file under: wave of brainulation
i've been working on this juvenile music project for the past couple of weeks. i've assembled the majority of the component parts, and the need for a working title has started to arise.
as i've been thinking about what to name this thing i'm working on, it occurred to me that something related to sonography might be a good place to start. after googling "sonar map" and other such permutations of possible keywords and then scouring wikipedia articles on related topics, i came across the term echolocation, which seemed like a good thing to write down for future title consideration.
imagine my surprise, then, when i dropped in on slate to read their daily summary of major u.s. newspapers to find this on the main page.
that, my friends, is what has come to be known as "brainulation" (named after a "therapeutic device" we saw demonstrated in a streetfair during one of N's first trips to NYC. the name of that device? "the orgasmic brainulator", whic was little more than a metal claw with rubberized nubs attached that grip and release the subject's head).
brainulation has become a commonly used term in our household (as has the mildly sarcastic comment, "way to go, brain", when the brainulation is not entirely appreciated) because i am halfway convinced that N has very strong brain waves which somehow skew the direction of pop culture in strange ways. believe me, it's happened a little too often for these instances of brainulation to be nothing more than simple, random collisions of coincidence in this cold, cold universe we call home.
anyway, that echolocation thing is a textbook example of brainulation: i became mildly obsessed with an idea over a day or two and then i found the idea reflected back at me quite unexpectedly in some media outlet in a location i have a habit of checking.
now, i'm sure this happens to everyone. of course it does. and of course everyone goes "whoah! dude!" when it happens and then promptly forgets all about it, because it's invariably too trivial to even qualify as trivia.
maybe conspiracy theorists are born from stuff like this; the susceptible ones among us come across some weird anomaly and then get lost in a chain of flawed reasoning welded together with "and if so!" statements that make less and less sense the longer the chain gets.
but does it happen more often to some people than others (because it happens to N, like, ALL THE TIME)? and if so, is it simply some kind of subtle environ-mental (see what i did there, dude?) cue they're tuning in to, like picking up neglected pieces of the future that don't matter? if so, could that propensity be used to, for example, pick winning numbers for some upcoming lottery? OR is this really how people become full-blown crazy, rushing out to buy lotto tix based on nonexistent connections and meanings we're weaving into our own private mediaverses?
as i've been thinking about what to name this thing i'm working on, it occurred to me that something related to sonography might be a good place to start. after googling "sonar map" and other such permutations of possible keywords and then scouring wikipedia articles on related topics, i came across the term echolocation, which seemed like a good thing to write down for future title consideration.
imagine my surprise, then, when i dropped in on slate to read their daily summary of major u.s. newspapers to find this on the main page.
that, my friends, is what has come to be known as "brainulation" (named after a "therapeutic device" we saw demonstrated in a streetfair during one of N's first trips to NYC. the name of that device? "the orgasmic brainulator", whic was little more than a metal claw with rubberized nubs attached that grip and release the subject's head).
brainulation has become a commonly used term in our household (as has the mildly sarcastic comment, "way to go, brain", when the brainulation is not entirely appreciated) because i am halfway convinced that N has very strong brain waves which somehow skew the direction of pop culture in strange ways. believe me, it's happened a little too often for these instances of brainulation to be nothing more than simple, random collisions of coincidence in this cold, cold universe we call home.
anyway, that echolocation thing is a textbook example of brainulation: i became mildly obsessed with an idea over a day or two and then i found the idea reflected back at me quite unexpectedly in some media outlet in a location i have a habit of checking.
now, i'm sure this happens to everyone. of course it does. and of course everyone goes "whoah! dude!" when it happens and then promptly forgets all about it, because it's invariably too trivial to even qualify as trivia.
maybe conspiracy theorists are born from stuff like this; the susceptible ones among us come across some weird anomaly and then get lost in a chain of flawed reasoning welded together with "and if so!" statements that make less and less sense the longer the chain gets.
but does it happen more often to some people than others (because it happens to N, like, ALL THE TIME)? and if so, is it simply some kind of subtle environ-mental (see what i did there, dude?) cue they're tuning in to, like picking up neglected pieces of the future that don't matter? if so, could that propensity be used to, for example, pick winning numbers for some upcoming lottery? OR is this really how people become full-blown crazy, rushing out to buy lotto tix based on nonexistent connections and meanings we're weaving into our own private mediaverses?
posted by pf at
5:15 AM
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