Karaoke Provokes Violence!

Saw this disturbing article the other day at the Telegram.co.uk…

Chinese toddler’s karaoke tantrum ends in bloodbath

Now before you have visions of berserk toddlers going on a murderous rampage, let me assure you that is not the case. Well, at least not here.

(Somebody is NOT happy!)

It was more like…

“Toddler’s refusal to give up the microphone during a

family karaoke evening started a quarrel that left

two men hacked to death with a meat cleaver!”

(Are you ready to rumble??)

OK, here’s what happened. A couple were celebrating the Qixi Festival (i.e. China’s Valentine’s Day), with a singing session at a local karaoke parlour. So far, so good. Trouble starts when the parents’ four-year-old son hogs the karaoke mike and the doting parents were indulging him. [1]

(Beijing… we have a problem)

Mayhem ensues when two of the karaoke kid’s uncles berate the father for having raised such a spoiled child;  a “Little Emperor”, as the Chinese say [2]. Push literally comes to shove, then shoving proceeds to punching. A nephew grabs a meat cleaver and hacks the uncles to death.

(The problem solver)

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Karaoke-related violence is a real problem in the East.

Other karaoke massacres have taken place in the Philippines, where the Frank Sinatra song ‘My Way‘ has had to be removed from many songbooks after sub-standard renditions provoked a string of killings.

(Clearly a trouble-maker)

In Thailand, meanwhile, a man shot eight of his neighbours, including his brother-in-law, after tiring of their tuneless reprisals of John Denver’s ‘Country Roads.’

(An incitement to violence)

In the United States, a woman punched a man for continuing to sing Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ after she had told him he was not up to the task.

(It would have driven Mother Teresa to violence)

In her defence… it WAS a karaoke version of Coldplay’s ‘Yellow!’

Ghandi would have punched this guy out!

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[1] NB: Karaoke is taken very seriously, not just in China but throughout Asia.

[2] There is no shortage of criticism inside China for the bad behaviour of the Little Emperors, the children raised under the strict one-child policy and doted on by their parents and grandparents.

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Waking Up With an Italian Accent?

How weird would it be going from day-to-day speaking your native language with an Italian accent, even though you’ve never set foot in Italy. [1] 

As the mangia-cakes over at United-Academics.org report, it can happen.

(Nicolas Cage in ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ – Worst Italian accent ever)

This rare medical condition is known as the Foreign Accent Syndrome. When suffering a brain injury, such as a stroke, the speech center of the brain can get affected. As a result, a speech impediment can occur that may cause a patient to pronounce his or her native language with an accent that to the ear of the listeners may be mistaken as foreign.

(Carlo Rota as Yakavetta [2] in ‘Boondock Saints’ – 2nd worst Italian accent ever)

Watch the video below to hear the speech of a woman suffering from the Foreign Accent Syndrome.

Per la miseria!

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Mariën, P, Verhoeven, J, Wackenier, P, Engelborghs, S, & De Deyn, P (2009). Foreign accent syndrome as a developmental motor speech disorder Cortex, 45 (9), 870-878 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2008.10.010

[1] It wouldn’t have been weird for me since I grew up with everyone around me speaking with Italian accents. If anything, I’d have blended in better!

[2] N.B: The Italian alphabet does not have the letter ‘k’ (or the letters j, w, x or y, for that matter). Maybe that explains the abysmally bad accent.

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What’s With The Bacon??

I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’ve come to this conclusion…

… in Canada and the United States, bacon is the closest thing to a religion without actually being one.

I’m serious. It’s more than a mere fixation. It’s more than a national obsession.

People ADORE bacon.

I’ve heard people say (and mean) that they would seriously consider converting to Judaism but…

(Bacon sundae)

… just the thought of life without bacon is something that is, to them, simply unbearable.

I don’t get the obsession.

Sure, bacon tastes great but a lot of things taste great.

(The Bacone!)

Ice cream cones taste great.

(Chocolate-covered bacon – with sprinkles)

Chocolate tastes great.

