- Iggy's Reckin' Balls
- Booby Kids
- Tongue of the Fatman
- Nuts & Milk
- If It Moves, Shoot It!
- Irritating Stick
- Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom
- Sticky Balls
- Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt!
Good stuff.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Worst Video Game Titles
Last night, I stumbled across a list of the 50 worst video game titles. It's definitely worth reading. Here are some excerpts
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Headache Insomnia/Romantic Chemistry
I was going through some really old email and before clearing one out, I thought I'd post a couple of stories here that a friend sent to me about three years ago.
***
Headache Insomnia
By Jamie R. (July 12, 2003)
I sometimes even see the hideous yellow face of my pain, but not very often. When I do, it is always about the same time, in the same room. I am unsure whether my pain lives there, then, and beckons me to join it, or if it follows me. It doesn’t matter. We are both there, and it shows itself.
My pain’s vehicle, either creator or progeny, is a breed of headache I was unfamiliar with when I was fully sighted. An eyestrain headache, the doctor concludes, advising me to cease the stressful activity and try aspirin for the pain. Since I am legally blind, I view much of the world through one type of magnifying glass or another, so now experience plenty of eyestrain, while I did not when I had normal vision. I believe the diagnosis, but the dullard’s feeble prescription is unrealistic and insulting. It is obvious the activity in question is my economic survival in a visually intensive society, so stopping is impossible. I don’t expect him to know aspirin is worse than useless, but I’m insulted to find he thinks me such a slack-wit that I never thought to pursue that mundane course of treatment. Still, he can’t know the futility of using over-the-counter remedies, as his narrow philosophy only permits the headache to be a medical condition. I know otherwise, because the headache I experience is always the same one. It came with my disability and lives inside me, usually dormant and causing no ill effects. Occasionally, it wakens, grows, and comes to visit, not a recurring malady, but an entity possessing volition and guile. I know this. I am an intimate terms with the being. We live together, and I alone am capable of understanding it. Eyestrain headache, it doesn’t sound so bad. Discussing it rationally, only possible in it’s absence, reduces it to a purely intellectual construction, and enables me to believe it isn’t.
My eyestrain headache differs from other kinds I experience. It resides in a place near the geometric center of my brain. When it arises, it stays up with me for several days, so if I manage to sleep, and cheat it out of part of its due, respite is brief. It waits for me to wake. In the morning, it signals with sharp messages, moderate jabs running up the back of my neck that urge full consciousness. The headache’s most distinctive quality, though, is it is accompanied by a myriad of visual effects. These begin hours before the pain, so serve to foretell the headache’s arrival, as well as to accent and enhance its discomfort for the episode’s duration. Aside from a general deterioration of my already poor sight, further blurring, and slower image-interpretation, the headache is heralded with, and accompanied by, flashing lights. In the beginning, the lights are small and subtle, thousands of tiny dots, like proximate stars, twinkling around me. When I see them, I know the headache is coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. As the entity grows, the lights become bigger and brighter, even violent. When the show is at its peak, it seems as if I walk through a dim corridor lined with photographers continuously snapping flash pictures with inappropriately powerful gear. Each flash is a concentrated spotlight aimed directly at my retinas. After each hits its mark, residual light lingers and scatters, adding additional distortion to the disturbances of new flashes. When the being rages and I am out in the city, the world is an only partially existent, dangerous place. Over half of my normally poor vision is occupied with flashes, which erodes my ability to interpret actual objects, such as moving cars. I often experience near collisions, but, immersed in the headache’s unpleasant fog, I don’t care much at the time.
The first day is not too bad. In my cubicle at work, I look up from the computer. A thin trail of lights drags behind my shifting line of sight. They appear as fireworks, incredibly small, intense spheres of brightness that quickly fade and vanish. This is the headache’s announcement of its intended arrival. It never visits without calling first. I look at the clock and feel fear, as it is only one, which means the beast will be with me by the time I head out. Aside from anxiety, there are no other unpleasant effects. The lights are even beautiful and interesting to watch, a private display being shot off for my sole enjoyment. I spend an inordinate amount of time not working, just watching the show.
The infant headache is born by the end of the day. It gets my attention, makes me aware we are together, but doesn’t push it. I walk through the streets and ride the bus home with little difficulty and only minor irritation, a dull throbbing and intermittent dim lights. The pace picks up during the evening, as my wife and I talk and watch television. I am communicative, as the pain is mild, though grows more insistent as the being organizes and consolidates. I feign disinterest in the creature. I believe this annoys it, but have no evidence. I have a hunch. The night passes relatively well, as the headache only manages to deliver a powerful enough stab to wrench me from sleep every hour. I get out of bed and pace, then drift off again, spending the night alternating between hour-long periods of sleep and half-hour periods of wakefulness. This ragged pattern takes a toll, adding the disorienting, will-eroding effects of sleeplessness to the headache’s discomfort, giving the malaise a surreal edge.
