Raev.net – Page 4 – A media project between ideas

Amnesia: The Dark Descent review

By DannyboyO1 | September 10, 2010

Yes, this is another of those cliched tropes where the main character starts out with a bad case of “WTF just happened to me?” At least this time around it’s not the product of a blow to the head. It’s self-inflicted, via… well, magic potion, basically.

But for a good reason.

No, seriously. There was a good reason for your character to drink a vial of “fuggedabowdit” and leave a note saying “If I can still read English after that, I need me to kill the guy that owns this creepy-ass castle. He’s in the Inner Sanctum. Best of luck. Trust me, I’m you.”

Now, being the clever fellow that I am, I stared at that for a while and realized my character’s prior self was a bit of an idiot. No map whatsoever to navigate through this crumbling castle. No confidence on his part that there’d even be much of a mind left to follow instructions…

And it hit me. Whether or not my mission is a success or not is immaterial to my past self. He wasn’t trying to win. He was trying to commit suicide by killing who he had become!

And on that, you embark on a horror game, a quest of discovery and redemption… taunted by semi-hallucinatory revelations and memories… and an encroaching unreality as the world itself grows grotesque crimson tumors that hurt to touch.

This isn’t your typical survival horror game as brought to you by… Capcom. How Resident Evil ever became the brand name for the genre escapes me. This game has atmosphere. It has style. The voice acting is good. The writing is good. (Not great, but good.) RE games give you “horror” by giving you barely enough ammo for an action game. I call BS. This game gives you NO ammo. No weapons. You aren’t a fighter. You aren’t capable of going up against even one shambling horror from beyond. You are just barely up to hiding in a dark closet and praying the bad thing leaves on its own.

The key question to me, with this type of story, is whether or not the payoff lives up to the buildup. And it has actually a very good buildup. Unfortunately, what’s difficult to detect is that the actual payoff/climax is in the final scrap of diary that explains why you took the amnesia tonic. The three endings available to you in the final confrontation are simply a choice and three sets of consequences… and this being a horror game, it’s fair that even the best ending is not necessarily good.

Unfortunately, this sort of game is not for everyone. The… I hesitate to say “combat” with reference to the frantic scramble that follows an encounter with a monster; from the perspective of the monster, it is combat, so we’ll go with that. When you see a monster, your vision blurs due to insanity effects (the mind does not wish to see!) and your only hope is to shut a door between yourself and it, then hide for a bit.

So the most action the game has to offer, really, is you staring at the wall of your hiding space, hoping you don’t give your position away, and hoping the foe leaves before you go insane or it kills you.

Needless to say, while this is quite effective at producing tension, after you figure out good hiding spaces in the level, it’s boring as fuck.

Of course, when you find out your hiding space is inadequate… then you get shaken out of your boredom quite effectively. The atmosphere, noncombat mechanics, and sheer deadliness of everything that isn’t you combine well to induce adrenaline in those moments. And since this trick only works when you’re not used to it, the paucity of foes keeps it pretty fresh.

The puzzles are generally along the lines of finding things in one area and using them to reassemble something in another area so that you can reach the next area. With a few twists here and there. The game has a physics engine, but seems to leave it for immersion instead of puzzles. It was refreshing to see a barrier in the form of a raised bridge… and to simply throw a rock at the chain holding it to release it.

Those puzzles that are tricky to solve typically have nice “hints” in the various papers lying about. Either they refer to the plot or puzzle solutions. So if it’s not disturbing, it must be useful!

That covers the important bits. The game’s big “I’m different!” draw is the use of the mouse as a sort of physics gesture tool. You want to open a drawer? Click on it and drag it out. Same for doors, levers… everything, really. Need to break loose a pipe? Bend it back and forth a bit. Need to crowbar open a stiff door? Set the crowbar and PULL.

The not-so different, your character is afraid of the dark. Understandable for a number of reasons. You have 4 options. Stay in well-lit areas. Pull out your lamp with limited oil. Use a tinderbox (a WHOLE tinderbox) to light one unlit item in the area. Or run through and accept the “temporary” loss of sanity. Insanity mostly just makes the screen shift a bit, and late in the game, you get effects like bugs crawling in the monitor.

Is it worth getting? Well… that depends on your character. If you need violence in your videogames, avoid. If you like horror and being made uncomfortable through good storytelling, come on down!

Messes & Things

By Squeak | September 9, 2010

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I know we all get lazy, and in our adult lives we tend to be “too busy” for most things that we want to or need to do. Especially in these days with this so called “fast paced” lifestyle where we hardly find time to read the directions posted on a sign anymore, but when it gets to the point where we aren’t keeping our homes or our belongings clean is that just laziness or are we really THAT busy?

I became inspired to write this short story all thanks to the most likely week old McDonald’s biscuit that I just realized was sitting on the couch next to me. It’s not mine, I don’t really ever eat breakfast from fast food places, but it’s sitting right here on the couch cushion next to me all nestled up next to a screwdriver (okay so the screwdriver is my fault) and a knife. It’s as if they’re all snuggled up, and the two other objects are protecting the biscuit from the evil human being who is about to throw it away after she’s finished writing. There;s even a can of peanuts sitting behind it, acting like a bodyguard to this poor stale, lifeless, and probably tasteless, biscuit. I understand that my brother works long hours in a night, and I definitely could be of more help in keeping the apartment kept up, but I know for a fact energy is a problem for me, and it’s also hard to touch old food that I haven’t brought into the house. I’m also getting pretty terrified of that can of peanuts now that I look at them more, they are pretty mean looking. What if it’s a trap and there’s really a snake that pops out of the can the second I go to grab that disgusting pastry and bring it to it’s final resting place?

I’m starting to think I need to invest in a trash can in every room in the house or every other corner. I’m not going to sit here and say that I am the cleanest person you’ll ever meet, but I am scanning my living room and noticing that my big problem is the many pairs of shoes I own that are kind of scattered about in the pathway from where we enter our apartment. I rarely drink Dr. Pepper if ever, and there are cans of it scattered about as if they had been in some sort of war against each other. None of them were left standing and…oh wait, there’s one survivor! Maybe it’s because he has a few body guards too, a soda cup from Runza (again not mine), an orange juice cup from McDonald’s (again not mine), a coke zero can (oops) , an open bottle of rubbing alcohol (mine, but the last place I left it was in my bathroom), a fry box from Runza(not mine) with a couple of surviving fries, and a bowl with some sort of green substance in it (not mine, and most likely molded milk).

Now I’m beginning to wonder what the exact distance the kitchen is from my couch…all I really know is it’s not that far. Maybe I should build some sort of belt like for a cash register to set all this stuff on so it makes it into the kitchen, instead of on our floor or furniture. No, on second thought maybe I shouldn’t because that would just promote even more laziness in a country that already has a severe problem with it. Oh, and just so we’re clear this isn’t a story intended to attack my brother, the poor guy overworks himself from 6pm to 6am almost every night, it’s just a realization on my part that one or the other needs to get into gear. Actually, people in general really need to. Yeah, I’m talking to you mister “I’ll just leave my soda cup on this clothing table even though the trash can is 5 steps away from me in plain sight” and you miss “I’ll just leave this paper sample cup on this end cap because even though there is a designated trash can next to each sampling station it’s just too much effort for me to use my brain or eyes to find the thing, or even extend my arm to throw it in there. I mean who does that anymore? Using your arms or any part of your body to do things yourself is so 1999! So is using your brain, my phone and computer just do that for me now!”

