COLUMN: Insomnia

Because life just isn't fun without challenges, I've picked up a new hobby this week: insomnia. I've given it a chance, but I've got to say that so far, I don't get the appeal.

I'd like to blame it on science somehow. Perhaps the drop in barometric pressure causes restlessness. I don't know if that's a fact. I also don't know if the barometric pressure has dropped. Come to think of it, I don't really even understand how barometric pressure works. But it sounds impressive, right? Maybe it's the fact that we're on the precipice of the summer solstice. When it doesn't get dark until 9 p.m., going to bed shortly afterwards feels like I'm being cheated out of my evenings somehow. It's disruptive to my circadian rhythms. (See? I'm dropping mad science terms all over the place like a proper intellectual.)

I'm just desperate to blame this on anything or anyone other than myself. Truth be told, I'm pretty sure I know exactly why I've had trouble getting to sleep lately. For one, I need to stop drinking caffeinated soda after dark -- that's just dumb. I also know a lot of the blame falls on my side hustle as a weekend DJ. During the week, I try to live a somewhat respectable schedule of getting to bed by midnight and getting up around 7 a.m. On the weekends, though, I'm spinning records until 2 a.m., which means I don't usually get to bed until 4 a.m. or later -- and then wake up at the crack of noon wondering where my weekend went. When I was in my twenties, that lifestyle was easy to master. These days, it's a little more taxing. 

But honestly, I'm trying my best not to divulge the REAL reason for my sleeplessness, which has less to do with circadian rhythms and owes more to me staying up til the wee hours watching ridiculous videos on TikTok. I'll get in bed, tuck myself in, realize I'm super bored, and grab my phone. 97 videos later, I'll look at the clock and realize it's 1:30 a.m. and then lay there worrying about how many brain cells I've just lost watching utter nonsense.

Thankfully, though, the internet has an answer for sleepless nights, and that answer is Spotify. Specifically, the ever-growing and ever-popular category on Spotify simply called "sleep." Just scroll past pop, rock, and country -- you'll find it towards the end of their genre list. Inside this category are a number of carefully curated playlists with the sole aim of lulling you to sleep. I'm deeply fascinated by it. Perusing Spotify playlists might honestly be my new favorite hobby.

I've written about some of these Spotify sleep playlists before, but I never really took a deep dive. The last time, I was captivated by my discovery of five distinct playlists -- the ones labelled "white noise" (214 "songs" of pure static fuzz), "pink noise" (196 tracks of slightly deeper static fuzz), "brown noise" (230 tracks of even lower pitched static fuzz), "black noise" (essentially the soundtrack to the lobby of Hell,) and "green noise," which is identical to pink noise except they superimpose sounds of frogs and cicadas and such over the top of it.

Somehow this is supposed to make me sleepy. Instead it just makes me giggle. It all just kinda sounds like the interior of an airplane cabin to me, except that it must not, because there's a separate playlist called "airplane cabin noise." They ALL sound the same to me. Either my ears are off or there's a scam afoot here. Either way, I applaud whoever earns an honest living by recording static and marketing it as a magical sleep aid. I bet that dude sleeps soundly every night.

Every one of these playlists has over 100 tracks that are each roughly around five minutes long. I've rapidly discovered that the only thing more off-putting than listening to five minutes of static is the one second of silence that plays as it changes tracks. I tried lulling myself to sleep in static-filled bliss the other night, but every time that second of silence hit, it felt like I could suddenly hear my own soul and my eyes immediately popped open. What happened? Did I die? Did the plane crash?  

The other trendy sleep sound that the new-age-iers amongst us swear by are "binaural beats." It's an auditory illusion that occurs when you play separate tones of slightly different frequencies to each ear at the same time. The human brain can't process the different tones together, so it instead perceives the noise as a combined third tone. Supposedly, this can induce a semi-hypnotic state of relaxation and tranquility. I've found it can also induce a semi-gross state of nausea. Plus, the effect only happens when you're listening through headphones, otherwise it just sounds like your cat is having a lie-down on a Casio keyboard. 

Speaking of Casio keyboards, that's pretty much what Spotify's "lo-fi sleep" playlist sounds like. Or there's the "sleepy piano" playlist, which sounds like you're trying to catch a catnap inside a Von Maur -- as opposed to "calming nature music," which sounds like someone let birds into the Von Maur. "Floating in space" is a neat playlist if you refrain from thinking that you'd die within about five seconds in the vacuum of space. And if you think the "train sounds" playlist is relaxing, you might have problems way deeper than insomnia.

Personally, the one sleep playlist I like is called "gloomcore," described by Spotify as "wandering the forest as the fog floats through the trees." I dig it -- but I dig it a little TOO much, because instead of sleeping, I prefer to just lay there and groove out to the gloomy bliss. 

Do the sleep playlists work? Well, you be the judge -- it's presently 1:30 a.m. and I'm currently listening to the "Deep Sleep" playlist while writing a column about listening to the "Deep Sleep" playlist at 1:30 a.m. Mission unaccomplished. But I'm not giving up on it yet -- after all, what else do I have better to do in the middle of the night? I mean, other than sleep.

