We usually end our night by watching the 11:00 news so that we have some idea what happened during the day. The local NBC news always ends at 11:30 pm with the anchorman encouraging people to watch the next local news at 4:30 am in the morning.

4:30 am in the morning!?! How many people watching television at 11:30 pm are thinking to themselves, “Wow! I cannot wait 5 hours to see what exciting things happen overnight”? Don’t those people sleep at all? Or are they 24/7 news junkies?

And what can possibly happen in the middle of the night that is so important we all need to set our alarm clocks for 4:30 am to learn about it? Another mugging in the streets of New York or Newark? Another tornado touching down in south Jersey? Another clandestine attack on public employees by our esteemed governor? And which of these urgent stories will have more impact on our lives because we spend the entire day in a half-daze due to lack of sleep?

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I bet you all know some people who are so clueless they believe they are both competent and respected when in fact they are totally incompetent and looked down upon by everybody who has contact with them. Such as a public official who gives a speech so riddled with grammatical errors that people laugh at the person behind their back. Yet that clueless wonder is so impressed by the quality of their speech that they not only give paper copies to everybody who works for them, but then post the speech so that the entire community can have a good laugh at their expense.

If you have never heard of the Peter Principle, look it up; this public official has verified the truth of it yet again.

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Sometimes nothing relaxes you better than an awful pun:

It is well-known that Abraham Lincoln’s wife went crazy later in life, but what is not so well-known is that Abraham Lincoln was a terrible snorer. Recent studies have suggested that the two facts were closely-related.

In 1962, Lincoln and his wife went to see a prominent doctor about the snoring. He listened to Mrs. Lincoln’s complaint that she had not had a good night’s sleep “in ages.” Then he studied Lincoln’s face briefly before saying, “The shape of a man’s beard often determines how he breathes while sleeping and, ultimately, whether he snores or not.”

“Really?” the couple said.

The doctor nodded. “Change the design of President Lincoln’s beard,” he suggested. “Each change should alter the sound of his snoring and, if you keep trying, you will eventually eliminate the snoring totally.”

So the hopeful couple returned to the White House where Mrs. Lincoln trimmed the president’s beard. As a result, the sound of his snoring changed completely, but it was still so loud and so constant that Mrs. Lincoln could not sleep.

So they kept trying. She altered his beard more than a half-dozen times, all changing the sound of his snoring, but none of them eliminating it.

Frustrated, they returned to the doctor who took one look at Mrs. Lincoln and shook his head. “You look terrible,” he said. “When is the last time you actually had a good night’s sleep?”

She replied, “Four snores and seven beards ago.”