I'm told smiling is therapeutic.
True: smiling at the right girl at the right time can get you syphilis (which probably means she was more of a left girl), but all in all there seems to be value in this postulate.
Simply exercising those few muscles needed to bend the curve of your lips slightly towards a local minimum (sorry, math joke) is reported to release wee bits of endorphine in your body. Endorphines: literally an internal band with Mark Sandman: if that isn't cheering you up, you need a spanking. And if that doesn't cheer you up, I'm sure it will cheer someone else up.
But seriously: this link between smiling and feeling better is obviously a design flaw: it would have been so much easier if I were to feel better from lashing my eyes, inhaling or digesting (come to think of it: most of those things do at times make me feel better - though in at least one case more 'less bad'. Was that a sentence?) It is a simple fact that raising the corners of my energy-intake requires a bit of concentration and diligence -especially when I could do with a supersize-me portion of yee-haw. And even when I'm not particularly occupied, I often catch myself, walking around with a face like someone's cat just drowned and I was their cat.
What helps me most, at these times, is looking around at other peoples faces: you have to hope that looking like the bright side of life is somewhat transmittable (sexually, if need be), as everyone around generally seems to be having their own cat-drowning thoughts - or at least the matching facial expression (tempted to write fecal expression - but that would be more the digesting part). And yes, I do know this: when somebody is smiling at me, regardless of their being the visual equivalent of a fart with sugar on top, the little pink man in my skull immediately presses the emergency-lip-bending-button. So, as a humanist, I have my motivation for smiling. I can only assume that when I, visual equivalent of apple sauce and sausage, display my jolliest face in anyone's general direction, some may pick up the signal, enhance, and pass it on, even!
Mind you, there is a catch for the fuzzy-(Fozzie?)brained would-be realists among you (me, me, me): it is oh so easy to forget that it works. Say you decide to give it a try: you will frantically keep it up (your right mouth corner) and you'll even throw in the other right one. As theory predicts, you're bound to have a good day, feel like Christopher McCandless on sight of a bus, and ergo be ignited to become even more of an upright emoticon (One wonders if the sole purpose of war isn't to keep humanity from exploding in a mushroom cloud of endorphines). And that is where the cable gets kinky: any old cynic (well, any new cynic - considering the original cynics weren't all that euh... cynic) will come to the obvious conclusion: damn right I'm smiling now: if I have such a fine day tomorrow, I won't need to say cheese either. God damn right it's a beautiful day - uhuh. Then you get up in the morning and you observe your face in the mirror, scratch your hangover or notice the cat in a nearby pond, forget to smile and grumble on through another lucky day in hell.
So: I hereby oficially invite all and everyone to remind me: it's silly like armpit farts but it works: (-:
20090519
20090513
Hee-hee
't was the day before, and humour was the lore.
A brain, particularly mine, is a tremendous instrument. First of all, your frontal lobes possess the gift of creativity. You know, the whole genesis thing: 'in the beginning, there was nothing, and then the-artist-also-known-as-god hit a huge bassdrum' (well, something along those lines, anyway). It's not even necessary to present your grey matter with a problem: if need be, your central nervous system (in some people, that term is a brilliant allegory, by the way) will create and occasionally solve it's own mysteries.
Did I leave the coffeemachine on? Does that girl with the proverbial boots dig me? Yeah, I know I checked it - at least I think I know I checked it - then again I'm not so sure: maybe I dreamed it all up - but did I leave the coffeemachine on? This here mathematical problem should be trivial to solve, but I don't really have the time to solve it now (a^24+b^24=c^24)? Damn, that was great, but how do I boot her out of my bed again?
Another greater feat of your thinking device (I mean the one closest to your skull - not your bitter balls or your spouse), is the ability to remember. And funny things do get stocked in that neural net. Trivial knowledge that isn't even going to serve me on quizes, personal non(sense)-historical events, messed up parts of lyrics, and the way to ride a bicycle.
What has been rumoured as the most important function of the mental pudding, however, is one I am particularly good at: the great gift of... wait - what was it again? Oh, right: forgetting. To set that record straight up front: I'm not jealous of Alzheimer's patients (though "ignorance is bliss" has a ring to it), but imagine not being able to forget what a jerk(-off) you've been last week. What would happen if you could recall every (bad) dream you ever had (how long would it last until you were unsure where to draw the thin line between what happened and what hasn't anyway)? Would it still be romantic if you remembered every mariage proposal you ever read (in books, I presume - unless you have a very confusing love-life)?
So, yes, I'm very good at forgetting. How come? Well, let me take you on an inch of study (I did start to become a psychologist once). Memory is considered as a three-step process. First, you observe something (hey, when that bell rings, soon after, I get fed). Next you actively or passively memorize it (bell, fed, bell, fed,...). Finally, the last important step is to recall the information at the relevant time (though recollection at inappropriate times sometimes gets you a laughing crowd - and sometimes knuckles implanted): 'Ting' - ooh, yummy!
