GO TO SLEEP!!!

Can anyone spot the sleeping undergraduate in this pic?

As yet another rosy-cheeked dawn kisses the eastern sky outside ol' Adjunct Proff's window (without the aforementioned Adjunct Proff being successful at wresting [pun intended] a single hour of sleep from the previous raven-hued night), my thoughts turn towards that bug-eyed monster called Insomnia.  What is it?  --why do I have it?  --have any famous people from history suffered from it also?  --what can I do to stop it? --but most importantly: is there a delivery service in all of Massachusetts' Merrimack Valley that can score me some hot pastrami on a kaiser roll with spicy brown mustard, mayo, jarlsberg cheese, grilled onions, a side of fries, and a nice, hot cup of chamomile tea with milk and honey? --at 4 a.m.?  Failing that, is there a loyal reader out there who will hit ol' Adjunct P in the head with a crowbar so that he can have a couple hours' unconsciousness before facing whatever fresh new Hell today has in store?  Somebody?  Anybody?  Bueller?

You could also hit me with a sandwich this big-
it'd probably have the same effect as a crowbar.

The earliest written record of anybody not having insomnia (and thereby confirming that there was insomnia) comes down to us from the Epic of Gilgamesh, that kooky moldy-oldie that also treated mankind to the first recorded threat of the Zombie Apocalypse (see my post OH NO! Zombies Ate My History Homework!  for more on those zany Akkadians), and is none other than the title character, Gilgamesh himself.  In Tablet XI (the Gilgamesh poet wasn't really big on chapters --or paper, for that matter!), the Sumerian equivalent of Noah, a dude called Utnapishtim (the same dude who survived the flood, built an ark, re-populated the entire world and who, with his old-lady, were just chillin' at the End of the World and groovin' on the fact that they were immortal), challenges Gilgamesh to stay awake for an entire week.  If he can stay awake, he's a god; if not, he's just a human being like you and me.  You can guess the result: big-G falls right to sleep and sleeps for an entire week (to be fair, he had had a rough couple of days before that).

I am a Sumerian God!
I never sleep! -or fart!

Why did the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and such all want their gods and goddesses to have insomnia?  It's because they wanted to feel like the bunch of hooligans that created them, the Earth, the sky, that miserable little yippy-dog that lives next door to me --that their gods were always on the clock, around the clock, looking out for their creation and protecting them.  And since nobody mortal --not even the semi-divine King Gilgamesh of Uruk --could stay awake all the time, insomnia was seen as a super-power of the gods.  Wow.  I wonder: were chronic insomniacs like me seen as semi-divine beings back then?  That would be almost worth it...

And it wasn't just the Mesopotamians who liked their deities wide awake.  Argos was a Greek giant who had a hundred eyes.  He needed them because Greek heroes were constantly trying to sneak up on him while 30-40 of his eyes were asleep so they (the heroes, not his eyes) could kill him.  Apparently he had pissed-off the Greek Heroes' Union Local #733 by killing so many Greek Heroes, and not all of them in self defense.

The Hebrews and Christians had these things called Angels, a.k.a. Watchers who, well, watched stuff in Heaven and, well, elsewhere.  They were supposedly wide awake all the time.  And the most powerful bunch of Angels, the Seraphim, supposedly surround God 24/7 and praise Him 24/7 for all eternity --I presume that they are awake during all this praising, unless there is a condition among the angelic called "sleep-praising."

That is one seriously bad-ass bunch of angels, Mr. Botticini!
I assume the Virgin is there because it's her assumption.

As for people you've probably heard of who suffered from this god-like affliction of insomnia, there was Sir Isaac Newton (of course he did!  Newton was such a hypochondriac that this was probably his only legitimate disease!)  Sir Isaac, or Figgy to his chums from prep school days, reportedly went all of 1693 without sleeping.  Needless to say, this depressed Figgy --that, and nobody was believing that he had invented differential calculus, and everybody was believing that kraut Leibnitz had.  Sir Winston Churchill suffered from it --he was having troubles with a different kraut.  And speaking of great looking celebrities, Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson both had such a terrible time getting to sleep that they were literally killed by their prescription sleep medication.

I don't think they ever slept together.

Ok you wide-awake, semi-divine Adjunct Proff, so what causes insomnia?  The biggest (and most mind-bogglingly unspecific) cause is stress --the psychological kind, not the force on the airframe of a Boeing 777 at take-off.  Here is a link to the world famous and completely expensive Mayo Clinic if you want to read up on other things the doctors at the Mayo think cause insomnia:

Can't Sleep? Try Some Mayo!  

I suggest reading this late at night or early in the morning, especially if you can't sleep.  There's nothing better on nights like that than reading about why you can't go to sleep so that you can worry a lot about it.

So <YAWN!> there you have it: the complete and exhaustive <YAWN!> [pun not intended] history of insomnia, some <YAWN!> famous people who have had it, and some really... expensive... ideas as to what causes... Z-zzz-Z, ZZZ zzzzzzzzzzz... 

OH NO! Zombies Ate My History Homework!

If your whole life (death?) revolves around watching the Walking Dead, watching the Talking Dead podcast, visiting Walking Dead fan-sites, reading Walking Dead graphic novels and fanzines, then your world --like so many others' worlds, Adjunct Proff's included --is on hiatus until the next series installment.  But not to worry: Adjunct Proff is ready to fill the breach in our sadly temporarily depleted lives by filling you all in on the origins and continuing influence exercised by fears of the Zombie Apocalypse on our collective zeitgeist (German for whatever is friggin' buggin' you now).

