Humans Fail to Prove Superiority of Opposable Thumbs
Lamp Remains Inoperative

Urbana (Associated Cats):
ou have to give the humans credit for being amusing. But lets face it. They're all "We're bipedal and have opposable thumbs," and "Whoa, like, let's fix something." They fail to comprehend that the important matters of life are comprised of laying on a heater vent and/or chasing things. I've been watching Tim and Anne play with this silly "lamp" thing for almost an hour. Granted, they look like they're having fun , but what they should be doing is keeping an eye on all of the things that are moving unawares in the basement. Were it not for me, no one would ever take care of such important matters. They would just play with "tools" (or is that "toys?" I always get the two mixed

My theory is that humans simply don't sleep enough.

up.) and try to "fix" "things." They never investigate all of the important smells, sounds, or small moving things that quite frankly need to be hunted down and dealt with. Nor do they chase things that don't exist. Their behavior simply makes no sense most of the time; it is this disturbing trend in human behavior that I wish to discuss.

My theory is that humans simply don't sleep nearly enough. That's why they spend so much time doing such crazy shit. Right now, Tim is fiddling with the part of the lamp that sits on the floor and Anne is doing something to the string part that runs through the lamp and gets stuck into the wall. Only through lack of sleep is this sort of silly activity reasonable. Other humans - was that a bug over there? No, just some dust. As I was saying, humans don't sleep nearly enough and this affects their behavior. If one takes a look at Fig. 3.7, one can see a clear ranking of pointless and silly behavior, and the number of hours of sleep (out of 24, with 16-20 of that being a reasonable amount of sleep) required to make that activity seem desirable.

We can - see, now they've pulled the whole thing apart again. Geez. Why in the name of Roast Duck with Natural Juices did they do that? That was silly. We can clearly see that the less sleep a human gets, the more likely they are to partake in pointless and nonsensical behavior. Let's take Case Study "X". Case Study "X" has 2.6 kids, a dog, and a husband. "X" works as a paralegal, and only gets about 6 hours of

Criminy, now the damn thing is smoking!

sleep a night. We can see that this has greatly affected the sanity of "X" first by looking at her choice of four-legged companion- a dog! And a small yippy dog at that! Next, let's look at her choice of after-work activity. "X" likes to do that thing where you pick up a ball and roll it towards several white things and you roll it across a wooden floor. Unlike any sensible creature, she does not chase the ball once she rolls it; in fact, the ball she uses is so large that it poses an impending and lethal risk to any small creature that might get in its way. Pursuing this type of activity is a sign of absolute madness, and is indicative of the human condition in whichever century they seem to think it is.

Let's return to the activity I'm observing in front of me. Criminy, now the damn thing is smoking! See, if they had only listened to me when I tried to tell them that it was the CORD that was messed up, and not the SOCKET, they wouldn't have tried to burn the house down again. I'd been hearing the strange sounds that cord was making every time I chased bugs in the upstairs bathroom. I tried to tell Anne, but did she listen to me? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. She just gave me treats. Every time I try to tell her something, she thinks I'm asking for treats. I mean, I ate the treats. Who wouldn't? At least they've unplugged that death machine of a lamp they've got there.

Finally, here is a pie chart (Fig 78Q) of activities that they should be taking part in.