Brain Dungeon

Dear Stacy’s friend who works at a convenience store and sent a whole case of energy drinks with her to our office as a promotional thing:

I want to thank you for your generosity in thinking about Stacy and the people she works with. Working in an office all day long can actually be quite draining and sitting in front of a computer all day can literally make people lose all will to actually even move their fingers to type…I think that’s why voice recognition software was created. Having liquid energy in 16oz cans sitting in our office fridge is hugely convenient.

Anyway, while I am appreciative of the gesture, I thought I would let you know what happened after consuming my first 6 cans during my lunch hour yesterday.

First of all, I was mildly amused by the moniker of “Earth Shattering Energy” on the can…at first. After the third can or so, I realized that this was no “amusing” matter. Truth be told I am a little concerned that my internal organs may not stop violently spasming. I probably should have stopped after the 5th can as the MRI at the ER last night revealed severe bruising of my brain. They asked if I had been in an accident of some kind because it was like my brain had bounced around in my skull violently for hours. I guess it’s a good thing they’re low-carb…imagine if I’d had all that sugar too!!!

Also, did you know that one serving of that energy drink has 100% recommended daily values of Niacin (B3), 190% of B6 and 180% of B12? Did you also know that there are 2 servings per can? I guess consuming 1200% of B3, 2280% of B6 and 2160% of B12 in under an hour throws your vitamin balance a little off. I couldn’t touch a computer for the rest of the day because my body actually absorbed all the A’s, C’s, D’s and E’s off every screen and keyboard I came in contact with. Imagine that! I had the energy and will to work, but COULDN’T!

I did some reading on the symptoms of overdosing on B vitamins, but there is one side effect that I suffered that I couldn’t seem to correlate and was wondering if you’d heard of it. After about 2 hours and 8 more cans of energy drink, the two separate hemispheres of my brain seemed to begin operating independantly of each other…and without regard to my willful operation of the finer motor functions of my own body, my right arm ripped my left arm clean off my body and started beating me in the face with it. I ran around the office screaming for help, but no one would come near me. And when I say “ran” I’m using the term loosely. My left leg ran, but my right leg stubbornly stood in one place so really I was just spinning around in circles. Have you ever beaten yourself in the face with your own dismembered arm while spinning in circles and screaming? Apparently others see that is “crazy.” The blows must have been pretty forceful too because, although the bruising and cracked bones in my face will heal quickly, I am still having trouble finding the middle and ring fingers of my left arm. I think it is important to note at this point that my right arm was the prosthetic one.

As I can generally be a little crazy at work, it took a while for anyone to realize just how serious a reaction I was having. I must have told them over and over I really needed help, but apparently it was coming out as “FADA BADA BADA BADA BLUH BLUH BLUH FFFF THBBBBBB”. While this isn’t completely unusual for me in the office, this time I hadn’t been on a tech support call for the last hour.

Lastly, I thought it interesting to note that until the final 4 cans yesterday I thought the term “jumping out of my skin” was just a euphimism. Did you know seeing a living human body with no skin can actually make people vomit? Although it probably didn’t help that my skeleton wasn’t much support for all the meat because it had vibrated to almost complete liquification.

Anyway – sorry to go on and on, but I just wanted to thank you again for thinking of us. Aside from the missing fingers, the doctors seem confident that I will be mostly back to normal after a heart transplant, brain surgery, and after they reapply my skin and re-attach my left arm. I look forward to trying the other flavors of that energy drink!

Here I am! I’ve been busy and busy and busy and well…something came up that I just HAVE to share.

For the past week, I have been visiting several of our restaurants before opening time and at closing time to perform some updates to the databases in their registers. This is a fairly arduous task and has been the cause of some sleep deprivation I’ve had this past week. Every day I have been up some time between 3AM and 4AM (for those of you who are particular about it, that’s Central Standard Time), so that I could be in the stores and have the full process completed before they opened their doors at 6. THEN, I would visit a store at 10 and perform the updates and get out of the stores around 12 or 1 (again, central standard time).

There was also work to be done during the day, and I did my best to catch some Z’s when I had some down-time, but 2 things kept that from happening: 1) I have a very hard time sleeping during the day and 2) People have a very hard time calling me without making my phone ring. So…even if I did happen to doze off, my phone would ring within a few minutes and wake me up. Even sleeping at night was tough this week because of all the thinking involved in getting this done right – it was hard to turn my brain off when it was actually time to sleep. So most days I was on less than 4 hours of sleep and even one day I was on 1.5 hours of sleep.

I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this except for maybe it sets the stage for the kind of mood I was in this particular morning.