I’ll just leave it at that. It’s not really a matter of “I don’t have the time” as it’s more of a, “this doesn’t interest me because it’s a mundane necessary task in life, and quite frankly it bores the living shit out of me so I won’t do it. Besides , someone else will even if I don’t.”

And with that all said, I am now off to attack this biscuit, pick up these fallen soda cans, these bowls that look like they’re about to be sick, and the debris this little trash war has left on our living room carpet. If I return alive, you’ll see me back on Facebook yet again, and the carpet will be thanking me because it will be able to breathe again as well as show it’s pretty self off. Just keep this simple fact in mind, you’re all adults now. Pick up after yourselves! Hell, most of you (I would hope) learned how to pick up after yourselves since you were knee high. Why quit now that you’re adults? The only excuse you have now is any possible disabilities, or just being so old you don’t function anymore, and I mean that in the literal sense. Not just saying you’re old because you feel old, I mean like old as in you share a birthday with dirt. The end.

— I would also like to add as a side note the biggest apology on earth to my mother for being a messy teenager/young adult during the time I lived under her roof. I now completely understand the irritation!

The Public Shame Glory Train is boarding. Run, Freedom Faucet.

By alphabete | August 23, 2010

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This. Here you are, turning on the Freedom Faucet and letting it run. Please enjoy my thinly-veiled contempt for your kind.

Preamble: You people, you people make me sick. Make me ashamed, make me sad and embarrassed to be an American. Make me afraid to be a Black American. I am so sorry we share a common national heritage and the same Constitution and that the Declaration of Independence is the same for the both of us. You are a noxious cancer, a pox on all that is good about this country.

How dare you twist the facts to your own purposes? How could you stand and with a straight face claim citizenship of this nation that was built on the backs of everyone but yourselves and expect to have what you want when you are coasting, as are we all, on the downward slide of our country into unreason and irrationality? I don’t even have enough spit for all of your faces.

So, we have this video. This black man walking through a crowd. Somehow he becomes the target of chants and accusations and, don’t try to deny it, hatred by the protesters. How did this happen?

I remember learning in school that this nation was founded (and yes, stolen) by people who wanted to worship as they pleased. I used to think that this meant in America, your choices were respected. I feel a little like a fool. Who have I sat next to on a bus or spoken to politely in line at the store that has taken one look at my hair wrapped up and my unadorned face and thought to themselves “That brown girl’s prolly a Muslim”? Have I walked through a door that was held by a Tea Bagger? Did I ever smile at a baby whose parents were teaching it behind closed doors to hate in public?

What are our freedoms even worth if we’re too ignorant to exercise them properly? I mean didn’t we all learn how to read a map in school?

Here’s a map from TopherChris, you stupid motherfuckers. Read this Village Voice post too, so you can see what’s already near Ground Zero that’s somehow not more threatening than a community center aimed at fostering multicultural understanding and defusing the kind of horribly (un?)American antics depicted in this video. I realize that this terror mosque will be right in the middle of Ground Zero, so I suppose I understand how it must feel to be standing at the site of the World Trade Center and not even be able to see the people you hate so much. For those of you who are just looking at this for the pictures because you can barely read, “A” as in “All I want is for you to learn something today” is the proposed site of the place you’re terrified of and “B” as in “But I bet you’re still an idiot” is the site where you’re trivializing the deaths of thousands of people with the crosses you’re burning on the inside.
View Larger Map

Amagad look, over there there’s a woman dancing with no clothes on while men get hardons staring at her! GASP! And over there is a betting parlor! And oh crap a bunch of kitschy junk!

In the interest of being fair, I thought I would try to balance myself out a bit here lest I be seen as some sort of liberal-thinking intellectualist who cares only about allowing terrorism and terrorists to grow and bloom in this, the “greatest nation on Earth”. Remember this guy?

Wh-what’s that say? The face of…terror? Really? Perhaps you were not aware of this but Timothy McVeigh, while not a mainstream Christian, was a member of the Christian Identity movement. I won’t go into a long definition here but let’s see what we can find out about them. From one of their own pages:

Kingdom Identity Ministries is a Politically Incorrect Christian Identity outreach ministry to God’s chosen race (true Israel, the White, European peoples). We proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom (government according to God’s Law) through books, tracts, tapes, videos, the American Institute of Theology Bible Correspondence Course, our international Herald of Truth Radio Broadcasts, a Prison Ministry, Biblical Counseling, Seminars, and other means. The Elect Remnant, Christian Patriots, Nationalists, Reconstructionists, Racialists, and all seeking a higher level of understanding will learn Biblical solutions to personal and national problems, and be given keys to unlock hidden truth.

I won’t link to their page but you can Google it if you want don’t already have it saved in your favorites. Perhaps you might be saying “Well gawrsh, alphabete, those guys are extremists!” O rly? Might they be? Just like, I don’t know, the extremists who killed a grip of people on the eleventh of September in the Year of your Lord, Two Thousand-One? I’m not done yet though, for ye who kneel and prostrate yourselves at the altar of hatred and stupidity.

You may recall Mr. McVeigh caused some property damage. He blew up a building, specifically the Alfred P. Murrah on 19 April, 1995. It remains the worst act of domestic terrorism that the United States of America has ever seen. This is a man, a white man, in this country, a citizen who conspired with another white American citizen to cause damage to property and lives. A guy who believed in God and, ostensibly, Caucasian Jesus. But wait, there’s more.

Look at all these Christian churches near the Murrah Building! Where are your protests? Where’s the claim that by putting churches near the Murrah building is a slap in the face to the victims of McVeigh’s terror? Where? Oh, right, just look at these fucking comments.

Let’s see what those shifty Muslims are up to with this so-called “Community Center at Park51”. According to their Mission Statement the founders of this project hope to

“Uphold respect for the diversity of expression and ideas between all people”

“Cultivate and embrace neighborly relations between all New Yorkers, fostering a spirit of civic participation and an awareness of common needs and opportunities”

“Establish a state-of-the-art green facility that will serve as a model and inspiration for sustainable space, helping to advance sustainable living in urban contexts”

…and a few other things. A couple of them have to do with Muslims but if you want to tell me with a straight face that you’re not being willfully ignorant you can read them yourself and look for the “halla halla halla”. So let’s see. They want to uphold respect for diversity? Those bastards! Cultivate and embrace neighborly relations? Foster the spirit of civic participation and an awareness of our commonalities? What the fuck? And don’t even get me started on that whole green facility/sustainable space/sustainable living thing. For crying out loud it sounds like they’re trying to turn New York and indeed, all of America into some kind of place where the people you shit on prove that they’re not as bad as you think and that, in fact, they may be better than you.

I checked out some other pages. Know what “their kind” will have in their fancy-pants new center of extremist terror-breeding? Recreational facilities. A swimming pool. A reading library (oh Holy Father preserve us!), art studios (grab your Bibles lest ye be tempted to appreciate something), a restaurant and culinary school where no doubt all the food will be seasoned with a nice heaping tablespoon of jihad, and let us not forget the mother-fucking swimming pool. Does that explain it? Are you people afraid of getting in shape or are you scared that in your swimsuits we will see you exposed for the yellow-bellies you really are? So hard to tell.