The second day begins with the headache nagging, exerting a constant, but not severe, pressure. Each heartbeat creates a throb in the center of my head. It is tolerable, but causes slight dizziness. Out in the town on my way to work, the environment begins to change. Sounds are slightly louder than they ought. Colors appear more vibrant and bleed together, making it difficult to ascertain where one object leaves off and another begins. The flashing is sporadic and weak, creating few problems. Work is transformed into a series of mildly irritating events. Slightly loud or improperly pitched voices bug me. Fluorescent lights emit annoying purplish glare. Why does the phone keep ringing? Through all this, the headache builds, its dull throbbing punctuated with occasional jabs of intense pain. I get through it.
By bedtime, the event is in full swing. I can no longer hide the headache, but I don’t actively whine. I don’t have to. I sit silently while my wife speaks to me a language I am presently unable to understand. Like an incompetent field linguist, I make crude and ineffective attempts to isolate, and attach meaning to, patterns in the noises she makes, but the pounding has long since rendered incoming communications difficult, at best, to interpret. Coherent outgoing messages are also unlikely, as the intense pressure in my head clogs the route between my brain and vocal chords, making transmission of formulated ideas between the two points physically improbable. I gape moronically as she talks, unable to fully comprehend or adequately acknowledge, occasionally contributing a few slurred syllables of partially articulated words, which, she claims, come out as meaningless grunts and hums. In this manner, I whine passively, complaining implicitly with my silence. Because I don’t say anything, she knows the headache is with me. Although I don’t want to spread even a bit of my misery onto her, I can’t care. I refuse to hold myself accountable for communication without intent.
The night is long. Brief bouts of fitful sleep are interrupted by extended periods of wide-awake staring at the ceiling, contemplating various aspects of the headache. I can only imagine how it occurs, and I do. I imagine it so fully, my version becomes true. It becomes truer than fact, better than science, because it is entirely contained in my mind. After countless sleepless headache nights spent in study, a detailed, meticulously constructed, working model of the process is housed in my brain. There, I can examine it, test it, change it until it works. As I conceptualize each mechanism, I feel it occur, verifying my assumptions until they are true.
The eyes constantly gather images. They draw particles of light from objects and suck them in through the pupils in streams, funneling them towards the retina for reassembly and interpretation. The retina’s central area, the macula, is the vortex to which the swirling fragments are drawn. In the retina of the normally sighted, the particles hit the macula and stick, accurately reconstructing the observed image, and the eye’s muscles and nerves relax while they await the next signal.
In my retina, the process operates differently. The particles strike the degenerated macula, and those that hit a good spot stick, while others bounce off diseased points of impact and scatter, reduced to incomprehensible fragments of colored light. They ricochet around on useless tissue for a while, then lay, unused, at the back of the eye. The brain struggles to make sense of the fragments that stuck, forced to work hard at the task of filling in gaps, which often fails. While the nerves and muscles are still trying to diagnose and fix the problem, another cascade of swirling light particles, drawn from a new image, hits the macula. Again, some stick, while others tumble to the back. A heap of wasted light forms at the back of the eyes, growing with each new bombardment. The recesses at the back of the eyes fill to bursting. It has to go somewhere. The pressure from the growing pile forces fragments out through fissures too tiny for them to pass through otherwise. The light seeps out of the back of the eye, directly into the brain cavity serving as the hibernating monster’s lair. The particles of energy touch the sleeping beast, curling around it in a fine mist. The headache grows and takes shape, gathering seeping light particles more and more as each image strikes the macula on the other side of the cracks. The beast becomes itself, again.
It’s happening right now. I’m in bed, staring at the ceiling, testing my model against the feelings I am experiencing. I find them to be consistent, as I can almost hear each discarded particle tinkling onto the swelling heap and feel the minute increase in pressure each new addition causes. Sometime after four, I doze, despite the ruckus. Or maybe, on account of it. Perhaps the continuous hammering knocks me senseless. Either way, I’m grateful for the break. No, an eyestrain headache doesn’t sound so bad, but when it greets me at daybreak with a worse banging pain than the one I fell asleep with, it seems like it is.
As soon as I begin to stir, but still cling to precious unconsciousness, the headache strengthens. The morning birds give it the momentum it needs to obliterate the remaining remnants of sleep. Just before it succeeds, less than half awake, I dream their songs, which are several times louder than necessary and carry disturbing, oddly spaced notes that cause a wave of almost physical revulsion. I ride the sickening wave out of oblivion into headache reality.
The morning is bad. The headache, annoyed with impatience from waiting, pushes me to full alertness with a few rapid, particularly nasty jolts. Now that I’m fully awake, no sharp edges are dulled, and my return to total awareness of every aspect of the headache makes me recall being up nearly all night, dealing with it’s uncomfortable effects. I seriously doubt sleep ever really came. Up for work, I am a zombie shuffling through a hostile haze of pounding pressure and distorted perception, automatically performing the necessary motions without thought. Out into the city at seven presents a dreary, surreal scene. Every sense heightened by the headache and lack of sleep, I am assaulted by brightness and sound. The light hurts my eyes. A quiet noise from a passing car contains a peculiar, high-pitched buzz that wheezes into my ears, bothering me. Work exists to get on my last nerve. People’s voices and office sounds are loud and distorted. Lights are overly bright and flicker terribly. The chair is uncomfortably hard, and pushes relentlessly against my thighs. I’m getting a cramp in my leg. In the cafeteria at lunch, cutlery clanks in faint, but distinct, discordant flats and sharps that tear at my sensibilities. A tremendous rustling noise, like the sound of a brisk wind through an autumn forest, is produced by a man removing the cellophane from a Twinkie. The pop tastes like summer hose-water. I’ve got a stomachache. The colored plastic tendrils decorating the toothpick through the deli sandwich I bought are so little, they’re ticking me off. I need to get out.
