Wierd art. warped humor, Pro Wrestling.. making strange faces. message board trolling, bonding with neighborhood cats, avoiding skunks, spending time alone (with or without anyone else), staying up all night drinking tea, wishing that things had been different but at the same time being grateful they weren't. because then I would have turned out like so many inconsequential "breeders" who live and die, wishing in the final reel they had been more like me...
Lon Chaney silents. Birth of A Nation, My Breakfast With Blassie,The Blood of Jesus, Glen or Glenda, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, dwarf/siamese twin exploitation movies, Three Stooges short subjects, WW2 Propoganda Training cartoons starring Donald Duck, sex education training films for the mentally retarded. old shop class films on how to avoid industrial/machine shop accidents, Pressure Point, High Noon, I'm Not Scared....
Ive been missing Smerdley for months now and dreading the worst....... I get feedback from youtube and would see a vid from Brian and rush in to watch it, my son would laugh too!
I'm truly sad now even though Brian himself has gone on his way to a more pain free existence, cos I like prob many others felt I knew him and that's a rare gift, he also reminded me so much of my Dad, I asked him once if he was OK he didn't like being asked, so I snuck back out quietly.
Finally I came back here and now I know why he is absent.
Brian Smerdley, through your many youtube posts you reached out to many and made them smile and rock with laughter and Im one of them, and I will truly miss you.......I wish you peace love and of course cranky ethereal neighbours to keep you busy, take care my treasured online friend
rest in peace, my friend. your presence on this planet has meant more to me than you could ever know. i'll miss your feedback on my youtube posts. i always loved how you seemed to know something about everything. i only told jeff this, but i had a dream about you the night you died. feel free to invade my dreams whenever. bye brian.
I will miss you in this life but certainly see you in the next. I remember small moments of silence between us that conveyed things that words and there slogans can't. I will take your advice and not walk around in circles too long as I am only really crying for myself. I hope the afterlife/Valhalla/Heaven/Avalon is filled with humor, learning, and peculiar things with many more choices that could never be activated here in this brief time on Earth~ a living Hell and a living paradise. Take care and Godspeed to the Infinite light. Love and Rememberence until I get senile; Rich Polysorbate 60 "Milton"
I had last kept contact with Brian a few weeks ago, the day he had left the hospital early. (April 2009) We had spoke about death many times before. Sometimes philosophically; sometimes through dark humour. Although I have not visited him in a while we still kept contact.
I am going to miss him. I am going to miss his perspective on things, his sense of sarcasm, his youtube shows, his awkwardness, and his strengths.
He will be with me in spirit and memory and live on through his letters, cassette tapes, comics, and other small collaborations we had worked on. As I write this I feel he is not dead but rather just invisible to my over worked and dulled down five senses.
Phantom limb pain consistently baffles the medical community. Theories abound as to its cause, but they are only conjecture, and no consistently effective treatment exists -- until now. Clinical trials of "mirror therapy" at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have yielded surprising and welcome results. Mirror therapy consists of positioning a mirror in such a way that the intact limb is reflected in the position of the amputated limb. Patients flex and stretch the intact limb while looking in the mirror, creating an illusion for the mind that both limbs are present. After one month of mirror therapy, all patients in the clinical trial reported "significantly less" phantom pain. Half the patients performing the same routine with the mirror covered experienced an increase in pain, and those who only visualized the treatment experienced a 67% rate of decreased pain. When these patients were switched to mirror therapy, 90% experienced decreased pain. A similar study on mirror massage seems to corroborate the results of this study. The prevailing theory on phantom pain's origin is that the brain's ability to tell where a limb is located, which does not alter after amputation, is in conflict with the visual input of the missing limb. This conflict causes neurons to misfire, which sometimes results in a perception of pain. By bringing the visual input in alignment with the body's proprioception in mirror therapy, the brain is tricked into thinking both limbs remain present. Misfiring lessens, and pain decreases.