There will be a mosque, sure, oh, and also a memorial room for contemplation. I see now, though, that contemplation in a 9/11 memorial room, or a basketball court, or an exhibition hall are so, so much worse than a gentlemen’s club which you would go into if it weren’t for your shame-laden penises shrinking at the thought that wimmins aren’t property and naked dancing doesn’t make them gutter trash. And the fact that you’re not gentlemen. I’d address the lady Tea Baggers here but I will assume their mouths are too full of their husbands’ balls to get back to me.

You are the festering, gangrenous wound in the side of this country. You are the ones who are ignorant and irresponsible and hypocritical. When will the physical attacks begin? When will you mobilize to bring down De Gubmint in which it is encoded that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”? When will you stand up like men and women and say “You see these freedoms? They’re ours, not yours!”? Come on now, when will you break down your barriers of respectability and appearance as normal American citizens and do as your hero McVeigh did, and use force to get what you want while you whine that people are trampling on your precious, pure-blooded Aryan America? Or are you afraid to just put on your balaclavas and come out of the closet as the terrorists that you are?

You deserve your tickets on the Public Shame Glory Train and you make Mr. Conductor want to drive this shit off a cliff.

Risen! PC Game Review

By DannyboyO1 | August 3, 2010

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I’d like to take a moment to tell you about Gothic. Crazy German RPG from a few years back, with an amazing take on action-adventure-rpgs. It wasn’t trying to be an RPG. It seriously had the bare minimum. You had hp, mp, strength, dex… 4 weapon skills, and a handfull of one-off abilities you could buy up like lockpicking, or harvesting trophies from critters. The weapons did get better, but the wielder is what was deadly.

The focus wasn’t so much on the RPG elements. It was on the world. You were set loose on a valley without any reason to care about anyone in it. Your quests often had multiple outcomes based on who you were willing (or eager) to screw over.

There was so much to do that you could play for days without even needing to mess with the main plot. Before you ever had to embark on saving anyone, you got to know the world.

The sequel, Gothic II, was a masterpiece. Sidequests were deep, varied, and kept cropping up throughout the game. Which makes sense, since you really can’t drive off robed mystery men from a man’s home until after they’ve invaded. It even had a good reason for playing the same character back at level 1 again… it took a few weeks to rescue you from the first game, and you were half-mad and half-starved from being trapped in rubble.

The 3rd game in the series… first change in the engine… and it sucked. The combat was tied to the animations, and they couldn’t change the animations by the time they figured out they’d built a set of rules where a wolf could juggle a seasoned fighter to death. Players feared barks, and would be relieved by a mere combat with dragons. They fight fair, flamethrower notwithstanding.

A few too many corners were cut. The game had clearly shipped on time, but at a brutal cost. Still, the quests kept their depth. And if you were willing to put up with a horrible combat system, the game did yield a truly impressive level of control over the fate of the world. Be a champion of light? Dark? Or go with the bright idea the necromancer has and kick all the gods out of the world, and forget this whole “every thousand years” war BS.

This brings me to Risen. Clearly by the same guys that brought us the first Gothic game. Since the combat isn’t broken by bad animation, it’s a much better game than their next most recent offering. But it does have a few problems. I can’t complain about the combat system, although it’s gotten a bit more depth. There are now 3 melee weapons skills to go with the 2 ranged ones, and raising skill gives you more maneuvers and lets you use a shield with even two-handed weapons.

The quest log has a button you can hit to see map locations for any given quest (if given). Always a nice touch.

The problem I had with the game wasn’t the combat, or the magic systems… or the (limited) crafting.

The problem I had was with the sidequests. But it’s a difficult thing to address. You have to understand that this is a game that gives you an open world at the outset. The only limitation to where you can go is what’s going to kill you. A bit of training and a lot of prudence (and cunning use of sheer cowardice) can allow you to go virtually anywhere from the beginning. So it’s quite simple to end up doing some parts of some quests quite out of order.

And that means that, while it doesn’t really break a plot to have you gather up vital macguffins ahead of time… the game does give you the quest update whether or not you’d started it. It’s not a terribly subtle way of saying “This seems important!” Also, it’s not possible to cover absolutely every permutation… so you get some very odd responses if you do things in a particular order.

One very beautiful quest line involves a pirate’s daughter. She’s looking for her father…’s treasure. So’s another pirate. At one point, you split up, and of course, she’s captured. You get to play Russian roulette with trapped chests (and a set of clues to tell which ones not to pick) and bring out the reward (including a main plot macguffin) to exchange for the girl’s location. All anybody really wants is the map to the other treasure hauls around the various islands. I don’t dig the ransom thing, so as soon as I had the key to the girl’s cell and her location… I slew five pirates and took the map back.

Problem was… when I rescued her, my side of the conversation said “I gave him the map.” She was a bit put out by this. Then I got the option to say “I got the map.” It was more than a little clunky, and it felt as though that method of resolving the quest should have been accounted for in the dialog.

Still, for the most part, as long as you aren’t expecting as much in the way of conversation options as previous games covered, it’s an awesome romp in a not-quite-standard RPG realm. There are some curious design choices… like, even if you are a mage, the endgame fight is basically Zelda. You use a shield to reflect glowies back at the boss, run up and hit him. Repeat. Try not to fall into the volcano. Your entire game’s combat practice is irrelevant, because someone wanted the end-game boss to be “different”, I guess.

A graphical glitch also marred my enjoyment. The sky would tend to flicker through day and night quite spastically. A quick internet search revealed a need to upgrade my graphics drivers. No problem. It worked nicely… for a while. A few days later, there are problems when moving into certain areas, causing the rapid flicker… and whatever time of day it stopped on when I left, all the NPCs would do whatever was appropriate then. If it stopped on night, they went to bed. If it stopped on day, they’d go to work. That’s… more than mere graphics at fault. Worse, the game eventually froze on midnight and refused to budge from there. I had to wake people up to complete quests… despite the risk of retaliation from trespassing.

Some who have played this game confessed disappointment to me… because the sheer volume of sidequests at the outset set an expectation… that there would be more as the main plot progressed. This was proven wrong, obviously. Only a few important threads tied into the main plot and were developed in the later chapters. I believe it has something to do with the design philosophy. The quests are things to do, and they’re scattered around the island. You are the only one determining how fast you plow through them. You alone determine if there are any left before you advance the main plot. It is like hunting down all the hidden packages in GTA before doing the second mission. Nobody forced you to do it in that order.

And that’s something most players don’t get out of an RPG… choice. It’s not even implemented particularly satisfyingly here, in all cases. It’s usually between two sides, and eventually just becomes a linear progression towards an inevitable destiny. Which… actually… is the theme.

Still, good to see these crazy guys are still working, still pounding out… well, it’s basically refurbished Gothic 1. But that was still better than 3, so… yay!

(Note, the above review contains spoilers. If you wanted to avoid them, you should have looked at the end of the review first, since that’s all you’d care about.)

I’m Wrong, and You Can Be Too!

By DannyboyO1 | August 1, 2010

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Everyone is wrong. Wrong is the default state of the universe. It’s the default of any idea, it’s the starting place of every rationalization, and it’s every step along the journey towards either greater or lesser wrong.

I know, it seems an exaggeration. It’s not.

Do you remember physics and chemistry? My textbooks had a few pages about the various models for atomic structure that have been proposed throughout the ages. In order from quite wrong to less wrong. And the implication is that our current understanding is wrong too, and we haven’t figured out how yet.

