Gangnam Style

First there was Rebecca Black’s Friday. Then there was Call Me Maybe. Somewhere in the middle of that Joseph Kony killed some children. Viral internet videos become part of the collective social consciousness, not least given to the fact that they spread quicker than an STD in a brothel. “Hey have you seen this?” one friend says to the other, and before you know it, everyone has herpes. I think I’m mixing analogies.

Both Black and Jepsen (or Rae Jepsen, I never worked that out) went viral due to being catchy but ultimately awful. People would watch once to see what all the fuss was about, twice to check if what they’d just seen was as bad as they thought, and a third because they had become addicted to it and were getting withdrawal symptoms. No one was watching them due to their quality, music or video. If anyone could combine the catchiness with an awesome song, surely the internet would explode? Enter, Gangnam Style.

Gangnam Style is a song by flamboyant tune-blazer and Korean mega-star Psy. Presumably this stands for “Psychologically damaged due to a lack of love and attention as a child”, or simply “Psycho”. From what I can deduct from the video, when Psy was a child his father promised to get him a wooden rocking horse for Christmas. His father then went away, fighting and dying heroically in the Korean War in the 70s. This left Psy traumatised, and to this day he still runs around pretending to ride that invisible wooden horse he was promised all those years ago. Watch the video again with this in mind and I promise you this tragic back story will become obvious.

Gangnam Style can be accredited to a genre of music I had previously never heard called K.Pop, which stands for Korean Pop. However, my fleeting research into the career of Psy lead be to discovering that he in fact describes himself as a rapper. We can only assume that its genre placing is due to the fact that they didn’t want anyone saying that his music is “Complete and utter K.rap”. 

Proverbs

Let’s start with a joke, just because I thought this was brilliant.

“I’ve bought heroin four days in a row now, I’m starting to think I’m a shopaholic.”

Good, wanted to get that out of my system. It is slightly relevant though. Some people are addicted to drugs, others binge on alcohol. You do get some rarer addictions like anti-depressants and 50 Shades of Grey. However, I am yet to meet anyone who shares my habit. Second hand books.

Put me in a charity shop or a second hand book store and I will not leave quickly. When I am eventually dragged out, I will be the owner of 10 or 15 new (not new) books, most of which I don’t actually want and none of which I will ever read. A recent clear out of my room unearthed books such as:

• A guide of wildlife in woodlands in the spring time. I think I bought this because it looked old.
• An introduction to psychology. Not in itself unusual. In fact, it went really well with the other two copies of it I had.
• An AS Level biology text book. Actually, I probably should’ve read that at some point.

Last weekend I found myself at another second hand book stall at a fete, and obviously I came away with more books. A compilation of Agatha Christie novels that I probably won’t get round to reading before I retire, the life works of Peter Cook (because I’ve heard of him) and a book of poetry that I will never open, because it had a nice cover. However, I did buy one book that I’m actually interested in, called “A Treasury of Essential Proverbs”. I had to buy it, it was essential.

Proverbs are a strange phenomena. They are short phrases, probably not more than 10 words long, that ideally will lead you to living a better life if you abide by them. Some of them seem obvious (Money isn’t everything), some of them have been translated from Chinese (Good medicines tastes bitter) and some of them make no sense at all (The more it changes, the more it remains the same).

Anyway, he’s a select few:

The pen is mightier than the sword
You can see what the writer is getting at, if you’re prepared to be all metaphorical about it. However, I like to think that he make his maker turning up to a medieval duel with a biro.

You can’t put new wine into old barrels
I don’t really understand this one, because it simply isn’t true. Ironically, the only time you would believe this proverbs is when you’re incredibly drunk.

Live and let live
I don’t want to boast, but I abide by this proverb almost every single day. Almost.

A stumble may prevent a fall
Most proverbs deal with overall morality and how to live a better life every day. This one is purely a useful tip about walking, which in reality is much more practical.

All’s well that ends well
I have nothing to say about this. I just thought it was a good one to finish on.

