Path: netnews.upenn.edu!netnews!mjd From: mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu (Uncle Ucle) Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,alt.prose Subject: Neurology in the Future, or Why I'm Going to Murder My Roommate Message-ID: Date: 14 Mar 92 03:17:17 GMT Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu Followup-To: talk.bizarre Organization: Eaters of Wisdom Lines: 92 Xref: netnews.upenn.edu talk.bizarre:98247 alt.prose:1883 Nntp-Posting-Host: saul.cis.upenn.edu Hi! I just got back from the future. Neurology has been developed to such a degree that the neurologists can identify the six or seven hundred neurons that fire the most when you're thinking of any given thing, even though those neurons are usually widely separated in your brain. This, for any given concept, say `Caribou' , the Neurologists of the Future can find your `caribou centers'. For a fee they will identify the center of any meme you name and remove it. So you could have your caribou centers removed. Then you souldn't know about caribou, you wouln't remember caribou, and you wouldn't think about caribou. If you ran across caribou in the encyclopedia you wouldn't remember them; you might say ``How funny that I never heard of this animal before!'' You would have to learn about them all over again. Of course, that's not so interesting, but I'm sure you can think of a few thoughts you'd rather not ever have pass through your head again. Okay, now I have to retell an anecdotes I've told before, because I know you've forgotten it. Years ago, I was at summer camp, and I'm sitting there with Jonathan eating breakfast, and talking about something (this was the summer after we talked about how to stick moldy gross underwear to the ceiling, so it wasn't that) and Janet Stemwedel stormed in, sat down at our table, glared at Jonathan, and said ``It was the first thing that popped into my head when I woke up this morning.'' ``What was?'' I asked. Jonathan was laughing hysterically. Janet just sat and glowered in disgust. Finally I got the story out of Jonathan when he stopped laughing. ``Yesterday,'' he said, ``I told Janet I would tell her something. I would say a word to her, and tell her what it meant, and it would be so disgusting that for the rest of her life, it would be the first thing that popped into her head in the morning.'' Janet was nodding sadly. ``So what was it?'' I asked eagerly. Jonathan looked around, and then said, in a low voice, `` `Felch'. '' `` `Felch'? What's that?'' Janet cringed. ``Felching,'' explained Jonathan proudly, ``is the oral extraction of semen from the rectum.'' ``Heh,'' I said, and proceeded to think of felching every morning upon awakening for the next five and a half years. So when I heard about the trick these neurologists in the future could do, I was, as you might imagine, anxious to try it out. I went and had felching removed from my mind. I had a pleasant awakening for the first time in years. I knew that there had been something unpleasant that I used to think about, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was. I was hanging around with Ranjit, who by then was an emeritus professor at RISD, and I mentioned that I'd had a meme deleted from my brain. ``Oh,'' said Ranjit. ``What was it? Hee hee hee.'' ``Asshole,'' I said. Of course he knew I couldn't remember what it was. We talked of other things, and agreed to meet for dinner the following week before I came back here. I took the Tube back to Mountan View to stay with Bill Bill, who was one of the few people I know who was still alive. When Ranjit and I met for dinner the following week, he said to me suddenly, ``I ran into the neurologist who did you meme deletion on Wednesday. It was a funny coincidence.'' ``Yeah,'' i said. ``That is odd. Did you talk about me?'' ``Why, yes,'' he said. ``He even told me what it was you'd had deleted. Felching, it seems. You always said you would.'' What a fool I am. ``Felching? What's that?'' ``He said it's the oral extraction of semen from the rectum.'' ``AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!'' I said. ``You asshole! Do you know how much that operation cost me?'' -- Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum. Mark-Jason Dominus mjd@central.cis.upenn.edu