Every science, every art, every discipline… perfection is not attained. We strive not to be perfect, but to be less wrong than we start. It’s a process, and every one of us demands improvement from ourselves in some aspects of our lives. Lest we succumb to depression.

You don’t think it applies to you? How about sex? You like sex? Gets better with practice, doesn’t it? Anyone who hasn’t repressed (or not experienced) their first sexual experience knows for damned certain that virgins are not good lovers.

Or maybe you’re a bit of a puritan? Finding sex offensive, you spend your evenings in Bible study… trying to improve or maintain your spiritual purity… or just to deepen and improve your understanding. Because you are imperfect, and therefore wrong in some way.

It’s easy to spot wrongness in others, isn’t it? Laws passed that clearly didn’t have the best of brains behind them, or have wording so poor that every armchair lawyer is thinking how bad the loopholes are. That grumpy sourpuss in line ahead of you that’s getting fed up with everything not being 100% perfect in their life and letting the whole world know… that they’re wrong in their expectations.

But the only way that we improve as human beings is to say that there’s something wrong about ourselves… and then fix it.

I am fed up with my life. It’s not living up to my expectations. The problem is, what I want is a way to get from here to… self-supporting, and having a family. I don’t have that. I lack the education, the job market sucks, and I have a shitty work ethic when it comes to begging for a job I really don’t want. I don’t even have half a clue what I want to do with my life from here.

I’m wrong!

Nothing in my life suggests I’m actually going to be any good with starting my own family. That’s an expectation that I had for life when I was 6. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. I barely stay in touch with the loving family I have now. We’re generally aloof people and even wanting a family, I’d have to learn how to be a real part of one.

I’m wrong about hating just about every sort of retail job… that’s bullcrap. I liked work that involved a lot of moving around. Was great for my metabolism in high school. Once my weight shifts to where it’s less strain, I’ll like that again. It’s not even the physical pain of menial labor that bothers me. It’s putting up with corporate bullshit… but… most low-end jobs have pretty obvious common-sense rules. Sure, some of it’s BS layout from corporate, or obviously bad legal compromises… but there’s stories there, and you can respect them. At the end of the day, your job is to move things to where they must go so people can find them, and money can be made. I’d probably hate management there, but that’s not what I’d be applying for.

And, for what I want? I do know. I want to help people. I want to see justice. I want to get paid… and I’d like to be creative and occasionally even underhanded when someone deserves it.

I’m not quick. I keep a level head under pressure… I think I’m describing police work. Bit of a surprise, I was expecting counseling. Something to look into either way. I just have to keep in mind that, with any expectations… I’m wrong about reality.

But we all start being wrong. So it’s all right.

The Hornet’s Sting – A Chronicle

By Captain Anonymous | May 23, 2010

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Finding myself in a position of having too much money, and too little to lose, I parted way with a few reds and met up with a delicious little number dubbed by myself as “Hornet”. 4-HO-MET, or 4-hydroxy-N-methyl-N-ethyltryptamine – a tasty little chemical string that is synthesized into psilocin – the chemical found in naturally occuring mushrooms of the psilocybin variety. My experience/s with this chemical are as follows:

Monday, 17th May 2010: Deliverance.

4pm – Open package containing sample, eyeball about 20mg, lick finger, stick into powder, then straight into the mouth. Blech, bitter disgusting fucking shit. Washed down with some coca-cola it really sticks around for 15-20 minutes. Licking my lips it remains around my mouth and in my ‘stache a little. Effects creep up slowly, excitement grows, however effects are quite mute and only barely noticeable. The computer monitor is breathing almost. Eyesight is cloudy, like I’ve taken an excessive amount of codeine. I don’t feel particularly lively, but I am quite happy and alert.

6pm, I lick my finger and poke it back into the sample and consume another 7-15mg. Rapid onset bolsters first dose, but barely. I get a little giggly with this. Monitor continues to breathe. I notice this even after I come down off the drug, and it’s 8 hours later.

Verdict: Drug seems non-potent. I wonder if it’s because I constantly dose myself with Tramadol, a known 5ht (serotonin) agonist, and norepinepherine reuptake inhibitor. It’s then and there I decide to abstain from taking tramadol, to observe the effects of the ‘Hornet’.

Wednesday, 19th May 2010:

Once again, around 6pm, I lick my finger and dip it into the sample. Unsure of dose, probably 10-20mg or so. Decide to order precision scale set online. Bitterness like the first time, yet somehow worse makes me gag. I wash the chemicals down with a good litre or so of coca-cola. Tongue is a little numb on the tip. A whole lot of nothing happens this time, apart from codeine-like vision haze. I consider taking more, but don’t. Remaining chem is about 1/3rd of what I had to start off with. Decide to wait til the weekend to take the last dose in one hit.

Saturday, 23rd May, 2010: Still Stings, These Shattered Nerves

Well, 3rd day of my experience, and by far the most remarkable. This day the chemical opened my mind to its true nature – the hornets sting. Tonight was the night I was going to take my largest single dose of Hornet, and I just so happened to be going to a poker night with some mates. At this point in time I’ve been awake for nearly 34 hours, kept stimulated by large doses of caffeineated energy drinks, and a somewhat unhappy stomach.

6:25pm – My friend messages to tell me he’ll be picking me up at 7. Cool I think, I have about an hour til the drug kicks in, so I might aswell take it, and then take a shit before I go out. I swallow a precautionary 10mg metaclopramide (for anti-nausea, and possibly anti-emetic qualities as needed – little did I realise that this would increase my gut problems). I up-end the sample bag onto my hand, and tap every last mg out. I lick the powder which is even more bitter than before. It takes several licks to get all the powder off my hands, each horrible bitter lick aided by a swig of Coca-Cola. I then tear the bag apart and lick the plastic clean of powder. This I remark to someone online, must look very desperate, however, I wished to just get as much of the chemical into me as possible. Swigging the rest of the bottle of Coke, I say farewell to my internet friends, and head to the toilet for a pre-night-out shit.

6:35pm – Sitting on the toilet emptying my stomach out, I sit with a crossword puzzle in a magazine, and start to resume where I left off with it last time. About 4-5 minutes into my shit, I start feeling my vision is getting heavy, and as I did not think the Hornet would be taking effect yet, I put it down to tiredness, exhaustion and caffeine intake. 4-5 crossword answers put in, and I start to notice my mental acuity decreasing, and my ability to fill spaces with synonyms becomes reasonably difficult. The crossword is starting to warp a little bit like if I was starting to get a migraine headache with a heavy visual aura.

6:40pm – Looking around me, the walls start to get more orange under the reasonably dim light. I hear the sound of indian instruments, possibly filtering in from a background source (I believe a TV in another room was on). The walls are starting to spin, throb, bleed, and blend together. At this point I begin to mentally talk to myself – Am I fatigued and passing out? Am I getting a migraine? ….Could the Hornet actually be kicking in? No, I tell myself, Don’t be silly. But the effects remain. I look at my watch. Normal. The only thing that isn’t spinning and changing. I stare at it, and see the minute had very slightly move every few seconds. Fuck. I am definitely starting to trip. And only after 20 minutes? What the fuck is going on? I start to try and hurry myself up a bit. The walls are starting to really blot, like fresh ink running over parchment. This is one thing I get as a first-onset symptom of LSD, and this is how I know it is most definitely the drug.