I leave work two hours early, overwhelmed by the headache’s constant thudding and no longer able to interpret my computer screen. The city is masked in a harsh bright glare of blending colors. My hypersensitive vision gathers every possible image, but the brain is unable to interpret each fully, so parts of each distinct object are interspersed with parts of other objects, and I perceive one great scramble of visual signals, like there is a finger-painted wall directly in front of me. I use my cane to navigate, ignoring the incomprehensible, and false, appearance of my surroundings. I normally don’t need the cane, as I usually possess enough vision to find my way by sight, but under the beast’s influence, I am functionally blind. It is not a blindness of darkness, like I probably imagined before I became visually impaired, but a bright blindness, brought about by excess, rather than absence, of light. I determine the safety of crossing streets by sound, which is normally pretty efficient, as motor vehicles make substantial noise, and my practiced hearing is adept at estimating distance by ear. In my current state, though, the task is complicated by my headache and insomnia enhanced hearing. Complicated, but safe, as my ability to hear further than usual necessitates greater caution, and I detect, and wait for, cars that sound imminent, but are actually too far away to do me any harm. I wait a long time at each crosswalk, until nothing but silence prowls the street, and feel the way to the bus with the cane. Its vibration as it taps the sidewalk sends tiny shocks up my arm, making it tingle as if asleep. I struggle to remain oblivious to all the useless information coursing through me, and concentrate on the cane’s interpretation, which is the only reliable input I am receiving. This works. I make it home without incident.
I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening vainly trying to decipher the television, as it shoots off thousands of images and words every minute. I get in bed with my wife at the regular time, each movement causing a small, uncomfortable disturbance in the pounding pattern. The sheet feels like sandpaper as I lay back and drag it up over my sensitized skin. The sound of the sheet rubbing against itself and the bed has an underlying, normally inaudible, scraping quality that gives me a dose of the creeps. I don’t understand how I still manage to grasp at the faintest shred of hope for sleep at this point, but I do. This hope is not based on experience, but on probability. Even in the midst of the most frantic, pounding pain, sleep sometimes comes. Why not now, instead of at 3:30? The odds are slightly worse than those for being struck by lightening while placing a winning single-number roulette bet. The pounding exerts itself. I lay on my back, staring at the fireworks hovering above. I hear my wife’s breathing change, the pressure distorting the soft sounds until her breath bellows and booms as she drifts away. I stay like this for an hour, experiencing the headache, continually examining its effects and adjusting my model, which now approaches perfection. The level of pressure escalates, banging through my temples, shaking my whole body with slight twitches. Futility appears. Sleep is totally out of the question, despite need and desire, as mounting pressure renders exhaustion irrelevant. Headache insomnia dominates the evening’s activities.
The beast is everywhere, following or leading me as I pace about. It exaggerates every sense. Normally quiet night sounds are amplified and distorted. I hear every hand dragging across the face of every clock in the house. The air conditioner kicks on with a boom, then produces a high-pitched, grating squeal as it runs. I pace, because the timing of my steps is out of cadence with my heartbeat, distracting me from the incessant throbbing. The floor is too hard. Not content with having my feet lightly tread on it, it pushes up against them, causing me to stumble. I can smell everything we’ve cooked, and cleaned with, for the past several days, all in one nauseating mix of odors. As I pass through dark rooms, walls emit bright flashes, which shoot through my pupils as they are sucked into the diseased vortex. As always, a portion of the particles comprising each flash cannot adhere to the macular surface and are discarded into the back of my head, creating more substance to feed the raging beast.
Eventually, without complete conscious intent, I collapse into the wheeled office chair at my computer and lean back, gripping the arms tightly. There is no sensation but the heartbeat-timed pounding pain. I suddenly understand it is yellow, but the perception is not entirely visual. Although each beat causes an incredible instant of pressure along the veins in my temples that is accompanied by a yellow flash, other senses also perceive the headache pain’s nature. It feels profoundly yellow. It tastes yellow. The air is thick with a yellow smell that makes it difficult to take full breaths, and I hear a roaring, yellow sound. I grip the chair more tightly, lean back, and roll around slightly. I can tell the beast is close to the surface.
“Show yourself,” I scream, without verbalization, willing it to appear.
