Annabel Crabb wonders, both seriously and satirically, whether prime minister Kevin Rudd is suffering through advanced insomnia and the effects of intense sleep deprivation :
Mr Rudd's own spouse has confirmed that the PM can get by on just three hours' sleep a night.This revelation raises some compelling side issues - like: How do you stay married to someone who only sleeps for three hours a night? When do you go through their stuff?
But it also explains some of what we are seeing; the panicky decision-making, the forced bonhomie of yesterday's Canberra press conference (what exactly is a "rolled gold bucket of fear based on myth"? It sounds like a Kings Cross cocktail, the sort of thing that might have got Ricky Ponting into trouble, in loucher days), and the inability to communicate some basic points.
The breaking of the campaign promise on political advertising is one thing.
The more worrying element of the Prime Minister's reversal is that he actually needs to pay someone else $38 million to explain a policy decision because he is having difficulty explaining it himself.
Sleep deprivation can be deadly serious (says me at 2:12am). It not only fucks your head, and clouds your judgment, depriving yourself of sleep bitchslaps your immune system, destroys your libido, causes aural and visual hallucinations and induces intense paranoia.
The Sleep Doctor is in. Here's what you need to do, Kevin.
Take a sick day, check into a hotel, punch a few breakfast billies (Swannie hangs out in the rock scene, he'll be able to fix you up), eat a pizza while getting stuck into the bourbon, run a warm bath, put some mid-1980s Clannad on the stereo (not too loud), sink into the warm water for a solid half hour while thinking only of fluffy sleepy kittens lazily pawing at the air, flop out of the bath, wrap yourself in a warm towel, stagger into the bedroom, drawer the curtains, climb into bed, pull the blankets right up over your head to induce the feeling of being somewhere womb-like and imagine you're in a lift, going down - the top floor is bright light, and each floor you descend when the doors open is a deeper, darker shade of blue. The bottom floor is wonderful, peaceful darkness.
Sleep for ten hours.
Repeat.
Thank me later.