6:50pm – I finish up, and unsteadily, uncomfortably stand up. Automation takes hold, and I flush the toilet, spray deodouriser, and exit the toilet. I walk into the bathroom and turn on the tap. Leaning forward I look into my own eyes. My pupils are dilated so much that there is barely any of the iris showing, the pupil is just about the entire centre of the eye. This is not particularly surprising to me, and I wash my hands and stiff-legged walk into the livingroom. The TV is on, Funniest Home Videos plays on it, and the dining room light is on, but there is no one around. I take several paces up and down the living area and thru the kitchen, stopping to peer outside and down the driveway. The house feels very comforting, and much like I feel when I visit my grandparents house – a sense of warm familiarity. I am reminded of family Christmas.

6:55pm – I walk outside and under the cover of the pergola. There is reasonably windy showers expected, and I pace back and forth under the pergola, while feeling very shamanistic and almost at one with the earth and nature. I walk around the side of the house and into my room, and sit at my computer to report that the drug had kicked in to a friend online. I sit down and I start to hear a high-pitched, fast-sped giggling, like chipmunks talking. I also hear high pitched twanging music, which resonates after about every noise I hear. My computer monitor is a mess of colours like looking at it with a beaded curtain in the way, the chat window swirls and breathes. Surprisingly I can still manage to communicate online. My keyboard muscle memory remains, nearly unchallenged. My glasses become a window of which my monitor becomes another windows through. In the peripheral of my vision I see the characters from the original series of Star Trek – posing as if on the front of a DVD boxset. If I focus, I see only what is actually there – the top right is a tissue box if focussed, but Uhura in peripheral. I remark this to my friend who finds it absolutely fucking hilarious.

7.04pm – My friend calls me – He’s out the front. I stumble outside to walk around the house, and practically lose vision, as the light turns to dark very quickly. I walk blind for a few steps and my vision slowly returns to me, all at once (yes – slowly all at once. Very fucking weird). I walk under the pergola and thru the living room, then out the front door, locking it behind me. I walk unsteadily to my friends car and open the door and sit. “Sup man” he says “Dude. I am fucking tripping. Absolutely tripping” is the first thing I say. “good thing I’m driving then” he says “Fuck yeah.” says I. we proceed on our way.

7:08pm – We cruise down the street and I babble something about hornet and tripping balls. Out the windscreen all I see is a colourful mass of swirling, moving dark pastels as the rain and fog mist the windscreen. My friend asks me where another friend we’re picking up lives. I reply autonomously, yet unsure of what I was saying. Turned out to be correct, and we end up outside said friends place. He gets in, says what’s up, says he has a present for us, and hands us both a Rockstar Cola. I tell him I have a present for him – I hand him a Romeo Y Julieta No. 1 cigar I meant to give him at Christmas.I tell him what I’ve taken, and he says I’ll probably only want to go one round in poker. He mentions something about getting fucked up on weed (I think).

7:12pm – I lose track of conversation for a moment as the drug takes a hold of my concentration. Outside the window the streaming colour mass is fascinating. I snap back to conversation when personal limits of alcohol consumption are mentioned. Certain people are named and shamed as saying they can drink far more than they actually can. My friend asks me how much alcohol I could put down in one sitting “back in [my] good old days” (2 years ago or so now). I say about 1500mL of spirit (40%/80proof) on a good night. easily 1 litre, and then some, I tell them. The debate other peoples ability to consume alcohol in such high volumes. Conversation switches to how Friend 2 went at the pub the previous night. Titties were mentioned. Fascination for me switched to what I was seeing as the car went around the round-about we had made it to.

7:15pm – I unsteadily drag myself out of the car, holding my can of Rockstar Cola. I remember I forgot my 4-pack of V energy drinks and mention it. I make my way unsteadily towards the house. Standing outside the garage door, Friend 2 starts imitating an humourous accent, through which my other 2 friends who are setup with the poker equipment respond to. The garage door is opened (which knocks over a table leaning against it, beaning Friend3 on the head – which I don’t see, luckily or I probably would have laughed hard). I walk in and stand next to Friend 4 who is sitting down. I am slightly confused at this point, and finding normal comprehension of words and social interaction more challenging. I sit down between Friend 3 and 4, and exclaim “I am so unbelievably Fucking high right now. You have no idea.”, this elicits laughter and an exclaimation from Friend 3 that “yeah man, you look fucked.”

7:20pm – We’re all settled in for a game of poker and I’m having trouble comprehending what people are even saying. As their mouths move, it seems a second, phantom-like mouth is ghosting their real mouth, and is out of synch with their actual mouth. I am a little giggly at this stage, and start to laugh somewhat uncontrollably for no reason. This creates a kind of “lets see how much we can make him laugh” game by my friends, which, while annoying and frustrating on LSD, was actually kind of enjoyable on Hornet. I chuckle and compose myself. Friend 1 owes me for a cigar I purchased for him, and he buys me in for the first round and hands me the change over the table. Automation takes over for this task.

7:25pm – Cards are dealt and I’m told to play my bet. I am confused as what to do, however my mind is still reasonably coherent. I remember the rules of the game and which chips are which. I place my bet and play my hand reasonably well. Strong visuals make the world seem like it is shifting in front of itself – existing objects start to ghost other objects. The table throbs. The cards bleed into the fabric. My brain is nearly on another plain of existence.

8:00pm – Lost track of time. I play cards reasonably decently, however I bet somewhat non-characteristically. I sip my Rockstar cola every now and then, which Friend 3 helpfully opened for me after he saw me staring at it. Friend 3 and 4 continually make references to how fucked up I seem, and that they will be violating me sexually should I pass out. I assure them I’m not taking a drug which will make me tired, and to instead violate Friend 2 after he passes out from bourbon and weed. I end up wit hthe dealer chip, and have to deal the deck. I actually manage to not fuck it up. Effects of the drug seem to have plateaud very nicely at this stage.

8:15pm (approx) – I decide I need to take a piss, and decide to do so outside. It is raining quite heavily and I am determined not to give a shit. I walk straight out into the rain and start pissing up against a shed, not realising how soaked im getting. I finish up and walk back, drying my glasses on the way. I get back and I’m apparently drenched. Everyone laughs and comments how fucked up I must be. I’m totally nonchalant about it, and I’m not feeling heat or cold at the time. Now am I feeling my usually aching back. I continue to sip my drink and play poker (almost).

My mind wanders heavily during this stage, and I end up zoning out quite a bit, thinking about life, existence, the universe, and certain people I hold dear to me. Friends, family, and others. Humanity, and its ability to live like a bacteria. Right strains of bacteria go on to continue their existence and to evolve, whereby the stragglers of humanity branch out – the rednecks, hillbillies, and other degenerates, exploring and colonising the most uninhabitable shitholes on the planet, doing so just to continue their existence, and spread themselves onto the next generation. Facts of life, drug use, chemical reactions on my brain become very surreal, as if this may be the clear conscious, and my sober self the troubled, unrealistic person. I think about death. I think it’d probably suck, but at the moment I am very much alive. I wish for clarity, but then I quickly stop the thought, and instead embrace the trip.