Candy tastes great.

(Bacon cinnamon buns)

Cinnamon rolls taste great.

Mom’s apple pie tastes great.

And yet none of these foods even come close to the infatuation people have with bacon.

It goes WAY beyond liking it as a food. There is an emotional attachment at play here.

It is a national icon.

I will continue to try to understand this passion for bacon. I’m not sure I will succeed.

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Loonies I Have Lunched With (Part 8): Darth Peanut

I recently had the opportunity of enjoying a lovely dinner with a dear friend of mine, AL, who – in addition to being a noted loonie and because she is quite petite – bears the unfortunate nickname ‘Peanut.’

I myself do not use this nickname for her, nor do I encourage others to do so. But stick with her the epithet has.

At any rate, we were discussing the rather sad turn her life has taken recently. Or rather, the sad turn the lives of those around her have taken recently.

I encouraged her to eject these distracting and possibly destructive relationships from her life.

She was reluctant to do so. Why? Well, it appears that my dear friend is ‘nice’… and by nice, I mean she will not assert herself, thinking – misguidedly – that standing up for herself and saying what needs to be said somehow makes her ‘the bad guy.’

I encouraged her to embrace The Dark Side. Get in touch with her inner Sith.

Doing so, I argued, would make her a more effective person and, in time, make her life a lot less complicated and a lot better for her and her young sons.

She needed to become stronger, more grounded, less scattered, more focused.

(Darth Peanut!)

In short, I urged her to become… Darth Peanut!

Anytime someone tries to undermine her or suggest she is not capable of doing something, I suggested that she should reply with a firm and steady, “I find your lack of faith… disturbing.”

Being firm, asserting yourself, standing up and resisting those who attempt to manipulate and take advantage of you is not, I stressed, being a mean person.

It is perfectly possible to utilize the Dark Side while still maintaining one’s overall cuteness.

(I find your lack of milk… disturbing)

I’m not sure whether our dinner conversation helped her in any way. I hope it has.

Until then, I eagerly await feeling a disturbance in The Force.

 

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I’m Sorry… What’s Your Name Again?

I have memory problems. Specifically, I have a problem remembering people’s names.

Which is why this article at ScienceDaily.com caught my eye.

The article begins, “Most of us have experienced it. You are introduced to someone, only to forget his or her name within seconds. You rack your brain trying to remember, but can’t seem to even come up with the first letter. Then you get frustrated and think, “Why is it so hard for me to remember names?”

All these years, I presumed I had a faulty or weak memory. I was relieved to find that this may not be the case at all.

It appears that lack of interest, not the brain’s ability (or lack thereof) may be why we forget!

According to Kansas State University’s Richard Harris, professor of psychology, it’s not necessarily your brain’s ability that determines how well you can remember names, but rather your level of interest.

“Some people, perhaps those who are more socially aware, are just more interested in people, more interested in relationships,” Harris said. “They would be more motivated to remember somebody’s name.”

This goes for people in professions like politics or teaching where knowing names is beneficial. But just because someone can’t remember names doesn’t mean they have a bad memory.

“Almost everybody has a very good memory for something,” Harris said.

The key to a good memory is your level of interest, he said. The more interest you show in a topic, the more likely it will imprint itself on your brain. If it is a topic you enjoy, then it will not seem like you are using your memory.

This explains a lot, really, since I generally find most people singularly uninteresting.

It’s not that other people are somehow unimportant or that their lives and problems are invalid. It’s just that they don’t interest me, usually. There are exceptions, of course. Rare ones.

The general rule, however, is that most people I meet are a dusk-to-dawn snooze-a-thon.

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Neuroscientists Show How Brain Responds to Sensual Caress

Uh huh…

Neuroscientists Show How Brain Responds to Sensual Caress

I can almost hear those little geeks and nerdlings over at ScienceDaily.com giggling over this one.

Try to imagine the grant application for this little bit of research!

