The Corruption

I have nothing to say about my abusive girlfriend Insomnia because I've had just about enough of looking at her and her staircases for one day. Instead, I want to talk about how I've been sick with a case of the brain fever on this otherwise fine Presidential Weekend.

You see, it all happened last Wednesday night when I started coughing. I dismissed it as an unwelcomed indignity that comes part-in-parcel with my nightly ice cream snack but I kept coughing all throughout the night. On Thursday morning not only was I still coughing but I had developed an oppressiveness on my chest and a dense fogginess of mind. I realized then that I had little time left. I went throughout the day as usual, giving angry speeches in my English class when wholly inappropriate, giving speeches in my Math class (also inappropriate) and giving speeches to my friends because honestly they need some guidance in their lives. All the while I could feel it growing inside me. The Corruption. The tainting of my precious bodily fluids. Throughout the day I could feel myself becoming more "disconnected" with the world around me. I couldn't concentrate and my eyes grew heavy and hot. I felt nauseous and lost all appetite (which really is tragic because my Grandmother made a very nice sandwich Thursday).

By the time the day was over I was dead, slumped over in my chair and totally unable to communicate with my own nerves, let alone the world around me. My mind was swimming through static as I could hear Mark (some dude I know) calling from across the abyss. The whole time, a single word kept running through the rapidly sinking ship of my mind.

Agamemnon...

"I'm going to die." I told Mark over and over. "And you're the executor of my estate!" But I couldn't die, not yet (Insomnia isn't done after all). So somehow I workup the sheer will to stand up and walk when class was over. My head hung limply in front of me as I made my way to the library. I promised one of my misguided friends that I would meet him there to help him plan a videogame he was making or whatever. By that point I couldn't care, I couldn't even understand what was happening. I was running on the last reserves of my strength and before I knew it I was playing a children's card game. He offered to take me home and I politely refused, we parted ways and I was alone in the failing light of the oncoming evening, a ticking time bomb of feverish delusion. I had to make it home, I couldn't collapse in the street. By the time I finally reached my house, I mumbled something I couldn't understand to my Grandmother and collapsed on my bed, not moving for the rest of the night.

Agamemnon lives...

Friday morning, I'm laying in bed with an awful bronchial cough. My head is throbbing, my eyes feel like their going to burst and my brain in swimming without direction, it's ship's wheel long gone. The whole day is spent sheepishly sipping water and laying in bed, I can't even look at the computer screen without waves of nausea washing over me. I don't know if I feel hot or cold but I'm constantly tearing the sheets away, only to pull them back over my head, shivering.

Saturday, I'm totally disabled and barely have enough of an appetite for a cup of yogurt. I can't bring myself to open Hammer and I shun Minecraft, instead I try to glean interesting facts from TVTropes and learn about a really really funny series called Look Around You. I lay in bed mostly and read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, which doesn't sit too well with me after the dreams I had last night and certainly do not have the patience for Atlas Shrugged.

It was after I watched the "Calcium" episode of Look Around You and decided to go to bed that it started to get weird...

I dreamt that a Mexican drug cartel had kidnapped my sister and it was up to me to rescue her. For reasons I don't remember, the first order of business was getting a steady job and a house. I'm certain I never actually found her or any evidence that the cartel was even real but I do remember lots of car chases through the vibrantly colorful and even psychedelic streets of that nameless Mexican city. Plus, I narrowly avoided getting trapped in an electrified net.

I woke up, drenched in sweat and quite confused. I've had this dream before and even after I'm awake I remember it perfectly (but sadly do not now). I've had dreams like this the last time I had a fever. So I change into fresh evening wear and wait for the next dream.

I'm in the house I grew up in, in the backyard is my old swing set. I'm suddenly in my room, staring at a person who will remain anonymous. Their eyes are red and filled with tears, cardboard boxes full of papers are scattered everywhere in my tiny bedroom. Suddenly, the person pulls out an Uzi and points it at my head. I wake up before they shoot and wipe the cold sweat from my brow.

Today is Sunday, I still feel a little unbalanced when standing but I had some pancakes and a grilled ham sandwich. My vibrancy and dynamic rage have all but restored but still cough loudly and frequently.

In a way, I was looking forward to this. I'm actually a pretty healthy person, I walk to and from school every day and have taken up very light weight lifting but it's been in the back of my mind since the last time it happened: The Fever. It was about three years ago when I last had a fever and, coincidentally, it was the first time I read The King in Yellow (SO cash) and since then, I've wanted to have those same strange, pallid dreams. Those visions of long-extinct sea-life and dead, dry Earth. I've been able to revisit that, and while I would gladly give up the coughing and feeling like I'm-going-to-throw-up-but-won't I wouldn't give up the dreams and out-of-body feeling.

