Friday 7 September 2007

Pic of the day: Actually, it would be more useful for me to teleport myself to the men's bathroom. At least I don't have this problem at home.

Not so heroic

My American readers may already be familiar with the TV series Heroes by NBC. Actually you have to live a very sheltered life to not have heard of it, or so it seems from throwaway comments among my online friends. It is coming to Norway too, but is broadcast by NRK. I don't exactly hate NRK, but one of my many reasons for not having a TV is that I don't want to pay NRK the rather large yearly fee for being able to receive their TV channels. You see, in Norway this state-owned broadcaster has the right, by force of law, to collect payment for use of their channels whether or not you actually look at them. It is enough to have a TV. They want to also get paid from those who have a PC, but so far this has been denied them. This is fine by me. For most of my life they have been a faithful supporter of the social democrat Labor party, as can be expected since the conservatives wanted to allow competition. This eventually happened anyway, but NRK does not need to like it.

So instead I'm watching the original American version. I may not understand spoken American quite as well as Americans do, but a lot better than they understand Norwegian at least! I am able to follow the conversations easily, but I thought Sylar was called "Sailor" until I saw his name in writing. -_-;

So the last couple nights I've been watching this show. I have mentioned before the strange physiological reactions I have to movies. This is most pronounced when watching cinema, and I rarely feel it at all when watching animation on my PC. Live action is somewhere in between. It was quite noticeable when I watched Smallville (which reminds me that I probably have another season to catch up on there, I have seen 4 by now). Heroes was even worse. I mean, my body reacted even worse.

When I watch a movie, I soon begin to shiver and even shake. After a while, my face begins to grow hot, while hands and feet remain cold. My head remains hot throughout the movie, while the cold in my extremities comes and goes. Another embarrassing change is that my urine production increases dramatically. Usually I cannot enjoy the last part of a movie when I go out, because all I can think of is not peeing myself. This is even if I have been careful not to drink anything for a while before. Without going into even more detail, I really think my blood must be measurably thicker afterwards. It is really baffling. Unsurprisingly I get a headache (the same happens to people who drink alcohol, it drives water out of the body and this causes the infamous hangover, or "carpenters" as we poetically call it here.

Why do the English use the word "carpenter" about timbermen, as we correctly would call them? They don't have more cars than other people, and I don't think they pain their cars more than other people either. Does it have anything to do with carpal tunnel syndrom, or Carpatia? Wait, never mind, found it. It is indeed derived from car, but the stupidity seems to be French and just abducted by the British as usual.

Anyway, I have never found out for sure why movies affect my body this way. I think there is some process in my brain burning them kind of like a DVD, this would account for my rather exact memories of all the movies I have seen. It is not a photographic memory, but still fairly detailed. Actually, it may be that converting the memory from photograpic (which I cannot recall) to verbal and spatial (which I can recall) is what puts the strain on my brain. I am not sure.

What I am sure of, however, is that I ignored the body's warning signal that this was heavy work. Despite a worsening headache, I kept watching for two nights. Then this morning I was unable to go to work. Even in the afternoon, after sleeping for like 8 hours, I feel like I'm partially made of jelly. My pulse is 20 beats higher than usual, so even crossing the floor feels like jogging. I gave up on mowing the lawn, as my heartbeat went wild and I felt strange and light-headed. I will recover over the next few days (I know this because I write this at the end of the month, not because of psychic powers!) but it was kinda creepy while it lasted.

My mutation doesn't seem to be quite as useful as theirs, eh?