Free The Great Brain by Paul Stafford Page B

homework, then went outside and milked themselves, and it still wouldn’t have helped a skerrick.
    Eating brains did not give Mick brains. Eating the extra-smart Greens did not translate into loftier, more insightful thoughts leaping more rapidly across hissynapses. It did not result in Mick writing a treatise on the great apes of Borneo, or the problems facing barefoot Confucian scholars in the 21st century, or even the best way of robbing the un-robbable vending machines at deserted railway stations.
    Eating brains had no effect at all on Mick. He remained fully and totally and super heaps thick, like an African boab tree in Nike shoes.
    Listen. It’s time to knock a tedious proverb on the head like a scabby old dog that refuses to be cured of scrofulous mange. That clichéd maxim ‘you are what you eat’ may apply to Kevin Bacon and Mr Potato Head, but it won’t wash here. In fact, my own extensive research (twelve minutes in the local library – ten of them arguing with the librarian about The Simpsons , two spent kicking her bicycle chained up outside) proves beyond doubt that the you-are-what-you-eat adage is fully fallacious, seriously spurious and (resorting to schoolboy Latin) wrongus wrongus.
    You are what you eat? Bogus. A hoax. Mick Living-Dead ate brains for every meal, but he wasn’t brains. He ate them stir-fried; he ate them poached; he ate them in a totally tasty, creamy satay sauce; and he took sliced brain sandwiches to school, which had the advantages of not only being flavoursome and nutritious, but also possessing a low GI.
    They tell me that’s important.
    But this is not a cookbook review or a lifestyle mag or even a Jamie Oliver blog – we are dealing in cold hard facts here, not soft old lady talk. The jury was back in and the truth was out: the effect on Mick of eating all those brains was precisely nada , measured on the most sensitive Spanish laboratory equipment available.
    He was still dumber than twelve goats.
    Nothing made Mick smarter, nothing worked, and therein lay the quandary: Mick didn’t even know what ‘therein’ meant, and as for ‘quandary’, forget about it.
    But Mick knew this: he had a problem. As problems go, it was big. Big? Jeepers, it was huger than Oprah’s chocolate bills.
    See, Mick was locked into an exceedingly foolish bet with a teacher at Horror High that he appeared certain to lose. There didn’t seem any obvious solution, and it’d have to be very obvious for Mick to grasp it. He couldn’t wriggle out of the bet, and he sure couldn’t win it.
    He couldn’t even kill himself. He was dead already.
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    Monday morning, 11.15 a.m. Mick was at home now on extended zombie Christmas break, while the rest of the Horror High student suckers were still in school. Mick planned on staying here until he could nut his way through the problem. He’d eaten a lot of nuts, but there was no change as yet.
    We’ll bring you updates throughout the day.
    Mick had conned Principal Skullwater into believing that it was essential he have extended leave from school due to thecomplex religious ceremonies required at zombie Christmas-time, like drinking brain-nog under the mistletoe before eating the neighbour’s Christmas tree, the neighbour’s dog that wizzed on the Christmas tree and, finally, the neighbours.
    The school admin staff fully fell for Mick’s counterfeit excuse.
    Horror High was especially sensitive to different cultures, traditions, weirdities and taboos, and the school authorities didn’t dare question the zombie student. If zombie Christmas took three months to celebrate, so be it. They didn’t want to be accused of cultural insensitivity and, in all truth, didn’t give a coroner’s curse if young Living-Dead was present at school or not.
    Honestly, they didn’t care if anyone turned up to school – they were paid a fee per student enrolled, and once