Crazy? CA-RAY-RA-ZAY!

As a teenager I read Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber. Yes, I was a teenager that read. But I also bullied the few kids nerdier than me so don't start any shit, bucko.

Sybil the true story (the author, Schreiber, was a friend and confidant of the real Sybil) of the first thoroughly documented case of a multiple personality sufferer's other personality's becoming re-assimilated with the original personality they had become fragmented from.

The book begins with Sybil standing under a streetlight on a unfamiliar street, in a city she doesn't recognise, with none of her belongings. In her pocket is a single hotel room key, which she has also never seen before. The moment previously she had been standing in an elevator in her college in New York. To Sybil, the time that had passed between standing in the elevator and standing in the street had passed within the blink of an eye but she now found herself in a completely unfamiliar environment with no idea how she got there (I've had this this happen to me on more than one occasion and I've found myself wishing it was Muliple Personality disorder, as opposed to just being really drunk).

Unbeknownst to Sybil, in the elevator a different personality had taken control of her body, a personality that loved to travel. This personality took a cab to the airport, flew to a different city, checked into a hotel and went for a walk. She then ceased control of the body, and left Sybil standing in the street. This had been happening to Sybil for most of her life; once, she was standing by the grave at her grandmothers funeral and the next moment she was sitting in her class at school. Her classmates weren't all the same, and looked older. She eventually realised two years had elapsed and she had no memory of it.

Sybil had 16 different distinct personalities- 14 women, two men. To them, the personalities all had a different appearance (the men, when prompted to describe their appearance, described men), one was french, some were adults, some children. Sybil's subconscious created the personalities to combat emotions that Sybil herself could not handle, so when Sybil felt a strong emotion the personality most adept at dealing with that emotion would come forward. Some were self destructive, some just wanted to help. Some were sausages (that's a lie). It was an incredible story, hard to believe but undeniably true.

ANYWAY, that was a long winded way of getting to this. This is a great but dated docomentary on Multiple Personalities. Most bizarrely, one of the women interviewed has to check into a mental facility because one of her personalities is threatening to kill her. Less bizarrely, another one wants to go shopping.

I'm not black, not even a little bit, not even 1/50th black.. but I dance like this woman.

If you don't get a little big of gospel funk in your trunk from this video then you're DEAD INSIDE.

DEAD. INSIDE.

Occasionally during a relationship you find yourself sitting beside your other half on the lounge or next to them in the car (or perhaps even whipping them until they scream the safe word) and you find yourself musing over what it is that draws you to this person, this person in particular, and what it is that separates them from the thousands of other people you weed out as potential partners during your lifetime.

Not so long ago I was perched before the television with the object of my affections. Our nightly ritual was in full swing; we'd just finished eating dinner, Oprah had just finished bleating on about some rubbish and Dr Phil was about to begin, followed by MTV's Made, Super Sweet Sixteen and then we'd end the evening with a few episodes of Animal Cops, without a doubt the best show ever made.. ever.

We were probably having a minor argument about who was going to the fridge to refill our refreshments, the only thing we regularly argue about. By regularly, I mean a couple of times per hour. He always wins; his greatest skill is being incredibly annoying at the highest possible volume. Like how some whales can hear each other across whole oceans? That's him. But a really annoying whale.

Transfixed, we stopped bickering and watched these women stand before mirrors, assess their skeletal frames and speak about how they could count the fat rolls (err, the fat rolls are your ribs lady..). After a few minutes of silence my other half looked in my direction and blurted out, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world:

"..god, just give them cookies. Who doesn't like cookies?"

That's right. Cookies.

Clearly, he's a genius. That's why I didn't weed him out.

Richard Dawkins is pretty cool. Not as cool as a slice of ham is when you fold it over and then over again- leaving four little slices of ham that you can eat separately, thus savouring the salty goodness- but pretty cool nonetheless.

His book The Selfish Gene took evolution down to it's most primal genetic form, and his book The God Delusion made an atheist out of anyone with half a brain. So I can forgive him for only writing books with "The" as the first word in the title and he can be a smartypants as much as likes.

Here he is lecturing about the universe and the beautiful weirdness within it. Yes, I know the porn you've got open in your other browser isn't gonna just look at itself. Pervert.

A little blog entry called: MY FAVOURITEST AUTHOR EVER

Mary Roach is awesome.

If you have any interest in popular science, randomness, tidbits, facts, dead people, sex, life, the afterlife, the lack of an afterlife, historical trivia AND you have a sense of humour, give one of her books a try.

Stiff, my favourite, is the history of the use of cadaver's in medical research while Spook investigates scientific research into the afterlife and otherworldly things. Her newest book Bonk delves into the sloppy world of sex research, though unbelievably there's no mention at all of "sloppy seconds" or that other sometimes-but-not-always unpleasant event, "jizz-eye".

So just trust me and give 'em a go.

So... a small digression..

I was reading up about AIDS discrimination (on a brief reprieve from my jam-packed day of watching Judge Judy on youtube), and yes, it's obvious that AIDS discrimination needs to be replaced with understanding, empathy and an "it's no big deal" attitude. But is it really possible to have a "socially friendly" infectious disease? If peeps weren't frightened of acquiring AIDS would they take the precautions (i.e. pulling out, praying, etc. if you believe some African governments) to not catch it?

No way, ho's say.

So we need the fear, to an extent . The real crux of the dilemma is can we somehow manipulate the public into guardedly respecting the disease without holding preconceived notions of those afflicted with it.

With that in mind, I have an idea. a RADICAL idea. A free thinking, shitting-against-the-wall-of-the-establishment kind of idea! Ok, it's not that amazing. But it might work. I propose we get rid of the term "AIDS"- give the lil' fella a new name. Something benign. Something that sounds like a medical condition, but friendlier. A bit like "Dropsy", which sounds like a condition you'd want to have, because it sounds so damn cute. That way, you see, the old AIDS baggage will be left behind and we'll have a new identity and a new framework upon which to hang brand-spanking new stigmas and prejudices (people will be people, after all. Let's not have unrealistic expectations) determined by our current knowledge and social climate.

It's worked before, such as the slide from negro to African American; it worked with pansy/sissy/poof/fag morphing into "gay" and those mad loons- but cocktail party favourite's- the manic depressives, who are now mingling with the common folk under the guise of Bi-Polarity. Imagine AIDS to be like a shabby old clothes line hung between two dead tree stumps, with our prejudices sloppily hung along it as if they were hung there by a bitter, sherry sedated housewife; while our newly named disease is like a shiny new hills hoist, or something like that, or maybe it's probably best to stop imagining that because it's a rubbish analogy and, to be honest, rather unhelpful.

So. to recap, I say we rename the stubborn little shit, thus redefining what it is, it's actual threat and what it means to be afflicted with it.

No more "AIDS", the dirty gay/african/drug user disease, insidious scourge of the morally lax...



..and hello "Bubbles".



..or something like that. I'm not very good with names.


Now, with all that said (brilliant idea had today? TICK!) it's back to Judge Judy...