Sleepless in Tucson

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I never see
...
It's not easy
To be me

Superman
-Five for Fighting

It's almost midnight at the Arizona hotel room where I've been sentenced to spend the night, which means its almost two in the morning according to my internal time clock.  This is my fourth consecutive week traveling away from home as part of my mission to save the world from the powers of evil, but frankly, I would almost consider letting evil win a few rounds if I could just get a couple good nights' sleep in return. 

Tonight, my room is directly above the bar and a rock band is playing.  Worse yet, my historic room doesn't even have a tv I can use to drown out the constant, pounding noise. 

Hotels are in the business of providing travelers a good nights rest.  I would love to hear the logic of the hotel manager who thought hiring a rock band to play in their lobby on a Tuesday night until 2 a.m. helps accomplish that goal.  Whoever had that brilliant idea should be drug out into the street and shot.  Or even worse, be forced to spend a night in a lower-floor room of the hotel they manage.  

I would walk the streets for a while just to escape, but I've already done three loops of the downtown Tucson streets and there aren't any available diversions for a lone traveler (other than perhaps being mugged by one of multiple local wandering vagrants or hooligans), even if I didn't have to be up before seven in the morning.  There isn't even a bar within walking distance where I can watch ESPN. 

I'll be happy to go home tomorrow. 

I'd be happier if society didn't make life miserable for those most trying to help it.  Teachers make almost nothing, and states across the Union are trying to take away what small perks they ever had.  Police officers and firefighters don't do much better.  Prosecutors in my office haven't had a raise in four years and get only about a third of the salary of the attorneys who, as I once did, shuffle thousands of dollars back and forth between billion-dollar corporations in hyper-technical disputes that are ultimately meaningless. 

I don't have the energy to do justice to a full debate on whether society should pay its heroes substantially more than its janitors, but suffice to say, it doesn't have to be this way. 

And my hotel room doesn't have to be this noisy. 

At my wits end, I just walked to the reception desk to ask about other available rooms and inquire as to the logic of the hotel providing beds for guests to sleep while simultaneously providing noise that would prevent even those clinically dead from resting in peace. 

The receptionist gave me another room on the same floor that turned out to be only 30 paces away from my original.  I was less than assured when I immediately saw a package of earplugs sitting on the dresser, but it is at least slightly quieter than the first one, which might as well have been inside the hole of the lead singer's guitar. 

I'm tempted to complain about the idiocy of this whole arrangement to the incompetent hotel manager tomorrow, but I doubt I would get anywhere. 

Besides, who am I to complain? 

The band probably makes more than I do.