Friday, July 17, 2009

"When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it."

I currently have 'psychology' on the brain, as opposed to the other thing that Sigmund Freud talked a lot about.

I was taken to see Derren Brown the other week, and he was as always, pretty impressive. I know that a lot of his tricks, his 'Mentalism' is down to his knowledge and awareness of people's behaviour in certain situations, and as this sort of thing fascinates me, I thought that I would delve a little deeper.

This led me to Quirkology by Richard Wiseman, which I have started reading, and I'm finding it fascinating, it's full of oddball psychological experiments analysing human behaviour.

So there I was, watching Michael Jackson dancing with his head on fire whilst filming a commercial for Pepsi and I was reminded about the murder of Kitty Genovese because it took such a long time for people to rush to his aid, and the 3rd degree burns that he suffered triggered the drug addiction that ultimately claimed his life.

Kitty was stabbed to death outside her apartment block in New York in 1964. Nearly 40 people either saw the incident out of their window or heard her screams for help. The attacker even went away and came back ten minutes later. It was over half an hour before any of them called for help as (it is assumed), they thought that somebody else would do it.

This socio-psychological behaviour, is known as "Diffusion of Responsibility", or "The Bystander Effect" and has led to many studies which have successfully replicated it... If other people are around to help, you are less likely to respond first, or will wait until you have been given specific instructions.

Makes you wonder, if that accident hadn't happened to Jacko, or if people had reacted quicker and therefore he hadn't needed the pain killing drugs in the first place, what else he could have gone onto achieve...

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it, after all, in the immortal words of Freud, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar..."

No, wait, what does that mean?!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

"...and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness"

"I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness."

Yeah, I'm with you on that one Kafka, normally I do my best to ensure that my English is written proper like, ya know?

My keyboard set up is slightly odd by the way. There is a sliding shelf under the desk where the keyboard sits, and for whatever reason (apathy probably), I don't pull the keyboard out usually. Luckily, I can touch type. In my own inimitable style, I am a three finger touch typist, but a touch typist all the same.

There are a few keys that I have to look for, which is annoying because all it does is slow me down, Goddammit! These keys are the ones to the right of P, L and M, you know, the @'s, :, /'s of this world.

On my last post, due to the effort involved in pulling out the keyboard, averting my eyes from the screen, readjusting their focus and employing the required neck muscles to look down at the offending keyboard, I chose to use speech marks (") in certain places as opposed to their billynomate equivalents (') which I think is wrong.

I'm not as anal as either Gareth or Fanno in this regard who seem to have an irresistable urge to correct even the slightest error in grammar, syntax, spelling or punctuation.

Their fastidiousness pales compares to certain people who have set up websites dedicated to highlighting these errors. I have to say, some of it is quite comical;


Whilst we are on the subject, I thought that you might enjoy this site too...


And of course, the snobbery of us English speakers knows no bounds...


Thankfully, there is at least one person out there who loves their linguistics and wants to share as opposed to criticise - nerd!



Wednesday, July 1, 2009

"The greatest wealth is health"



Virgil was a dude, if he had a penny for everytime a couple of his phrases had been used, he'd be pretty well off. Still dead though, as my guess is that the science behind Cyronics wasn't around back in those days. "Fortune favours the brave". Yep, that was him. "Love conquers all" was him too.

Ok, I'm procrastinating. "Why" I hear you all ask, weirdly in unison.

Well, I'm going through a mid-life crisis.

No, not really, at least I don't think so.

I desperately need to prove my masculinity now that my wife is working full time.

No, that's not it either.

I'm not a shallow narcissist and it has nothing to do with me hitting 40 in a few years time. Maybe I'm just thinking if I don't do it now, I'll probably never shift it.

Ok, this is the plan, I'm giving myself 4 months to turn my body into a proper temple from the current Aztec ruin that it is!

Only trouble is, I have no money, no time and to be brutally honest, (to explain my indecision at the start), no real inclination either!

I know basically what I need to do. Get rid of some of the fat, change the rest to muscle, easy!

I'm thinking of a £50 budget which rules out gym memberships. Just as well, I calculated that I have been a member of various gyms over the years for a total of 7 years. In that time, I've used the swimming pools on offer 3 times and the actual gym itself? Well if we include the 3 induction sessions,and take away the one that I missed, it's been, let me just add up, ah yes, twice!

There are a couple of other obstacles.

I know nothing about diet, and am not going to learn. If anyone tries to tell me, I just switch off. It's just an automatic reaction, I have nooooo interest!

I can't jog. I can, in fact I can run forever if there's a ball in front of me, but jog for jogging sake? Purlease, how boring is that! I don't have suitable trainers anyway. I have a pair of footy boots, some astro-turf trainers, 1 pair of shoes and the only trainers I have, I lost the laces ages ago and they fall off if walk any faster than a tortoise.

So, in a nutshell, no money, no knowledge, no equipment and no motivation!

I do have a couple of things going for me though.

I'd like to think that I'm naturally quite fit and healthy.

I play footy once a week and I also go weekly to the golf driving range that I blogged about previously, but not sure how that helps at all!

I have a trampoline in the garden, but my back tends to hurt everytime I use it.

There's one of them exercise balls somewhere in the garage.

And lastly, I have the kids to run after.

I have a few ideas to help me. I've bought a skipping rope for £2, it did wonders for Rocky after all !

My good friend the internet has supplied with lots of videos and useful links

I just need to find the time to read/look at them now...

I wonder if it's the appearance of my 2nd, 3rd and 4th grey hairs, eight years after my first? No, it's not that either. I do fancy a couple more tattoo's, hmm, I wonder if that's it?

If anyone would like to join in with me, feel free!

The links that I am going to use;

Goal Tracker - I'm a visual person, and some would say simple, and this is both, simple and visual!
Push-Up's - I've been trying to follow this for the last couple of weeks.
Sit-Up's - Again, I've been doing this for the last couple of weeks too.

I've been doing the above to build up a bit of strength, I need to move it up a level now, and need to find some time to go through all these links!


This http://www.nowloss.com/ looks useful
Summary of a BBC TV PROGRAMME that I caught the last 5 minutes of,,,
Another SKIPPING vid