How Often Have You Surprised Yourself?

"What in a leaping out of the cupboard shouting "boo", with a joke hatchet in my head kind of a way, - not often."

"No in more of a shouting out the answer to a quiz question, be it during a friendly Trivial Pursuit challenge with the neighbors, or whilst vegging out in front of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire or similar take-off program."

"Aha, I see what you mean - it is amazing what comes out sometimes, a kind of Verbal Delinquency really."

"Indeed, perhaps most in evidence during these game shows when houses nationwide are suddenly filled with sufferers, all sofa-bound and screaming, making tourettes look like a walk in the park."

"And isn't it amazing that the volume of voice in these instances is usually a million times greater than normal?"

"That is due to the clear and simple reason that it comes from deep within."

"That much we understand but where the hell did it come from in the first place?"

"Exactly, how the fuck did the brain suck up the name of the first president of Malawi, the origins of beetroot salad and to which phylum the horned slug of Jujudeburg belongs? And all without our knowledge! The point is, it’s all in there somewhere which means that at some point in life we must have been exposed to the information, and whether we're aware of it or not, the brain has absorbed and assimilated it, and it is then a simple matter of retrieval as to how readily this can be accessed at a later date. Therefore it would seem safe to bet one’s life savings and a spare grandmother on the fact that other things we have been exposed to, have also been absorbed and assimilated in a similar way."

“Doesn't that mean we need to look at what the hell we're putting in there!”

"Not a new theory you cry."

"I was just about to."

"And rightly so, yet how come night after night, houses are filled with the miserable, depressing, scaremongering shit put out by the makers of soap operas and so called ‘documentaries’ to name just a few?"

" Soap operas - 'a slice of real life' ? And documentaries 'factual reporting' my asshole!"

"Thank you, an interesting point as, in fact, incredible though it sounds, your asshole would probably deliver a far more factual report than most documentaries, given that it is completely impartial and objective, having no axe to grind, and no opposable thumb with which to hold the handle."

"So how come this crap is so popular, and by crap, I mean to express my opinion in no uncertain terms, of how low I hold these dangerous, treacherous and ridiculous programs, in esteem."

"Truly, mankind has nothing to fear from the next ice-age or the sun exploding, or the re-invention of dinosaurs, because long before any of these events could take place, humanity will have long evaporated in a smog of wretchedness and melancholy, angst and despondency, which will be attributed after investigation by those that follow, entirely, to the garbage with which man filled his head."

"Are we being a bit unfair here?"

*

Life Rule For The Common Man no.8

The size of your TV has nothing to do with the size of your success.

And the number of channels of crap you can access is not in proportion to how far you've come in getting that Great Life you've been swindled out of.

*

"Well, TV is not to bear the full weight of blame for there are plenty of other mediums; Obviously the internet, books, magazines, music, newspapers, theatre plays, school curriculum, old war stories perpetuated by deluded, doddery old gits, family horror stories swapped over the dinner table... the list is, in truth, far longer than we can be bothered to go into."

"And here again, it would be perfectly right and proper to question why we're laying into such things without offering an alternative."

"Perfectly right and proper but perhaps a little impatient because the answer follows here in a few short words...

keep these wonderful mediums which reach so many people, but use them to make people feel great, not shit, to factually inform not to spread scaremongering, emotionally histrionic bollocks!

 ...Simple when we think about it!"

"So what we're saying is that the opportunity to lavish due care and attention on our brains, as if they were an organ as vital as the heart or the lungs, is ours for the taking."

"Absolutely, for what is a healthy body with the brain of a sick person, a Fit-For-Nowt!, an iron man with gout, a miserable git, useless to the world."

"We might want to steer clear of the wise soothsayer type of speak."

"Sorry"

"Mind you, reciprocally speaking, our organs do us a fair service and for some, their organ does a fair amount of servicing to others."

"And why the hell not, we say? But a fair service it is, nay a great service, and in return all we have to do is nourish them with some good food which is readily available to most of us, and also simply, to stay of the really corrosive stuff like chillies, lard and meths. Again, it has to be said, that seems a bloody good deal, in our favor with the onus squarely on the side of the organs to keep us going through all of life’s demands."

