He wants to have one of those productive days. One of those days where he wakes up at the BCD (that's short for butt-crack of dawn, but BCD sounds so much more official. Sort of like Kentucky Fried Chicken officially changed their name to KFC. For real. Go to one of their stores and see if you can find the word "fried" anyplace) and plows through, like, fifteen chores. One of those days where 9 am rolls around and he's exhausted but satisfied. One of those days where, later on, one of those old ads for the army comes on, the ones that go "we get more done before 6 am than most people get done all day," and he's like "wanna bet, Jack?"

The problem is, of course, he has nothing to do. Not really. All the things he thinks he has to do are either already done or don't really need to be done. They call that busy work. And why is there busy work? Because the busy workers are otherwise useless. He wants to get things done so he can feel useful. But he knows that once he gets things done, he will feel twice as useless because of that fact that all he had to do was busy work and all he has left is nothing.

For example, the bed. He should make the bed, right? So he goes to it, and first he pulls everything off, creating individual piles of each item onto the floor: main pillows, throw pillow, sheet, blanket, throw-blanket (is there a better name for this kind of blanket? Probably. Maybe he should look it up. Maybe that can be on his to-do list too). Then he goes about making the bed, starting by straightening out the fitted sheet, then putting the main sheet on, walking around and around the bed getting it even. Then the blanket, or comforter, or what have you. Then folding the top of the sheet back over the comforter to make one of those nice magazine- looks. Then placing the main pillows just so. Then placing the throw pillows just so. Then the throw-blanket. Then one stuffed animal.

The problem is, of course, absolutely no one will see any of this. And the whole project will take about five minutes, and be useful when he goes to bed later for about five seconds, as he throws the throw pillows to the floor, peels back the sheets and blanket, crawls, turns off the light, and stares wide-eyed at the darkness of the wall wondering why he can't just fall asleep once for a change.

If the bed was a rat's nest of twisted blankets and pillows and maybe a discarded shirt (he sometimes sweats in his sleep, no matter what temperature it is) he'd maybe straighten it a bit before he got in it, but more likely, he wouldn't even think of it as a place to go at a designated time; he'd end up waiting until he was too exhausted to stand it anymore, and then he'd crawl into the nest and fall right asleep.

The problem with THAT, though, is that he'd wake up tired, too tired to want to be productive, too tired to want to make the bed, and he'd do nothing while he tried to survive the morning, eventually come to a more wakeful state in the afternoon, putter around with a few chores, do some other things, and eventually night would come and do what it does and he'd do what he does and be exhausted and crawl back into the rat's nest again and start the cycle all over.

Or end it. Then again, the thing with cycles is that they don't really end, so they don't really have starts. And there's no use tracing it back to whatever triggered the actually cycle: the first night awake, or the first morning dead, because that ends up being a chicken and the egg kind of question, and the truth is a cycle isn't a cycle until it's cycled once, so it doesn't exist until it's existed for a while. A guy could go mad trying to figure that one out.

And he is mad, completely insane, totally mental, a psychopath, off his rocker, nuts, bonkers, crazy, cuckoo, crackers. He is without reason, bereft of good sense, totally and entirely woggy. At least, compared to the rest of the world. That's what he's been told, anyway. And he's been told that it's a good idea to be productive: it's good for the soul. And if he doesn't try to do things to better his soul, he's obviously damned to hell.

House arrest sucks.