Thursday, May 26, 2016

A pill to end need for sleep; one to end need for food: You must take one. Which do you take?


Imagine it is the future, which means it could be 10, 20 or 50 years from now or it could be tomorrow morning.

It is announced a major pharmaceutical company has developed a pill that if you take just once will eliminate the need to eat.

Simultaneously, a rival announces it has developed a pill that eliminates the need to sleep.

And because it is the future and we’re all conditioned to see the future as grimly dystopian, the prevailing tyrannies announce everyone in America has to take one or the other.

Which do you choose?

Will you never sleep again or never eat again?

I’m torn.

Sleeping and eating are two of my very favorite human activities. But, guaranteed, we’re nearing a day when these prescriptive remedies are available.

Many people regard both essentials as nuisances. Many Type As brag they sleep just three or four hours a night, like sleeplessness is a virtue. They’d certainly take both pills, viewing meals as time consuming inconveniences.

But most of us aren’t like that. We enjoy eating and sleeping. 

On many, many days I look forward to sleeping the way I used to look forward to Friday nights. The event fills me with yearning anticipation.

We have a comfy waterbed — and I can’t fathom the marketing failures that have relegated the moisture mattress to hippie nostalgia. If I’m tired, crawling into a warm waterbed with my soft sweet wife is a heavenly sensation.
When the air is brisk and crickets croaking Mother Nature’s lullaby, a good night’s sleep leaves me feeling born again.

On some rare nights, I become so lost in slumber, so bereft of decorum, I wake up with my face stuck to the soggy pillow. It’s slobber sleep, the best sleep there is, the sleep equivalent to bowling a 300.

Then there’s the soulful afternoon doze. It may last just 15 minutes, but it’s perfectly refreshing. I like turning on the Weather Channel and watching the soothing patterns depicting havoc being wreaked in places I’m not. They could be getting the hell pounded out of them in Kansas, but to me the big purple blobs look like a soothing lava light in a darkened room.

Zzzzzz …

That’s all done if you take the big no-doze.

What will happen to the bedrooms in the houses where nobody sleeps?

It seems extravagant to keep a bed in a room just for the screwing, especially in homes that have a handy breakfast bar.

No sleep means no pillows, no PJs, no bed head, no my-alarm-didn’t-go-off excuses. No more nightmares, but no more wickedly raunchy dreams either. And no cocooning retreat from the world when it seems to be getting really mean.

One of our last sanctuaries will be banished forever. It’ll truly be 24/7 for 24/7.

A pill that will eliminate the need to eat will forever rid the world of hunger so we’ll have to find something for the farmers to do.

And driving will take on a dangerous new element as the streets may soon be over run with wild cows, chickens and pigs as liberating the animals makes more sense than maintain them.

PETA will have to figure out a whole new ad campaign while militant vegans will face an identity crisis.

It’ll be nice that no one will be hungry but a no-eat pill could cripple the economy. Look around where you live. Nearly every third business is some kind of eatery. Same goes for commercials.

But it’s not like the people who feed us will ever go hungry so don’t lose any sleep over that factor.

I know many people will who mistake food for fuel. They believe it’s merely something to combust to keep the motor running.

I pity them.

I love trying new recipes, shopping for food, preparing food and then slowly, bite-by-bite, savoring it.

Many of the best memories of my entire life involve eating meals both simple and grand with people whose company I treasure.

Val and I dined at Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center with all Manhattan spread out beneath us. And there was that four-hour lunch at he famed French Laundry in Napa. And I love the grub fests at some divey roadhouse after me and the boys have enjoyed a sunny afternoon round of golf.

I’d miss juicy grilled steaks, sumptuous sushi, eggs-over-easy, pasta, winter soups and ballpark hot dogs with my darling daughters.

What will I miss most?

The answer will reveal I’m at heart a man of pedestrian tastes, but I bet I’d miss good pizza the way men who’ve endured accidental castration say they miss their erections.

I just love pizza.

In fact, just typing the word pizza has me right now craving pizza.

Oh, how I wish I had access to a pill that would free me from these distracting daydreams!

Or maybe it’d be better to just order a pizza while that’s still an option.


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