Brain Assassin

Here I am … in one of those moods. You know the kind of mood where you start think­ing with­out being able to stop. Every­thing just seems to be made of ques­tions and every poten­tial answer — again — raises a bunch of ques­tions. As if that wouldn’t be enough, I keep hop­ping from thought to thought with high speed. The last time I expe­ri­enced an onslaught like this was more than two years ago. Well, back then these things hap­pened on a reg­u­lar basis. Now I don’t know how to han­dle it any more.

It sounds weird and most prob­a­bly, it is. I don’t know why that hap­pened ear­lier — even then it seemed to come out of the blue — and I don’t know why it stopped. I’m am a multi-​​tasking per­son and I tend to think on a few things simul­ta­ne­ously. Not that I could stop that if I wanted to, mind you. That pro­duces some … inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions when I sud­denly change the topic in mid-​​sentence with­out rec­og­niz­ing it. The only hint I ever get is the con­fused expres­sion on my dia­log partner’s face. Notic­ing such expres­sions is another mat­ter entirely.

Some­times, I’m not good at that at all. No, that’s not true. Most of the time I’m not good at it. But there are these rare moments when I seem to know oth­ers bet­ter than they do them­selves. When I was a youth it was com­pletely dif­fer­ent. Some time in life I must have taken the wrong path at the cross­roads. What­ever I did or didn’t, it has turned my life upside down. I’d like to say that this scares the shit out of me but I can’t find the emo­tion to back this state­ment up. It feels more like … some sort of sci­en­tific curiosity.

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Whoa, two days with­out an update. I can almost hear you out there scream­ing »What is wrong with you?«, »You promised!«, or »Don’t get a life, I absolutely need to read what­ever you write!«. I do take my respon­si­bil­ity seri­ously. It it all about enter­tain­ment, isn’t it? Since there’s noth­ing of great inter­est going on, and I know it all — trust me, I take the chance to address some­thing that’s been on my mind for the last 24 min­utes. No. This is nei­ther a hint at a cer­tain TV show nor am I refer­ring, in an encoded way I might add, to a par­tic­u­lar movie inspired by Dou­glas Adams.

No, what I have in mind is about a cer­tain term that has been in use for quite some time now: info­tain­ment. Obvi­ously, this word is the result of an art­ful cou­pling of informa­tion entertain­ment and refers to a mix­ture of news and enter­tain­ment fea­ture. In short, it is a way to make hard news more diges­tive to the aver­age Joe. Plus, to my mind, it describes a cer­tain lifestyle where it is impor­tant to know every lat­est bit of infor­ma­tion avail­able on a topic almost always con­cern­ing so-​​called celebri­ties or cool new stuff in gen­eral. It cer­tainly makes you look cool if you got the lat­est »intel« on some­thing that oth­ers don’t know of.

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Do you some­times won­der who you are or are you done ask­ing this ques­tion? It’s not easy to answer at best and it may not be some­thing you’d like to speak out loud at worst. Even worse, the answer changes with you. If you once knew, you may not know any­more because you’ve evolved. I don’t reg­u­larly think of it but now and then peo­ple say some­thing that prompts me to pon­der this very ques­tion and it is get­ting harder and harder to come up with an answer.

Truth is, I don’t know who I am. Not for sure, any­way. I know that there is some­thing dark in me. Still, I’m not an evil per­son even though peo­ple accuse me of being too detached. I fake a lot of human inter­ac­tions because it is the eas­i­est way to han­dle peo­ple. To give them some­thing they can under­stand. Fact is, I don’t under­stand quite a lot of human … liv­ing. I don’t feel like oth­ers do. I see things … dif­fer­ently. I’m cold and remote. I’m charm­ing if I so choose. No mat­ter how much I think on that the answer eludes me. I do not know who I am. Per­haps I should start by assert­ing who I am not.

Seems like it’s worth con­sid­er­ing. Right now, I don’t have the answer and I really won­der: does anyone?

That’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion, don’t you all agree? There’s no ques­tion that peo­ple have always been attracted to the dark side of the force. For that rea­son alone there are many peo­ple flock­ing to the vam­piris­tic move­ment. You think I exag­ger­ate? Just open your eyes. If you know how to look, you can see them almost every­where. There are no real bound­aries — not in a world that is con­nected by the Inter­net. So, with­out a ques­tion, there is a sub­cul­ture that cen­ters around vampirism.

Some peo­ple are attracted to it because they like the dark side. Oth­ers sim­ply enjoy hav­ing power over their fel­low humans (Just in case you’re won­der­ing: That power is evi­dent. I have wit­nessed some punks chas­ing after a quite beau­ti­ful woman who had the appear­ance of a goth. They had barely time to utter a few words when she bared her fangs. Yeah, right. Fangs! Both punks sud­denly stopped, unsure as what to make of it.). Then there are quite a few who seem to get sex­u­ally aroused by act­ing like a vam­pire. Oth­ers are in for spir­i­tual rea­sons while a few just like the fashion.

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What do you make of that? It def­i­nitely unlocks lots of pos­si­bil­i­ties. I could add a lit­tle descrip­tive adjec­tive like ›sick‹. And it would be true. Once again my good old acquain­tance viral infec­tion is lodg­ing with me and I was forced to take some sick days. Best of all, I got sick on the first day of my vaca­tion which took place under the motto ›well­ness‹. No need to men­tion that I didn’t break off my vaca­tion but I didn’t do all that much well­ness either.

Regard­less of how hard life tries to push me down I could state that I am happy. I’m not feel­ing all that bad — just a mas­sive cold, a lit­tle cough­ing, lots of sneez­ing, and I’m aching all over, mostly head and stom­ach (some­times simul­ta­ne­ously and some­times in sequence but hey, that’s no big deal). It’s just a dif­fer­ent form of being on leave and hav­ing time for one­self. I could as well say that I am con­tent. Sat­is­fied. Hun­gry. Open-​​minded. Leg­end (just kid­ding). I dare not expand beyond adjec­tive, pos­si­bil­i­ties increase by some order of magnitude.

No, it’s enough to say that I am. I am is good enough for now.

Christ­mas is almost upon us and the shops tend to be so damn crowded that you can’t even walk in with­out bump­ing into a few per­sons. Did I men­tion that I hate crowded places? Any­way, it’s the same wher­ever you go. I for one can’t even buy books online — mighty Ama­zon just isn’t able to deliver within a rea­son­able time-​​frame. The books don’t mat­ter, I wouldn’t dare buy­ing Christ­mas presents on Ama­zon only a few days before the great day.

Unfor­tu­nately, I still need to buy a cou­ple presents. In other words: I have to wage a full-​​blown war. Yes, that’s right. I will have to bat­tle other last-​​minute shop­pers like me to get the stuff I need. I just hope I don’t have to engage too many foes lest they over­whelm me and take what’s right­fully mine. Now I will go and med­i­tate to get into the right state of mind for the bat­tle that is ahead because I believe Sun-​​Tzu was right when he said that »vic­to­ri­ous war­riors win first and then go to war, while defeated war­riors go to war first and then seek to win«. Wish me luck!