Sleepless nights

I appear to have lost the ability to go to sleep.  It's like losing a key; I have no idea where it is.  I rack my brain but can't find it. 

  I go to bed, but sleep does not happen.  I feel like Macbeth, or is it Lady Macbeth,  but without the guilty conscience.  On some occasions, I do finally nod off, waking in the morning to find I have migrated to some hitherto unvisited part of the bed with sheets and blankets tangled around me.  But lately, even this has eluded me.

  So I lie there, trying to think of something, anything, to divert my mind and coax it to release me.

  Sometimes I get up and have breakfast and then sneak back to bed.  This sometimes fools my sub  conscious for a time, not always. Or I move to another bed.  I open the window.  I close the window.  I turn on the ceiling fan; it get too cold; I turn it off.  I turn on the electric blanket.  Then I turn it off again. I go downstairs, lie on the couch, and turn on the television.  My feet get cold.  Alternatively, I feel hot all over.  Neither condition lasts.

  I am wide awake, and alert enough to do my income tax.  But I don't want to do my income tax.  I want to sleep.  I want to knit  up the ragged sleave of care.

Evil machines

It is an established fact that mechanical devices are malevolent; I have proved that electronic devices are also imbued with evil intent.

Take, for instance, my GPS.  It was working okay, until Thursday night, when it was invaded by an evil spirit.  I had found my way to an area I was not familiar with, and was now headed home.  I turned on the GPS and programmed it to go home.  It led me out to the wilds of Pennsylvania, places which have never heard of street signs or lights.  From there it led me to Winterthur, three times.
Needless to say, I do not live at Winterthur.  Yet I went around Winterthur three times.

  It then directed me down a one-way lane, unlighted and creepy, and from there ordered me to turn at Dairy Barn Rd.  I refused to do so.

  I finally recognized my surroundings and found my way home without help from the GPS.  No one can ever persuade me that that device did not intend to do me harm.  Once lured down Dairy Barn Rd I most likely would never be seen again!  I'm sure of it!

Customer service

There isn't any.

Try calling Verizon, with which I have a hideously expensive account, to ask them to move the cable from one location to another in your house, and see where it gets you.  Clearly, the company has never heard of such a ridiculous request.  Verizon customers should leave their equipment where it was originally installed..  Or move to another house, if necessary.  End of discussion.

  Now suppose you are an. airbnb host.  Someone has sent you a message requesting the use of your house for a certain date.  You reply with an enthusiastic afirmative message.  Airbnb cannot forward your message except on their app, which has no link for sending messages.  Try the website.  It will notify you of wonderful venues where you can stay.  Anywhere in the world.  You could probably book a room on top of an active volcano in the remotest Godforsaken venue.  But there is no way to send a message to a potential guest.  Call the phone number provided for customer service.  Leave your number and they promise to call you back.  That is a lie.  They won't.

  End of rant.

Advice to mystery writers

In many mysteries I have read over the years, the villain makes a fatal mistake.  Having captured the hero (or heroine) and rendered him or her defenseless, he (or she) takes a much needed respite.  He decides to leave the victim where he is for the time being and go get some food, or take the dog for a walk, or any of a number of things that need doing.  He can always come back and murder her later.

  This is foolhardy.  The victim is bound to find a coat hanger or something and free herself.  You can make book on it.  In any room, no matter how little furnished, there is something that can be fashioned into a weapon in less than 10 minutes.

  In your absence, he (or she) will take a curtain rod from the window and fashion a lethal weapon out of it, a weapon with which she (say a 130 lb woman,) will subdue you, even though you're a 250 lb football player.  She will then take the discarded curtain and tear it in strips, which she will bind you with, before calling the police with your mobile phone.

The moral of this story is, Don't procrastinate.  Or as Lady Macbeth put "If 'twere done ,when 'twere done, 'tis best done quickly."  Or words to that effect.