How tired are you?

Over the weekend, while being tired as shit on a bus ride back from NYC, I had an epiphany, I had an epiphany of epiphanic proportions. Yeah, it was that epiphanous.

I've always thought that the phrase "tired as shit" was just slang for "extremely tired." Not once did I think it had actual implications or metaphoric value. But if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

Shit actually has a long journey to make before it becomes what it is and ends that journey. If its journey ever ends. Beginning as various seeds from all over the world, harvested by people or ingested by animals which are then harvested by people, it then gets processed and cooked (or not cooked, if you're an animal) before being sent into the digestive system. First, its precursors--the very basis for its existence--is masticated in an oral cavity, before being laboriously squeezed down a narrow, muscular tube. It then must be subjected to gastric acids, before being sent down into the intestines from which it emerges in all its glory.

Imagine that in human terms. To be as tired as shit, you'd have to travel across the continent, get beat up by some punching machines, get roasted over an open fire, run around dodging boulders, get tied up with giant elastic ropes and escape from them, take a swim in acid, then take a tube slide down to the end, where you get dunked into a dunk tank leading to rapids and then a waterfall. Finally, after you hit the bottom of the waterfall, you are tired as shit.

So how tired was I on that bus ride? Well, I'd have to say, now, I was as tired as a desert hare. A desert hare runs around in the sun all day, jumps a lot, sweats a lot and also tries to drink as much water as it can. And also eats lots of dumplings.