No, I’m not drinking blood or sleeping in a coffin (yet) but I’m awake most nights and nap away large portions of my days.
Yes, I’ve had a sleep study (everything was normal) and yes, people who have serious mental health issues typically have insomnia. And yes again, at 62, I’m getting older and that makes it harder to get a good night’s sleep.
But I still can’t get used to having a continuous case of jet lag when I haven’t been on a long jet plane trip since I got out of the Army.
I’ve learned that late-night TV infomercials and ads have to do with sleep, sex and making outrageous amounts of money, in your pajamas, for a few hours a week while at your computer.
First there is the ad for the “snore guard,” a plastic mouth appliance that looks about as comfortable has a horse bit. It pushes your jaw forward, like a cave man, and presumably allows the air to bypass your larynx. Personally, I think I would opt for divorce, or separate bedrooms, before inserting that plastic mouthful and pretending it doesn’t bother me.
Allied with the sex theme is a Swiss-made battery powered belt that fits around your abdomen and supposedly gives you “killer six-pack abs” without doing a single crunch or sit-up. This infomercial was moderated by a female champion Brazilian mountain biker/talk show host with, by the way, great abs.
The belt around your middle delivers electrode shocks that make your abdominal muscles intensely (yet somehow effortlessly) contract at intervals. It showed people sprawled on the couch with the exercise belt in place, happily watching TV or doing household chores like vacuuming. You wear the belt for a half hour a day ó in lieu of doing agonizing crunches and leg lifts at the gym.
They didn’t dare suggest a price on this expensive looking belt apparatus but strongly suggested a 30-day trial (that costs $14.95).
As far as me, personally, I have a gut, but I believe the best exercise for that would be flexing my arms back from the dinner table with the ample remainder of an overstuffed plate still uneaten.
As far as making lots of money, remarkably these same guys who’ve been on late-night television promoting how to make millions dealing real estate are still on the tube. Now they’re talking about making tons of money on foreclosed homes. (Meanwhile, the banks and Wall Street are losing their shirts in the still sagging real estate market.) But YOU, by sending in $39.95 for a loose-leaf binder and a DVD, can be shown how to outsmart them all from the comfort of your own, hopefully not foreclosed, home.
On a positive note, I did net a useful gadget from late-night TV called the Clapper. You just clap your hands a couple of times and whichever light or appliance you have plugged into a wall unit box will, as if by magic, turn off, and on. Well, I could justify buying it, because the switch on a beautiful silver floor light I use behind my recliner was going bad. So I jiggled the switch so the light was on all the time and plugged it into the Clapper unit at the wall. So now I can just clap the light off and on. How handy.
Goes to show that becoming a late night TV Vampire has some advantages.
Hugh Deadwyler lives in Salisbury.