Infectious: Mark Abrams gets Bugged...

There was, I think you must have read about it, a scientist who figured out how to wire the brain of a cockroach with micro-electronic radio receptors and control it via a remote.  Well, it was my general misfortune to have picked up the cockroach by accident at a Taco Bell. It has apparently gone rogue.   Anyway, it got into my pants leg and while the scientist was apparently going a bit mad trying to get it to angle the camera 38 degrees, it did happen to have a pretty good view of the entire length of my body all the way to my head. And so as I went to… this is the embarrassing part… a Dungeons & Dragons game, and sat there passionately playing Johan the Paladin of the Platinum Dragon God, the entire session was being recorded. What’s most annoying, probably, about the fact that it got loaded to YouTube was that the editor saw fit to filter out all the cool bits where I was playing Johan as a True And Noble Hero of Good-n-Holy Righteousness, but instead loaded the bit where I was snorting at some joke that a fellow player had made, along with another bit where I was pretending to be Darth Vader, though of course I was just KIDDING – Johan is nothing LIKE Darth Vader… but I digress. The good news is that of the two minutes on the video those scenes the editor only took about 8 seconds, so that’s not too bad.  

The rest of it was kind of interesting stuff of me talking with a girlfriend over sake at a Japanese Bistro, and having a laugh with her and the bar tender about Toshiro Mifuni’s portrayal of King Lear.  Then there was another bit of me practicing Wudan Sword, “Dragon Walking” which uses the Gim Sword (the thin straight one with the double edges), and that was actually nice to see. Practice does make perfect after all. Then there was another scene where the cockroach-cam caught me at an odd angle taking a photograph of the sun through some trees during the snow storm on the first day of spring out on the highway. What I liked about that was the fact that the colors were deep greens, yellows and blues around the sun, and my head got haloed by the scene because I had to lean over to catch that shot. Then, by chance, I happen to have picked up my guitar and played a half a song, but my tennis elbow still keeps me from playing very well, so I didn’t get very far before having to put it back down.  Still, the bit of the song I played sounded pretty good to me, and there was a bird singing along outside the window. I suspect it had microchip enhancements, because it was a bit coincidental that it sang along perfectly with the harmonics of the melody, but then again birds will do that sometimes. My favorite part of the video though, has to be when the video-roach caught caught me relaxing on the couch, day dreaming about all the amazing things that the future has in store for our funny little race.

About the Author:

Mark is a wierd combination of diometrically opposing mental constructs.  On the one hand he exercises a Spock-inspired reverence for logic and order and is a computer programmer/analyst by trade.  On the other hand he's a thoroughly unaccomplished traveler/adventurer, artist, musician, poet, writer and pencil & paper role-playing game designer (which he's been at for three decades).  Eventually he plans to come out of his shell and introduce himself and his creations to someone else... but don't rush him.