They’re making me want something I don’t want. I feel like Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams trying to stay awake in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The peacock, a male several years old, wandered into a Staten Island Burger King parking lot and perched on a car hood Thursday morning. Charmed employees had been feeding him bread when the man appeared.

He seized the iridescent bird by the neck, hurled it to the ground and started kicking and stomping the creature, said worker Felicia Finnegan, 19.

“He was going crazy,” she said.

Asked what he was doing, she said, the attacker explained, “’I’m killing a vampire!”’

—“Man attacks unlucky peacock at Burger King; N.Y. resident insisted bird was a vampire; animal had to be euthanized,” AP, MSNBC.com

This story makes me want to cry and vomit.

For the research, Zukowska’s team first tried to stress mice in a way that would duplicate human life.

They made them stand in cold puddles — akin to riding a bus with wet feet in the winter. They also put the mice with aggressive mice that might act similarly to an angry human boss.

—“Shots could help you lose that pot belly; Injections in mice blocked chemical linked with weight gain, study finds,” Reuters, MSNBC.com

I can’t remember anything

Can’t tell if this is true or dream

Deep down inside I feel to scream

This terrible silence stops me

Now that the war is through with me

I’m waking up, I cannot see

That there is not much left of me

Nothing is real but pain now

Hold my breath as I wish for death

Oh please, God, wake me

Back in the womb it’s much

too real

In pumps life that I must feel

But can’t look forward to reveal

Look to the time when I’ll live

Fed through the tube that sticks in me

Just like a wartime novelty

Tied to machines that make me be

Cut this life off from me

Hold my breath as I wish for death

Oh please, God, wake me

Now the world is gone, I’m just one

Oh God, help me

Hold my breath as I wish for death

Oh please, God, help me

Darkness imprisoning me

All that I see

Absolute horror

I cannot live

I cannot die

Trapped in myself

Body my holding cell

Landmine has taken my sight

Taken my speech

Taken my hearing

Taken my arms

Taken my legs

Taken my soul

Left me with life in hell

–Metallica, “One,” 1988. Video directed by Bill Pope and Michael Salomon. Clips from Johnny Got His Gun, directed by Dalton Trumbo.