You see, Friday night was the first night I was able to get more than 4 hours of sleep. I probably would have slept until 9 or 10 had my phone not rang at 7:20. I had also taken my pain medicine the night before so I was pretty groggy. But…all in all, I was in a decent mood because I was going to GO HOME (3 Hour drive from where I was).

So I go down for a continental breakfast and sit down with a bagel, some yogurt and a banana. I turn to the large, flat-screen tv mounted on the wall which has the sound turned down. I am watching what appears to be some kind of shopping network or something. I can’t really tell what’s going on since there’s no sound, but usually, one can deduce what’s going on in an infomercial, right? WRONG!

There are two people on the screen. One man and one woman. The man appears to be the informercial salesman and the woman appears to be the infomercial oooooooh-and-aaaaahhhh person. I see the man take something that looks like a large phone receiver and stick it to a wall. When I say it looked like a phone receiver, I mean it looked a lot like the photo to the left, except the color was white, there was no cord, and the round parts were much bigger. It looked like some make shift wall-handle. My first thought was, “Oh, yes – because I’ve always wanted a handle…ON MY WALL!!!!” Funny, yes, but I thought I’d continue watching to see what the purpose for this phone-receiver-looking wall-mountable handle might actually be.

No such luck. The man moved on to another bizarre task. He took 4 or 5 rectangular and brightly-colored sponges and put them on the table in front of the woman. He then takes a chef’s knife (as pictured to the right) and presses down on the stack of sponges. I think “Oh – the guy is going to cut sponges with a knife…but what’s with the handle on the wall?”

Patiently I wait for the answer to the wall-handle question and continue to push down on the stack of sponges and nothing happens. Well, the sponges compress but there is no cutting going on.

So the guy reaches over and starts sharpening the knife. I think to myself, “Ohhh….he’s going to sharpen the knife and THEN cut the sponges. He’s selling a knife sharpener! But what’s with the handle ON THE WALL????”

So he finishes sharpening the knife and presses the knife down on the sponges. This time quite a bit harder. I’m thinking “If pressing harder did the trick then how am I supposed to know if your sharpener worked, bright guy?”

But, once again, nothing. The woman is smiling and nodding and saying something, but I don’t know what. For all I know she could be saying, “If you keep trying to cut the sponges, maybe people won’t notice the large plastic handle on the wall right next to me!”

So the guy starts sharpening the knife again. If it’s an informercial for the knife sharpener, this is not going well.

So he takes his twice-sharpened chef’s knife and pressed down really hard on the sponges this time he starts sawing at the sponges…NOTHING! The woman picks up the top sponge and looks at a tiny cut in the top of it and looks like she’s impressed that he was actually able to cut a small slit into the sponge. I’m thinking “Yay, he sharpened it enough to cut a SPONGE; NOW I can use it to cut MEAT! NOW WHAT’S WITH THE HANDLE ON THE WALL?????”

As if to press my insanity over the wall handle to new levels and confuse everything that makes up my mental capacity, the guy then reaches over and picks up a generic can of cola and a square of carpet. “OHHHHH…”, I think to myself, “He’s selling SPONGES. He’s going to make a mess and clean it up!”

So the guy proceeds to dump the entire contents of the can of generic cola onto the square of carpet that is now sitting ont he counter right next to the sponges in front of the woman. “I called THAT!”

Nope!

He then reaches over and picks up a large chamois and starts mopping the cola up off the carpet. At this point I’m thinking “Ok, so the guy is nothing more than a raving lunatic who wants to cut sponges and when that doesn’t work he has to throw a tantrum by dumping his soda all over the counter and then feels guilt-ridden enough to mop up the mess…BUT WHAT THE HECK IS WITH THAT FREAKING HANDLE ON THE WALL?????????”

I am sorry to report that I have no idea what that was all about. I don’t know why the guy dumped out the soda and mopped it up. I don’t know why he tried THREE TIMES to cut a stack of colorful sponges. In fact, had the sound been on, I’d almost be willing to bet that he tried to cut the sponges the woman remarked “WOW! Those are some TOUGH SPONGES!!!” and then he would have replied, “Yeah…too bad they can’t clean for CRAP! So here’s a chamois!!!”

And…I.DON’T.KNOW.WHY.HE.PUT.A.HANDLE.ON.THE.WALL!!!!!

Please…PLEASE…one of my readers out there…PLEASE tell me that you’ve seen this infomercial and can fill me in on what it was all about! My mental wellness may very well depend on it!!!

I’m getting more search engine traffic!

