Cyberpunk

Grant.
    Take care of yourself and ignore that Jenn Parker troll. Call me if you feel up to it, okay?
    beast says:
    May 11th, 20__ at 3:36 am
    sorry about your friend its so scarey that were all gonna die
    anonymous says:
    May 12th, 20__ at 10:56 am
    I’ve spent the past week doing nothing but reading obituaries from every newspaper I can find online. I read Grant Lee’s obit and followed links to his MySpace and then here to your blog.
    My son died last week. I was with him in the backyard when he just folded in on himself, falling to the grass. His eyes were closed and blood trickled out of his ears. He was only six. I suppose that his young age is supposed to make it worse, but it can’t be any worse.
    I’m afraid to write his name, as if writing it here makes what happened to him more final than it already is.
    Someone else, not me, wrote my son’s obituary. I don’t remember who. They did a terrible job.
    When we first came home, after leaving his body at the hospital, I went into his room and found some crumpled-up drawings under his bed. There were two figures in black on the paper, monstrously sized, but human, small heads, no mouths, just two circles for eyes, but all black. They had black guns and they sprayed black bullets all over the page. The bullets were hard slashes, big as knives, black too, and they curved. I have no idea what it means or where it came from.
    Was it a sketch of a nightmare, did he see something on TV he shouldn’t have, was he drawing these scenes with friends at school? Why did he crumple the drawings up and stuff them under his bed? Did he think that they were “bad” that he couldn’t show them to me, talk about it with me, that I’d be so upset with him that I’d feel differently about him if I were to see the pictures?
    It’s this last scenario that sends me to the computer and reading other people’s obituaries.
A Grim Anniversary
    Becca Gilman • April 12th, 20__
    The Blog at the End of the World has been live for a year now. I thought it worth revisiting my first post . On March 20th, 20__, in Mansfield, MA; a fourteen-year-old boy died suddenly during his school’s junior varsity’s baseball practice ( Boston globe ), and two days later, a fifteen-year-old-girl from the same town died at her tennis practice ( Boston Globe ). The two Mansfield residents both had sudden, catastrophic brain aneurysms.
    So why am I bringing up those two kids again? Why am I dragging out the old news when you could open up any newspaper in the country, click on any blog or news gathering site, and read the same kind of stories only with different names and faces and places?
    Despite the aid of hindsight, I’m not prepared to unequivocally state that the teens mentioned above are our patient zeroes. However, I do think those reported stories were mainstream media’s story zero concerning the cerebral aneurysm pandemic and the first of their type to go national, and shortly thereafter, global.
    And, finally, a one-link Link roundup:
    New York Times reports widespread shortages on a host of anti-clotting and anti-seizure drugs used to treat aneurysms. Included in the shortage are medications that increase blood pressure, with the idea that increased blood flow through potentially narrowed vessels would prevent clots and aneurysms. Newer, more exotic drugs are also now being reported as in shortage: nimodipine (a calcium channel blocker that prevents blood vessel spasms) and glucocorticoids (anti-inflammatory steroids, not FDA approved, controversial treatment that supposedly controls swelling in the brain). The gist of the story is about the misuse of the medications (many of which are only meant for survivors of aneurysm and aren’t preventative), of course, leads to a whole slew of other medical problems, including heart attack and stroke.
6 Responses to “A Grim Anniversary”
    revelations says:
    April 24, 20__ at 10:23 am
    Your a fear monger. You spread fear and the lies of the Godless, liberal media. GOD will punish you!!!!
    Jenn Parker says:
    April 24, 20__ at 1:29 pm
    I have no doubt the Times story is true, but only because of the panic.
    This story does not prove there really is a pandemic of aneurysms, only that a segment of the public believes there is one.
    The reality is that on average, since 2010, 50,000 Americans die from brain aneurysms (spontaneous cerebral hemorrhaging) per year, with 3–6% of all adults having aneurysms inside their brains (fortunately, most