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Monthly Archives: January 2012

Tempermental ATMs

Recently, I stopped by my local bank to make a deposit.  I went on a Sunday afternoon, which meant the branch was actually closed, but they are so kind and generous that they allow access to the ATMs twenty-four hours a day.  Thus, I was at one of the ATMs trying to make a deposit.

These ATMs were of the “new and improved” sort, in that they no longer require envelopes to make deposits because the ATM will count your cash or checks right as you make your deposit.  This was my first experience using the ATM to make a cash deposit.  I rarely have so much cash on me that I would need to deposit it into the bank.  In fact, I rarely have any cash on me at all.  It makes one’s wallet large and fat and bulky.  That’s annoying.

Anyway, I was making my deposit and the check portion of the deposit was summarily rejected.  I have never had a check deposit rejected before.  The ATM just told me that it was unable to take check deposits at this time.  Um…why not?  I put the check away and I was going to try it in the neighboring ATM.  I didn’t get a chance to though, because a whole family of people came in to use that ATM.  Using the ATM apparently is a family affair for some.

Then I tried depositing all the cash. It was a bunch of loose and annoying low denomination bills. That was partly why I was depositing the cash. Who wants a wad of ones clogging up your wallet?  Well, after I stuck the wad of cash in the collection window (after dutifully unwadding it first), the ATM started making clicking noises happily to itself counting up said unwad, but then it suddenly started dinging at me in a most alarming manner.

Ok, so it wasn’t alarming at all.  It was vaguely annoying and somewhat confusing at first because the ATM failed to give me the corresponding error message that went all that dinging.  Finally it told me that it didn’t like some of the bills.  I don’t know why.  All the bills were carefully unwadded and even all facing in the same direction.  I figured it might have been a few of the more raggedly bills I put in, or maybe one of the higher denomination bills looked suspicious to the ATM.  But when it finally spit out the offending currency, it was a fairly crisp one dollar bill.  And only one.  And it never told me why it was unacceptable.

This was one of the less successful deposits I’ve ever attempted.

A viral infection of the attention span

I am currently recovering from a viral infection of the attention span.  Need proof?  Check out these last two posts: here and here.  Obviously, they weren’t up to par with my normal standard of ridiculousness.  It was because my attention span was so short.  It was really hard to concentrate on something for more than a few seconds.  That makes it difficult to actually write up a post.  So, you basically had fillers these last two days.

BUT!  I’m making up for it now!  You have a (relatively) well thought out, ridiculous post today!  Huzzah!

So, like I was saying, I am in the midst of recovering from a nasty viral infection of my attention span.  You know when you just can’t seem to focus on anything no matter how you cudgel your brain?  Do you know how difficult it is to drive like that?  I probably should not have been driving this past weekend (Saturday was the worst) and I was pretty useless at work Monday and Tuesday.  Well, I think even when I’m useless at work, I am more useful than Colleague X.  But I digress…

You may think that a short attention span may be the result of lack of sleep, too much stress, the zooga, or any number of other things and all this may be true.  But there’s another reason as to why your attention span may fizzle to nothingness: a viral infection.  In fact, I would say that the lack of sleep, too much, stress, etc, etc is not the direct cause of your inability to focus your attention.  What’s really happening is that it’s taxing your immune response so that the viruseseses are able to infect your attention span.

Not too many people know about this.  It’s not really surprising.  Most people think their attention span is something abstract.  Some kind of mental energy, or whatnot, that you can focus to accomplish a task.  That’s not true.  One’s attention span is actually an organ in the brain composed of many attention span cells.  And this organ, with its specific cells, can be affected by certain types of viruseseseses, namely the attention span virus (ASV).

An acute infection of ASV causes attention span deficit (ASD) and you experience an extreme inability to concentrate on any matter for any reasonable length of time.  In really severe cases, one’s ability to focus dwindles down to near zero and things that used to be simple tasks, such as reading or following a simple conversation, become so taxing so as to become nearly impossible to do.  And it’s exhausting.

Perhaps you’re wondering if you slept all the way through biology in high school because you cannot remember any of this.  Perhaps you did.  But no matter.  I am including some handy diagrams to show you what is going on.

Just a regular person and their brain.

Your attention span is located in your brain.  In case you can’t remember where your brain is, I’ve included the diagram above.  I’m not sure why I feel like brains should be pink, but the brain is colored pink so as to stand out from the surrounding whiteness.

Due to stress or lack of sleep or whatever, your immune system is not up to par.  Thus, when some passing ASV enter into your system, as it’s all around us in the environment, it eventually passes through the blood-brain barrier and enters into your brain.  From there, the ASV works its way down to your attention span and gets to work.

An ASV about to infect an attention span cell.

Apparently, ASV look a lot like bacteriophages, but they are not.  Bacteriophages only attack bacteria and your attention span is not a bacterium, but an important part of your brain.

Infection!

Anyway, when an ASV lands on the surface of an attention span cell, it injects its DNA into the cell and tricks the cell into replicating lots of the viral DNA, which in turn means that a lot of the ASV is reproduced within the cell.

Reproduction!

This continues over and over until the cell is so full of ASV that the cellular membrane ruptures, releasing all the replicated ASV and they go off to infect other cells.

Replicated!

If you’re immunocompromised, your body cannot effectively fight off the ASV, or at least, not in a timely manner, so the ASV can go on and infect large portions of your attention span.  A bad infection can leave your attention span looking a bit like Swiss cheese, in particular Emmentaler, since the cells die when they explode with viruseseseses.

Cheese! Or actually, it reminds me a lot of lotus root.

Now, with your attention span looking like that, it’s really no wonder that you can hardly focus on anything for long.

Now, ASD isn’t deadly in and of itself.  But it can be an indirect cause of death, due to your inability to concentrate on important tasks.  What if you need to drive somewhere but you can’t concentrate on the road?  You may end up driving off a cliff and killing yourself.  And it’s really best not to operate heavy machinery if you have ASD.

Also, since ASD is caused by a viral infection, there aren’t too many drugs that you can take to cure yourself (ANTIBIOTICS ARE FOR BACTERIAL INFECTIONS AND DO NOT WORK AGAINST VIRUSESESESES SO STOP ASKING YOUR DOCTOR FOR THEM WHEN YOU HAVE A COLD WHICH IS VIRAL YOU ARE MAKING ALL KINDS OF BACTERIA RESISTANT TO ANTIBIOTICS AND THEN WE WILL ALL DIE).  There’s are a few antivirals out on the market, but they haven’t been extensively tested as treatment for ASD.  It’s best just to get bed rest and plenty of fluids.  Like I said, an ASV infection isn’t fatal, and your attention span is a pretty hardy organ.  Your body can fight off the ASV and then your attention span can grow back.