May 9th, 2005
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
A long time ago, in my university days, I had a friend who was completely nuts.
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
He had theories about the extraterrestrial nature of bananas, he was convinced we humans were bred as workers for the same extraterrestrial folks who brought us those bananas, and he had a great desire to return to Malaysia, China, Vietnam, Japan, and other Asian countries to return to his half-completed quest to have sex with as many Oriental women as possible.
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
But he was also a genius, able to fold a milk carton in a series of steps so that he could unfold it so that it was inside-out. He needed to describe such concepts as perception in time and space and the qualities of colours, so he invented his own system of mathematics to do it. He tried to teach it to me, but got impatient with my inability to grasp it immediately.
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
I stopped seeing my friend after a while because he was too much of a liability; lots of people think that they can be somehow dangerous and then later make up for it by being charming or intelligent or whatever ... well, *wrongo*. In his case, I came into his apartment one afternoon, and started to grow a conviction that something was horribly wrong with the universe—the hairs stood up all over my body as proof. As it turns out, he had used large quantities of styrofoam sheeting and some sort of foil to turn his 600-square-foot apartment into a gigantic capacitor. The walls were, literally, plugged into the mains. A liability ... a dangerous liability who saw nothing wrong with the experiment he was conducting.
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
Anyhow, my friend also had a firm belief in the existence of subliminal messages. Oh, he was like the rest of the rational world in thinking that they were either ineffective or of such negligible effect that they weren't worth the time, but he still contended that people spent the time and effort in vain efforts to lure the unsuspecting to buy their crap. So we often spent hours poring over printed advertising for beer, whisky, cigarettes, and other high-turnover items.
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
In the photographs and pictures, we found a lot that could be the subliminal images and words we were seeking ... or maybe we were just experiencing the same psychological effect that people have when searching the clouds for recognizable shapes. I still don't know, even now. I didn't (and still don't) believe that there was any use in attempting to create subliminal messages. I don't think that folks are so easily persuaded. But maybe something was there in some of the ads ...
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
And, at the time, I was interested in using every tool at my disposal to maximize my grades at university. So I started an experiment of my own with subliminals. I took a piece of paper and put it overtop the title page of my paper or essay and, with a heavy hand, wrote, "This is an A paper." After removing the top page, the impression from the pen remained, but one had to look at the page at an angle to the light, and also look for the impression.
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
Hmm ... the real secret of my success? Well, probably not, since I can't recall there being any noticeable difference in my marks after starting that strange little ritualistic practice.
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
But that is the thing about life, isn't it? Even as we practice and preach that there are no secrets to success—that there are no silver bullets—we still keep an eye open looking for them, don't we?
Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money. Send Brian chocolate and money.
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