(Neuroscientist hard at work on caress response research)

Okay, here it goes…

“A nuzzle of the neck, a stroke of the wrist, a brush of the knee – these caresses often signal a loving touch, but can also feel highly aversive, depending on who is delivering the touch, and to whom. Interested in how the brain makes connections between touch and emotion, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the association begins in the brain’s primary somatosensory cortex, a region that, until now, was thought only to respond to basic touch, not to its emotional quality.

The new finding is described in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“The team measured brain activation while self-identified heterosexual male subjects lay in a functional MRI scanner and were each caressed on the leg under two different conditions. In the first condition, they saw a video of an attractive female bending down to caress them; in the second, they saw a video of a masculine man doing the same thing. The men reported the experience as pleasurable when they thought the touch came from the woman, and aversive when they thought it came from the man. And their brains backed them up: this difference in experience was reflected in the activity measured in each man’s primary somatosensory cortex.”

Alright, alright. That’s quite enough, gentlemen, thank you very much.

Straight guys like being touched by girls and don’t like to be touched by other guys. Thanks for the big breakthrough.

Now get your smutty little overdeveloped minds back to work on synaptic gaps or cerebral cortices or whatever it is that you guys do when you’re not trying to swindle money to pay for your grope sessions!

Honestly! Some people.

I mean really!!

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Read the full ScienceDaily.com article here!

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Are We Attracted To Our Opposite?

They say that opposites attract. That presumes that the attraction is mutual, I suppose.

(The gun totin’ Southern Redneck Good Ole Girl)

I’m not sure that is always, or even often, the case.

(Hitler Youth – more my son’s type than mine, really… but still…)

Take the example some of the kinds of women to whom I am attracted. [1] Now, I am not saying these are the types of women with whom I’ve ever been involved. I just feel drawn to them in some odd way.

(Goth beauty in black lace)

All are fantasies in one way or another. Figments of my imagination, as it were. Just the kind to which I feel a genuine, if somewhat confusing, attraction.

(Vampyre brides)

They are generally strong, somewhat dangerous women who know who they are and are at peace with that. Even comfortable with it.

(Warrior – Ancient)

If that is who they are, what does that say about what I think of myself? A disturbing thought. Are we attracted to characteristics that we lack… or to those we simply admire or value, whether we have them ourselves or not? Are we drawn to those who openly display traits that we choose to keep hidden?

(Warrior -Medieval)

This is not to say I am not also attracted to women who are ‘appropriate’… of course I am. But maybe it is the very inappropriateness of these ‘other types’ that forms part of the attraction. The whole ‘forbidden fruit’ thing. But even the forbidden fruit allusion implies that you can eat of it, if you choose, even though you know you mustn’t.

(Warrior – mix of new and old)

Conspicuously absent from this list are the types you might expect to see. Hollywood glamour types or blonde bombshells or scantily clad floozies with major league yabbahoes, to steal an expression from the movie Animal House. Aside from an initial ‘wow’ response when I first see them, there is no attraction for me. In fact, as a general rule (and as can be seen from the above sampling), I don’t really hold by what most people find ‘beautiful’ or even ‘attractive.’

(Warrior – Modern)

Hmmm… I just noticed that all but one of the women are ‘armed’ in one way or another [2] and that the last three ‘warrior women’ also happen to be vampyres! Bit of a cross-over of types there but… as I said… it can be confusing.

Luckily for me, I’m not the kind of person who revels in pop psychology. It’s a curious thing being drawn to these types of  women and while I don’t mind pointing this little quirk out, I’m not going to be spending an awful lot of thought on it.

 We all have our little idiosyncrasies.  This is one of mine.

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[1] I take it as a given that none of these types would even acknowledge that I am of the same species as they.

[2] The Goth Girl may give off the air of having a dark side, so the potential for harm is there… but not openly so. The others have weapons or, in the case of the Vampyre Brides, fangs and preternatural powers.

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Total Societal Meltdown: Not as Fun as You Might Think

Do you ever get the impression that there are people out there who just can’t wait for the world to go to hell in a handcart?