Nothing happens. I rock back, immersed in my lonely, insomniac world. I slip away, somehow, for several minutes, only realizing I am asleep when I experience waking. A prickling sensation goads the back of my head, running up the base of my neck, resulting in a body shaking shiver that wakes me. From the corner of one eye, I glimpse a yellowish white wisp of fine mist originating somewhere behind me. It passes in front, a continuous stream of bright yellow dots, like the illuminated dust of a comet’s tail, and circles my head. The stream spirals and wraps around my head several times, about six inches away. The spiral grows and twists with dizzying speed until I am looking up into a tornado of yellow flecks. The funnel configuration’s source is an unseen point somewhere at the back of my head, where the headache’s pressure forces accumulated scraps of wasted light to ooze from my skull. Through delirium, I watch a cloud take shape inches from my face. An area is defined where shimmering particles move closer together, forming a shape more yellow than the streams of more widely spaced lights in the funnel. The shape takes form, appearing to be a stocky, flying gnome. It dances before my eyes, jerking in frantic, arrogant, irritating gestures. It’s long, narrow, pointy face emerges, astoundingly yellow. It doesn’t look like a real person, but like an exaggerated painting of a mythical face, the face of a deranged pixie, twisted by misery and spite. The horrid grimace floats, becoming a shade more yellow as each beat of my heart pushes another wave of pain and light out of my brain to nourish it. The pressure is so severe, it conveys the impression I have a high fever. In an insomniac’s desperate boredom, I put my hand on my head every thirteen seconds to check, but detect no heat. With each heartbeat, I grow hotter, the pressure stronger, the pain more nauseating. The demon glows a shade of perfect, fully saturated yellow, so pure and beautiful it is not meant for this world. As I am able to experience the color with all of my senses, the shock of its purity overwhelms me. I pass out.
I wake in the chair, sweating slightly, to a house at normal volume. No throbbing and little pressure remain. It’s over. Eyestrain headache, it doesn’t sound so bad. Perhaps it isn’t. On a day with acceptably obscured vision, average ability in use of my other senses, and the absence of excessive pressure, I don’t think it is.
***
Romantic Chemistry
by Jamie R. (June 21, 2003)
I was nearly an accredited scientist, but my extensive knowledge of medicine and biochemistry were useless at that point. The malady I suffered was real, but its symptoms could not be measured, so no treatment was prescribed. It was an emotional affliction that expressed itself physically. Fluctuations in pulse-rate, associated with my body's adjustments to minor chemical imbalances, caused variation in temperature and waves of manic exhilaration, resulting in pleasant, euphoric disorientation.
That inexplicable reaction some call love.
Schooled in science, I did not entertain the false notion I control my actions. I realized I was merely a sustained chemical reaction, which, although poorly understood, had somewhat predictable results. Somewhat, for I could not foretell whose byproducts would react with mine, or when, but it happened.
My particular composition causes me to react strangely to certain chemical emissions of the female of the species. Since adolescence, I had been assaulted by many such mixtures, and combinations of varying potency had been formed by contacts with nearly every female I crossed compounds with. I resisted, sustained by my love of freedom and fear of rejection, avoiding commitment at all costs. In loneliness, I found independence, unburdened by others’ expectations.
After years of suppressing irrational feeling, I thought I was numb with indifference and immune to entanglement, especially with somebody with whom I had absolutely nothing in common. She was from an elevated social plane, and destined to remain there, so I, an impoverished science student, was no great catch. This was irrelevant at the molecular level, as she emitted reagents that explosively reacted with mine, producing insanity causing substances my body had never contained. I fell. The newly forming solution inside me was reaching saturation, yielding emotional precipitation that compelled me to act, to speak. I had to tell her.
"I really like you."
Getting close.
"I enjoy being with you."
Closer still.
Under the influence of strange chemicals, I longed to confess I thought I would die every time she left, that I felt like I was dead when she was away for a few days, that I smelled like I was dead when I knew I would not see her and neglected my personal hygiene.
"I missed you so much."
How close can you get? Complete saturation was attained, the reaction formed the words and forced them from my mouth.
"I love you. I’m in love with you. I want to spend every second together, and dedicate my life to becoming your ideal husband."
There, I had finally said it, the 'three little words.'
Then, her reply. Would it have been so hard for her to repeat them, like a chant? Three tiny syllables. Not much of a strain, phonologically speaking. Say it, sweetheart, I know you feel the same. But knowing and knowing are two different things.
Apparently, a side-effect of my condition was the clouding of scientific objectivity, leading me to the unsubstantiated assumption a two-way reaction had been taking place. Upon further analysis, however, I concluded her emissions were catalytic in nature, causing a reaction in me while leaving her own composition unchanged. Instead of three small words, I got one little word and one bigger word.
"I'm flattered."
What now? Suicide? Nope. Distance. The reaction intensified, making me unable to respond verbally, forcing adrenalin into my legs and bidding them to carry me homeward.
Inexplicably, at least in my scientific philosophy, the words changed the reaction’s effects, though not the reaction itself. I hypothesize the particular sonic-wave pattern of her chosen words created chemical impulses that altered my perception. The love-induced euphoria was pulverized by the ailment’s overpowering physical manifestations. My racing heart no longer excited, but sent jolts of painful pressure through my head, as if I had a gas-station air hose jammed in my ear. Alterations in body temperature occurred so rapidly, I nearly froze to death from heat exhaustion. Instead of happy intoxication, disequilibria now seemed to produce vile, poisonous materials.
