But TWO HOURS MONITOR FREE BEFORE SLEEP???? Are you bugging me? Yes, I will get a lot more book reading and drawing done, but I needs my stuff! My people! Fictional and invisible both!

Yeah, exactly. Though you could print out fic to read off screen, I guess.

One of the first things they will rec is 2 hours TV, computer, any kind of monitor-free before bed.

unpossible. Especially at the start of the new fall TV season.

I realized that I have dinner plans tonight, and will miss Undercovers (the first major network non-comedy to have two black leads). In honor of our past, I invoke the VCR prayer.

Attention all religious people, established or not, pagan or Wiccan or Bible Belt or Jewish or Bead Jiggler (like me): Please pray to the VCR gods tonight for all of us who are Unavoidably Unable To Be Home. May the cable systems all remember. May the tapes be fresh and have plenty of space. May our power not brown out and reset the VCR clocks. May kids and SOs and stray kittens not wander by and reset the apparatii. May our UPN affiliates not fold, spindle, or mutilate the show with weird crawls, ads for other inane shows, sports, or teasers for the Ten o'clock News. May we all come home to Buffy, just Buffy and purest Buffy, from Previously to the previews. Amen.

As painful as it is, several studies show that screentime before bed can delay sleep by up to two hours. (Anything with a backlight is confusing to the parts of your brain that are trying to keep track of diurnal rhythms. Indirect light from a reading lamp doesn't have nearly as strong an effect as direct light from an LCD screen.)

I realized that I have dinner plans tonight, and will miss Undercovers

I have dinner plans too! And I feel like ass. But I will not cancel. I have not seen this chick in years. If it gets cancelled, it's on her. But my backlog is getting bigger and bigger. Hopefully I can at least clear Criminal Minds off it tonight. I know I can't stay out at dinner too long.

I can't cancel dinner to stay home and watch two of the hottest men on the planet, right? I mean Boris Kodjoe AND Shemar Moore (who will be rocking the manpain tonight)? I don't know if I'll be able to handle it.

several studies show that screentime before bed can delay sleep by up to two hours

What about those of us that fall asleep in front of screens?

Well, it's not like I've gotten any sleep without the aid of drugs in about a year, so I don't count. But I would regularly fall asleep in front of the TV before the insomnia started.

Huh. I just said "sistas before mistas!" to my sister. I feel like I've crossed some sort of invisible crazy person line. But I think she went there first.

Top UK spies revealed as wankers

The UK spy agency MI6 experimented with using semen as invisible ink; presumably because this fluid was readily available to several of their field agents on a few moments' notice. The agent in charge of the project? Mansfield Cumming. This and other revelations appear in MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, to be published this week.

A member of staff close to "C", Frank Stagg, said that he would never forget his bosses' delight when the Deputy Chief Censor said one day that one of his staff had found out that "semen would not react to iodine vapour".

Stagg noted that "we thought we had solved a great problem".

However, the discovery also led to some further problems, with the agent who had identified the novel use having to be moved from his department after becoming the butt of jokes.

the butt of jokes

Did they really want to go there?

What about those of us that fall asleep in front of screens?

Yeah, I sometimes find myself falling asleep while sitting up in front of the computer, and often while watching TV. And I almost always go to bed with a TV on in the bedroom so the flickering light against my eyelids can lull me.

Total darkness and I aren't good friends, though we occasionally work together when Happy Fun Migraine stops by for a visit.

But TWO HOURS MONITOR FREE BEFORE SLEEP????

Seriously. I would never watch TV again.