Haircut

Trusting a stranger is never easy. No businessman would expect to do a deal without building some level of rapport with the client, and why would anyone else be willing to throw their faith at someone they have no previous knowledge of. Apart from…

The hairdresser has a surprising amount of trust placed in them when you sit in the chair and have your cape draped over you, preparing yourself to stare at your ever-changing reflection for the next 40-odd minutes. Once you have committed yourself to this compromising position, this man (let’s go with a man for the sake of brevity) has a frightening amount of influence over your appearance, your image, your happiness over the coming weeks and months. In short, they control what you look like. This in turn controls what people think of you when they see you, which is turn controls how much they like you, and determines your entire future relationship with that person. In short, the hairdresser literally holds your life in his hands. Think I’m exaggerating? Take a moment to think about how closely he holds a pair of scissors to various essential arteries and your general face area. 

You may think it vital to give this man precise instructions in order to get your hair as closely to what you want as you hope, i.e. damage limitation. It’s going to be awful, it’s going to look weird, so best to get it to look as not awful and not weird as you can salvage. Your instructions you give him are vital! What do you want done? In an ideal world, you would want to be able to control the exact length and direction of each individual hair, to avoid the disaster of coming looking like you’ve been wrongly processed by a blind farmer during the sheep-sheering season. How would you like it? It’s an important question. Which only goes to emphasise how careless I am with the same answer I give every time. I’d like it shorter please!

Here’s a question. When the barber shows you the back of your head, has there ever been any thought that crosses a person’s mind that isn’t, “Ooo, so that’s what I look like from the back”?

Instant Links

The brain is a strange concept. It’s where the entire body is piloted from, nothing happens without the consent and direct instruction from the brain (except the beating of the heart, thanks GCSE Biology!). You might think it inherent that we would have worked hard enough in human history to have an understanding of how the brain works, what with it being all important and everything. Despite the plethora of neuroscientific research throughout human history, we still don’t have that much of an idea of how the brain works in all its capacity.

One thing we do know is that our brain can think quickly by making subconscious links. In other words, we learn to expect a certain image or item etc. when the brain is triggered by a word or sound etc. When we hear the word ‘sky’, most of us think of the colour blue, maybe clouds, or possibly the night sky full of stars if that’s what your brain links the word to. Some people, myself included, think of Sky TV and its logo when I hear the word, which shows that I am a complete sucker to their advertisement campaign. The ultimate advertising victory would be for someone to hear the word ‘sky’ and immediately think ‘plus’ and ‘hd’ after it.

I can’t even begin to pretend that I know enough psychology to dig any deeper into the idea, although I would love to someday. I would love to know how the links are made, why those particular links are made and if certain things can be done to influence which links are made. But then I might end up in marketing so

I’ve got to be careful. One thing everyone can do is explore what links we have made in our own heads. All you have to do is take a word and work out what you think of immediately. You have to take the first thing that comes to your head, it doesn’t work if you think about it too much. Here are some of mine.

BenThis works particularly well with names. For example, if you know 5 James’es (I have no idea what the plural for James is), which is the first one you think of? Is it even someone you know. Both my best friends are called James, but I definitely think of one before the other when I hear the word James. I’ll just let them both think it’s them.

Ben is my name, so you’d think when I hear the word Ben, I’d think of me. This isn’t the case. When I hear the word Ben, the link I make in my head is to a man, mid 30’s, with stubble. I think I’ve made this link somewhere between Ben Fogle and Ben Ainslie. Either way, it’s certainly not me. I only just fit one of those descriptions…

ForceThrough many years of Physics lessons, I know that Force=Mass x Acceleration. However, when I first hear the word ‘force’, I make a different connection, given that I grew up as a Star Wars geek. When I hear ‘force’, my brain triggers the sound bite of Ben (back to that again) Kenobi saying ‘The force will be with you, always', before running away and being killed my Darth Vader.

DavidHere’s a strange one. I know 3 Davids, plus many more celebrity Davids, and one of my favourite songs growing up was Who’s David by Busted. The link that my brain has made is actually to the biblical David, who killed Goliath. Having not grown up in a particularly religious setting, I genuinely can’t explain that one.

YellowSome people probably just make the link of something that is yellow. Others might instantly think of the Coldplay song. Many will think follow ‘yellow’ with ‘car’, the infamous colour of car which allows for Actual Bodily Harm on school buses (I’ve never understood that one). My personal link is to a medicine I used to have as a child which was simply called 'Yellow Medicine’, which left such an impression on me that it is now what I think of when I hear the word ‘yellow’. It is so memorable simply because it was so disgusting. Genuinely the second more vile thing I can remember. Second only to the song Yellow by Coldplay.