So, I did what any chemist would do when faced with an uncontrollable reaction. I knew it was theoretically impossible to stop it, so I let it run its course. Containment was the only viable solution. I stayed home sweating and vomiting for four days, expelling failed love’s noxious residue. With the removal of the catalyst, the churning reaction eventually subsided. I fell out.
***
Headache Insomnia
By Jamie R. (July 12, 2003)
I sometimes even see the hideous yellow face of my pain, but not very often. When I do, it is always about the same time, in the same room. I am unsure whether my pain lives there, then, and beckons me to join it, or if it follows me. It doesn’t matter. We are both there, and it shows itself.
My pain’s vehicle, either creator or progeny, is a breed of headache I was unfamiliar with when I was fully sighted. An eyestrain headache, the doctor concludes, advising me to cease the stressful activity and try aspirin for the pain. Since I am legally blind, I view much of the world through one type of magnifying glass or another, so now experience plenty of eyestrain, while I did not when I had normal vision. I believe the diagnosis, but the dullard’s feeble prescription is unrealistic and insulting. It is obvious the activity in question is my economic survival in a visually intensive society, so stopping is impossible. I don’t expect him to know aspirin is worse than useless, but I’m insulted to find he thinks me such a slack-wit that I never thought to pursue that mundane course of treatment. Still, he can’t know the futility of using over-the-counter remedies, as his narrow philosophy only permits the headache to be a medical condition. I know otherwise, because the headache I experience is always the same one. It came with my disability and lives inside me, usually dormant and causing no ill effects. Occasionally, it wakens, grows, and comes to visit, not a recurring malady, but an entity possessing volition and guile. I know this. I am an intimate terms with the being. We live together, and I alone am capable of understanding it. Eyestrain headache, it doesn’t sound so bad. Discussing it rationally, only possible in it’s absence, reduces it to a purely intellectual construction, and enables me to believe it isn’t.
My eyestrain headache differs from other kinds I experience. It resides in a place near the geometric center of my brain. When it arises, it stays up with me for several days, so if I manage to sleep, and cheat it out of part of its due, respite is brief. It waits for me to wake. In the morning, it signals with sharp messages, moderate jabs running up the back of my neck that urge full consciousness. The headache’s most distinctive quality, though, is it is accompanied by a myriad of visual effects. These begin hours before the pain, so serve to foretell the headache’s arrival, as well as to accent and enhance its discomfort for the episode’s duration. Aside from a general deterioration of my already poor sight, further blurring, and slower image-interpretation, the headache is heralded with, and accompanied by, flashing lights. In the beginning, the lights are small and subtle, thousands of tiny dots, like proximate stars, twinkling around me. When I see them, I know the headache is coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. As the entity grows, the lights become bigger and brighter, even violent. When the show is at its peak, it seems as if I walk through a dim corridor lined with photographers continuously snapping flash pictures with inappropriately powerful gear. Each flash is a concentrated spotlight aimed directly at my retinas. After each hits its mark, residual light lingers and scatters, adding additional distortion to the disturbances of new flashes. When the being rages and I am out in the city, the world is an only partially existent, dangerous place. Over half of my normally poor vision is occupied with flashes, which erodes my ability to interpret actual objects, such as moving cars. I often experience near collisions, but, immersed in the headache’s unpleasant fog, I don’t care much at the time.
The first day is not too bad. In my cubicle at work, I look up from the computer. A thin trail of lights drags behind my shifting line of sight. They appear as fireworks, incredibly small, intense spheres of brightness that quickly fade and vanish. This is the headache’s announcement of its intended arrival. It never visits without calling first. I look at the clock and feel fear, as it is only one, which means the beast will be with me by the time I head out. Aside from anxiety, there are no other unpleasant effects. The lights are even beautiful and interesting to watch, a private display being shot off for my sole enjoyment. I spend an inordinate amount of time not working, just watching the show.
The infant headache is born by the end of the day. It gets my attention, makes me aware we are together, but doesn’t push it. I walk through the streets and ride the bus home with little difficulty and only minor irritation, a dull throbbing and intermittent dim lights. The pace picks up during the evening, as my wife and I talk and watch television. I am communicative, as the pain is mild, though grows more insistent as the being organizes and consolidates. I feign disinterest in the creature. I believe this annoys it, but have no evidence. I have a hunch. The night passes relatively well, as the headache only manages to deliver a powerful enough stab to wrench me from sleep every hour. I get out of bed and pace, then drift off again, spending the night alternating between hour-long periods of sleep and half-hour periods of wakefulness. This ragged pattern takes a toll, adding the disorienting, will-eroding effects of sleeplessness to the headache’s discomfort, giving the malaise a surreal edge.
The second day begins with the headache nagging, exerting a constant, but not severe, pressure. Each heartbeat creates a throb in the center of my head. It is tolerable, but causes slight dizziness. Out in the town on my way to work, the environment begins to change. Sounds are slightly louder than they ought. Colors appear more vibrant and bleed together, making it difficult to ascertain where one object leaves off and another begins. The flashing is sporadic and weak, creating few problems. Work is transformed into a series of mildly irritating events. Slightly loud or improperly pitched voices bug me. Fluorescent lights emit annoying purplish glare. Why does the phone keep ringing? Through all this, the headache builds, its dull throbbing punctuated with occasional jabs of intense pain. I get through it.
