Category: Nonsense

If you’re a fan of toasting your brains, either literally or metaphorically, there’s now a t-shirt especially designed for you.

Belgian t-shirt label Carbone 14 have created some rather natty versions in red and white.

There’s also a skinny fit version if you like your toasted brains, well, skinny.

If on the other hand, you prefer your brains mashed, fried or baked, you’ll have to advertise your preference some other way, as they’ve yet to design shirts for the rest of the culinary range.

Thanks Laurie!

If you’ve ever wanted to suck on Freud, or you just think Freud sucks, McPhee have created a watermelon flavoured Sigmund Freud head lollipop.

With Freud’s fondness for cocaine, perhaps a novelty sherbet dip should be the next addition to the range?

Link to Watermelon Flavored Sigmund Freud Head Pops (via BB).

During a 1978 tour, psychobilly punk band The Cramps created one of the strangest moments in the history of both rock n’ roll and psychiatry when they played a gig inside Napa State Mental Hospital.

It’s hard to believe it actually happened. The story sounds more like an exaggerated rock legend than an account of a real concert, but no suspension of disbelief is needed. Someone filmed the gig.

We can only guess how the band got permission to play inside one of California’s biggest mental institutions, but play they did, to a few supporters and a fired-up crowd of psychiatric inpatients.

The footage is grainy, black and white, and chaotic, and we immediately see the band launch into a high-energy version of Mystery Plane.

The onlookers look bemused at first, a few start dancing, a few just wander.

As the first song fades, the lead singer, Lux Interior, addresses the crowd: “We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you people.”

“Fuck you!” a patient yells back.

He cracks a smile. “And somebody told me you people are crazy! But I’m not so sure about that; you seem to be all right to me.”

The gig ascends into pure punk rock chaos.

Patients jump on stage and pogo like they were Saturday night regulars. Lux suddenly duets with a member of the crowd who grabs the mike and adds her own improvised lyrics to the mix.

One song finishes with the lead singer sprawled on the floor with two female members of the audience. One of them shouts “I got the Cramps!” Lux replies “That’s your problem, honey. I got ’em myself, and I can’t do anything with ’em, either.”

As with Johnny Cash’s landmark concert, played a decade earlier in Folsom Prison, it would be easy to assume that the onlookers are intended to be part of an ironic publicity stunt.

But one thing is striking from both of these shows: the audience wouldn’t have looked out of place at any other date on the tour.

Cash and The Cramps are unlikely bedfellows, but both took their music to the marginalised and hinted that we’re not so different from those we lock away.

OK, so The Cramps didn’t hint. Punk isn’t like that. But then again, the fans have hardly been known for their conformity either.

Link to YouTube clips of Live at Napa State Mental Hospital.

The classic 1960’s B-movie The Brain That Wouldn’t Die has fallen into the public domain and is now available to download or to watch online.

It’s another classic story of boy meets girl, boy loses girl in terrible car crash, boy keeps girl’s head alive in neuroscience lab while looking for attractive new body.

Needless to say, it all ends in tears, but not before a journey that takes us from the lab, to a cat fight in a strip bar, and back again.

All in the best possible B-movie taste of course with some er… ‘unique’ dialogue that should give any experimental scientist cause for thought:

“The paths of experimentation twist and turn through mountains of miscalculations and often lose themselves in error and darkness!”

Wise words indeed.

Link to download from the Internet Archive.
Link to stream from Google Video.

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.”

Wise words from the purveyor of the most delightful nonsense, Dr Seuss.

The Wired Alt-Text blog has an amusing list of made-up diagnoses for internet users, covering all the major pathologies of online interaction.

This is my favourite:

Pugilistic Discussion Syndrome

In this curious form of aphasia, the subject is unable to distinguish between a discussion and a contest. The subject approaches any online forum as a sort of playing field, and attempts to “win” the discussion by any means necessary. The rules of the imaginary contest are apparently clear to the individual as he or she will often point out when others break them, but when asked to outline these rules the individual is reluctant, perhaps not wishing to confer an “advantage” on any “opponents.” The conditions for winning are similarly difficult to pin down, although in some cases the individual will declare himself the winner of a discussion that, to all others, appears to be ongoing.

Of course, the next step is for an ambitious young researcher and a support group of affected families to champion the cause. Shortly after, a precise list of symptoms for each diagnosis will be created.

Some initial research will demonstrate that the behaviour in a particular category can be reduced by a particular psychiatric drug, at which point a drug company will fund a ‘public education campaign’ about the disorder.

Now flush with cash, the researchers and support groups will lobby for mainstream acceptance (inclusion in the DSM being the crowning glory), and as soon as that happens, the drug company will push for a licence for their treatment to be approved for the condition.

Voila. Another dreadful disease has been recognised, de-stigmatised and treated. The march of progress moves ever forward.

On a more serious note, what I’ve just described is a typical process by which new psychiatric conditions become mainstream.

Some people, and their families, may genuinely suffer from the effects jokingly described under ‘Pugilistic Discussion Syndrome’.

It is always worth helping people to suffer less, but the question you should ask yourself when you hear about a new mental illness is not whether people are suffering (which they almost certainly are), but whether the best way to alleviate that suffering is by deciding it should be diagnosed and treated by the medical profession.

Medicine uses science, but the decision over what is worth researching and treating is based on a mixture of political, personal, scientific and economic concerns.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in psychiatry. An essential question for critical thinking in this field is ‘who benefits from this approach?’.