9:00pm – By this stage I’m out at poker. Friend 4 put me all-in. It was for the best, I had no idea what the fuck was going on anymore. I stare at my watch. It’s still real. 9:00 on the dot. Still set to singapore date. all is normal. Brain wanders incredibly, vastly contemplating all the other above mentioned things. I get asked if I’m ok. “What?” I reply after a long pause. Friend 3 remarks that its rude, and I should say excuse me. At the time I can not properly distinguish if he’s joking or serious. I lapse back into deep thought

9:05pm – About 30 minutes later…oh wait, it was less than 5 minutes. I zone out thinking and snap back to my watch. 5 Minutes. Really? Seemed I was out for 30. I take my focus off the watch. The game continues on in front of me. Friend 2 is out of the game also, his pipe ready for the smoking. I zone out again

9:15pm – Around 10pm….no wait – its still only 9:15? what the fuck? How could I have so many thoughts in just 10 minutes? I am amazed. Observable time is dramatically slowed down. Living time is sped up. Confusion is very slowly starting to clear up around this point. I think I’m on the comedown. Visuals still persist but are becoming more muted. Psychological effects are still in gear.

9:45pm – Observable time returns slowly to normal around this point. Total mental haze clears up a very slight amount. Thought about humans being extremely complex animals begins to circulate in my head. I think of humans forming relationships with members of the opposite sex, and how the pursuit in life is still so basically and instinctually drive, even when some humans choose to pursue other feats, the human drive is to ultimately reproduce, or to atleast simulate reproduction. The man who deludes himself is only fighting the very core that he is built upon. I think about how a relationship would effect me at this time, and I start to think about certain people on a slightly deeper level. I become slightly lonely and begin to miss certain people. I wonder what they’re up to, and how I am suddenly very interested in whatever they have to say. This troubles me slightly as I realise my instincts are still at my thought basis. I decide this is probably not going to change. I miss cetain people more.

10:30pm – The effect of the drug is definitely wearing down quite a bit now. There is only residual mental cloudyness. Visual effects are all but gone, but slightly persistant. Visual bleeding still occuring slightly, as is objects breathing. I am feeling like taking a little tramadol to up my serotonin so I can shift back to normality a little quicker

10:45pm – I excuse myself to take a crap, as my stomach has been churning the whole time I’ve been tripping. “seeya in 30 minutes” comes the chorus back. I stand up and stumble a little, unsteady on my feet, and I make my way into the house. Passing a couple of people lounging, I say hi, and get hassled by the stupid dog, which yaps at me until I get to the toilet and close the door. As I’m sitting there I look at the tiles, and notice they seem to have a pattern on them which looks very 3-dimensional. I sit and think a bit more about life and stare at my watch. Time moves extremely fast, and by 11:15 I decide I had better get the fuck out.

11:20pm – I walk back through the house, and into the garage where the poker game is still going. I’m asked if I’m ok, of which I am, and then I take a glass and have a few coca colas. This is about where my memory cuts off as it took me a good two weeks to write this article. However, I must say that 4-HO-MET is a very fun, and extraordinary drug. I would recommend it to anyone (except those with possible underlying mental issues)

EOF

Auditory Hallucinations: The Rundown (Part 2)

By Captain Anonymous | May 3, 2010

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Over the past several weeks/months I’ve been writing down anything I hallucinate while on the come-down of any sort of psychoactive drug. If you require a re-cap, you can check out part 1 here. Most of these current sentences were heard mainly during the come-down after tramadol, promethazine, or heavy doses of caffeine, whereas the last few are due to dextroamphetamine.

Here are 15 more.

1. “There’s like, a carpet sledgehammer that comes in rolls.”
2. “You guys planning to do? Not have a Christmas party.”
3. “Bit big is it? During the month?”
4. (Male) “We’re getting in touch with our clone soon” (Female) “HAHA! Cannae go local”
5. “We’ve been inspiring the hippies for…hundreds of years”
6. “What about 1…1….1:30. 1:30?”
7. “Fuck off cunt, you think they’re mine to limit?”
8. “You’ve gotta time it, then you’ve gotta mount their heads.”
9. “Fishy crab bath celery soup”
10. “No wonder I can’t pick up now, I feel seedy as”
11. (Robocop) “Somebody TURNED MY COMPUTER OFF” *gunfire*
12. “Cut the goat out, man. Seriously whack”
13. “So like when did you lose your license and stuff, mate? You were going so good, and we’re glad you kicked him out. He’s a terrorist; wears a suit when he comes out for a walk around the back yard”
14 “I have no idea how that idea gives me other ideas.”
15. “Water pipe rock ‘n’ roll”

Another 15 down, another unlimited supply to go. Until then,

EOF

Detrimental Assistance

By Squeak | April 27, 2010

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Everybody needs help at one point or another right? You start off life as this confused deformed looking form of life, but now you’re no longer a fetus safe from the outside world anymore. It’s time to start learning things on your own once you come out of that dark gaping hole crying, covered in blood, and other things you’d rather not think about. Of course you receive assistance while all this going on , much more than you will later in life (hopefully) because you are too young to fend for yourself and you’re probably about the size of a large house cat at this point.

This is all perfectly acceptable right now. You can’t even lift more than a hair yet, you have no idea what’s going on, people are constantly fussing at you, you can’t speak yet, and the only things you know how to do are things that are based off instincts. If you take a shit, you can’t tell anybody you feel like you need to drop a deuce, you don’t know how to change your own disgusting piss and shit filled diaper, you can’t feed your hungry happy ass whenever you please, and so on. I’m sure you guys get the point now.

Life goes on , you grow into a young budding child (who’s still a little bratty snotty nosed shit), but you still get help from the people around you when you need it. There’s so much left to learn, and you can’t fit it all in that screaming hyper child sized head of yours. Many mistakes are made by you, but at this point it’s for the most part forgivable because you’re not ‘old enough to know better’ yet. Enough time goes by, and soon you learn not to use your little smart mouth with your mother, lie about the fact that you just beat the shit out of your sibling (even though they are in tears on the ground beside you), or whine and bitch about a toy you weren’t bought at the store.

You also learn one very important concept of life. Showing up on time matters, and will matter much more when you get older. In order to do this ‘being on time’ thing you are also taught that getting a proper nights sleep is essential, because it usually allows you to wake up on time for any appointments, interviews, or important matters you may need to handle the next day in your adult life.

School bells ring in the morning to tell you school is starting, and you better get the fuck into the classroom. There are also bells that ring to signify your next class is about to start, so you better hurry and end your conversation with your sticky, dirty, and dumb little friends about who has cooties and who doesn’t. Then there’s the lovely bells that ring to tell you that you’re late to class, because somehow your dumb ass apparently hasn’t figured this out yet even though you’ve been in school for a few years now. This is supposed to condition you to learn to manage your time in order to be on time, appear reliable to your current teachers, and appear professional to possible future bosses when you’re older.

When you’re still in these young years, you thankfully have your mother, father, maybe grandparents, or some family member/guardian who gives you a bedtime and expects you to follow it religiously. Some parents or guardians are better at reinforcing this than others, but for the most part most kids who don’t get into bed when told to can expect to see a belt or some other form of punishment coming for them. At least in our years this was true. Now you can’t spank kids, so that creates a problem…no wonder they are all little shits, you can’t even so much as lay a hand on your kid to give them a high five anymore without someone jumping on you claiming you’re abusing the child. Anyway, that’s a different topic for another day.