By bedtime, the event is in full swing. I can no longer hide the headache, but I don’t actively whine. I don’t have to. I sit silently while my wife speaks to me a language I am presently unable to understand. Like an incompetent field linguist, I make crude and ineffective attempts to isolate, and attach meaning to, patterns in the noises she makes, but the pounding has long since rendered incoming communications difficult, at best, to interpret. Coherent outgoing messages are also unlikely, as the intense pressure in my head clogs the route between my brain and vocal chords, making transmission of formulated ideas between the two points physically improbable. I gape moronically as she talks, unable to fully comprehend or adequately acknowledge, occasionally contributing a few slurred syllables of partially articulated words, which, she claims, come out as meaningless grunts and hums. In this manner, I whine passively, complaining implicitly with my silence. Because I don’t say anything, she knows the headache is with me. Although I don’t want to spread even a bit of my misery onto her, I can’t care. I refuse to hold myself accountable for communication without intent.
The night is long. Brief bouts of fitful sleep are interrupted by extended periods of wide-awake staring at the ceiling, contemplating various aspects of the headache. I can only imagine how it occurs, and I do. I imagine it so fully, my version becomes true. It becomes truer than fact, better than science, because it is entirely contained in my mind. After countless sleepless headache nights spent in study, a detailed, meticulously constructed, working model of the process is housed in my brain. There, I can examine it, test it, change it until it works. As I conceptualize each mechanism, I feel it occur, verifying my assumptions until they are true.
The eyes constantly gather images. They draw particles of light from objects and suck them in through the pupils in streams, funneling them towards the retina for reassembly and interpretation. The retina’s central area, the macula, is the vortex to which the swirling fragments are drawn. In the retina of the normally sighted, the particles hit the macula and stick, accurately reconstructing the observed image, and the eye’s muscles and nerves relax while they await the next signal.
In my retina, the process operates differently. The particles strike the degenerated macula, and those that hit a good spot stick, while others bounce off diseased points of impact and scatter, reduced to incomprehensible fragments of colored light. They ricochet around on useless tissue for a while, then lay, unused, at the back of the eye. The brain struggles to make sense of the fragments that stuck, forced to work hard at the task of filling in gaps, which often fails. While the nerves and muscles are still trying to diagnose and fix the problem, another cascade of swirling light particles, drawn from a new image, hits the macula. Again, some stick, while others tumble to the back. A heap of wasted light forms at the back of the eyes, growing with each new bombardment. The recesses at the back of the eyes fill to bursting. It has to go somewhere. The pressure from the growing pile forces fragments out through fissures too tiny for them to pass through otherwise. The light seeps out of the back of the eye, directly into the brain cavity serving as the hibernating monster’s lair. The particles of energy touch the sleeping beast, curling around it in a fine mist. The headache grows and takes shape, gathering seeping light particles more and more as each image strikes the macula on the other side of the cracks. The beast becomes itself, again.
It’s happening right now. I’m in bed, staring at the ceiling, testing my model against the feelings I am experiencing. I find them to be consistent, as I can almost hear each discarded particle tinkling onto the swelling heap and feel the minute increase in pressure each new addition causes. Sometime after four, I doze, despite the ruckus. Or maybe, on account of it. Perhaps the continuous hammering knocks me senseless. Either way, I’m grateful for the break. No, an eyestrain headache doesn’t sound so bad, but when it greets me at daybreak with a worse banging pain than the one I fell asleep with, it seems like it is.
As soon as I begin to stir, but still cling to precious unconsciousness, the headache strengthens. The morning birds give it the momentum it needs to obliterate the remaining remnants of sleep. Just before it succeeds, less than half awake, I dream their songs, which are several times louder than necessary and carry disturbing, oddly spaced notes that cause a wave of almost physical revulsion. I ride the sickening wave out of oblivion into headache reality.
The morning is bad. The headache, annoyed with impatience from waiting, pushes me to full alertness with a few rapid, particularly nasty jolts. Now that I’m fully awake, no sharp edges are dulled, and my return to total awareness of every aspect of the headache makes me recall being up nearly all night, dealing with it’s uncomfortable effects. I seriously doubt sleep ever really came. Up for work, I am a zombie shuffling through a hostile haze of pounding pressure and distorted perception, automatically performing the necessary motions without thought. Out into the city at seven presents a dreary, surreal scene. Every sense heightened by the headache and lack of sleep, I am assaulted by brightness and sound. The light hurts my eyes. A quiet noise from a passing car contains a peculiar, high-pitched buzz that wheezes into my ears, bothering me. Work exists to get on my last nerve. People’s voices and office sounds are loud and distorted. Lights are overly bright and flicker terribly. The chair is uncomfortably hard, and pushes relentlessly against my thighs. I’m getting a cramp in my leg. In the cafeteria at lunch, cutlery clanks in faint, but distinct, discordant flats and sharps that tear at my sensibilities. A tremendous rustling noise, like the sound of a brisk wind through an autumn forest, is produced by a man removing the cellophane from a Twinkie. The pop tastes like summer hose-water. I’ve got a stomachache. The colored plastic tendrils decorating the toothpick through the deli sandwich I bought are so little, they’re ticking me off. I need to get out.
