commentary to be dangerous; and the Law of Unintended Consequences creeps into every corner of the text. And better still, from one text, any amateur historian (read: insomniacal hack) is bound to draw conclusions and opinions that are then applicable to all points in history and to life today.

Case in point from this article: silver supplanting paper banknotes as the currency of standard in the empire. Though it was certainly an enabler of the dynasty's ascendancy and prosperity, and though it was beyond the control of the emperor to prevent its supplanting paper money in the first place, expensive wars, bad management, natural hardships, and drying up of the flow of silver into China were key factors in the Ming emperors not being able to put down the Manchu threat. And I can hear armchair historians across the world cracking open a beer and saying, "and that's why you shouldn't use a precious metal as your currency."

notes:

• I have relatives (who shall remain nameless, those of you playing at home can guess in the comments area if you like) who argue that one of the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that Latin was supplanted by Greek as the language of the people, and therefore, America should establish English as its official language and guard it well.
• I can also hear certain voices saying, "Good. Then we're all agreed. We should return to the Gold Standard."
• One of the few names I did recognize here was Nurhachi, godfather of the Manchu rebellion (and the eventual Qing dynasty): "Dr. Jones, I want Nurhachi." God dammit. I am a slave to pop culture, and to the pointless meanderings of my own mind.

Good night-- it's 4:30 now, and I'm approaching the "it's just better to stay awake at this point" zone, so I'm going to try to go back to sleep. I recommend this for everyone.

So last night we went to see the Fort Wayne Komets hockey team in action. And that's what we saw. Inaction. In what was probably the worst professional game I've ever seen, the Port Huron Icehawks whitewashed us, 4-0. By the end of the second period (when it was still 1-0), most of the Komets looked like they just didn't give a damn anymore. Of the 7,000 fans in attendance, about 2,000 stayed until the tired, bitter end, and booed as the Komets exeunted. The team didn't seem to be bothered all that much. Scary for the second place team to look so crapluster.

After the game we went for coffee and had a good jaw at Starbucks until they closed at a disgraceful 11:00. Damn, I miss being in a college town, where the coffee shops are open even later than the bars.

Anyway. So, presuming that it's the caffeine that kicked in and is preventing my getting back to sleep at 4am, I gave up trying. So what do you do when you can't sleep in the middle of the night? Paint disturbing pictures of farming machinery Look up weird shit on wikipedia, of course!

Tonight's entry: the Livonian War.

Basically, the war is the 16th-century struggle of Ivan the Terrible to gain a port on the Baltic, as well as to force trade from the Hanseatic League. Nothing profound to say here; I'm just astonished in a quiet, academic sort of way, that damn-- I've been to these places. The fortress on the Narva river, the towns of Tallinn, Narva and Tartu (nee Reval, Narwa, and Dorpat), et al.

Effing Russians. In the same manner that to Jay and Silent Bob it's all about the lipstick, to the Russians, it's all about the warm-water port on the Baltic. They're the overshadowed, angry little brother of the world. Gotta love 'em. :)

PS: It's bloody cold, btw. Our house, drafty at best, hits a cold-seepage point when the temperature outside gets sufficiently low (~<5°F), and then you simply can not get warm inside without a blanket around you. It's -7°F now.

Brrr.

So here I am at 1:30 am on a worknight. Can't sleep. Can't eat. There's no doubt. I'm in deep. So what do you do when you can't sleep in the middle of the night? Channel Robert Palmer Look up weird shit on wikipedia, of course!

Tonight's entry: Old English.

I studied Old English a bit during my previous life as an English major, and I have to admit, if there's one purely academic subject I would chuck it all for and just go study, it would be English Language History, with a focus on Old English.

Have you ever heard anyone speaking this? It has a strange, primal rhythm to it compared to today's dull politico-enterprise English. It's the bastard child of vikings, germanic locals, roman soldiers, and a shitload of angry celts. Tolkien knew it and loved it; the language of the Elves was based on Finnish, but the language of Rohan, which (I'm convinced) is the people in his books that most represented his ideal, is Old English. If you doubt me on either one of the claims in that last sentence, feel free to comment. But beware-- it'll mean you need to get a life too.

Once again, can't sleep at 2:45 am on Wednesday night. I suspect this is due to deep-seated rage against the seething maelstrom of fate, or mountain dew. But as ever, what do you do when you can't sleep in the middle of the night? Look up weird shit on wikipedia, of course!

Tonight's entry: the pole weapon.

Growing up playing D&D, you learned a lot of obscure weaponry vocabulary, so I've seen most of these names before. In fact, most of us had a poleaxe of choice before too long. Mine was the Bec de Corbin, or crowsbeak: good for beatings and pokings on horseback or on foot.

You want to watch your GM squirm, make him come up with on-the-fly modifiers by having your halfling character grab a polearm or battleaxe.