Though – I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of. Of course, this site isn’t really about anything in specific other than me posting my thoughts and rants and ravings and whatnot. But Google helped get my site some attention with the following search terms:

ant online warehouse (no quotes) – oooooooh…not good for antonline. Though I show up as number 15 for this search, it certainly wasn’t a happy post! I still have such a bad taste in my mouth for them that I would absolutely advise AGAINST purchasing with them. They don’t have their act together people! You can’t reach the people who contact you and they treat you like you’re stupid!

Still not holding a grudge…PFFFFFFFT.

And the other search term that brought me some traffic…

dusty turn on hold again (with or without quotes!) – ummmmm…I have no idea what this person might have been looking for. I think they may have just…I dunno…randomly typed a few words into Google and…wow. WHAT? The worst part is that I show up as NUMBER ONE for this search…go ahead, try it! You know you want to. If you haven’t already you’re just being stubborn…no seriously, you can type it without quotes and I’m number one. You can type it with quotes and it says “No results found…” and then shows the results without quotes. I just don’t understand!

Ok, so that was a little fun.

You know – for being just a “fun little blog” I sure have got some wide-spread traffic! I mean, ok…it’s probably no big deal. But when I first turned on Google Analytics on my site, I truly anticipated that I’d see a hit here or a hit there and just, you know…whatever. But so far I have gathered traffic from SIXTEEN states and FOUR countries outside the United States. Sure some if it may just be people who happened upon my site and then happened away from my site.

Perhaps it helps that I’ve started posting more frequently. Whatever it is…I find it really cool.

Anyone else using analytics that has found themselves in awe of what they are seeing?

NO TRUCK!!!

*Sigh* well, I feel like being nice about it because the guy sounded so apologetic when I called for an update, but apparently getting the brakes fixed on our truck was so time consuming that they couldn’t find time to finish the whole airbag light problem. According to the manager, the part for the airbag light thing came in, but not until later in the afternoon. They got whatever needed disassembling disassembled, but they’re not quite ready to put it all back together yet. Perhaps they really just forgot how…

So, we will supposedly get the truck back tomorrow. I know they’re doing me a favor by fixing my truck, but why do they have to forget that I’m doing them a favor by giving them my business? It’s just so frustrating.

On a much less serious note:

I’m not sure how many of my readers are also readers of my wife’s blog, but I know there’s at least a couple of you out there. For those of you who are NOT my wife’s readers, it might behoove you (did I really just use that word?) to check out her post about the 11 boxes of the same thing and get a laugh when she talks about her paranoia of clicking submit incorrectly. She said in her post:

“Pushing that submit button, you must understand, sends a jolt of panic up and down my spine and I click it as quickly and as lightly as I possibly can so as to not awake the multiple-click-submit-button-dragon, angering him and causing him to charge my credit card multiple times.”

Well, we were talking about that post today. Of course, knowing my wife, I knew she was being silly and creative and funny. What I DIDN’T know was that she actually is a little paranoid about that submit button! The sites always say “CLICK SUBMIT ONLY ONCE” in big bold letters and it makes her nervous that she’s going to do it wrong. She literally clicks it as quickly and as lightly as she possibly can to avoid being misinterpreted by the submit button!

I thought that was funny. So I said, “you seriously do that?”

As if to justify her neurosis, she goes on to say, “well, you have to be careful because what if you lose control of your finger…” I REALLY don’t know what she said after that because I was lost in a fit of uncontrollable laughter! I could not stop laughing at the image of someone losing control of that blasted finger that clicks the mouse!

Crystal, I love you with all of my heart…but you need help! Especially if you are having problems with occasionally losing control of your fingers!

I admit there’s a chance that you “had to be there” in order for that to be as funny as it really was…but what’s worse is as I’m posting this, she’s STILL trying to justify that you just never know…it COULD happen!

That’s the ONLY Google search that has resulted in a hit on my blog so far. As I told you before I went ahead and installed Google Analytics on my blog so that I could see what’s going on with my blog and I was actually kind of impressed. Ok, so I’m not reaching the masses, but I really kinda thought that I was really only typing for me and like 2 readers. (One of those readers being my wife!)

So after a little waiting I finally saw that I had a Google search bring someone to my blog. What I had to say about that abomination of a Pink Jeep obviously wasn’t what they were looking for because, according to Google Analytics, their average time on my site was 00:00.

I was just looking at the rest of the information and I am, I have to say, really astounded! So far, have had hits from 10 states within the US and 3 additional countries! I’m an INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTAR!!!

Ok…so maybe I’m not an international superstar, but I’m definitely getting more exposure than I thought!

I just have one question…WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE???

