As a young reader dipping my toe into the realm of adult arcana for the first time, Oliver Sacks was one of my favorite writers.
He's written several books chronicling some of the more obscure cases he's encountered as a neurologist. They are usually anecdotal case studies of individual people with a strange condition. People with autism, colour blindness, Tourette's Syndrome, or synesthesia (when stimulus to one sensory pathway causes a perception in another as well: for example, 'smelling' a colour, or tasting shapes). He wrote the book 'Awakenings,' 'An Anthropologist on Mars' and lots of other stuff.
In any case, it was all fascinating fodder to someone who had recently graduated from reading Famous Five books, and who thought toasted crumpets with baloney was kind of exotic.
One guy mentioned in his books has haunted me, because he reported having the same jingle running through his head for years. DECADES. He said the jingle was always, always there, sometimes louder than others.
I know the purpose of a jingle is to be catchy. First rule of jingle marketing is It Doesn't Matter If It's Annoying. As long as a consumer can be standing there innocently in the cereal aisle, spot a box of Honey Comb, and then, as if galvanized, begin humming "HONEYCOMB'S BIG, YEAH YEAH YEAH. IT'S NOT SMALL - NO, NO, NO." then their work is done.
But I think I have a problem with this. Not as bad as the other guy, because I can still hear myself think. But I must have ruts physically worn onto my brain from these same stupid tunes going around and around!! I've experienced a similar thing with a handful of tunes, for years.
For impossibly long stretches of time, I'll have a song or a jingle in my head that my brain will wander over to, bow, and sweep out onto the dance floor whenever there's a lull in programming: Trying to fall asleep. Daydreaming. Doing some repetitive, mumbo-jumbo task at work.
For about half a year at least, the song has been "Baby's Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-Lot. Actually, just the first 8 words unfortunately. Over and over...
By sharing, perhaps I can relieve some of my own suffering!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Share the Pain.
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6 smart remarks:
A friend and I, when we used to go backpacking together, had a sadistic game we played. Basically, we'd be walking along the trail, and one of us would start singing the worst stupid pop song we could think of just to stick it in the other's head (this was particularly effective while backpacking, since we couldn't try to wash it out by listening to other music). And it always worked, hours later, you'd suddenly find yourself humming the stupid song and saying "damn you...."
Even though I have music to listen to here at home, I'm not about to hit that video and take on your Sir-Mix-A-Lot curse....
HA! I'm not falling for that one. But it's amazing that synesthesia has come up no less than 4 times now in the last 2 weeks and I'd never even heard of it before. A remarkable condition. In fact, all this sort of odd stuff that happens to people is fascinating. I did sort of a post about this very topic last week.
There are worse songs to have stuck in your head.
Ah the dreaded earworm. Keep reading about brain disorders and you'll get to the guy who has not short term memory, so I wonder if he get earworms? Being in a eternal now though, it would always be new to him.
As to Sir Mix, I have never been that fond of big butts myself.
its 9 words :-p
i like big buts and i can not lie
I debated over that one Valla. In the end I attributed to Sir Mix the more frequent (and to me, aesthetically pleasing) "cannot."
"Cannot" and "can not" are both acceptable spellings, but the first is much more usual.
You would normally use "can not" when the "not" forms part of another construction (such as "not only".)
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