Today I was going to the dentist (first time in around 18 months), something that had me rising and shining rather early after three hours of sleep. It sounds bad, but I must say, when not having seriously pressing business to attend to or other obligations likely to keep you up all day, three hours isn't that bad.
With less time for deep sleep, it's not as quarrelsome and nauseating to get up as after five hours, and once up, rather than cotton-headed and grumbly, I feel more warmly, comfortably tired. Of course, this only lasts for a few hours before things rapidly start getting worse, but by then, it's a real blast to go back to bed.

So anyway. Still no cavities. A little calculus, but 18 months are 18 months after all, I decide, and exit disgustingly proud of myself.
I realize that nowadays, eventual fears I harbour over going to the dentist are not of potentially painful tampering or drilling, but of cavities in themselves. I've gone clean for so long now that failure here would feel like a personal fall from grace.
Then, with clean teeth, all ready for smiles, breath tests and serious making out, I enter the local tobacco-and-convenience store, aiming for a bit of sneakreading. It's 30 minutes before next bus leaves for home, and with the rain being as it is, I'm not up to walking.

Since I started subscribing to X-Men, my main target in here is usually Spider-Man. This issue however comes in plastic to protect the little stickers within (or maybe as a precaution against people like me), so no go. I marvel instead at massive offerings of bad comics, tabloids, gossip, and a huge collection of unique-ways-to-be-sexy-trendy-and-trimmed magazines. The sole science magazine offered on the rack, I realize, I also subscribe to.
I end up, basically by default, with a gaming magazine, and read to my delight about the production of DOOM III, about upcoming Tekken 4 and a movie-based Spider-Man game. Stuff like this makes me feel 12 years old again, I tell you. I think that no matter how mature I end up becoming, I won't be outgrowing videogames.

Unrelated thought:
Before heading out this morning I was buying tickets online for Minority Report (goes up in Sweden tomorrow, but I'm seeing it on Saturday). In my still somewhat tired state I glanced at the runtime, and felt a jolt of excitement at the "226" displayed there. 226 minutes I thought - that is goddamn three hours and 46 minutes. That's what I call respectable length. This could be really good.
My mind soared at this for a few seconds, before I finished and went back out to the main movie-menu, and the truth: Right.
2 hours and 26 minutes. That'll teach me.

Sadly, it seems to be an unwritten rule of western movie-making to land nine out of ten movies somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes in length, as if that's where the line is drawn for the audiences' attention span and ability to concentrate.
Me, I like my movies long. I enjoy prospects of four, five or six hours of watching ahead of me when I sit down. Long doesn't always necessarily mean good here of course, but on the other hand, really good movies usually are of decent length. A good story tends to need a fair amount of space and be allowed its own time to develop.

Instead though, to avoid boring the hell out of reviewers and people looking for some quick action on a rainy wednesday night, motion pictures, with few exceptions, appear to develop in the same direction as pop songs: be quick and entertaining, make a point and follow a plot.
The result of this ideology is movies (and pop-songs, for that matter) that run straight from A to B, and pass you by quickly and unnoticed like a fast-food meal on the run.

Well. So having said this, I guess it could be acknowledged that 146 minutes is still well above average, and in spite of expectations on movies like this always being up there, maybe it'll still work out.
But 226 minutes. That would have been quite a thing.