how to deal with an unruly head

 

I had to get Fanny back. Mutant mosquitoes aside, if I was going to win her back, I had to do exactly what she said: take care of my little friend once and for all.

How many ways are there, I wondered, to reverse the knowledge process and empty out all the rotten information that was steadily usurping my brain? Is it even possible? If there was a way, I was determined to find it.

But how? Yes, I could have sex with a bag over my head again, but it’s just not dependable. Besides, even sex with a purple-haired broad from the street corner gets really expensive over time. Where do they come up with their price structure, anyway?

Getting hit by a car again? No, thanks. Like I said, I’m not going back to the hospital. What’s more, you have no idea how expensive a date that turned out to be. Of course it didn’t bother me at the time, maybe because I had my head all wrapped up and was sucking my dinner through a crazy straw. When I got the bill six weeks later: you don’t even want to know.

I thought: What if I become a head-banger? True, I was a little old to start listening to skinhead music now, but rapidly shaking your head back and forth causes axons to tear, which leads to brain cells dying. It worked for Tom Araya of Slayer, maybe it would work for me. I doubt it.

Maybe I could become a professional football player. You know what I’m talking about. Too many suicides, though. Besides, I was a little old to start playing football now. Brain damage by football is something you have to start planning for at an early age.

If I had Sleep Apnea, that would be a good way to knock brain cells off. Lack of oxygen to the brain, a direct result of sleep apnea, is a great way to do damage, more specifically memory loss, but it’s not very romantic.

I could have a stroke. That would kill of plenty of brain cells. The only problem is, I could wind up talking like Kirk Douglas—for fifty years!

What about Lyme disease? They say if Lyme disease goes undetected and untreated, it can lead to memory loss and the inability to concentrate. But how in the world do you go about getting Lyme disease, anyway? Forget about it.

I could ingest massive doses of carbon monoxide by inhaling exhaust fumes from a motor vehicle, but I don’t even own a car. What am I supposed to do, chase after buses all day? They say the fumes that come off a welding torch contain high amounts of manganese, a sure-fire path to Parkinson’s disease; but I’m not a welder. Damn welders have all the luck.

Even if I could come up with enough one-offs and miracle cures, still, they’re just not dependable. I needed something more reliable, something I could count on day in and day out. So I got on a regimen, a daily routine I put together from a list I found on the Internet, a series of cheap and easy steps that were guaranteed to kill brain cells on a more consistent basis. Here’s a thought: don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. But I tried it anyway. It went like this.

I’d start off each day after a long night of sleep deprivation. When I could, I’d stay up all night. If I had to, I’d get by on just one or two hours sleep. Next, I’d consume a healthy supply of junk food: Fritos, Cheetos, Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and my favorites: those little, white-powdered donuts. I could eat those little white donuts all day long.

Then, I got into dehydrating myself. When that didn’t work, I started drinking way too much water. Next, I started eating microwave popcorn, even sticking my finger in the electrical socket. Still, no success.

So I came up with something simpler, more down to earth. Every morning I’d wake up, take a nice hot shower, make a fresh pot of coffee, read the morning paper, then slam my head into the wall. Most mornings, it was just enough to get me through the day. Other mornings, I got lucky and hit a stud. Those were especially good days. But eventually the sheetrock got to looking like Swiss cheese, and I had to move onto something else or risk bringing the whole wall down.

Next, I started hanging myself. Just enough length of rope and I was right and ready to take-on the day. However, after the ceiling fan hit the floor, and all the crossbeams split and cracked, that good thing went the way of the dinosaur.

Incidentally, you know what happened to the dinosaurs, right? They all were cleared off by land developers. Picture this: you’re in your backyard, enjoying your patio view of the golf course, grilling up some steaks, having a nice glass of Cabernet, and a family of dinosaurs drops in. Think about it. It’s just common sense.

All this bashing my head into places and hanging around, there had to be a better way of life. Besides, I’d bitten off half my tongue and there were rope burns all over my neck that forced me to wear turtlenecks. I hate turtlenecks!

Nope, I had lived too long and I knew too much. It was going to take decades to drain all the useless knowledge I had swimming around inside my head. Only thing was: I didn’t have decades. I didn’t have years. I didn’t have months, either. Looking at all the homeless people everywhere, my thoughts kept taking me back to booze and marijuana. At least, that’s what my brain kept telling me. What my brain didn’t know was, I was onto its mind games by now.

You see, we are forever in an ongoing battle with our brains. All of us. While one part of our brain is busy building us up, another part is tasked with tearing us down, This is the duplicitous nature of the human brain that while keeping us alive, is killing us just the same.

These are the same two parts of our brains working in concert that convince us that starting a war is the best way to attain peace. It’s the same reason why so many people used to swan dive off the Empire State building. While climbing to the top to get a good view sounded like a great idea, in the end they convinced themselves that jumping off was an even better one. It’s also why they had to close the whole thing off with chicken wire.

So you see, while my brain was busy telling me that drowning myself in booze was a good way to do myself in, the truth was it was anything but. What my brain didn’t know was that I had recently read a very interesting article in a well-respected medical journal. Guess what? Alcohol doesn’t kill off brain cells after all.

The article said:

 

When alcohol reaches the brain, it disables function by damaging the connective tissue at the end of neurons. This disrupts communication among neurons and makes it harder for an individual to focus or complete minor tasks. However, our bodies are incredibly resilient and for the most part forgiving works of nature. This alcohol-induced cell rampage does minor damage and most definitely does not result in the cell’s death.

 

In short, all alcohol does is disrupt communications. Seriously? So all those winos out there, they’re brains are perfectly functional, they just can’t spit it out the words? Not even if they’re drinking motor oil?

Then, I discovered another interesting little tidbit: marijuana doesn’t kill off brain cells, either. A study in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, from Cambridge University, states that marijuana does not cause long-term brain damage in users. So what’s wrong with those potheads who live in my building? I guess if there wasn’t too much to begin with, there wasn’t too much to lose. Looks can be deceiving sometimes.

So what’s a poor boy to do? I was plum out of ideas. It seemed like my brain was bound to get the better of me when suddenly, like divine intervention, I discovered Huffing.