Bad brain

Your brain has a secret sense of humour.

It is one reserved for laughing at you. 

Yes, your brain thinks you are a poor sap, and it is almost always bored with you, because you never give it anything much to do. Asking it to think about Facebook updates and responses to updates is not very challenging, so, because it is bored, it plays mind-games with you, to pass the time.

For example, if I am riding my bicycle, I will often be struck blind with an idea for a column, an idea so brilliant that it takes some effort not to fall off the bike. Every single word for the column races through my brain, the entire area above my neck becomes thick with it, my brain is a whirling dervish of activity. The column is letter-perfect, and I am laughing wildly as I ride. People stare at me, but I don’t care, because I have my column ready. I am on fire. All I need to do is get home and type it out. 

I get home. I’m still smiling, but can’t quite remember why. That’s because the story is completely gone. There’s nothing left other than the words ‘but’ and ‘the’. The end result of that once perfect article:

Untitled by Jo Slade

But. The.

The end.

This is what brains do. They give you the best ideas imaginable, when you cannot possibly do anything about them. It’s malicious, but that’s a brain for you. The brain is the smartest part of your entire body, and wouldn’t you know it, it is also the class clown. And for the butt of its jokes, you’re ‘it’.

Maybe it will deliver an itch to you. The itch will be in a spot generally considered a no-scratch-zone in public, and it will not be an ordinary itch, no. It will be an intense itch, one in need of immediate attention, and you will almost die from it. Why does the brain do this to you? Because it can.

The problem with the brain is that it is brilliant at coming up with ideas. Of course it is, it is a brain. Thinking is a sort of speciality with it, and as a result, it is a formidable enemy to hapless you.

When you have a stomach virus, note that your brain will start thinking about food. The last thing in the entire world that you want to think about at that point is food, especially the food that made a surprise comeback ten minutes after you ate it. Bad brain strikes again.

How bad can it get? 

Well, if you are attending a solemn occasion such as, say, a church service, and your brain is feeling out of sorts with you, well god help you. As soon as the sullen thing realizes the solemn nature of the occasion, it will fire up the urge to make you laugh. You can think about dead people, you can think about the collective sadness in the world, you can think about sad-eyed abandoned puppies, but none of this will work.

As you try, in vain, to suppress your giggles, and you’re thinking it can’t get worse, it will. Your brain will signal to you that you urgently need to pee. And that you are itchy in every possible naughty bit aboard your body. Then, with a mighty final swing of its merciless sword, it will finish you off with a vivid image of everybody in attendance dancing around the church wearing nothing but smiles and construction cones. 

By this point, your brain will have atrophied to the intellectual capacity of a pea. This means you will no longer have an operation system database to search ‘for god’s sake, map me a speedy escape route from this truly humiliating situation’.

Hint: There is no escape route.

Tip: You’re done for.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.