Finally you hit your adult life, and hopefully you’ve learned how to set your alarm clock, wake yourself up, and drag yourself into whatever lame routine of life you may have set for yourself. Mommy is no longer waking you up saying, “It’s time for school sweetie, get the hell out of bed!” Mommy is no longer beating your ass when you refuse to get into bed the night before, and she’s no longer beating your ass for oversleeping in order to get you where you need to go on time. You’ve HOPEFULLY by this point trained yourself into being able to handle this basic part of life on your own. You can go to the bathroom on your own now, feed your own overweight hairy ass, dress yourself in your own horrendous outfits, and speak for yourself. Hopefully, at this point you aren’t crying for no apparent reason, crying to let people know you’re hungry, need to use the restroom, or need to play.

Here’s what inspired me to write this story. I love to help others, and I love to help my friends. However, I’m beginning to wonder if this is all getting to the point where it’s just detrimental to certain people in my life. I wouldn’t be overly concerned except for the fact that a majority of my friends are older than I am by several years, and I thought that with those years came something called “experience”. At least that’s what I was lead to believe…

I am finding it difficult to process that my 30 something year old friends can’t manage to get themselves up in time for work , or in some cases class (I know a few people going back to school). I often wake up to last minute text messages about how they woke up late and if there’s any way I could possibly give them a ride (I have a few friends who are unable to access cars at the moment as well). It doesn’t, or I should at least say it DIDN’T, used to bother me before because for the past 3 months I’ve been out of work with nothing better to do. In fact, I was the one who offered rides many times even though I know these people are fully capable of finding ways to get themselves where they need to go as well as arriving there on time. However, I’ve noticed a trend in some of these people becoming more and more reliant on me.

Maybe I’m weird, but I never found it difficult to get up and get to work or school on time. I follow a basic rule: If I have somewhere to be or someone to meet the next day, I go to bed at a time I know that I will be able to still make a timely appearance. If I made the mistake of staying out too late and partying the night before, I mentally kick my ass into gear. Why doesn’t anybody else seem to have this in them?

What I guess I’m trying to really get at is the fact that I’m realizing my help seems to be more damaging than actually helpful. I seem to be sending these people straight back into reverse, and quite honestly I feel like a mother trying to wean my 30 something year old children off breastfeeding. They have teeth which really fucking hurt first of all, and don’t forget they can talk back in a way that doesn’t send me crying for my mommy, but rather trying to collect the bits of my brain they’ve exploded with their words as well.

It’s time to fly free birdies, I won’t be off work much longer, and if you don’t make it to where you’re going to be on time, I won’t be found anywhere within reach. I’ll most likely be stuck behind a register arguing with some numbnut about why the coupons they brought with them aren’t valid, because they refuse to read, and refuse to believe that coupons have dates, fine print, and restrictions. No more help from me at the drop of a hat . It may be what I love to do , but I also hate hurting people, and in this sense I am hurting you by stifling the growth you apparently still have to do. It’s time for me to move on, and all I can do is hope that you figure it out.

The AVM experience – What it’s like to have a stroke at 22

By Squeak | April 23, 2010

3 Comments

This has been swirling around in my head for about the past week. I kind of quickly shoved it back as soon as I was alert enough to realize what happened to me back in January, but now I feel like I should speak out about every little detail.

Sunday January 17, 2010 around 9:30 p.m. I had just finished getting ready to go out with my friends to our regular Sunday karaoke bar. I left my apartment feeling normal, I rode in my friend’s car to the bar feeling normal, I walked into the bar, and I started to drink like normal. I had put my usual song in to sing (Portishead-Sour Times) and found my way back to where my friends were hanging out.

We sat around our table, bullshitting like we always do, and having a good time. Soon I was called up to sing, but just shortly before that happened I started feeling a pressure in the top left of my head which traveled down to the end of the bridge of my nose. I had felt this same thing about two years before while out grocery shopping once, but it was a very very light sensation that went away on its own so I continued on with life.

As I continued singing the pressure started to turn into a pain. I tried to ignore it thinking it would pass, but the more I kept going the more pain came. I got to the point where I was less able to focus on the words on the screen, or even remember what I was singing anymore. Somehow I made it through my song, and sat back down at the table in a quiet state of shock because I had no idea what was happening to me. I have a problem with anxiety disorders, and I did not want to provoke myself into a panic attack even though it was getting past the point where I felt in control of what was happening within my head. I did not want to freak out the rest of the bar which is a small place where most of the crowd knows each other, and the last thing I needed was people smothering me asking what was wrong.

I casually texted a friend and asked him if he was coming out to the bar, but I quickly noticed that for some reason when I looked down at the screen of my phone I couldn’t see my thumb or my index finger there touching the buttons. I thought that I was maybe causing this by panicking (I had about given up at this point on trying to control it), so I tried to make sure breathe, but nothing was helping. Shortly after, I started seeing a small triangle shaped pattern that had mini orange triangles inside of it, and was sort of “flashing” in the bottom right corner of my right eye.

I let the friend sitting next to me know what I was seeing, and that I didn’t feel right. She had dealt with my anxiety before , and has a general idea of what to do when I am freaking the hell out. We both went outside, and at that point I couldn’t even keep my breathing straight anymore. I was hyperventilating, and trying to force myself to cry because for some odd reason sometimes crying helps me get over my attacks.

I was too nervous about what my body was possibly doing to itself that I couldn’t even force myself to cry as much as I wanted to and tried to. My friend asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital. I told her no, and that I just wanted to go home to shake this off. It kept getting worse. All of it. The anxiety, the way my head felt, and the flashing shape in my eye were just feeding to the anxiety problem. I have rarely ever had it reach the level where it’s beyond controllable, and it did get to that point that night. Thankfully , my friend decided it was time to go to the hospital anyway after discussing that my mother had and still has problems with migraines, but I never had before in my life.

Everyone (by everyone I mean a guy friend who drove us to the bar, his girlfriend who is also my friend, and another girlfriend of ours) quickly packed into the car, and it was off to the hospital with me. I tried calling my mom to let her know what was going on , but she didn’t pick up her phone. Later in the night she noticed it was my number that popped up on her screen, so she texted me saying she thought it was one of her friends calling to bug her, and asked what was up.

At that point I was already at Clarkson Medical Center’s 24 hour urgent care building out west. I remember walking up to the counter, handing the man behind the desk my insurance cards, and trying to fill out the paperwork. I was so disoriented at that time that I could barely even state my name to the guy, when I was born, or my social security number. I had to think really hard to complete such a simple task such as writing in the information needed on the emergency room papers. It got to the point where I just passed the paper over to my friend and asked her to fill the rest out for me.

I was quickly called back to see the nurse who asked me to describe my symptoms to her. I was still in full on panic mode, feeling like I was barely able to function. I was doing my usual nervous habit of shaking my legs, but I was doing it so bad that she had to remind me to settle down so that I could continue to tell her what was wrong. As I told her what was going on with my eye, and the headache I felt, I noticed the right eye went slowly back to normal, but in my left eye I was seeing a blurred transparent circle. Almost like a cap covering my pupil. I remember telling the nurse this , and about jumping out of the chair because I was that terrified. I had no idea what was going on or what to do and felt like I was losing all control. Right after I jumped out of the chair, it suddenly felt like someone had stuffed cotton balls in both of my ears, and I could barely hear the nurse asking me any of her other questions.

I was sent back to the little check up room, and waited for a doctor to come in to take a look at me. Keep in mind hospitals have always made me nervous, and I hate setting foot into them even if I’m not there to see a doctor. Being in that room experiencing what I was (at this point the orange triangles had come back) was only bringing my anxiety levels right back up after I had just calmed down a tad bit. I panicked so bad from just waiting in that room for what felt like an eternity, that I decided in a dazed and almost unconscious state it was a good idea to get up and leave that hospital room by myself to get my friend for comfort.

