Dramatic Reenactment.

I had assembled an odd assortment of goods, some purchased from Saizen: ping-pong balls, a hobby knife, some adhesive tape, headphones, and my Firefox set to Simply Noise.

I was going to attempt a Ganzfeld experiment, a form of sensory deprivation that was supposed to induce vivid hallucinations.

What happened instead was the opposite of sensory deprivation.

The first thing I needed to do was cut the ping-pong balls in half, to wear each half over my eyes to provide a homogeneous field of vision.

I had to use pingpong balls because Saizen was out of these white goggles.

You can see where this is going.

Since I bought my ping-pong balls at Saizen, I discovered that the material was tougher than the ping-pong balls I remembered from high school, which I could cut without any problems.

I began to saw into the ping-pong ball when I discovered that I had purchased one with a rickety blade. When I first slipped and the cutter stuck itself on the desk, I should’ve taken it as an omen.

I pressed on with the knife, literally, until the two halves were connected by a small sliver.

I sliced across this last bit, expecting it to be just as tough as the rest of the cut was.

The material suddenly gave way, and a sharp pain shot through my hand. The blade point embedded itself in my left middle finger. Blood began to flow from underneath the newly-carved flap of skin that had originally been my fingertip.

Now I am terrible with the sight of blood, specifically my own blood, seeping out from under a now-corpse-colored chunk of my finger. So I did what came naturally — I freaked out.

I ran to the bathroom, opening the sliding door with my bloodied hand in my haste, and putting my finger under running water. The blood kept flowing.

Feeling a bit light-headed, I realized that the someone who had been screaming the whole time was me. The cut showed no sign of clotting. I sat down on the floor for a while, concentrating on breathing deeply.

Regaining my senses, I managed to find the alcohol and ointment, apply pressure on the flap to finally make it stop bleeding, and dress it with a large adhesive bandage. And I even plurked about the experience, typing with nine fingers.

When I finally got back to the ping-pong ball halves, the adrenaline was finally wearing off, so after I strapped them to my eyes and put on my headphones, instead of hallucinating, I fell asleep.

For five hours.

I woke up to find my wife checking up on me, wondering if I needed to go to the ER for stitches. I was not looking forward to have a needle through my already-bloodied finger so I passed, and passed out again.

The Ganzfeld experiment had better work when I finally try it. I wanna hallucinate unicorn-riding wizards fighting mecha in surround sound. I bled for this, dammit.

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