Job-related brain rot

It feels like the world is blazing past me at 100-miles-per-hour, and I'm stuck is slow motion. There's this ever-present lump in my chest -- the panic appendage -- screaming at my legs to run faster.

"You've got to move," it reminds me. "They're leaving without you. Hurry, hurry, hurry."

But the harder I try to catch up the slower I go like a snail or a turtle or a worn-out computer processor.

There must be a glitch in my operating system -- something terrible like Alzheimers or cancer; exhaustion from lack of coffee; dehydration from too much coffee; or worse. It could be that super bug everyone's on about -- the people-ending super pandemic would begin with me.

Five years ago I'd have run straight to the doctor with a shopping list of pharmaceuticals, but Snowpocalypse 2007 killed my money tree.


I was drying my hair yesterday -- scowling at my reflection -- when I noticed something black and squishy protruding from my ear. I climbed on the bathroom counter and tilted my head towards the mirror to get a closer look. It appeared to be mildew -- but why was it growing in my ear? I turned around to examine the other side, and sure enough that ear was full of black slop too.

It took me a nanosecond to pinpoint the culprit -- the Internet. My brain is rotting from all of the stupid I see on the Internet. It turns people in my line of work are susceptible to intercranial mold. I'm told it was mentioned in the 372-page contract I signed thereby holding my employer harmless should I be incapacitated by job-related brain rot.

I'm a web analyst -- I review thousands of cached Internet queries to improve search engine accuracy. So all that stuff you thought you were looking for in private -- SURPRISE -- it's hanging out there like a naked old man. 

I'm surrounded by stupid all day  -- "pregnant pictures of Snooki," "Jwoww breast implants," "Justin Bieber shirtless," "emo love poems," "Jack the ripper victims," "Marilyn Monroe dead," "Miami zombie autopsy photos," "anal herpies," "scene girl hair" and on and on -- and those are the nice queries. The bad ones are so bad I can't even share them.

I know things I shouldn't. For example, Mylie Cyrus is engaged to Liam Hemsworth, whose high school sweetheart Laura Griffin is lashing out at Mylie in the tabloids for stealing her man -- oh God.

My brain needs an ipecac douche, but I'm stumped on delivery -- it always goes straight to my stomach. Then it occurred to me mid retch that a violent-enough upchuck might dislodge the rotten bits of gray matter from my system.

I know now "puking your brains out" is only a figure of speech.