- I think part of the reason I don't sleep well is because of my mattress. It's soft and comfortable, but I noticed that I always feel so much more refreshed when I sleep on the stiffer bed at home in Darien. I don't toss and turn as much, and I don't wake up in the middle of the night either. It seems that stiffness of surface is key. Maybe I should just sleep outside on the concrete in a sleeping bag from now on.

- A highlight from the weekend: A few hours of No Limit Hold'em with the boys at Rod's graduation party. It was good times, so I think we should make it a regular thing. Except, I would feel too much like a 40-year old guy having "Poker Night" with his buddies to escape from his wife for a day out of the week.

- I think the main reason we all decided to play Hold'em that night was probably because they have been showing the World Poker Championships on ESPN a lot lately. Makes me wonder about how much TV influences our lives, especially subconsciously. For example, I always find myself itching to play football more during NFL season, and softball more when it's baseball season. It's not just the weather, it's the exposure to watching games of each sport in each case. Something about the visual effects of seeing a nice tackle, a nice touchdown catch on TV must trigger the desire to play football with your friends. Same goes for watching baseball, and now Poker.

Then again, I'm probably just overanalyzing it like I do to everything else. But it does make you wonder if seeing too much violence on TV, movies, video games, etc. really does cause people to become more violent. I've never really believed in that school of thought, mostly because it seems like a cheap excuse for people who commit violent crimes. I mean, it's quite a jump to go from watching someone get murdered, to murdering someone yourself. But there are always the sickos who enjoy killing for some reason, and who knows how they got to be that way?

See, normal people (like me) watch a show like Jackass and just laugh about it. It's quality entertainment. But stupid teenagers can watch the show and end up thinking that it would be a good idea to jump off a moving car or something. In the same way, normal people might play Mortal Kombat II (or, for this generation of controversial video games, GTA: Vice City), and just have fun ripping a guy's heart out after kicking his ass in round 2. But what about the wacko kids out there who are mentally ill or emotionally unstable? You gotta figure that out of all the people playing this game, someone out there might grow up and end up becoming obsessed with ripping people's hearts out from playing MKII as a kid. In that case, who do you blame? You can't expect the video game companies to be responsible, when their game is perfectly fine and fun for 99.9% of people who play it. But for that 0.1% of sick people, they wouldn't have turned into violent killers if not for playing MKII.

Dang, my head is starting to hurt. My brain is running on empty, and I think I need to take a nap to avoid thinking.