Remnants 5 - Late-night Limbo: Part 2 (Piecewise Fail)

Today is one of those days where I surprisingly don't end up in late-night limbo by 11 o'clock (incidentally, I employed a combination of fruit juice and timed explosion of Hatsukoi Limited to keep me afloat). Therefore, I will detail my findings on a second form of limbo that I have encountered.

This form of limbo is similar to my 11 o'clock Fail in that a total loss of consciousness is reached. What differentiates the two, however, is that Piecewise Fail is just that - a version of late-night limbo that comes in defined waves of high and low strength, leading to periodic moments of relative awareness that cause even more confusion than 11 o'clock Fail.

Basically, Piecewise Fail is like nodding off, but to the utmost extreme - in this case, nodding is defined as an image of mental capacity that takes the form of a waveform curve with an irregular period whose lowest points approach zero. Essentially, that means slipping in and out of consciousness, which makes for a grand series of really stupid moments. More specifically, since the mind has been doing a ton of unconscious processing, a sudden shift to conscious decision-making unloads a torrent of sensory information for the brain to deal with. In other words, you wake up and you have no recollection of what you've been doing while your mind was out cold.

Immediately after waking up, your mind is still thawing from its rest, which means you don't exactly process information as well as you normally would. Whether as a result of this or of some weird psychological phenomenon, you'll probably start doing something as part of a gut reaction to your surroundings. As this is taking place, you can be almost guaranteed to make a mistake of some sort, like grabbing a toothbrush by the head after you've (apparently) put toothpaste on it. Of course, you are just as likely to realize the mistake through perception of new sensory input, like feeling the nice mess on the palm of your hand or seeing the pretty red, aqua, and white swirls of the paste associated with that feeling. As such, you become aware of the fact that you must have been drifting off into limbo, and you get a little frustrated. You lean over on your elbows and shove your chin into your hands, wondering how that could have happened, where you are, why you're twisted into that odd position you're in right now, what...

Then you open your eyes and start a staring contest with that weird-looking knock-off of you, who...is apparently just reflected on the curved surface of the faucet? What? Your elbows are wet. You tilt your head downward to see why that is, but then...right. That's where the faucet is, and that's where your head was in relation to it just a few moments ago, and that's gonna leave a mark. Maybe if you rub it enough it'll go away. Yeah, see? Now it's all white; it's not red anymore. Oh, but now it's kinda sti-- toothpaste. Jeez, you know, maybe you should go lie down in your nice, comfy bed...

Then you open your eyes and bolt up immediately, remembering that the reason you went to go brush your teeth early was because you still had some homework to do and you wanted to feel refreshed before finishing it. Then you remember there's that bar at the foot of your bed, the one you drape your jeans over before you change into your pajamas, the one that probably has a dent in it now. Wait, but why was that where your head was? Your pillow's over there, under your feet. There, see, now that's how you should be lying down for sleep...

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

I lied. Limbo got me. ^That's limbo; my elbows landed on the v key (apparently), not the bathroom sink.

Anyway, Piecewise Fail is pretty bad. If I had gone deep into to that kind of late-night limbo while writing this post, who knows what kind of crap would end up in it without me even noticing. Since I already did kinda fail, I should stop now. There will be more late-night limbo in the near future. At some point I'll be covering a very special strain of limbo that can easily be induced by simply listening to a very special song. Wesley from Genre Whiplash is going to be partially collaborating with me on that one, so look forward to it.