Created: 17 October 2015
Our Psychology class was assigned to write a narrative using all the parts of brain and nervous system…
The vocab words in order of appearance:
- Sympathetic Nervous System
- Parasympathetic Nervous System
- Autonomic Nervous System
- Somatic Nervous System
- Peripheral Nervous System
- Spinal Cord
- Hind-Brain
- Mid-Brain
- Fore-Brain
- Medulla
- Cerebellum
- Pons
- Thalamus
- Cerebral Cortex
- Pituitary Gland
…And that seemed like such an arbitrary and farcical thing to base a
narrative on, so I decided to write mine in the most contrived and
ridiculous way possible. So if you ever watch the video and feel your brain repulsed by the force with which the “educational” material is dumped, know that that even happens to me when I try to rewatch it. My goal was definitely not to make the subject matter palatable; if I’d managed to do that, it would be called something less ironic.
Here’s the unaltered text which I turned into the teacher (and got an A+ on).
Bram approached the large glass window with determination evident in his face, staring outside at the impending alien invasion. Mankind didn’t yet know what advanced technologies might be trained on them, but they were confident in their ability to turn the tables.
But a brain-beam hit Bram, breaking all his barriers, blocking behavioral bodily balance, and basically beginning the battle.
First, Bram’s Sympathetic Nervous System was corrupted, disabling his fight-or-flight response. Following shortly was his Parasympathetic Nervous System, as Bram’s carefully trained heart-rate beat out of control. With those two components out of the way, Bram felt his whole Autonomic Nervous System sputter, not to mention a bowel movement like nothing before.
As things picked up speed, his Somatic Nervous System was the next to take a hit. His limbs each twitched briefly as he lost control of them, falling to the floor. His entire Peripheral Nervous System was now out of commission.
Thinking perhaps that could be the end of it, Bram sighed in angst. Little did he know his very thoughts and knowledge were next on the chopping block! His Spinal Cord promptly deactivated and retired, leaving Bram paralyzed from the neck down, little more than a functional brain. Not functional for long though.
His Hind-Brain, Mid-Brain, and Fore-Brain all switched off in quick succession.
He’d been breathing steadily up ‘til now, but without his Medulla to regulate, he began to pant. The loss of his Cerebellum did little to phase him, as his muscles were already unavailable, and with no lower brain left, the Pons had no good reason to stick around. Although there was still function in his eyes, the subtraction of a Thalamus meant he was no longer receiving info from them, rendering him blind.
Bram didn’t know what to do now, his training never prepared him for such an onslaught. Oh, and there goes his training. The climactic defeat of his Cerebral Cortex signified the shut-down of all four of his lobes, incapacitating any ability to hear, touch, learn, remember, speak, process anything, or even to think.
In this, Bram conceded defeat.
But the joke was on him, the beam was just deactivating his bodily/mental functions to prepare him for the real part! Bram didn’t -couldn’t- feel it at this point, but the beam now targeted his pituitary gland, not to deactivate it, but to release hidden hormones to TURN BRAM INTO A BABY. Yep, that’s right. The aliens were the ones from Mars Need Moms, but now there were too many moms so they needed kids too.
This has been Mars Needs Moms 2: Mars Needs Kids with your host Bret Huston.
Shortly afterward, I decided to recycle this essay as a script. I read it out into my crappy $20 mic, rewrote the whole thing in text boxes in Vegas, and added some choice midis.
Interesting notes:
- I actually had those midis lying around because I’d already started working on Kidneyworld.
- The name Bram comes from a character I created nearly a month before this, for another class, Business and Personal Finance. We were tasked to come up with a budget for a fictional character, and Bram Bernstein was born. He was a a “rich successful screenwriter,” who got his first name because I was reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula at the time, and his last name from a discussion about the Berenstain Bears I think?
- It’s also worth noting that I came up with a second accompanying character, Nikki, who worked as a wrestling referee because that made for a more interesting budget plan (because she was supposed to be super poor). Anyway, might come up later.