Zombies ate my zeitgeist!  Either that, or
there's a zeitgeist peeking at me when I pee!

So, zombies have been around since... "Weekend at Bernies 2?" --the zombie movies of the 1950's drive-ins?  --the days of Vaudeville shows?  How about ever since the first friggin' story that human beings bothered to scratch onto a clay tablet sometime during the Akkadian period of Sumerian civilization?  Yup, those wacky Mesopotamians are at it again --this time giving voice to humanity's fear of the Zombie Apocalypse.  It's all right here in the first real story ever cuneiformed: The Epic of Gilgamesh:


Ishtar spoke to her father, Anu, saying:"Father, give me the Bull of Heaven,so he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down, and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!"

Now I don't claim to be able to translate ancient Akkadian cuneiform, but that sure sounds a lot like any given day on AMC's "The Walking Dead."  Why do zombies show up troubling the minds of ancient Akkadians?  Was this a recurring problem, dead rising from the grave and eating the living?  

We turn next to the ancient Greeks, who knew a thing or two about fighting monsters.  Ladies with snakes for hair?  --half-man-half-bulls who lived in an underground maze?  --whirlpools with teeth?  No problem: the Greeks would kill 'em all, then sit down with Homer and tell him all about it so that he could stick their adventures in his next epic poem.

"To which mighty Achilles said, "D'oh!"

Everybody knows the Iliad and the Odyssey. These two poems made ancient Homer's rep as da mos' def-jam mutha of the Greeks, yo. Nobody knows about the Nostoi, yet another epic poetry spin-off of the Trojan War. This story follows Achilles' kinsmen, the Myrmidons, and their long, adventure-filled journey home from the Trojan War. On one island, guess who they come across? These guys:

“It was there on that island when they noticed the men of ragged appearance. 
Their skin was a dull pale gray and the scent of putrid flesh was upon them. 
Their eyes were black as beings void of souls, they approached the Myrmidons with all the madness of a wild beast.”

And who might these dudes be? I dunno, maybe WALKERS?!? Guess what the baddest-of-the-badass Trojan War veterans, a.k.a. the Myrmidons, did then?  Did they stop those ancient Greek walkers with precise sword-head-shots?  Noooooo- they ran for it and "cursed Hades for sending these fiends amongst them."  Wow, where's Michonne when you need her?

About three thousand years in the future...

Fast-forward to Ireland in the 700's.  Archaeologists have recently uncovered a pile of skeletons buried sometime in the 700's with --get this -- bricks in their mouths.  When asked why the usually sensible medieval Irish did this wack-burial-job, anthropologists hypothesized that they were buried with a brick in their mouth in order to prevent them from --wait for it --rising from the dead like a zombie!  I am SO  COMPLETELY  NOT  making this up!  Ok ok, St. Patrick may not have driven the snakes from Ireland (see my St. Patrick's Day blog for more on this) --maybe his miracle was keeping the medieval Irish zombies DEAD  AND  BURIED  instead of running around the Emerald Isle noshing on the living.

...and they're magically delicious!

I could go on and tell you about Voodoo and Rastafarian religious practices, as well as relate Christian beliefs in an end of days that will occur before the return of Jesus Christ from, ah, Rancho Cucamonga, but you already know that  if you're hard-core zombie-apocalypse-preppers like me --that, or the demographic targeted by "The Walking Dead."

So, what's my favorite zombie scenario?  I really, really liked that movie, "Shawn of the Dead," where this British guy, his slacker buddy and his girlfriend survive the British zombie apocalypse by hiding out in the local pub that she gives him grief about spending so much time in before the British zombie apocalypse.  Funny, witty, edgy and ironic without being annoyingly British smuggish.

Let me leave you with this one brain-stretcher.  As already blogged-about in her award-winning blog, Jenny Lawson, a.k.a. The Bloggess, and her husband, Victor, a.k.a. the saint who's still married to The Bloggess, once had a conversation that went like this:

Me: Oh my God, did you see the name of that cemetery?  “Resurrection Cemetery”.  What a terrible name for a cemetery.

Victor:  It’s because they believe in the resurrection of believers, dumbass.

Me:  Still.  Some things just shouldn’t be resurrected.  Just what we need is a bunch of damn zombies wandering the earth. 

Victor:  Yeah, that’s not “resurrection”.  That’s “reanimation”.

Me:  Same difference.  Although I guess “Reanimation Cemetery” would be slightly more disturbing. 

Victor: It’s not the same difference.  Zombies are reanimated, but they don’t have their previous mental capacity so it’s not a resurrection.  Technically it’s “zombification”.

So, just what IS  this resurrection anyway, hmmm?  Isn't it the same quality that FREAKS  US  OUT  in zombies?  It's like, Jesus  JUST  WON'T  STAY  DEAD!!!  But worse of all, it means that for 2013 years, a lot of people have been worshipping, have constructed an entire religion around, and have committed unspeakable acts in the name of  A  ZOMBIE!!!  Ponder that one until Rick, Karl, Daryl, Michonne and the whole live-and-undead gang return for Season 4 which will be, no doubt, Totally Killer.

...and, unlike all those other zombies, Jesus can also walk on water
--which makes him slightly more creepy, come to think of it!