The answer should always be the patients, but it isn’t always clear that this is the case. We need to keep asking ourselves this same question over-and-over to make sure psychiatry is serving those most in need.

So, if you want to get involved with medical progress, consider some of the conditions on Wired’s satirical list.

Link to ‘Narcissistic Blog Disorder and Other Conditions of Online Kookery’.

Overheard in a bookshop last week:

“I’m looking for a book called The God Delusion.
It’s by Richard Darwin.”

Is this the first case of the God Capgras Delusion I wonder?

Wired magazine has a slide show of the bribes promotional gifts given out at last month’s American Psychiatric Association by pharmaceutical companies trying to get doctors to prescribe their drugs.

It’s all fairly tacky stuff but they’re expensive enough to be motivating. These sorts of things are handed out willy-nilly by drugs reps and your local doctor’s office is likely to be awash with these sort of semi-useful adverts.

At conferences, to get the more expensive gifts you usually have to complete a short quiz, which in reality is a push poll designed to make the key marketing points more memorable.

They tend to ask questions like:

In a 2003 research study [conducted by our company] of over 2,000 people, which drug was found to be most effective for condition X?

Was it:
a) our new drug Fixitall^TM
b) ye olde elixir of quicksilver
c) competitor’s drug [which incidentally, just had bad press]

In reality though, these sorts of promotions are really the tip of the iceberg. What you don’t get from the slide show, is that possibly the majority of people at the conference will have had their trip funded by drug companies, probably with dinners, cocktail parties and excursions thrown in.

Those who don’t, end up staying in cheap hotels, miles from the conference, in the seedy parts of town, because either they have to pay the whole trip themselves or their departments will only give modest amounts as it is assumed you can just get drug company money.

You can see why choosing to remain as uninfluenced as possible by drug company promotion is less attractive for some.

Of course, most clinicians argue that these sorts of things don’t influence them, but we know from exactly the same type of research that clinical science is based on that it has a strong and significant effect on attitudes and clinical practice.

What’s more, patients look upon these gifts much less favourably than clinicians do.

If you want to know more about the effects of drug company promotion and the bias in the advertising material, have a look at No Free Lunch.

As an aside, if there is a big psychiatric conference in town, go to the less glamorous area of the city, and you’ll find groups of researchers having a much better time. One of the disadvantages of attending the corporate events is attendees are expected to behave like the Queen at a garden party, so no-one “upsets the funders”. Very dull indeed.

Link to Wired article ‘Prescribe Me!’ (via BB).
Link to No Free Lunch campaign.

Despair Inc has this fantastic parody of the t-shirts worn by private security firms at concerts, gigs and public events. So now you can wear the t-shirt and advertise yourself as a member of the insecurity team.

The company makes some fantastic parodies of corporate motivational merchandise, including a great range of demotivating posters.

Link to Despair Inc’s ‘Insecuritee’.

A Polish government minister has ordered psychologists to investigate whether BBC TV show Teletubbies promotes homosexuality in children.

Yes, you read that right the first time.

Here’s some of the story from BBC News:

The spokesperson for children’s rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.

“I noticed he was carrying a woman’s handbag,” she told a magazine. “At first, I didn’t realise he was a boy.”

…

Ms Sowinska wants the psychologists to make a recommendation about whether the children’s show should be broadcast on public television.

A 2004 study on the accessibility of mental health services in Poland found that the interval between being first assessed and getting mental health care was 12 weeks – much longer than all other European centres in previous studies.

A study on work difficulties in Poland published in 2006 found that mental and behavioural disorders were among the main causes of early inability to work.

And the government is ordering psychologists to assess Tinky Winky. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

Link to BBC News story.

An artist on Etsy is selling this wonderful iron-on brain patch based on an antique anatomical illustration.

For only $5 plus packing, you can get one of these delivered to your door and attached to, well, whatever you’d want a beautiful brain illustration attached to.

And if you can’t think of any reason you’d want a iron on brain patch, go see the drawing in more detail.

The cortex has obviously been subject to a little ‘artist license’, but it’s still a striking image.

Link to vintage medical anatomy illustration of the head and brain fabric patch.

Celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna on BBC Radio 4’s music programme, Desert Island Discs:

“When you hear a song, back in say the 70s, the first time you heard it, it sounded absolutely fantastic and it’ll never sound like that again. So, I age regressed myself – I know this sounds a little unusual – and took myself back and then whacked on Sister Sledge, and it just sounded phenomenal. It sounded like it did years ago. It was fresh, with those amazing big disco drums…”

Paul McKenna, confusing the sound of drums with the sound of serious hypnosis researchers banging their heads against the wall.

A man walks into a psychologist’s office. “Doctor”, he says, “I’ve fallen in love with two school bags and I’m worried I’m abnormal”. “There’s no need to be concerned”, says the psychologist, “I think you’re just bi-satchel”.

(thanks Kevin!)

A poem by Ogden Nash entitled ‘My Dream’.

This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.

While looking for neuroscience videos we’ve found some pretty weird stuff on YouTube before, but despite their quirkiness, at least they made sense. This one’s just completely baffling.

It seems to be a sort of love letter, presented as a brain diagram, with a disco backing track. Apparently it’s dedicated to someone called Leyla, and it’s from a teddy bear.

I’m assuming it makes sense to someone out there.

Link to YouTube video ‘Neuroscience with Patchy’.

A funny list from McSweeney’s entitled “The Names of Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs After Being Prescribed Paxil, Ritalin, Prozac, Lithium, Provigil, and Benadryl.”