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2002-06-04 | 7:55 a.m.

Jasper got up early, so I did, too. Otherwise he sits on the bed and talks in a loud voice and whines and even cries about not being able to reach the bananas--until we grind our teeth down to powder.

What else is there to do at 5:45 except watch World Cup soccer?

Some of the Christian ladies on the e-mail lists are trying hard to get up early to better serve their families. Apparently this is advice from one of the organizing books for which Biblical motivation has been located. I can't remember the chapter and verse, but you get the idea. But here's the thing: If I get up early on a regular basis, I get irritable. I snap at people. Which is not such a family-friendly trait. Then I think, well, if you changed your diet, you wouldn't sleep so long and so hard. They say those who sleep fewer hours live longer. I think it's the other way around: People who eat rich diets (and therefore sleep longer) die sooner. People who eat wholesome diets sleep less and live longer.

I have been reading up on the caveman diets, the Paleo diet, stuff like that. Where you're supposed to eat game meats, berries, and leaves like our ancestors did. Then Duff sent me this thing yesterday about people who eat a calorie-restricted diet because there is some evidence that it may help them live a lot longer. The body goes into starvation mode, and the theory is that because there are fewer free radicals flying around (or whatever it is free radicals do), people don't get age-related diseases. Anyway, it's certainly true of rats and monkeys, the scientists say. So there are these people who have followed the research and they are eating around a thousand calories a day of nutrition-rich food. They all want to live longer and they call themselves CRONIES, which is an acronym of some sort (calorie restricted optimal nutrition, something like that) and they hook up with each other online.

Now here's my question: What exactly are these people looking forward to? I mean, what do they want to live so long for? Just living for living's sake? It's not for a big juicy steak and a beer, that much is clear.

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