» Bullshit and Bullshitters

How eyes work
One day in high school, when I fancied myself a budding cognitive scientist, a rather gullible (but very respected) friend said she would like to understand how vision worked.

Thinking it would be absurd enough to make her laugh, I said "It's actually incredibly simple. When your eye is pointing at something, the light reflecting off of it temporarily burns its image onto the surface of the eye, and then the eye rotates back to face your brain, where the brain reads the image again off of the surface. Then the eye rotates back forward to capture the next image. It all happens incredibly fast like a movie reel."

After that I was waiting for a laugh, but she just stared. "That is amazing. I had no idea it was like that." she replied. (My friends and I tend to do a lot of bullshitting and most of us can keep a straight face, so I assumed she was bullshitting me back.)

"The human visual system is an extremely intelligent design," I added.

"Well, if that's true, then why can't we see each other's eyes going backwards all the time?"

"That's the weirdest part. They are all synchronized. Every person's eyes rotate at the same frequency, all in the same phase."

"And... And animals?"

"Yes, indeed. Even animals..."

At this point I was pretty amazed at her deadpan technique, as she became visibly excited. "That means we're all connected! Everyone on the planet, and all the creatures, we are all actually in synch with each other. That is such a powerful message!"

"...Yes. Yes. In synch." My stomach turned as I realized something wasn't right, but it was too late to turn back. It would seems so rude and condescending to explain that this was just a joke- more like a cruel trick from her point of view. So eventually the subject changed and I completely forgot about it.

Apparently she hadrelated the science fact to a mutual friend the next day, and after getting set straight on the deception she didn't talk to me for a week. I still don't know what I should have done or at what point.
(Tue 18th Jan 2011, 3:22, More)

» Brain Fade

Feast mode
This looks on the surface a little more like a "when I was shit faced beyond belief" story which I'm sure have been done in other QOTWs, but it's also an example of being *completely* on autopilot.

I have diabetes and in 15 years there's been a couple times my blood sugar has gone low enough to make me black out a bit, and each time I've discovered some evidence afterwards that I go into a kind of unconscious routine of 'Eat anything you can see or feel around you, in any order, in any manner. Eat it all." The first time was after spending a long, extremely hot day at work, skipping lunch, and then exercising outside for three hours.

Walking to my car, I started to notice that I was getting wobbly and took a detour to my office where I could get some sugary food or drink. This is about where my memory of the situation tapers off. I didn't actually pass out, but I must have been gone enough to climb the three flights of stairs to my office on total autopilot and get to the department refrigerator only to find that I actually didn't have any of my own food in there.

My memory starts up again about ten minutes later, when some friends found their way up to the department to check on me. I was crouching in the corner by the refrigerator with the door open, assorted items on the floor, calmly drinking someone else's lemon soda out of a makeshift cup. The cup was a half empty peanut butter jar belonging to another someone else (apparently half emptied by me, using my hand as a spoon).
(Sat 23rd Mar 2013, 6:06, More)

» FIGHT!

Fight song
I played in a band in college, eventually playing in and around New York City for actual money. One weekend we played at a bar in a medium-shit town outside of the city, which we found out on arriving was a popular destination for throngs of bikers at that time.

The whole show felt... precarious from the beginning. People seemed to be having a good, reasonably impaired time, but it wasn't a totally relaxed situation. Half way through the set we got to the single most ridiculous and questionable song of the whole set- a short R+B ballad called Juicy Wet Dream Boogly-Doo, which was awesome but sounded a bit like a song Ween would do if they were imitating themselves. A few minutes in to the song a fierce lady-on-lady struggle spontaneously broke out within the bikers, and spread through them like a slow motion explosion of leather and hair extensions and bottles. We were kind of dumbfounded on stage, but we all tacitly agreed to keep playing, going through the climactic section of the song time after time, maybe because we were all thinking sudden silence would only draw attention to our corner of the bar.

The fight lasted about five minutes with us playing this ridiculous song the whole time, and then the police showed up and spoke to a few people for another five minutes and ended up taking someone away, and around that time we decided to stop the song, which had ended up going from a 3 minute joke to a 13 minute long sexual explosion based soundtrack to a massive brawl. Looking back I think we might have done more to inflame the situation that we thought.
(Fri 15th Mar 2013, 7:38, More)

» Call Centres

A friend and I
Invented a game where we brainstorm a long list of 1-800 numbers that sound like they could potentially be sex lines, eg. 1-800 HAIR SEX; 1-800 ASS ROMP; 1-800 HUGE TIT, etc.

Ninety-five percent of the time these do indeed lead to sex lines (I have a theory that the phone sex companies may purchase a large number of 1-800 numbers that contain words like 'sex', regardless of the remaining digits). However, the remainder of the time one gets connected to a call center of some sort with no dirty phone love connections, and this is where the challenge begins.

Once an actual human voice comes in on the other end, the player must offer this poor cubicle-bound call-center laborer something to the effect of "Hi how are you? I was trying to reach 1-800-NO SCROTE (or whatever). Have I called the right number?" And continue to negotiate as long as possible.

Anyway, in case you decide to try this game I will give you a hint. As I recall, 1-800 POPE SEX is a member of the magic 5% that reaches a call center.
(Mon 7th Sep 2009, 2:34, More)

» Shops and Supermarkets

Elmer's Barn of Junk and Dead Things
I used to go to this huge junk shop in central Maine as a teenager. It was a good place to get unusual clothes and tools and unlabeled cassette tapes and such, as well as assorted clown/Jesus/unicorn memorabilia.

The most memorable part was the second story of the barn, which had two massive rooms right next to the staircase, one filled entirely with wedding dresses and the other with shovels. :0
(Wed 16th May 2012, 20:15, More)