COLUMN: Joro

I promise you it isn't my goal to turn this column into your new home for all things small and icky, but the hits keep coming.

A couple weeks ago, I told the tale of my backyard being invaded by a swarm of honeybees, which was pretty much my worst nightmare come to life. Last week, I mentioned how an aimless country drive took us straight into the heart of the great cicada uprising of 2024. For someone who hates bugs and insects and all manner of creepy-crawlies, I've certainly been devoting a lot of column inches to them.

I had plans to take things in a different direction this week, I swear. This one wasn't my fault. I blame TMZ.

People give TMZ a lot of grief. They are, after all, the "news" outlet that hangs outside of airports and restaurants in hopes of ambushing whatever celebrity might attempt to exist within their proximity. There's nothing quite as cringy as watching paparazzi painfully trying to get soundbytes from famous people by hurling inane questions at them. "J-Lo!" they'll scream in desperation. "Where's your wedding ring? Why did you cancel your tour? What do you think about the Trump verdict? How should we solve the crisis in Gaza?"

Paparazzi are the scum that live between the toes of other pondscum. I feel terrible for celebrities when they're hounded by paparazzi everywhere they go. People give Taylor Swift occasional grief for being so omnipresent, but can you imagine, even for a split second, living her life? She's literally a prisoner of her own fame. Taylor Swift can't step one foot outside her house (whichever of her many houses she happens to be in) without an onslaught of flashbulbs and idiots yelling inane stuff. It's truly a miracle she hasn't gone completely lost the plot, built an amusement park in her backyard, and tried to buy the elephant man's bones at this point.

TMZ are terrible -- but so, apparently, am I. As much as I despise the culture they perpetuate, I'm JUST shallow and vapid enough to obsess over the culture they cover. The TMZ app sits on my phone right next to CNN's like it's a major news source. I hate TMZ, yet there's a part of me that will always root for them. Whenever they get the jump on "real" news networks and scoop some breaking news, I can't help but cheer for the underdog, even if this particular underdog is covered in slime.

But most of the time, TMZ's breaking news bulletins are nothing but sensationalistic twaddle -- which brings me to their alert I just got on my phone:

"GIANT VENOMOUS FLYING SPIDERS INVADING ANY DAY NOW."

Welp, there's one I didn't have on my bingo card.

Honestly, though, given the decade we're living in, it kinda tracks, right? We've survived a global pandemic, an insurrection, Korean boybands, and whatever Jojo Siwa's turned into. I suppose it's simply high time we added giant venomous flying spiders to the list.

It's actually kind of horrifying. A few years, some Asian joro spiders must've hitched a ride on some shipping containers, landed on our shores, and set up shop down in Georgia back in 2010. Since then, the invasive arachnids have begun spreading across the U.S. If you haven't seen a joro spider, they can grow to the size of a human hand and have leg spans of four inches. Their webs are massive and sticky. And if that's not gross enough, when joro spiders feel like relocating, they weave their webs into the shape of balloons and just go paragliding in the summer breeze until they presumably fly directly into my face and test the efficacy of my heart medicine. Fun times.

The GOOD news is that TMZ is over-hyping and clickbaiting the headline somewhat. While joro spiders are indeed starting to colonize our continent, they're still a ways away from the Midwest. They're currently making their way up the east coast and even into Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They're likely coming our way, but not for a bit. And while these spiders ARE venomous, they usually prefer sinking their tiny teeth into other insects and NOT people. I just read an article that said their teeth are so small, they might not even be able to puncture human skin -- and if they DID, it would be no worse than a bee sting.

(Note to the general press and mainstream media: When you're trying to minimize the danger of something, don't compare it to a bee sting. Some of us are deathly allergic to bee stings. Just sayin'.)

When it comes to spiders, I generally have a "live and let live" philosophy, unless they're the scary and/or deadly type. If you're a spider and you want to set up shop in a distant corner of my property where you will never bother me and I will never walk into your web, have at it. Enjoy feasting on all the other bugs I hate. But if you decide to move that party INDOORS and encroach on MY turf, I am not responsible for whatever actions myself or a rolled-up newspaper may do. Last week, a spider decided the best place to build a new home would be my bathtub. I may have displaced him to a new home -- in Davy Jones' locker. 

The other night, my home security alarm starting blaring in the middle of the night to let me know there was an intruder on my front porch. That intruder turned out to be a tiny spider trying to build a web directly ON my doorbell camera. When I pulled up the surveillance video, it looked like there was an eight-foot multi-legged monster waiting patiently on the porch to sell me life insurance or something. If you were driving around at 2 a.m. and saw a guy flicking a broom around desperately, it was just me doing some spontaneous 2 a.m. arachnid gentrification.

None of this bodes well for the future, but it's okay, because neither does anything else in the news. Last week, it was cicadas. This week it's flying spiders. Next week, we'll probably have man-eating millipedes free-roaming our neighborhoods. But don't worry, when the great millipede invasion takes hold, I'm sure our leaders will come together and figure out a way to blame each other for everything. As for me, I'm putting a moratorium on bug columns for the foreseeable future. If you need me, I'll be out buying cases of Raid.