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Nov. 6, 2009
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Nov. 5, 2009
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JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
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JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
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Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review July 19, 2006 / 23 Tamuz, 5766

Just Singing in the Brain

By Malcolm Fleschner


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head that you just could not get rid of, no matter how hard you tried? What a stupid question — of course you have. Everyone has. Right now there's probably a Buddhist monk sitting alone on a Tibetan mountaintop trying to remember his mantra, but instead his brain stubbornly keeps bombarding him with the lyrics to "Who Let The Dogs Out?"


Experts refer to this phenomenon as "Stuck Song Syndrome." The songs themselves are often called "earworms," named for a parasitic type of invertebrate that been known to burrow into a sleeping person's ear and begin singing the Beach Boys' hit, "Help Me, Rhonda."


If nothing else, this syndrome proves that the brain is not just a benign organ that exists solely to do its owner's bidding. Oh sure, the brain can come in handy, like when you need to come up with an excuse to tell your boss why you're late to work for the third time this week (and it's only Wednesday), or for playing along at home while watching Wheel of Fortune.


But the fact is that brain can be a real jerk too. Otherwise, why would it wake you up in the middle of the night just to remind you about the time you were so happy when all your eighth grade classmates cheered your campaign speech for student council - until you realized they were only applauding because you had a stream of toilet paper longer than the train on Princess Diana's wedding dress trailing out of the back of your jeans? It sure didn't help that for the rest of the year every time you walked into the room your classmates and the teacher would launch into a round of "Here Comes the Bride."


Stuck Song Syndrome may just be the brain's way of punishing us for all those terrible sitcoms we forced it to sit through. You think it's a coincidence that one of the most common earworms is the theme from Gilligan's Island?


I asked James Kellaris, a University of Cincinnati marketing professor and the world's leading expert on earworms, what possible evolutionary advantage might arise from having brains that drive us crazy by replaying the same tune in our heads.


"One might speculate that it is our subconscious trying to convey a message, as in the case of an atheist who gets a hymn stuck in his head," Kellaris says. "But that doesn't explain why the rest of us are going around repeatedly singing 'Do Wah Diddy' to ourselves."


The worst earworm I ever suffered was "Runaround Sue" by the 1950s-era crooner Dion. This is a perfectly harmless tune stressing the importance of monogamy — a critical message for teens in an era when you never knew what disease you might pick up at a sock hop or from the bathroom at the local soda jerk. At least I used to think Runaround Sue was harmless — until I had to spend upwards of a week listening to Dion's warning that, "she gooooes…out with other guys" rattling around my brain on perpetual repeat.


Desperate for relief, I tried getting a hold of Dion himself, to see if he'd ever discovered how to "keep away from a-Runaround Sue." It seemed the least he could do after all the suffering he'd caused me. Sadly, Dion's burly security detail didn't see it that way. On the bright side, the earworm finally went away on its own, coincidentally on the same day the restraining order went into effect.


I asked Professor Kellaris whether it's possible to get rid of an earworm by passing it off onto someone else. My friend Elizabeth, whose identity I will protect by not mentioning her last name, Longstreth, claims to have achieved tremendous results by walking by coworkers' desks and softly singing, "My name is Luka. I live on the second floor." Of course, Elizabeth does this even when she's not suffering from an earworm, so I only mention it to demonstrate what a malicious person she is.


Professor Kellaris says that while some people swear by this "Tag - you're it!" strategy, no sure-fire solution to Stuck Song Syndrome exists. However, under direct questioning he pointedly refused to deny that he has, in fact, discovered a cure that he jealously guards to protect all his federal funding. True, he did say that he doesn't receive any federal funding. But isn't that exactly what you'd say if you were participating in a top secret Defense Department project to win the War on Terror?


Farfetched, you think? Maybe. But can you imagine if we had the power to permanently embed every potential terrorist's brain with devastating earworms like "Mandy," "Ice, Ice Baby" and "Wind Beneath My Wings?" Wouldn't that be great? Now that's what I'd call letting the dogs out.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Malcolm Fleschner is a humor columnist for The DC Examiner. Let him know what you think by clicking here.


Previously:

05/24/06: Who says you can't go home again?
05/11/06: When nightly news stories go off script
04/26/06: Cents and sensibility: A thought for your pennies
03/16/06: The day the Muzak died
02/23/06: Checkbook diplomacy begins at home
02/15/06: Today's toys: Where learning means earning



© 2006, Malcolm Fleschner

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