It’s enough to turn a man paranoid to know so many people are looking in but so few are actually saying anything…it’s like they’re sneaking up on me…

Every once in a while, when I am on the web and I have run through my normal routine (email, blog subscriptions, random thoughts I feel I must look up) I will reach a point where I decide it’s time to Stumble. If you’re not familiar with StumbleUpon then visit their site, get the toolbar and start stumbling. It can be fun.

Today I stumbled upon a website called I Am Neurotic. When I started reading the posts, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or just stare blankly at the screen. The most concerning thing to me is that I just KNOW that there is something I can or probably even should post there. Almost like a neurotic desire to share being neurotic. The bad part…at the moment, I can’t seem to think of the things that would think appropriate to post!

And the worst part…I subscribed to their RSS feed!

Maybe it’s a geographical thing…maybe it’s just an insanity thing…I don’t know what to attribute it to, but I find myself absolutely appalled at the fact that the people around me haven’t heard (or have heard of but have not TRIED) things that were common to me as a child.

The first one is peanut butter and banana sandwiches. How is it even POSSIBLE that there are people out there who have not sampled this delicacy? How is it possible that some have not HEARD of this fine treat? HOLY COW! What kind of deprived childhood did these people suffer???

I don’t remember how it came up, but I was talking about this at work and NO ONE in my office (those that were present at the time anyway) had ever tried this sandwich. At first it was a conversation with one person and I couldn’t believe that she hadn’t ever tried peanut butter and banana. So then I turned to someone else and said, “tell her how good peanut butter and banana sandwiches are!” and that person had not tried them either! So this continued on as I started moving from person to person trying to express how insane I thought they were for not having tried this sandwich only to find out that I WAS THE INSANE ONE in this situation! I WAS THE ODDBALL (not that it’s unusual for me to be the oddball, but in this case, COME ON!)

So I moved on to something else…peanut butter and marshmallow…also commonly referred to as a “fluffernutter“

…

Ok…how is it possible that out 5 or 6 people that were in the office at the time, that I was the ONLY person who had not only had BOTH of these sandwiches, but even ONE of these sandwiches! Ok, granted I never was a huge fan of the fluffernutter, but it was VERY common where I spent the majority of my youth/teen years.

And the next one…this one had me ready to call the looney bin. ELEPHANT JOKES! The hilarious because it’s not hilarious art form of the elephant joke!!! And what’s worse still is trying to EXPLAIN an elephant joke to someone who has never heard one.

Me: “How do you get down off an elephant”
Them: “…?”
Me: “You don’t! You get down off a goose!”

Why…oh WHY did I have to explain this??? Seriously…just do a Google search on elephant jokes and you’ll know I’m not crazy. This one had me chuckling for a good bit:

What did the cat say to the elephant?
“Meow”

*Sigh* Am I the ONLY sane person in my world?

So I was driving to work the other day, probably listening to a book-on-phone (what?). I learned that listening to books while I drive (especially long distances) can really shorten a drive. So my wife bought me some books on CD and I ripped ‘em to my computer, made MP3s out of them and put them on my memory card I bought for my phone which doubles as an MP3 player.

Anyway, so I’m driving along, minding my own business when this vehicle passes me in the next lane over. I had to do a double take…was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing? Perhaps I was drunk…no, I hadn’t had anything to drink in months, much less that morning. Perhaps I was high? No…don’t do drugs. Then why, in the name of everything good and pure, was I seeing what I was seeing? I got it! The end times…they were starting to happen right in front of my face! The world was getting ready to plummet into tribulation and dispair and it was all happening right before my eyes!

Ok…a bit over the top? Perhaps…but so was this:

No – really…it’s a pink Jeep. (I covered the license plate to protect the not-so-innocent)

A.Pink.Jeep.

Why? It’s….why???? Jeeps don’t belong it that color!!! Made for greens…acceptable in reds, blacks, blues, whites….but PINK??? It would be like seeing a rainbow in the sky with BLACK in it. It’s just not natural. You know, I would be willing to bet that as THEY were trying to put that color on the Jeep, it actually tried to dodge the paint. I’ll bet that it tried to shake off the offending tones like a dog shakes off water after a bath. I’ll bet there were mechanical sounds of an engine weeping oily tears as they touched up the last of the paint job. I’ll bet to this day there is a persistant oil leak in from the vehicle and they just don’t understand that THE JEEP IS STILL CRYING!

Get off my planet you barbarians! You don’t give a dog a mink coat and you don’t paint a Jeep PINK!

Ok…again…over the top…but so was the Jeep. Perhaps a inverted view of the colors would help.

There. I’ve made my peace with it.