I leave work two hours early, overwhelmed by the headache’s constant thudding and no longer able to interpret my computer screen. The city is masked in a harsh bright glare of blending colors. My hypersensitive vision gathers every possible image, but the brain is unable to interpret each fully, so parts of each distinct object are interspersed with parts of other objects, and I perceive one great scramble of visual signals, like there is a finger-painted wall directly in front of me. I use my cane to navigate, ignoring the incomprehensible, and false, appearance of my surroundings. I normally don’t need the cane, as I usually possess enough vision to find my way by sight, but under the beast’s influence, I am functionally blind. It is not a blindness of darkness, like I probably imagined before I became visually impaired, but a bright blindness, brought about by excess, rather than absence, of light. I determine the safety of crossing streets by sound, which is normally pretty efficient, as motor vehicles make substantial noise, and my practiced hearing is adept at estimating distance by ear. In my current state, though, the task is complicated by my headache and insomnia enhanced hearing. Complicated, but safe, as my ability to hear further than usual necessitates greater caution, and I detect, and wait for, cars that sound imminent, but are actually too far away to do me any harm. I wait a long time at each crosswalk, until nothing but silence prowls the street, and feel the way to the bus with the cane. Its vibration as it taps the sidewalk sends tiny shocks up my arm, making it tingle as if asleep. I struggle to remain oblivious to all the useless information coursing through me, and concentrate on the cane’s interpretation, which is the only reliable input I am receiving. This works. I make it home without incident.
I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening vainly trying to decipher the television, as it shoots off thousands of images and words every minute. I get in bed with my wife at the regular time, each movement causing a small, uncomfortable disturbance in the pounding pattern. The sheet feels like sandpaper as I lay back and drag it up over my sensitized skin. The sound of the sheet rubbing against itself and the bed has an underlying, normally inaudible, scraping quality that gives me a dose of the creeps. I don’t understand how I still manage to grasp at the faintest shred of hope for sleep at this point, but I do. This hope is not based on experience, but on probability. Even in the midst of the most frantic, pounding pain, sleep sometimes comes. Why not now, instead of at 3:30? The odds are slightly worse than those for being struck by lightening while placing a winning single-number roulette bet. The pounding exerts itself. I lay on my back, staring at the fireworks hovering above. I hear my wife’s breathing change, the pressure distorting the soft sounds until her breath bellows and booms as she drifts away. I stay like this for an hour, experiencing the headache, continually examining its effects and adjusting my model, which now approaches perfection. The level of pressure escalates, banging through my temples, shaking my whole body with slight twitches. Futility appears. Sleep is totally out of the question, despite need and desire, as mounting pressure renders exhaustion irrelevant. Headache insomnia dominates the evening’s activities.
The beast is everywhere, following or leading me as I pace about. It exaggerates every sense. Normally quiet night sounds are amplified and distorted. I hear every hand dragging across the face of every clock in the house. The air conditioner kicks on with a boom, then produces a high-pitched, grating squeal as it runs. I pace, because the timing of my steps is out of cadence with my heartbeat, distracting me from the incessant throbbing. The floor is too hard. Not content with having my feet lightly tread on it, it pushes up against them, causing me to stumble. I can smell everything we’ve cooked, and cleaned with, for the past several days, all in one nauseating mix of odors. As I pass through dark rooms, walls emit bright flashes, which shoot through my pupils as they are sucked into the diseased vortex. As always, a portion of the particles comprising each flash cannot adhere to the macular surface and are discarded into the back of my head, creating more substance to feed the raging beast.
Eventually, without complete conscious intent, I collapse into the wheeled office chair at my computer and lean back, gripping the arms tightly. There is no sensation but the heartbeat-timed pounding pain. I suddenly understand it is yellow, but the perception is not entirely visual. Although each beat causes an incredible instant of pressure along the veins in my temples that is accompanied by a yellow flash, other senses also perceive the headache pain’s nature. It feels profoundly yellow. It tastes yellow. The air is thick with a yellow smell that makes it difficult to take full breaths, and I hear a roaring, yellow sound. I grip the chair more tightly, lean back, and roll around slightly. I can tell the beast is close to the surface.
“Show yourself,” I scream, without verbalization, willing it to appear.
