Lately I've been philosophizing about how some people are in comas and have irreversible brain damage. Then I compared this to a little thing I like to call "life". Seriously, stay with me here. Life is not always as simple as we'd like it to be, I think we can all agree. Except if you have massive brain damage--then it's pretty much just bodily functions and an ungodly hospital bill. You might think the medical bills would introduce an element of complexity, but not really. We're talking about an individual whose mental faculties have been severely compromised. He likely wouldn't understand the concept of a medical bill even if you rolled it up and jabbed him on the forehead with it. So again, pretty simple.

The point is this: Under normal cirmustances, life is not perfectly analagous to a brain-dead person. A non-brain-dead person at least likes to play Gin Rummy, go to the corner store, or do any number of other things. He wouldn't just lie there. With the brain-dead guy, there's just a feeding tube and 1 or 2 family members who have long since forgotten he's still in the hospital. They probably already think the guy died a long time ago. And sure enough, as the months go by, their visits become more and more infrequent, because they didn't remember that he was still in there. That's sad.

But did my ruminations lead to any useful conclusions? Yes, and my conclusions were three-fold. Well, technically four-fold--one of my thoughts was that brain injuries aren't an appropriate humor topic, but as you can see I disregarded that pretty quickly, and rightly so. Let's look at the other ones.

Conclusion 1: Simplicity in life is not worth having parietal and occipital lobes that have completely withered away. Simplicity is good, but c'mon. It's not that good.

Conclusion 2: If your life is too complicated, you should go for a walk or get a spa treatment to ease the tension, instead of trying to get brain damage.

Conclusion 3 (coup de gras conclusion): Being in a vegetative state for 15 years before finally kicking the bucket has its advantages, I won't pretend it doesn't. No getting up to go to the bathroom anymore, for one. You could sleep right through that, guilt-free. Two, if you used to have recurring nightmares, well that problem pretty much fixed itself. Zero neurological activity, remember? Yet ultimately, I would rather not have it. Dead brain tissue, I mean. Given the choice on that, I would say no.

You may call me a coward because I'm not willing for that kind of inconvenience, but I look at it like this: It would be a major lifestyle change. I've given a lot of thought to this, and I'll thank you not to question my conclusions. The fact that you're even questioning them leads me to believe that you yourself may be suffering from...actually, I'm not even gonna say it. I'm bigger than that. But you know what I'm thinking, right? I'm thinking one of us has a problem with our brains, I'm just too nice to say anything about it. Now I'd like you to go and think about some of these things for awhile, if that's even possible. I don't mean to be hard on you, but honestly. This stuff is gold, people. Let's start showing some respect around here.