Monday, March 29, 2010

Brought to you by the number 8

We recently went to a Sesame Street musical with the Wee One, through which she sat about 50% terrified and 50% amazed. Every few minutes she would tear her eyes away from the stage long enough to say "Too loud!" to either my wife or I. Despite this, she hasn't stopped talking about it and we foolishly bought the soundtrack, which is now the soundtrack of every drive. That, or "My record please." for the whole drive. Where she picked up that a CD is a "record", I have no idea. But I digress.

For the last couple of weeks it seems like I always have one of the songs in my head. Diabolically, many of the songs are set to the tune of older recognizable songs so they lodge in the brain crevasses that much more easily. On more than one occasion I have found myself humming an Elmo or Big Bird vocal.

On this background, recently many of the random things in my life have been mentally framed in the context of Sesame Street. Yesterday I was looking at the syllabus for my class and realized that even though I had somehow calculated last week that I had 14 lectures left (In my defense, I was only about 20% "there" mentally at the start of last week), I really only have 8! How did that manifest in my brain? With a combination of a white 8 on a changing patterned background and "8! 8 lectures, ah, ah, ah".

Is there professional help to extricate furry monsters of this sort from one's head?

9 comments:

  1. Ooooh. My parents recently gave us their vinyl collection. In it is the "Sesame Street Disco" Album. "C is for Cookie..." One side is ruined because my siblings and/or I colored all over it with crayons.

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  2. "Where she picked up that a CD is a "record", I have no idea."

    That's funny! I realised at Christmas that my nephews say "let's tape it", even though there has never been any VHS or audio cassette tape in their lives. I guess the language will take a while to catch up with the technology.

    I notice that some of your images (including the banner at the top) are borked. Mine too. I hope they fix it soon, my blog doesn't feel like "home" without its usual header!

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  3. Either a .40 cal round at close range, or the liberal aid of Drs. James Daniels, James Beam & John Walker. Three very good friends of mine.

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  4. "I realised at Christmas that my nephews say "let's tape it", even though there has never been any VHS or audio cassette tape in their lives. I guess the language will take a while to catch up with the technology."

    Along the same lines I noticed that my junior programmers refer to "radio buttons" for our online survey product. They can't have any idea about the derivation of that term!

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  5. Is there professional help to extricate furry monsters of this sort from one's head?

    Why yes there is!

    When the muppets turn up in the head-stereo it's time to quite for the day. Mahna mahna do-do-do-do, Mahna mahna...

    Please deposit 50 cents in the honesty box.

    -antipodean

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  6. Extricating furry monsters requires The Batty Bat. :P
    jc

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7yAe2MBIpE

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  7. Damn the Batty Bat. Funny, but a brain worm.

    The funny thing is that we don't have records. In fact, we barely have any CDs anymore, so the Wee One had to pick that up from someone else. Maybe at day care, but I don't know.

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  8. Remember your kid does not have to know that kiddie music exists. Why for all they know, kiddie music could be Zeppelin. As a kid my folks gave me a Teddy Ruxpin for my birthday. My uncle was wise enough to replace the crappy music with his Guns 'N Roses tape. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do but who can beat a four year old that knew the lyrics to "Welcome to the Jungle" cold. All I'm saying is think about it.

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  9. Easier said than done. We tried that approach, but day care is all over the kids music.

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