"And they do all their great work quite independently of conscious thought - a fact we know but rarely take time out to appreciate. Consider the liver beavering away, processing hundreds pints of blood and manufacturing bile without so much as a prompt from us and despite us guzzling hundreds of liters of alcohol to keep it on it's toes -incredible!"

"Think then of the brain, busiest of them all, twenty four hours a day with no opportunity to shut down, (except during Eastenders omnibus), not only keeping a tight ship over the many and varied body systems, and all the while allowing us to think, dream, and sleep, safe in the knowledge that our lungs will continue to suck in oxygen, while we're chasing some weirdo through the streets of San Fransisco, dressed in woad, with a cucumber for a weapon and an aardvark for a sidekick. Incredible!"

"You lost me on the aardvark there. I can honestly say I have never had a aardvark dream."

"Shame! Look if we wanted to speak Spanish, it is easy, we would learn the language from either a course, or self-instructed book, or maybe by moving to the country and speaking to the natives daily, for a certain period of time. No mystery there. The resultant fluency would obviously be determined by such factors as level of desire, dedication to our studies, time spent in concentration, natural aptitude and so on."

"I think you have safely assumed we're in agreement as to the fact that what we put in, is what we would get out."

"Although it may need to be put in several or more times before it comes out in any way intelligible."

"Why the bloody hell then isn't such a simple method used in other aspects of using the brain?"

"Aha, here lies perhaps our first answer: that from the early days of learning to walk and talk, in whichever order we managed these in, we have been told that our brains are giant sponges, designed to soak up information that we might learn things. What things and for what purpose, is not usually so readily discussed, but the practice of loading the brain with knowledge is a widely accepted convention, nevertheless. Yet this amazing organ is capable of so much more: reason, understanding, drawing logical conclusions, cognition, belief, rationalizing, formation of ideas, translation of the spoken word, creative thought, sending and receiving signals."

"Ours as well?"

"Ours as well. If we were to put our brain to the real matters to which it is eminently capable, it would quite literally, blow our mind."

“Hmm”

Hmmm. So the barman then, he's got to be part of this, right. it can't just be abut the duck. Am I getting close?

“Ah, indeed so. After 2 weeks, the bar man is too intrigued and asks.' so what bring you in then, we don't get many of your sort in here' and the duck replies...'

“Quack?”

“!...the duck replies by pointing with his wing to the large gaggle of ducks playing pool in the corner'

“Go on”

“The barman goes 'that's odd, I never noticed'. The duck replies 'hmm..strange, I noticed...”

“ooh, ooh I know, he says 'I noticed that my local pond is full of short-sighted barmen”.

“Finally.”

*

"How the hell else can we use our brains?"

"Well now that we're fully conversant with the full colour, glossy brochure of its features, consider how it could be better applied to helping us achieve what we want, rather than filling it up like a library, rammed to the roof with words and facts and dust and dull people. If we want those things we can, after all, join the local municipal facility, and have pretty well all the access to them that we damn well want. Would you buy a Lamborghini to do the weekly shopping! ...the school run! ... annual trip to the vets for a squeezing of the dog’s anal gland!"

" Of course not!"

" And not just because those clever people at Lamborghini are far too sexy and ciao in their approach to fabulous car design to have allowed room for a single supermarket carrier bag, or grubby-fingered child* or dangerously full dog’s ass; more so because it would be a criminal waste. In fact in Italy, it is actually a crime and carries with it the stiffest of penalties, that is, if the Mafioso don’t get to you first. So we wouldn’t waste such amazing design, dynamics, potential or looks for a lump of steel, but a lump of grey matter with all the same attributes (except the latter because they are repulsive looking bastards in truth), that can go to hell as far as we're concerned."

"Not too bright an approach, it is probably fair to say."

"Misquoted figures of the percentage of the brain that is actually used, abound in far too many circles and publications to commit the same offense here, but given that a single brain is capable of putting man on the moon; using it to store latin verb tables and poor jokes, remember family birthdays and improve at Sudoku, is really rather offensive behavior."

"Too right. It would be like inviting Einstein to dinner and then pulling out the Twister mat."

" We can only hope he would punch us; hard."

Let's feel good...

**