Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Echolalia

My friend Mark Harris Virshbo knows the name for everything especially if that thing is a malady of the mind.  One day he told me about echolalia.  Echolalia is the repetition of a word or phrase spoken by another.  Infants do it as they are learning the meaning of sounds.  Otherwise it’s the immediate, meaningless and mechanical repetition of a word or phrase spoken by another.
In psychology, which is Mark’s place of business, echolalia is what crazies do as they walk down the street muttering to themselves or broadcasting some mumbo-jumbo as if there was something soothing or significant in the retelling.
There is no end of echolalia in our public discourse as well.  No sooner has some pundit or other public person characterized an issue, there are those who will parrot it.  Never mind that most of the time these words and phrases are for the purpose of defamation. Never mind that these characterizations are often the output of a focus group with the single charm of dumbing-down an issue of importance.

Reducing issues of importance to short, mostly meaningless words and phrases is bad for us.  It relieves us of studying the matter for ourselves.  It elevates the importance of coining such catchphrases.  And, when they are revealed to be baked in a bull, we have nothing invested. We can let them go as if we had never said them over and over and over and over and over and over.

Monday, July 18, 2016

Gobblefunk*


You was whoopsy-spunkler1 if you was took kiddlers2 see BFG3. It be jumpsquiffling4. Frightsome5 may be you that kiddlers do zip-fizzing6, trogglehumper7 or say filthsome8. Offer enormous
frobscottle9 makings of snozzcumbers10 exundly11 does phizzwizzards11.
Mark Rylance be time-twiddler12 fizz-whizzing13. Whizzpopping14 fun.
********************
*Language of Roald Dahl across his literature  1Fantastic  2Children  3Big Friendly Giant  4Collossal  5Yucky  6Running Away  7Nightmare  8Dirty  9Downward Bubbling Drink Made From Snozzcumbers 10Disgusting Vegetables  11Beautifull Dreams 12Immortal Giant  13Brilliant 14Farts Jokes


Saturday, July 16, 2016

Smart Coffee

There are between 6.5 and 7.25 billion people on the planet. All of them are different. Each of them is different from every other one of them. That’s hardly a new thought but one that is comforting.

So here I am having a smart coffee at a cafe on a busy intersection in one of the world’s great capitols with nothing better to do.  People are going by showing off their differences.

That guy standing near the street sign wrangling a schnauzer is not just a lapsed Catholic.  He is not just a 35-year-old with a Ben Gurion haircut.  He isn’t just fond of blueberry smoothies.  He is not just a thousand other things he is not just being or just being.

For, if everyone is different it must also be true that everyone who ever lived is different from everyone else who ever lived.

I doesn't take much to figure that everyone who did live beat some spectacular odds. There are so many permutations that we will soon run out of zeroes to calculate the odds over the generations for any of us with all our unique differences to have been born at all.

The mere act of you being you and me being me requires beating the odds starting at one in 400 trillion
(4×1014); essentially zero. The math is easy with a few assumptions but zero in every case.

And … to make one phenomenon a paradox of another … we mostly come in pairs.  We are drawn to be in relationship with at least one other person.

Okay. I'm just one guy enjoying a smart coffee in a cafe on a busy intersection in a world capitol. All those people going by and I share a special something of incalculable proportions while being utterly unique and paired up to boot.

It’s true occasion for gratitude.


Just Sayin’