I got out of the room, and started to make my way down the hallway. But something was wrong. My legs weren’t moving properly with my body at all. I was literally dragging dead weights underneath me that I had absolutely no feeling in. The tops of my feet were dragging on the ground too as I tried to focus on my walking and how to take steps…bring one foot up, bring the other foot up. Left foot , right foot, left foot , right foot. It was almost like dragging a puppet through a hallway, but not pulling it’s feet off the ground to make it walk correctly. I somehow miraculously made it to back up to the waiting room door, but the receptionist caught sight of me and asked, “Whoa! Where are you going?”

I explained to him that I really needed someone back in that room with me for comfort, he kindly asked me which person I wanted, and all I remember telling him was “the girl with the dark hair.” He went and got her after getting me back to my room, and somehow she managed to calm me down entirely. I was starting to get drowsy, and just sat with my back up on the bed ’til I felt like I wanted to lay down.

We chatted for a bit and tried to take my focus off of what was going on, but soon my stomach became uneasy.Thankfully, I can always tell when I’m going to vomit because my throat sends me nice little warning signs. My friend managed to get a nurse in quick, and I violently threw up into the tub a nurse was holding in front of me. When I say violently I mean it too. I had to have my entire face wiped off, and I almost couldn’t breathe through my nose because the force I had was just pushing the puke back up into my face.

I was given medicine for nasuea, and had been ordered a CT scan because if this had been a migraine it would’ve been my first. About five minutes after the vomit scene, a man came with a wheelchair to take me back to the CT machine. I felt like I was falling in and out of it, and to this day I’m not sure if it was because of my condition, the anti-nasuea medicine, or possibly both. I laid there on the bed in absolute silence, and I remember the scan not lasting more than five minutes before the guy silently helped me back onto the wheelchair.

On the way back to my room I began to feel worried again because I noticed how fast the guy was wheeling me through the halls. Neither of us said a single word, which of course led me to believe something was wrong. I can remember thinking to myself repeatedly to “please let everything be okay”. Shortly after I was dropped back off to the room, a woman came to the door and in her calmest most upbeat voice informed me, “We’re going to take you down to the medical center (UNMC) because your CT scan shows some bleeding in your brain, and they can figure out exactly what it is going on when you get down there. okay?”

My heart sank and my mind tried it’s hardest to race in my delirious state. I had seriously thought I’d be going home that night with some migraine medication in hand, and that everything would be fine again. Instead I was being wheeled down the hallway yet again, but this time it was to the exit doors to be loaded into an ambulance. I was starting to feel out of it and drowsy, and I was thankful that they allowed my friend to ride in the front seat while the other paramedic sat in back with me. Hearing a familiar voice made me feel comfortable enough to calm down, because at that moment and time I was facing on of my biggest fears ever(having to ride in the back of an ambulance strapped to the stretcher). I closed my eyes, and off we went to the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The longest car ride of my entire life even though in reality it’s only about twenty minutes.

We finally arrived at the hospital, and I remembered feeling the cold winter wind for about two minutes before I was inside staring up at the flourescent hospital lights. I kept wishing I was going to be okay. Before I knew it I was finally in the ICU on the 8th floor (neurology cases).

I barely remember being stripped of my clothes and quickly thrown into a hospital gown. I do remember hoping that it would all be over tomorrow, and that I would be back in my comfortable apartment with my familiar surroundings. I do remember four of my friends (the driver of the car we came in followed the ambulance to the hospital) standing at my left corner by the door as several different nurses hooked me up to IV’s and checked my vital signs. The very last thing I remember before falling asleep that night was my girl friend asking her boyfriend if he needed to leave the room (hospital rooms make him queasy), watching him say yes and walk out, listening to her state to the nurses that he’s a medical courier which made it ironic that he couldn’t stand hospital rooms. I remember hearing laughter about his situation, and listening to another friend tell me to be strong before they all left the room for the night.

My friends informed my mother later that night that I was in the hospital because I never was able to respond to her text after all that had just happened within the past two hours. They also informed a few of our good friends from the bar who had noticed my sudden disappearance and were texting my phone asking where I went, letting them know my situation and what was going on.

My mom and my brother arranged for a flight from California as soon as possible, and arrived on that Tuesday (the 19th). It was on that day that I had an angiogram, and that day that they discovered that I had an Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM) in the left occipital lobe of my brain. Something I was born with, but it (my brain)finally couldn’t take it anymore for some reason, and bled about the size of a half dollar causing a hemorrhagic stroke. I am not paralyzed or anything surprisingly, but I am an extremely lucky case.

Coming soon: It’s not like it’s brain surgery! Wait…yes, it literally is.

Cell phones apparently inhibit logic too

By Squeak | April 13, 2010

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Don’t get me wrong. I’m not completely against them (cell phones), I mean hell, the one I own barely leaves my hands or my sight (unless I am driving or somewhere where a cell phone is inappropriate). They’ve helped me out in situations where I needed help immediately, and they have given me the ability to assist others.

Anyways the thing that irritates me is the fact that recently I’ve been having this issue with receiving several texts from several different people asking me what I was doing. Well it was actually more like, “Wut r u doin/What ya doin?” This also has a tendency to only ever happen when I’m occupied of course.

Yes, I am guilty of sending these texts as well, but they are extremely rare coming from me. If someone says that they are busy, I stop texting them. Simple as that. I also actually take the time to spell out all of the words, and use proper grammar in my messages. You know…because that whole three extra seconds was so important to my life. Don’t want to lose those!

I don’t mind letting people know what I’m up to at the moment, and I like knowing that my friends care enough about me to ask, or at least send me some type of text at any time during any given day. It’s good to know I’m at least cool enough for some people to want to hang out with, or at least talk to if I’m not occupied.

The thing that has been bothering me is the fact that when I specifically state that I am occupied in my texts a few specific friends of mine continue to text me with questions about whatever I am doing at the moment, or about things that don’t matter. What does this have to do with common sense you ask? I’m getting to that, don’t worry your pretty little head.

First of all, I am out on the road a lot. I love to drive, and my friends know this. I do not own a hands free device, or have a way of texting by or with my mouth (they know this as well). So when I get asked a question like “what are you doing?” as I’m busy driving, I will make it a point to state that I’m doing so. I make it as short and sweet as possible (usually with a text while stopped at a red light) with the simple word “driving”.

Common sense would tell any normal human being with half a brain that the person driving most likely has both hands on the wheel , and has their attention on the road. So why, why do my friends take it upon themselves to continue to ask me questions, and then proceed to follow up with a frustrated “????” when I don’t respond within two minutes. I’m sorry, but I thought making sure I didn’t endanger other drivers and focusing on the road was a bit more important than answering your question anyway. It’s never urgent or of any concern, and I would hope that if it was, my friends would have the sense to get my attention by calling me rather than texting me.

So I guess you could just say I’m irritated at the fact that people (specifically these friends) aren’t using their brains to put two and two together, and that this is happening too often. I could tell them that I was hopping in the shower, and they would ask me, “So how’s your shower going? What kind of shampoo do you use? Are you shaving your legs? How long are you going to be in there for?” I could be running around the house with my panties on fire, let them know this, and these people would still ask me, “So what are you up to?” Hello?! Anything in that space in your head? Most people have one, USE IT!