Time for more Late Night Rambling. Last time, I commented about how I used to stay up all night, every night. Not Sundays. I never have liked to stay up past the late news on Sunday. I've always had a hard time going to sleep on Sunday night if I stay up too late. Weird, huh. Actually, it's not, or not to me anyway. I just had too much to think about. Sunday represented the end. You've just ended a week. You've just been churched up all day on life and death and afterlife and God, which in itself has this impending doom feeling to it. I used to lie in bed late on Sunday, and my mind would begin to race towards those questions you don't want to think about, like death. During the week, there was always something else to keep my mind occupied as I went to sleep. I would think about school tomorrow, or how I was going to play ball the next day, or mowing the yard. Since Sunday was the day of rest, I couldn't keep my mind occupied enough. Not only that, but now you've taken me to church where the preacher went on for a half-hour about what was going to happen when you died. Of course, this wasn't always the case, but the majority of the time was just like that. And by the way, the half-hour should clue some of you in that we were Baptists.

You can pretty much set your oven timer by the Baptist church service. The standard form is the same in every different Baptist church I've ever been in: Sing three hyms, sit. Preacher welcomes and does the announcements. Sing a hymn, sit. Special part of the service, either child's sermon, church business, Sunday school report. Sing a hymn, sit. Pass the offering plate, with contemplative music from the organist. Special music, big choir number for the week, or a solo, or a duo, or a trio. Sermon. Invitation. Those last two are the fly in the ointment for using the church as a timer. The sermon was written by the preacher to last until noon. He may get wound up. Preachers frequently do, and that's how it should be, it's their job and how they got the name in the first place. Also, after a particularly wound-up sermon, the invitation may last more that a few verses of "Just As I Am." That song has about eighty verses, but nobody knows them all. By that time, your cornbread is burned. Later in life, we began to go out for lunch as a group whenever church was over. We could never beat the Methodists to the buffet.

I watched the highly anticipated premeir of "24" tonight. At least it was highly anticipated by me. And by God, it didn't disappoint. Less than one hour after being released from a Chinese prison, Jack killed his first bad guy by Biting Him To Death While Both Of His Hands Were Shackled To A Chair. I jumped completely off the couch and started screaming, "Yes! Yes! Jack killed that bastard with his TEETH! Yes! Yes!" Evidently the theme of this season is for Jack to work his way up to bigger and bigger weapons, because the next guy he killed, he beat to death with a stick of firewood. Later, he tortured a guy by sticking a fork into the open wound on his shoulder blade. I figure that tomorrow he'll run over somebody with a car. God, I love that show.

Ok, enough, I think I've calmed my paranoid mind down sufficiently. I'm going to bed and hope I don't get struck by lightning for writing that blasphemous stuff previously.