Nothing happens. I rock back, immersed in my lonely, insomniac world. I slip away, somehow, for several minutes, only realizing I am asleep when I experience waking. A prickling sensation goads the back of my head, running up the base of my neck, resulting in a body shaking shiver that wakes me. From the corner of one eye, I glimpse a yellowish white wisp of fine mist originating somewhere behind me. It passes in front, a continuous stream of bright yellow dots, like the illuminated dust of a comet’s tail, and circles my head. The stream spirals and wraps around my head several times, about six inches away. The spiral grows and twists with dizzying speed until I am looking up into a tornado of yellow flecks. The funnel configuration’s source is an unseen point somewhere at the back of my head, where the headache’s pressure forces accumulated scraps of wasted light to ooze from my skull. Through delirium, I watch a cloud take shape inches from my face. An area is defined where shimmering particles move closer together, forming a shape more yellow than the streams of more widely spaced lights in the funnel. The shape takes form, appearing to be a stocky, flying gnome. It dances before my eyes, jerking in frantic, arrogant, irritating gestures. It’s long, narrow, pointy face emerges, astoundingly yellow. It doesn’t look like a real person, but like an exaggerated painting of a mythical face, the face of a deranged pixie, twisted by misery and spite. The horrid grimace floats, becoming a shade more yellow as each beat of my heart pushes another wave of pain and light out of my brain to nourish it. The pressure is so severe, it conveys the impression I have a high fever. In an insomniac’s desperate boredom, I put my hand on my head every thirteen seconds to check, but detect no heat. With each heartbeat, I grow hotter, the pressure stronger, the pain more nauseating. The demon glows a shade of perfect, fully saturated yellow, so pure and beautiful it is not meant for this world. As I am able to experience the color with all of my senses, the shock of its purity overwhelms me. I pass out.
I wake in the chair, sweating slightly, to a house at normal volume. No throbbing and little pressure remain. It’s over. Eyestrain headache, it doesn’t sound so bad. Perhaps it isn’t. On a day with acceptably obscured vision, average ability in use of my other senses, and the absence of excessive pressure, I don’t think it is.
***
Romantic Chemistry
by Jamie R. (June 21, 2003)
I was nearly an accredited scientist, but my extensive knowledge of medicine and biochemistry were useless at that point. The malady I suffered was real, but its symptoms could not be measured, so no treatment was prescribed. It was an emotional affliction that expressed itself physically. Fluctuations in pulse-rate, associated with my body's adjustments to minor chemical imbalances, caused variation in temperature and waves of manic exhilaration, resulting in pleasant, euphoric disorientation.
That inexplicable reaction some call love.
Schooled in science, I did not entertain the false notion I control my actions. I realized I was merely a sustained chemical reaction, which, although poorly understood, had somewhat predictable results. Somewhat, for I could not foretell whose byproducts would react with mine, or when, but it happened.
My particular composition causes me to react strangely to certain chemical emissions of the female of the species. Since adolescence, I had been assaulted by many such mixtures, and combinations of varying potency had been formed by contacts with nearly every female I crossed compounds with. I resisted, sustained by my love of freedom and fear of rejection, avoiding commitment at all costs. In loneliness, I found independence, unburdened by others’ expectations.
After years of suppressing irrational feeling, I thought I was numb with indifference and immune to entanglement, especially with somebody with whom I had absolutely nothing in common. She was from an elevated social plane, and destined to remain there, so I, an impoverished science student, was no great catch. This was irrelevant at the molecular level, as she emitted reagents that explosively reacted with mine, producing insanity causing substances my body had never contained. I fell. The newly forming solution inside me was reaching saturation, yielding emotional precipitation that compelled me to act, to speak. I had to tell her.
"I really like you."
Getting close.
"I enjoy being with you."
Closer still.
Under the influence of strange chemicals, I longed to confess I thought I would die every time she left, that I felt like I was dead when she was away for a few days, that I smelled like I was dead when I knew I would not see her and neglected my personal hygiene.
"I missed you so much."
How close can you get? Complete saturation was attained, the reaction formed the words and forced them from my mouth.
"I love you. I’m in love with you. I want to spend every second together, and dedicate my life to becoming your ideal husband."
There, I had finally said it, the 'three little words.'
Then, her reply. Would it have been so hard for her to repeat them, like a chant? Three tiny syllables. Not much of a strain, phonologically speaking. Say it, sweetheart, I know you feel the same. But knowing and knowing are two different things.
Apparently, a side-effect of my condition was the clouding of scientific objectivity, leading me to the unsubstantiated assumption a two-way reaction had been taking place. Upon further analysis, however, I concluded her emissions were catalytic in nature, causing a reaction in me while leaving her own composition unchanged. Instead of three small words, I got one little word and one bigger word.
"I'm flattered."
What now? Suicide? Nope. Distance. The reaction intensified, making me unable to respond verbally, forcing adrenalin into my legs and bidding them to carry me homeward.
Inexplicably, at least in my scientific philosophy, the words changed the reaction’s effects, though not the reaction itself. I hypothesize the particular sonic-wave pattern of her chosen words created chemical impulses that altered my perception. The love-induced euphoria was pulverized by the ailment’s overpowering physical manifestations. My racing heart no longer excited, but sent jolts of painful pressure through my head, as if I had a gas-station air hose jammed in my ear. Alterations in body temperature occurred so rapidly, I nearly froze to death from heat exhaustion. Instead of happy intoxication, disequilibria now seemed to produce vile, poisonous materials.
So, I did what any chemist would do when faced with an uncontrollable reaction. I knew it was theoretically impossible to stop it, so I let it run its course. Containment was the only viable solution. I stayed home sweating and vomiting for four days, expelling failed love’s noxious residue. With the removal of the catalyst, the churning reaction eventually subsided. I fell out.
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