As I'm alright at remembering (I've had my share of knuckle implants) and, while selective, not like Michael Jackson (if I'd be doing a stand-up this would be where I'd give the people a second to let it sink in, virtually drumrolling ont the wall) at imprinting data (witness be my reasonable success at any studies I undertake, reorientation notwithstanding), there is only one explanation left for my enhanced ability at forgetting (what is the etymology on that one? for-get? Shouldn't that be not-getting?): I'm a terrible observator.
And indeed: I manage to have an hour-long conversation with a person, wondering afterwards what they looked like (hair-colour, to name but one). If I don't explicitly focus my attention on what you are saying, chances are I was paying more of that precious gift to my own pondering. I can read a book and deeply enjoy it, but not notice its title.
Yesterday evening, it all came together again.
I saw a man at work, known in some circles as Guillaume, who sparkles with creativity, and remembered what needed to be so, thus rightfully gaining the crowd at a stand-up performance.
It was good to be there (released quite a load of endorphines), and my mind surprised me again: I visually recalled people and even managed to locate them in time and space. And you know what: I cracked a few creative jokes as well, albeit more incrowd-oriented.
No booted girls were observed, the coffeemachine was long dead by that time, and yet: this morning (no, my house did not burn down), Ruben asked me to tell one of the jokes I heard yesterday.
I couldn't come up with one.
A brain, particularly mine, is a tremendous instrument. First of all, your frontal lobes possess the gift of creativity. You know, the whole genesis thing: 'in the beginning, there was nothing, and then the-artist-also-known-as-god hit a huge bassdrum' (well, something along those lines, anyway). It's not even necessary to present your grey matter with a problem: if need be, your central nervous system (in some people, that term is a brilliant allegory, by the way) will create and occasionally solve it's own mysteries.
Did I leave the coffeemachine on? Does that girl with the proverbial boots dig me? Yeah, I know I checked it - at least I think I know I checked it - then again I'm not so sure: maybe I dreamed it all up - but did I leave the coffeemachine on? This here mathematical problem should be trivial to solve, but I don't really have the time to solve it now (a^24+b^24=c^24)? Damn, that was great, but how do I boot her out of my bed again?
Another greater feat of your thinking device (I mean the one closest to your skull - not your bitter balls or your spouse), is the ability to remember. And funny things do get stocked in that neural net. Trivial knowledge that isn't even going to serve me on quizes, personal non(sense)-historical events, messed up parts of lyrics, and the way to ride a bicycle.
What has been rumoured as the most important function of the mental pudding, however, is one I am particularly good at: the great gift of... wait - what was it again? Oh, right: forgetting. To set that record straight up front: I'm not jealous of Alzheimer's patients (though "ignorance is bliss" has a ring to it), but imagine not being able to forget what a jerk(-off) you've been last week. What would happen if you could recall every (bad) dream you ever had (how long would it last until you were unsure where to draw the thin line between what happened and what hasn't anyway)? Would it still be romantic if you remembered every mariage proposal you ever read (in books, I presume - unless you have a very confusing love-life)?
So, yes, I'm very good at forgetting. How come? Well, let me take you on an inch of study (I did start to become a psychologist once). Memory is considered as a three-step process. First, you observe something (hey, when that bell rings, soon after, I get fed). Next you actively or passively memorize it (bell, fed, bell, fed,...). Finally, the last important step is to recall the information at the relevant time (though recollection at inappropriate times sometimes gets you a laughing crowd - and sometimes knuckles implanted): 'Ting' - ooh, yummy!
As I'm alright at remembering (I've had my share of knuckle implants) and, while selective, not like Michael Jackson (if I'd be doing a stand-up this would be where I'd give the people a second to let it sink in, virtually drumrolling ont the wall) at imprinting data (witness be my reasonable success at any studies I undertake, reorientation notwithstanding), there is only one explanation left for my enhanced ability at forgetting (what is the etymology on that one? for-get? Shouldn't that be not-getting?): I'm a terrible observator.
And indeed: I manage to have an hour-long conversation with a person, wondering afterwards what they looked like (hair-colour, to name but one). If I don't explicitly focus my attention on what you are saying, chances are I was paying more of that precious gift to my own pondering. I can read a book and deeply enjoy it, but not notice its title.
Yesterday evening, it all came together again.
I saw a man at work, known in some circles as Guillaume, who sparkles with creativity, and remembered what needed to be so, thus rightfully gaining the crowd at a stand-up performance.
It was good to be there (released quite a load of endorphines), and my mind surprised me again: I visually recalled people and even managed to locate them in time and space. And you know what: I cracked a few creative jokes as well, albeit more incrowd-oriented.
No booted girls were observed, the coffeemachine was long dead by that time, and yet: this morning (no, my house did not burn down), Ruben asked me to tell one of the jokes I heard yesterday.
I couldn't come up with one.
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