The Insomniac's Guide To Insomnia. (Red 2002) The definition of insomnia is finding it difficult or impossible to get to sleep, to sleep deeply or to sleep for a long period of time. All of my life I have found it difficult to sleep, although in recent years it has got worse. This rambling is a scrap of paper I found in a drawer with my fanfics and figured I might as well type up for you to laff at - but it has actually got a few tips on how to make practical, X-Files-related use of a night when insomnia strikes, straight from my and Hails' eXperiences. Hails takes the coffee route most of the time, I don't, but apart from that the tips are all the same. If you're as hyper as I am, you won't find caffeine necessary anyway!! Things to do with your night (or, how to waste time) 1). Stay online for as long as you can possibly manage. That is, until your parents drag you off (preferably kicking and screaming), you get typists' cramp, the glare from the VDU begins to drive you round the bend, or the concept of phone bills finally gets through to you. 2). Play a "happy" CD as loud as is humanly possible in the circumstances, and dance around the room linking every song back to the X-Files in some way or another. 3). Decide which ep you are most in the mood for (my method of deciding is quite simple - glance around the room at the pictures until one jumps out at you and you think, "Oh! It's ages since I've seen that one!") and settle down to watch it, replaying your favourite scenes over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until the tape/VCR goes "CLUNK!!" and you wise up to the fact that everyday devices are not generally made "phile-friendly". 4) . Channel-hop and wind up watching some ridiculously rude flick with no sound or subtitles or plot, realise you have got absolutely no saintly idea what in the name of Chris Carter's laptop is going on, and still manage to find some sort of reference to the X-Files in the film. 5). Tidy your room. I'm serious. it's quite good fun if you've got about a squillion small X-Files related nicknacks laying around. I've been known to spend weeks on end rearranging my book collection! 6). Videotape yourself. It does help, of course, if the video is already being made for a certain person or for a certain reason, but if not, just call it "My Video With No Point" or summat. Get yourself tied up in cables and stuff, finally find a blank tape to put it on, and then twig that the thing hasn't worked for years anyway. It's strangely not very irritating by this time of night, you know. 7). Resurrect your alien cyberpet from its several pieces in the corner, with the help of glue, pliers and sellotape, and realise that its silly beeping noise has got even *louder* than before. (All this disregarding the fact that the batteries ran out three years ago - god only knows how it's running, probably on dust). 8). Write fanfic. I would suggest reading it, but by this point at night you should have moved away from a computer or anything more sophisticated than a toaster, and in any case your head would be too scrambled to process the words and you'd likely end up on a site of Backstreet Boys fanfic or something, and not even realise until a few days later. If you have no plot, write a story with no plot. It's a lot easier than people think to carry on forever with no plot or plan as to how to finish it. I more or less prove that every time I write more than three words at a time! (Don't forget to add into the author's notes, the tagline: "I love writing. It's so much more fun than boring things such as *sleeping*!!!") 9). Try to work out how much money you've spent in your lifetime. Failing that, narrow the search down to X-Files merchandise. (I strongly recommend a calculator for this exercise, as if you were to attempt any form of mental workout after the previous activities, the chances are that you'd either a: go mad or b: fall asleep and since I'm assuming you already are mad and are unable to sleep, I wouldn't like to see the outcome from an impossible situation. It's like the unstoppable-object-hitting-an-unmovable-surface thing that I hate so much) Believe me, when the calculator displays £3,456-22 and you haven't got past the first stack of stuff, you'll begin to wonder what your name is. 10) If all else fails and you really are bored out of your mind, I recommend that you write a list such as this to occupy your brain. Alternatively, you could turn to alcohol, but I don't recommend that as I normally usually never I don't drink.