Tomorrow, I will read War of the Worlds as it is my tradition when sick.

The Winchester House of Mystery

Ah yes, the familiar musty smell of album covers. We leave such fond memories of the past to once again peer into the dreamscape I am weaving from the threads of feverish night terrors: Insomnia.



First of all, take a gander at that. That's the Winchester Mystery House, it's a well-known California mansion that was under construction continuously for 38 years, and is reported to be haunted. It once was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, but is now a tourist attraction. Under Winchester's day-to-day guidance, its "from-the-ground-up" construction proceeded around the clock, without interruption, from 1884 until her death on September 5, 1922, at which time work immediately ceased.

It is well known for it's bizarre architecture, such as staircases that lead to the ceiling, rooms built without doors, doors that lead outside from the second story, twisted hallways that don't go anywhere and secret compartments.



A building constructed to be as bizarre and confusing as possible that features heavily in hallways and secret compartments? That's a ridiculous idea!




The cubes don't care about the three-dimensional tourists that get lost in the house. They'll destroy everything they touch with their superior hyperangles.



A quite evening on the veranda, the typical smells of summertime blow westward from the valley.



Again, twisty hallways. You should have seen this coming.



Another train; derailed and headed for the wild blue yonder of the Paranoia Zone. Where will it go? What will it's passengers find in that starry abyss below?

The pressure's really on to finish this now, especially now that Duke Nukem Forever is actually coming out! But not only that, so is Portal 2. Will Insomnia fall to the wayside when these bigger titles finally ship? I hope not, Insomnia will be free after all, that's got to count for something.

Even More AWFUL Album Covers!

Oh album covers! Where would I be without you? Probably somewhere successful...

Flamenco! By Vicente Escudero


Béla Lugosi tried to reinvent himself to get away from his role as Dracula. After his first Flamenco album he stopped trying.

When God Smiled on Ronald Coyne...


...the damage was irreversible.

Music for the Sensational Sixties


They always told Don that there was no controlling the powers he tampered with, that many before him tried to harness the raw power of Jazz. He didn't listen to them. Now, hurtling through space on his demon-engine of of death and sounding the maddening call of the blasphemous horn to let all men know of their inevitable doom Don Elliot couldn't help but wonder if he made the right choice.

Slide Easy In...Disco


You'd be surprised at all the amazing products that come in a convenient can (then there's those products you wish didn't come in cans). Now the very essence of Disco itself comes in a can! Go ahead! Smash some Disco in your manly fist. Spread some on cake, I don't care! Bust open a can of boogie, because Disco never dies!

Jacques Dutronc


ARRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH!!!

The Barry Lee Trio Being Creepy


Honestly you guys, you're not fooling anyone. I don't know what's sadder: the fact that they spend their weekends creeping around Mrs. Cunningham's backyard or that they try and cover it up by saying they're on "safari".

Space Escapade By Les Baxter


Les was a real go-getter. He applied for a job at NASA, the Soviet Space Program and even Star Fleet but was rejected every time. Not letting these early failures get to him, Spaceman Baxter built his own rocket ship. After inventing an ingenious new spacesuit from his mother's exercise suit and fish bowl he was ready to fulfill his destiny and be the first man ever on the planet Femiplex 6.

Beat that Captain Kirk.

Jennie


"Gentlemen, please...my neck...is...shrinking...can we please do the photo-shoot some other time..."

"No no, this is going to be great! You're money Jennie, you're so money!"

"But...can't...breath...head...shrinking..."

Halli, Hallo, Wir Fahren By Heino


Heino strikes again! With his 3-D glasses nothing can escape his gaze.

Joyce


When talking about the worst album covers ever the question is not "Will Joyce show up?" but "When and how often will Joyce show up?".

Just look at her. Look at the way she commands that clown frock, the way she presents the rose so seductively, the subtly of her expression. And that 'FRO!

Joyce is too much woman for me, maybe for any man.

Don & Seymour


Anyone in the business will tell you that Seymour was the real creative genius behind the duo. Sure, Don was the only one with hands and therefore the only one who could play the guitar at shows. But Seymour wrote all the lyrics, he was in the recording studio at the crack of dawn, ready to work. Yet, Don got all the credit and Seymour drifted into obscurity.

Such is show buisness.

Stuffparty 1 By Larz Kristerz


Oh my god.

Forget everything you just read...THIS IS NOW THE LIST OF THE BEST ALBUM COVERS OF ALL TIME!!!