The Man With The Screaming Brain
Where I come from, pain is supposed to mean something. Physical pain, I mean. That crushing despair we all feel when we wake up in the morning of course means nothing.
But when you feel a searing pain on your abdomen, it's usually because a hot poker (or some other really hot thing) has fallen on it. A dull ache in your wrist either means you have carpal tunnel or that your hand has recently been severed from your arm. And so on. Pain is there to tell us something our standard senses haven't noticed. Or that our brains are too screwed up to recognize as damaging. Maybe one of your most cherished memories is when you were a child and your mother was cooking soup on the kitchen range. So today, it seems to you that it would be very comforting to rest your head on one of the heating coils. Of course, those sane members of us in the audience know such a desire is ridiculous, but Pain is there to convince you of it.
Thus it is very disconcerting when we experience pain for no visible reason. If you have that same searing pain in your abdomen, but there is nary a hot poker in evidence, well, it can be troubling. Doctors can sometimes tell you what phantom actually caused the pain (usually it's an organ that has burst), but not always.
And so we are led, inevitably, to my head. Which, if I am to listen to my pain, is about to explode. But there is no vice crushing my skull. I'm not wearing a microwave helmet, or carrying an icepick in my eye. There isn't even a creepy looking telepath nearby with his eyes fixed on me.
Which means one of two things. Either:
1) Pain is meaningless, and is just a joke evolution has played on us.
or
2) Some pain is transmitted to us from the realm of the invisible, probably by alien puppet-masters.
So my next step is to fashion a tinfoil skullcap for myself. I hear those work well against the Orbital Mind Control Lasers, so it may help with my Headaches of Supernatural Origin.
But when you feel a searing pain on your abdomen, it's usually because a hot poker (or some other really hot thing) has fallen on it. A dull ache in your wrist either means you have carpal tunnel or that your hand has recently been severed from your arm. And so on. Pain is there to tell us something our standard senses haven't noticed. Or that our brains are too screwed up to recognize as damaging. Maybe one of your most cherished memories is when you were a child and your mother was cooking soup on the kitchen range. So today, it seems to you that it would be very comforting to rest your head on one of the heating coils. Of course, those sane members of us in the audience know such a desire is ridiculous, but Pain is there to convince you of it.
Thus it is very disconcerting when we experience pain for no visible reason. If you have that same searing pain in your abdomen, but there is nary a hot poker in evidence, well, it can be troubling. Doctors can sometimes tell you what phantom actually caused the pain (usually it's an organ that has burst), but not always.
And so we are led, inevitably, to my head. Which, if I am to listen to my pain, is about to explode. But there is no vice crushing my skull. I'm not wearing a microwave helmet, or carrying an icepick in my eye. There isn't even a creepy looking telepath nearby with his eyes fixed on me.
Which means one of two things. Either:
1) Pain is meaningless, and is just a joke evolution has played on us.
or
2) Some pain is transmitted to us from the realm of the invisible, probably by alien puppet-masters.
So my next step is to fashion a tinfoil skullcap for myself. I hear those work well against the Orbital Mind Control Lasers, so it may help with my Headaches of Supernatural Origin.
posted by Dean at 11/08/2005 12:21:00 AM
3 Comments:
2. definitely 2.
Bummer about the headache. Have you tried acupuncture? They have these little sticks that they poke into your brain, and apparently it kills whatever is chewing on your cerebral cortex. You should try it.
Sorry about your headache...two excedrin - chasing them by drinking a big coke as fast as I can usually helps me...I think it is that burping that follows confuses the alien or dislodges the tumor.
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