Whether it is a complete socio-economic meltdown, a total financial collapse, a global political conflagration or a good old-fashioned 3rd World War… do you get the feeling that there are those who will secretly say, “Yes! I was hoping for this!”

When I look at the Doomsday types… religious or otherwise… I can’t help but think that despite their dire warnings, deep down, they’re dying for the end to be near.

As you all probably know, I personally believe that if there is going to be a non-biblical end to Civilization As We Know It, it will be in the form of either a Zombie Apocalypse, a Robot Uprising or a Space Alien Invasion. All excellent and probable scenarios, of course.

(No matter how you slice it, it’s not so good for us)

But, believe it or not, there are others who feel that the world will experience The Big Collapse in other ways. Nuclear War is a popular one. A 99.9% effective disease ranks high in many people’s minds.

However we get there, I am sure a good many people will agree that what remains of mankind ends up eating stray dogs and fighting for the bones. Not an attractive idea but… as I said… I believe there are a good portion of people to whom this Mad Max dream world is heaven on earth.

I think these poor saps have a kind of Hollywood-induced image that makes post-civilized life somewhat bleakly romantic in a kind of modern Dark Ages way.

I’m not sure what you guys think, but from what I know about Europe between the Fall of Rome and early medieval times, I wouldn’t wish that life on my worst enemy. OK, maybe my worst enemy but that’s about it.

I see no romance in a life of grinding poverty, cruelty, ignorance and pestilence interrupted occasionally by the odd barbarian horde pillaging and raping everything in sight. And if you think you’ve witnessed religious fundamentalists in our day, trust me… you ain’t seen nothing compared to the way things were 1500 years ago.

And its not like you could ignore a disruption of that kind.

The only people I can imagine not noticing all that much that the world has fallen apart are those whose situation is already so bleak and desperate, it couldn’t get worse. People living out in the African, Australian, Southeast Asian or South American jungles or hinterlands with no contact with society already. If things headed south for the rest of us, how would they know… or even care?

Nope. Things going down the toilet is all well and good when we’re discussing The Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse and while it is a good idea to have a good survival plan in place in case of some natural disaster or toxic spill or the like, I don’t lay awake at night hoping and praying that things hit the fan on that massive a scale.

I’ll leave that to the survivalists in North Dakota or Montana or wherever the heck they hang out.

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Unhealthy Interests (Part 1): Zombies

I have been accused by more than one alleged friend of having an ‘Unhealthy Interest’ in zombies.

Well, honestly. These days, who doesn’t? I mean, really.

(♥ I’m a zombie girl… in a zombie world ♥)

Yes, but [1]… these so-called friends are quick to point out that, unlike yours truly, most other (i.e. normal) people…

• Are not lifetime members of The Zombie Research Society (with membership card in wallet to prove it);
• Haven’t given newspaper interviews or had newspaper articles written about them and zombies;
• Haven’t given lectures/seminars on the subject on zombies;
• Aren’t writing an ongoing Twitter fiction ‘journal-style’ story about life in The Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse;
• Don’t regularly write blog articles about zombies and The Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse;
• Don’t regularly use the expression ‘The Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse’;
• Don’t refer to Walmart as ‘The Zombie Serengeti’;
• Don’t have a large cache of weapons [2] in easy reach of their computer desks;
• Don’t have a 3-month supply of food in the basement; [3]
• Don’t have a dozen gallons of fresh water and boxes of Twinkies and Strawberry Pop-Tarts [4] in their apartments;
• Don’t call Twinkies and Strawberry Pop-Tarts ‘The Official Snacks of The Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse’; [5]
• Can’t speak for an hour straight on the most efficient/effective and least efficient/effective ways to kill zombies;

(The last thing a Georgia zombie sees)

The list goes on, as you can imagine.

Frankly, I don’t see how this interest of mine can be seen in any way as ‘unhealthy.’ If anything, it promotes emergency preparedness which, if done right, ensures survival.

