The Matrix - NC style

Y'all, I have firm evidence that the scenarios played out in the "Matrix" flicks are real.

Yes, you heard me, REAL.

How do I know? From where does this evidence come? It's nothing more than first-hand personal experience, my friends. RECENT personal experience.

Oh, sure, they SAID I was participating in a so-called "sleep study," but you can't fool me, I KNOW that once fully kitted out I was hooked up to a central respository of nightmares and lost hopes, taking my place in the vast dreamscape playland of imagination-starved plutocrats and demigods of industry.

Why ELSE would all those wires Friday night have been necessary? If I recall correctly there were:

5 on the scalp
1 on the forehead
1 on the cheekbone
1 on the jaw
1 on the chin
1 on the throat
3 on the chest
2 on the legs
-------------
15 altogether!

Not to mention the 2 elastic bands that went around my chest, to "monitor my breathing" (or so it was told to me), but could just as easily have been there to force my breathing into an unnatural pattern based on a series of mild electrical stimuli intended to harmonize my respiration with all the others around the globe similarly attached during that period of time.

Well, they COULD have, you know.

Oh, and there was an oxygen sensor on my finger, and air flow cannulas in my nose and mouth.

Sweet freaking dreams, my ass! Who can dream when bedecked in so many POUNDS of electronic finery? I had an actual DREADLOCK of wires snaking out the back of my head, and if you've ever had an IV line and felt like any small movement might tear that sucker right out of you arm, then you'll know how I felt when I say I didn't feel like I could move my head one INCH for fear of detaching any of the lines that was undoubtedly channeling my dreams into a vast network of virtual reality for the uber-rich to use as a wildly varying backdrop for their salcious and vivid nocturnal role-playing games.

Oh, sure, the bed was comfy enough, and the "sleep lab" lady was the most pleasant thing this side of a slab of warm apple pie, but who can sleep when there are wires attaching you to a monitoring system, and the sensor on your throat is adhered tightly with some kind of tape that itches and pulls when you turn your head, and you're afraid to breathe because then you might SNORE and that would be bad because if you do that means you might have to get a stupid-ass CPAP machine to help you breathe at night so you don't die in your sleep, all unknowing? Who, I ask you, can sleep under those conditions? What god-awful freak of nature can SLEEP under those conditions???

Um, well, apparently I can.

Not very well, mind you, and I had dreams of sharks and drowning and airplane crashes and losing my children and having my fingers chopped off and tremendous cities of sharp-spired buildings belching yellow smoke over a blasted-out husk of prairie, but I did indeed sleep, in between visits from Miss Monitor, who, even though she tried to be quiet when reattaching my electrodes to the monitoring unit, did have that soft sneaker-squeek on the linoleum floor that was enough to alert my semi-alert brain to "wake up! intruder!"

(As a short aside, someone shold tell that hospital that having one of those insta-squirt electronic air freshener thingies in the sleep lab room is NOT such a hot idea, because of the "CLICK CCCHHHHH" sound it makes every, oh, 10 MINUTES or so that, if they're not used to it, could maybe wake a person right the heck up from a shallow restless sleep.)

Needless to say, the Matrix got their money's worth out of me. I hope they're happy, I hope my discomfort and suffering was worth it.

But, dear friends, be aware that a truly nefarious turn of events may be about to take place, in that it looks likely that I'll have to go back for another "study." It's been hinted that I have sleep apnea in addition to the snoring.

Sure, I do. SURE I have apnea AND snoring. That's what they SAY.

If you ask me, I suspect that their lame-ass "apnea" is an excuse to get me strapped back down so they can get another dose of the nocturnal Tiff-scape to greatly enrich the hive-mind of the NC Matrix.

It's the only thing that makes any sense to me.