As I’ve repeatedly talked about my dream of ending up as a brain in a jar, I almost fell off my rocker and broke a hip when I saw this story:
Scientists have grown a miniature brain in a dish with a spinal cord and muscles attached, an advance that promises to accelerate the study of conditions such as motor neurone disease.
The lentil-sized grey blob of human brain cells were seen to spontaneously send out tendril-like connections to link up with the spinal cord and muscle tissue, which was taken from a mouse. The muscles were then seen to visibly contract under the control of the so-called brain organoid.
The research is is the latest in a series of increasingly sophisticated approximations of the human brain grown in the laboratory—this time with something approaching a central nervous system attached.
Okay, they need to hurry up with this. I’ve always wanted to get outside of the twisted rollercoaster chaos of my own brain for a while—you know, get “meat ray” away from ray’s brain. (Oh, and thanks to Joopiter for coming up with “meat ray,” which I will now never be able to unthink.) Given how my brain seems to have a mind of its own at times, any sort of break would be a welcome respite.
Also, I could absolutely use a few of those extra brains as this one seems to be topping out at capacity with all the worthless information crammed into it. Seriously, why do I need to have the entire casts of both “The Brady Bunch” and “Gilligan’s Island”—character and actor names—locked and loaded in the speed dial part of my consciousness? I would hook up the organoid dish brains to the main unit like it’s expanded computer storage space and download all the useless crap, such as lyrics to Banana Splits theme. “One banana, two banana, three banana, four. Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more!” (And I didn’t even need to look it up. Sigh.)
Thinking about it, I guess this blog is sort of like storing stuff in the cloud. Which is good because despite how much is cram-packed into my grey matter, apparently there’s even more that’s leaked out.
Speaking of leakage: I recently stumbled across “remember the night,”a post that I wrote nearly seven years ago, and ironically, can not remember writing at all. And before tossing around the old “you’re old and senile” tropes, there is a plethora of stories, posts and articles that I absolutely can recall crafting. For example, in fifth grade I wrote a series of adventures about The Chumperdink, a superhero who was less than super. Most of the details are now fuzzy other than the stories were silly, the endings were dramatically convenient, and the narrative voice was patterned on Ted Knight’s iconic cartoon super hero bravado.
Anywhoo, as I re-read “remember the night,” it felt like dipping into someone else’s world. I mean, I can easily identify the real experiences that served as inspiration, so it was somewhat familiar. Yet, as I was reading it, I had no idea where the story was going. [*Insert any joke about someone who celebrates contracting Alzheimer’s because every day is a new adventure.*]
FWIW: Unlike other stories or posts I look back on and cringe, I don’t hate it . . . .
Man oh man, I’ve written a lot of stuff. Like, a whole lot. Here, there and other places.
And that doesn’t include my full-time daytime gigs for the past 20 years, which have required me to churn out hundreds of articles, ranging from ice cream and immigration to configuring classroom space and space exploration.
That’s a ton ‘o content, as the kids say. And that doesn’t even count the unpublished manuscripts and other projects that I’ve been quietly working on the past few years.
The “funny” part is that despite how much I’ve written, I feel like a complete failure as of late. (Or an incomplete one, your call.) After a recent tumble down the rabbit hole of my own older work, I’ve come to an upsetting conclusion:
I’ve become a coward.
Ugh.
I used to take so many risks, letting my snark flag fly high. I used to mock everyone and anyone (particularly myself), joke about anything, and we all laughed together. It was funny and entertaining, and we all (myself included) would look forward to seeing what stupidity I might unleash.
But then a few things changed. One is that I got divorced, which kind of broke me a bit. In the process, I lost my “safety net” to fall back on in case anything I wrote got me in big trouble.
Next, as you all may have noticed, the rise of social media has changed being funny. Anything I write innocently to get a laugh can now easily be misinterpreted or knocked askew of context, then go viral, trigger our easily triggered outrage culture, and bring down the full righteous fury of the intrawebz. And again, I’m all alone up here on the verbal high wire.
It also hasn’t helped that I’ve mellowed as the years have piled on. The angry young man has eased into an affable dad. Although there’s room enough for both, isn’t there?
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Yes, I could delve back into my old sack of tricks and unleash that sarcastic wit—and trust me, it’s still there. And certainly, there’s no shortage of targets.
Except … well, there’s so much anger and mean-spirited rhetoric and petty bickering already, I don’t want to be another (b)log on that fire, despite how much I love sweet, sweet fire.
Maybe I’ve just reached a point of diminishing returns, as a person and a writer. That anything I write or do is just a waste of time, that no one cares, that I can’t move the needle. That it’s time to quit.
But …
It sounds so cliché, except after a tough personal stretch, I’ve come to discover that something as simple as a genuine smile at a dark moment can lift my spirits from the depths. Science (chemistry, in particular) backs me up on this. And I like the concept of paying it forward.
So maybe if I can make one person smile—or positively alter the chemistry of one brain in a jar or glass—with something I’ve created, some stupidity I’ve birthed, or even a seemingly forgotten memory, then maybe, just maybe, it’s worth going on.
Even if that one person turns out to be me.
