brain juice

Front Cover

Back Cover

Spine

Synopsis

Aram Wool's work has also appeared in Hibernations, Ice Box, The New Lemming, The Mind's Eye, The Fairbanks Daily News Miner, Without My Pants, and the EOTU Ezine. He is also 1st place recipient of Heartland's 14th annual holiday story contest. Brain Juice includes the author's own drawings, sketched while professors lectured. Here are some excerpts from the book: when you're walking in the vicinity of a chemical fire and getting a whiff of the toxic fumes, I would like to see a science fair project exploring the relationship between a person's recoiling reaction to the bad smell and the effects the fumes are having on them. when you smell a sick thing, you do actions like nose wrinkling and looking for clean air. if you breathe certain toxins, they will do things to your brain that will make you move about erratically, seizure, also potentially vomit, and a long list of other symptoms that I would be familiar with if I worked around hazardous materials. of course, the point at which the nose wrinkling and similar actions turned into the effects of the toxins in your system would depend on the toxins involved. a grand prize science fair project would need to include this relationship for a minimum five toxins, stating common name and chemical formula on proper graph axis versus voluntary and involuntary symptoms versus exposure time. yes, three dimensions, but it could be visualized with modeling. another excerpt: on my recent airport adventure I was taken hostage by my imagination during the flight from st. paul to fairbanks. I was afraid of the possibility I had booked myself for flights until my death, living airport/airplane passenger life for the rest of my days. I was worried about how it would feel to arrive at an airport and make my way to the departure gate of another flight, this cycle continuing indefinitely. I imagined some force pushing me on for thousands of trips around the world, getting familiar with all major city airports. and it became clear that the only way by which I might break the cycle would be for me to hack my limbs off, thereby preventing any movement toward departure gates. my demon possessed self would probably still attempt to inch forward on bleeding stubs with boarding pass between clenched teeth, but with any luck the EMT hospital folk would come snatch me up and deposit me in an emergency room bed, strapping me down tight just in case I was to try anything funny. and one more excerpt: while I was on the boston campus I was often witness to empty cars parked near campus buildings with distress lights blinking. it's tempting to believe that this was a precautionary measure taken by the driver to indicate to the university police that "yes officer, I know I'm parked illegally but as you can see by my blinking distress lights, I only intend to be parked here for a moment." but as far as I could tell they weren't parked illegally, there was blue parking lot paint marking off individual vehicle space. I've decided that blinking lights were used as an indication of how much it meant to the driver to be parked where they were. I imagined a passing cop who noticed a parked car without lights blinking would promptly write a ticket for 50 dollars. on the other hand, if the parked car had distress lights on, this would mean the driver cared so much about being parked where they were that they were willing to waste battery juice. a passing cop would leave a blinking car alone, with the rationalization that with the money being saved by not having to pay a $50 fine, the driver would have to buy a new battery.