I wrote a post about earworms last week. I only knew to use the word "earworm" because of the podcast How to Do Everything (an NPR production), which had mentioned them not long before in relation to their continuing series "The Best Worst Songs"; I only mentioned earworms because I had rediscovered the source of one that had been with me for more than 15 years - without, at any point in that time, having heard the song. (not that it was constantly in my head, of course; it merely maintained its share in the regular rotation)
I only posted about that because I had to respond to myself over a defeat of similar scale the week before, regarding a math puzzle about probability that I hadn't fully understood until then. Which only came up because another NPR-related program, Car Talk, used the same puzzle.
This week, NPR again tries to steal my thunder by broadcasting a 15-minute report on ear worms. Turns out, there is actual scholarly research being done, so I suggest to everyone that they go participate. Visit The Earwormery to find out about the research and fill out the questionaire. You can even keep an earworm diary to help even more.
I don't know if they're working on a cure - I don't think there's a real cure to be had in the long run - but this is a unique area of research that I think is probably a lot more important than we realize. If we can discover why our brain involuntarily subjects itself to music, we will understand some important stuff, I think.
Not only in the proper religious sense in which the idea of karma was conceived. It also exists in the smaller, direct form that it's more commonly known for in American culture. We want to believe that things generally balance out, that if you do good things good things will happen to you.
For the most part it's BS; doing good doesn't protect you from bad, even the most pious can be struck down, and sometimes shit happens for no reason. (though the Hindu/Sikh/Buddhist version may or may not be entirely real, depending on facts the living cannot truly know and must take on faith, as it were)
All the same, karma does exist, because sometimes good things do happen for a reason.
That's probably BS too but this is too perfectly karmic to ignore.
Keep all that in mind while I tell you about earworms.
No, not the kind from Wrath of Khan. I'd share a picture but... I don't want to share pictures of that.
No, earworms. The musical kind. When you get a song stuck in your head - it's called an earworm. I don't know why; it seems a horrible name for a thing. I'm remarkably susceptible to them. I always have been, and to a certain extent I can sort of control them. I can't get rid of them - no one can, I'm sure - but I can tolerate them and often pick a different song to be stuck with. Really, I'm much more myself when I have a little internal music going, which is why I so enjoy listening to music while I work or write.
You'd be surprised at the sort of things that can get stuck into parts of your brain.
Sesame Street, for instance. Lots of songs on Sesame Street, and many of them used just once for one particular scene; the scene might get reused in many episodes, sure, but it's probably the only scene the song is used for. There are two particular songs that were just so damn catchy that they still come up once in a while. One is called "You're Alive!"
The other, I'm afraid, led me to believe that I was born in a parallel universe and somehow traveled to this one later in life.
You see, for years I couldn't prove it ever existed. Yet I have memories of it, the full melody and chorus and even a vision of what the scene looked like. Yet no one else seemed to remember it.
I remember talking to Katie about it once - Katie was also a fan of the Street in her day, so there was some chance for her to remember it. She didn't. I could google it, but Google didn't seem to acknowledge that Ernie ever sang a different song about his rubber duck. Just "Rubber Ducky" (*squeek*squeek*).
So who do I believe? My memory? Or the world around me? My memory has proven false before; ask Katie about the time I swore we'd seen a movie together when she hadn't seen it at all. I felt pretty sure about that too, and I seemed to remember facts about seeing the movie with her. But she hadn't seen it at all, ever, not at all, and when we eventually watched it (together for the first time) she was still quite sure she'd never seen it, so I can say quite surely now that I was quite entirely wrong about my made-up memories of watching it with her (I decided that I had probably watched it while chatting with her over the internet before I moved to Georgia - thus feeling "with" her while she never the less certainly wasn't watching it). Could the same have happened to the mysterious "other rubber duck song"? Possibly.
Yet, no! For I can tell you today, Google has at last come through! With more creative searches and additional keywords, I Found the Name of the Song! Its title was stylized, thus eluding all my earlier searches somehow, but today I can tell you that despite being wrong about the coin thing, I was not wrong about This Thing! And so in triumph I share with you, "Do De Rubber Duck"!
