I am the greetest!

Recently one of my best friends had to have his left arm amputated, and without getting into to much detail, the Doctors sited the cause as "the strangest accident involving a can of Busch Brown Beans". Honestly, I really didn't know what to say to him. I had never gone through something like that. It wasn't until he came to me with a recent problem that I could see a way to bring a little light back into his life.

You see, he had purchased a copy of Grand Theft Auto 3 a short time before his accident, and to say that he was enjoying the game immensely would be an understatement. Now, being short one arm, he was finding it near impossible to play the game. Sure he could still move the mouse and stuff, but if you've ever played GTA3 before you'll know that you really need a mouse/joystick combo to work it properly.
 
I admit that I had no easy answer to this, and just when I thought that I was doomed to let him down again, the solution came to me during a commercial break of the 'ScreenSavers'. Let me give you a few little details about how television works here in Canada first. For a television station to get approval to be shown in Canada it has to first pass by the fascist rules of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). They first determine if there is already a viable Canadian alternative to the program, in which case it is determined that Canadians do not need to see such programming, because after all we are all gentle babies that have chosen the majestic beaver as our national symbol. On the other hand if there is no viable Canadian alternative, the program can be shown as long as it has x amount of Canadian content. Thus we can thank the CRTC for giving us Dave Chalk and 'Great Canadian Moments' on TechTV. Thank you all very much.

It was during on of these 'Great Canadian Moments' that the idea came to me. It was talking about some Canadian doctor who helped cure seizures in some people by probing the human brain. I affectionately refer to him as the 'I smell burnt toast' Doctor. I figured with the right tools and a little work it shouldn't be that hard to wire a Gravis Gamepad Pro directly into my friend's brain.
I first purchased the bone saw from a place that advertised it as a way to "stop wearing yourself out trying to cut skull plates with hacksaws or wood-cutting saws!" And let me tell you, it's a handy tool, and the blades can be replaced in seconds! If you are planning to do this I recommend finishing off the skull cut with a utility knife, because the saw doesn't give a nice clean finish. After I was through the skull plate, everything else was pretty much trial and error. I've transcribed a little snippet of the recording I made of the operation.

Me: "O.K. Let's start with the gas button. What do you want for that?"

Friend: "Uggnnn"

Me: "Think of a colour or something...then I'll wire it to that"

Friend: "Uggnnnn"

Me: "Excellent! I can see you're thinking of the colour red" Now I slip the exposed wire of the Gravis Gamepad Pro into that section of the brain "Wonderful! Ok stop thinking of red now we need to do the handbrake button next...I said stop it with the red! It's getting hard to see in here"

End transcript.

All in all I think the operation was a complete success. I attached the skull plate back on with a little two part epoxy and he was ready to go. Some of the edges are still a little rough so I'm either going to sand them down with some emery cloth or wait and see if the hair will grow back and cover them. Also one of the buttons seems to be sticking a little, but I plan to clean that part of the brain with a little rubbing alcohol when I open it up again to add a second controller for multiplayer games like NHL 2003.

It was funny, after word got out of how good I job I did, some of my friends starter calling me "The man who mapped the human brain", but I much prefer "The Greatest Canadian Ever".