Thinking

[helicopterjim R.I.P.]

Thinking

 

*It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then - just to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

 

I began to think alone - "to relax," I told myself - but I knew it wasn't true.

 

Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. That was when things began to sour at home.

 

One evening I turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life.

 

She spent that night at her mother's.

 

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't help myself.

 

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so could read Thoreau, Muir, Confucius and Kafka. I would return to the offic dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

 

One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking around here, you'll have to find another job."

 

This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking ."

 

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"

 

"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."

 

"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver . "You think as much as college professors and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"

 

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.

 

She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama. "I'm going to the library," I snarled, and stomped out the door.

 

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors. They didn't open. The library was closed.

 

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.

 

Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers Anonymous poster.

 

This is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.

 

I never miss a Thinkers Anonymous meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Next week it's "Careers in Marketing." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

 

I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.

 

Today I took the final step............I joined the Global Warming Thread.

[Frenchbob]

[DeBenGuzzi]

thats a really long way to go for such a lame joke there jimbo. jeeze

[dlaing]

thats a really long way to go for such a lame joke there jimbo. jeeze

PS what does reading have to do with thinking?

[Guest Mattress]

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.

 

That shit is the bomb. Do you watch a lot of Monty Python or Conan?

[Guest Nogbad]

thats a really long way to go for such a lame joke there jimbo. jeeze

 

Well I enjoyed it

[Martin Barrett]

[Guest ratchethack]

...what does reading have to do with thinking?

Well, Dave, forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but here's the direct connection: If a person can't, won't, or for whatever reason doesn't read, that person, by process of elimination, has few options. He then has no other recourse than to fall back on the likes of sound bytes, commercials, propaganda slogans, and cartoons as the raw material for his thinking processes. Garbage in and garbage out -- as er, ah, so very thoroughly and spectacularly illustrated in er, [ahem] certain threads hereabouts.

[dlaing]

Well, Dave, forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but here's the direct connection: If a person can't, won't, or for whatever reason doesn't read, that person ends up falling back on the likes of sound bytes, commercials, propaganda slogans, and cartoons as the raw material for one's thinking processes. Garbage in and garbage out -- as er, ah, so very thoroughly and spectacularly illustrated in er, [ahem] certain threads hereabouts. <_>

Unlike somebody, atleast I know how to read

[dlaing]

I think the best readers are the ones that can tune out their thinking and just read....but they are not the best thinkers.

The best thinking readers know when to turn off the reading, think, and then go back to the reading, or they have multithreaded brains that can read and think at the same time.

But multithreading begs the question of which brain is doing the reading and which brain does the thinking.

For example if you are reading porn I mean food, and you get excited I mean hungry, but your mind starts thinking about tangents like delicious aromas, as your eyes keep reading the page, what remembers what your eyes were reading and what remembers what you were thinking, your penis I mean stomach, or your brain?

[Guest ratchethack]

I think the best readers are the ones that can tune out their thinking and just read....but they are not the best thinkers.

The best thinking readers know when to turn off the reading, think, and then go back to the reading, or they have multithreaded brains that can read and think at the same time.

But multithreading begs the question of which brain is doing the reading and which brain does the thinking.

For example if you are reading porn I mean food, and you get excited I mean hungry, but your mind starts thinking about tangents like delicious aromas, as your eyes keep reading the page, what remembers what your eyes were reading and what remembers what you were thinking, your penis I mean stomach, or your brain?

Er, lemme see if I got all this straight.

 

The best readers tune out their thinking. . . . the best thinking readers turn off the reading, or have multithreaded brains for reading and thinking, with which to read and think at the same time. . . . . . reading porn is an example of how thinking processes operate. . . . . . and stomachs and (presumably) other [ahem] organs can have their own memories (????)

 

Hmmmmmmmmmm. . . . . Am I reading this right? Maybe I don't know how to read after all. Let's see. We're on the blue planet and this is an English-language Forum, so I presume I'm not at too much of a disadvantage with earthbound, English word definitions with which to interpret the meaning here? I read quite a fair amount in English, but I seem to be a little behind on my Remulacian lately.

 

On the separate brains for reading and thinking thing -- Are you referring to the big head and the little head, or is there more to the Remulacian anatomy and physiology that I don't know about?? Do stomachs and other organs have their own private brains on Remulac?

 

I reckon this kinda thinking must be a little too "advanced" f'er me, even with my extraordinary attempts to temporarily achieve dark and purply enlightenment recently by simulating the environment that provides Remulacians with their distinctly unique full-time perspective -- as I discovered recently, whilst huffing nitrous, upside down, by the light of the full moon, at the bottom of my swimming pool.

 

I read in English, and use earth-bound, logical thinking and blue-planet reasoning with my own brain, and I've only got one of those. My brain can't be "partitioned" like a hard drive into 2 separate and distinct brains where one reads, and the other thinks -- despite "soft science" psycho-babble nonsense. Now on alien planets in galaxies far, far away, I'm sure all o' the above makes perfect sense. O' course, things are a little different on Remulac, what with the dark and purply, nitrous oxide atmosphere and 7-dimension gravity well polarity vectors and such. . . . .

 

If you have two brains, do you need two helmets to ride a Guzzi in California?

 

Enquiring, single-brain minds just gotta know.

[helicopterjim R.I.P.]

I have done a little research on Remulac and i have found conflicting results. I wonder wich remulac ratchet is referring to?

 

Remulac:

Resource Management under Language and Application Control ?

 

Remulac:

A village in France?

 

Remulac:

A robot built by R. Steven Rainwater?

 

Dr. Remulac:

A listener who used to call in to Howard Sterns radio show almost every day and repeats the words ''I am Dr. Remulac, I am Dr. Remulac, I am Dr. Remulac'' over and over again. The only person who can talk to him directly is Stuttering John. If anyone else says anything to him he just repeats ''I am Dr. Remulac''. Howard was able to find out that the guy suffers from OCD(Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).

 

Now the enquiring minds just gotta know!!

[Guest ratchethack]

When questioned by an Earthling while on the blue planet, Beldar would always answer that it's a village in France.

 

He'd usually answer while chewing a Trojan lubricated condom, which he preferred to all other brands of Earth chewing gum.

 

Then he'd blow a very large, oblong bubble with a reservoir tip.