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Digital Slob
Curt Brandao
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Shock therapy is ultimate fix for snoring
AS LONG as our remote controls are juiced, our broadband connections are holding steady and our boxes of frozen Hot Pockets Pizza Minis are still at least 60 percent full, you'd think there would be precious little for Digital Slobs to lose sleep over.
But you'd be wrong. We can be your typical stressed-out-until-sunrise insomniacs just like everybody else.
However, while Respectable People lose sleep worrying about all the stuff they have to do, Digital Slobs toss and turn about all the stuff we haven't figured out how to avoid.
As masters of killing two birds with one stone, we keep our throwing arm on ice until at least a pair of fine-feathered friends line up just right.
Car making a weird noise? We'll get it checked when it's time for an oil change.
Kitchen sink clogged? We can boil eggs using tap water from the bathroom until our lease is up in March.
Occasionally losing all feeling in our left thigh? It'll wait until we get our teeth cleaned (after all, we picked our doc and dentist solely because their were in the same building).
But when short on excuses, a looming to-do list can make us sweat bullets on our pillows way past daybreak.
In fact, our insomnia only subsides once it builds up enough to be it's own excuse: We couldn't do "it" because we were up all night worrying about "it," and didn't wake up until doing "it" was no longer an option, roughly 4:45 p.m. And, without exception, "it" is always impossible to do at 4:45 p.m. due to rush-hour traffic.
Incidentally, most Digital Slobs can blame at least 9,000 things on rush-hour traffic -- it's why we didn't get to work on time; it's why we're fat; it's why our one true love broke up with us during our sophomore year to be a groupie for Whitesnake. Give us enough time -- we'll connect the dots.
Regardless, if our rationalizing writer's block extends past a few days, the timing belt in our brain eventually snaps and we crash into a deep sleep. Our subconscious then celebrates its long-overdue recess by snoring like all three-thirds of The Three Stooges.
This can be highly annoying for our spouses, who already have to endure our cars' odd noises, our vague complaints about leg cramps and at least six months of peeling hard-boiled eggs in the bathroom.
Enter the Snore Stopper, a wrist-watch-looking device highlighted recently at Gizmodo.com. After you strap it to your arm at bedtime, it detects your REM-induced snorts and sends a "mild, harmless electric signal" (known less euphemistically as a shock) through your body, causing you to turn over and, theoretically, stop snoring -- or at least have vivid dreams about being on Death Row.
According to the sales pitch, the electric pulse is not enough to wake you up, but is enough to act as an "nudge" that disrupts your iambic pentameter as you saw Zs.
Our better halves should know a few models come with two settings: "normal" for most people, and "maximum" if long ago they decided to say "I do" to a foghorn that drools into a pillow.
While Slobs spouses will welcome such innovation, there could be too much temptation to up the voltage. One day Slobs may come home to see them rigging a car battery to the night stand.
Suddenly, insomnia might not seem so bad.