It’s been months since my last bout of insomnia. I’ve been eternally grateful, too, since it results in feeling tired and grumpy pretty much 24/7. But it became clear sometime around 3:00 a.m. this morning that my grace period was at an end. Rather than fight it I decided to learn more about vikings. Why vikings — search me? Anyway, I read many interesting facts about the brutality and cleverness of Vikings. None the least of which was that viking hunters used to capture and sell baby polar bear cubs by killing and skinning the mother, spreading her pelt in the snow, and then grabbing the cubs when they came to (sadly) lie down on it.

At first I was absolutely horrified. Then, after 15 minutes or so, I found it pretty funny to imagine drunken Vikings breaking from their daily regimen of raping, plundering & pillaging to communally engage in a little polar-bear-cub dead mama capture. Then I was a little concerned that I found the thought of polar bear death & capture funny. Then I had an internal debate over whether this was worse than the clubbing of baby seals in Canada. Then I remembered reading a hilarious (faux) write-up about a group petitioning the Olympics to allow baby seal clubbing at the 2010 Vancouver winter games. Then I blew through about 30 minutes trying to find said article. I never managed to track it down, but I did find an online game about clubbing baby seals. I spent the next hour trying to get high score by clubbing as many baby seals as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Then I decided to look up how to make lentil soup. Soon after the alarm went off and it was time to start my day. And this, folks, is what insomnia leads to.

On this day..

• The Nürnberg report. - 2006