(Yeah… I wish!)

And you can’t get much healthier than ‘not being eaten by hordes of living dead.’

So, back-off, buzz-kills!

You don’t see me kvetching about your ‘unhealthy interest’ in taking long walks and hitting little balls with sticks while wearing stupid gaily-colored pants.

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[1] “You know, my brother once told me that nothing someone says before the word ‘but’ really counts.” (Benjen Stark, ‘Game of Thrones’)

[2] Off the top of my head (and looking around me):  samurai blades, four (2 katanas, 1 wakizashi, 1 tanto); standard machete, one; bayonets, two (1 U.S. Indian wars, 1 French, WW1); Bowie knife, one;  gurka knife, one; ‘Book of Eli’ machete, two (1 large, 1 small); ‘Eragon’ medieval dagger (Arya’s blade), one; billhook sickle/machete, one.

[3] With respect, that’s my mother, not me. I barely have a 6-week supply. Hardly anything, really.

[4] Twinkies and Strawberry Pop-Tarts are the official snacks of The Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse.

[5] D’OH! 

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Sex-starved fruit flies driven to drink more alcohol!

Let’s file this under the “Yew jus’ cain’t make this $#!t up!” category, shall we?

Apparently… and I am NOT making this stuff up… sexually deprived male fruit flies exhibit a pattern of behavior that seems ripped from the pages of modern man’s ‘That’s the Story of My Life!’

When female fruit flies reject their sexual advances, the males are driven to excessive alcohol consumption, drinking far more than comparable, sexually satisfied male flies.

(Fruit fly porn! Eeek!!)

It seems that a little molecule is what’s behind this sad and somewhat loserish behaviour.

According to our pals at ScienceDaily.com, a group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has discovered that a tiny molecule in the fly’s brain called neuropeptide F governs this behavior – as the levels of the molecule change in their brains, the flies’ behavior changes as well.

So… why do we care?

Well, it turns out that the brain mechanisms that make social interaction rewarding for animals and can shed light on those that underlie human addiction. You see, a similar human molecule, called neuropeptide Y, may likewise connect social triggers to behaviors like excessive drinking and drug abuse. Adjusting the levels of neuropeptide Y in people may alter their addictive behavior — which, by the way, is exactly what the UCSF team observed in the fruit flies.

“If neuropeptide Y turns out to be the transducer between the state of the psyche and the drive to abuse alcohol and drugs, one could develop therapies to inhibit neuropeptide Y receptors,” said Ulrike Heberlein, PhD, a Professor of Anatomy and Neurology at UCSF, who led the research.

Clinical trials are underway, she added, to test whether delivery of neuropeptide Y can alleviate anxiety and other mood disorders as well as obesity.

Now the question that intrigued me was, “How did they get a whole bunch of jilted male fruit flies in the first place?”

Piece of cake, it seems!

It appears that despite being floozy as all get out when virgins, pregnant female fruit flies no longer show any interest in male fruit flies. It was just a matter of putting a whole bunch of horny male fruit flies  together with a whole bunch of “talk to the hand” pregnant female fruit flies. The result… sex starved and somewhat depressed male fruit flies.

But the weird thing is… the rejected males then gave up trying to mate altogether. Even when placed in the same cage as virgin flies, they were not as keen to have sex. Their drinking behavior also changed.

Now I was really interested. How do you get sexually rejected male fruit flies to drown their sorrows in booze?

Again, ludicrously simple!

(Set ‘em up, Joe!)

When placed by themselves in a new container and presented with two straws, one containing plain food and the other containing food supplemented with 15 percent alcohol, the sexually rejected flies binged on the alcohol, drinking far more than their sexually satisfied cousins whose advances were never spurned. The difference was not only apparent in their behavior. It was completely predicted by the levels of neuropeptide F in their brains.

“It’s a switch that represents the level of reward in the brain and translates it into reward-seeking behavior,” said Galit Shohat-Ophir, PhD, the first author of the new study.

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