Gotcha!

I think we need to clarify what counts as a "gotcha question."

It's a charge that gets levied against the media every time a political candidate is asked an awkward question.  Doesn't seem to matter whether the awkward question is relevant or not, whether it has anything to do with qualifications for public office, whether it makes sense or not.  If the candidate doesn't want to answer the question -- for whatever reason -- all (s)he has to do is call it a "gotcha question," and the onus is thrown back on the media for even asking it.

Now, to be fair, some things are "gotcha questions."  Take, for example, the question that Jeb Bush was asked a couple of days ago by a reporter from Huffington Post, apropos of whether Jeb would go back in time if he could and kill Hitler as a baby.

So here we have a question that presupposes using an impossibility (time travel) to commit a crime that might or might not prevent World War II and the Holocaust.  In Jeb's place, I would have responded, "What a fucking stupid question.  Where did you get your journalism degree from, Steve's Mail-Order Diploma Warehouse?"

Which explains, at least in part, why I will never run for public office.

Jeb, instead, decided to answer it.  He said, "Hell, yeah, I would.  You gotta step up, man...  It could have a dangerous effect on everything else, but I'd do it."

And what was he expected to say?  "No, I'd leave Baby Hitler alive, and sacrifice millions of innocent lives instead."  Or, "No, the bible forbids the taking of a life, I wouldn't kill an infant even if it results in a disaster."  Or "Of course, ethics demands that the value of many lives outweighs the value of a single person, even though I've claimed in the past that every life is sacred."  No matter what he answers, he opens himself up to being blasted -- and all over something that isn't even a hypothetical, it's completely impossible.

Adolf Hitler as an infant [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

On the other hand, the questions that Ben Carson is being asked about his veracity in the past are not "gotcha questions."

There's his claim that he was offered a scholarship to West Point -- until it came out that West Point doesn't offer scholarships, and he amended that to saying that he was "invited to apply by a local ROTC officer."  Then it turned out that he in fact never even applied.  Carson said the news stories about the claim were a "political hit job."

There are the stories of his troubled childhood, that more than one person who knew Carson as a child say simply aren't true.  Carson responded by saying that the stories were too true, and that the things he recounted had happened even though none of the folks who knew him were aware of it at the time.

Then there's further evidence of a tenuous grasp on reality, with his claim that the Great Pyramids of Egypt were built by the biblical figure Joseph as places to store grain.  Confronted with this bizarre statement, Carson stood by what he said, placidly responding that the controversy over his words was nothing more than a liberal hatchet job.  "The secular progressives try to ridicule it every time it comes up and they're welcome to do that."

Okay, Dr. Carson.  We're happy to oblige.

See the difference?  With Bush, we have a deliberate setup using a pointless hypothetical, where any answer would leave you open to being lambasted by one side or the other.  With Carson, there are very real questions regarding his apparent lack of understanding of the commandment "Thou shalt not lie," not to mention its less-known corollary, "Thou shalt not make weird shit up."

So anyway.  Yes, the media could do a better job of avoiding stupid "If you were a fruit, would you be a banana or a mango?" type questions.  Just like with any profession, there are people who are competent and intelligent journalists, and people who are total morons.  But that doesn't make every awkward question that puts a candidate on the spot a "gotcha question."  There are times we need answers, because political figures should be held accountable for the claims they make.

To put it simply: dammit, truth matters.

Cup of woe

So it's a bright time in the calendar year here in the United States, despite the shortening of days and cooling of the weather.  Thanksgiving approaches, with its promise of good meals and family together-time.  And after that, of course, we have the Christmas season, a time of gift-giving, religious observance, and atheists declaring war on happiness, tradition, and little children's hopes and dreams.

At least that's the contention of a certain cadre of über-Christians, who every year trot out the whole tired "War on Christmas" trope.  Can we just get one thing out of the way, right from the beginning?

I am an outspoken atheist blogger, and I put up a Christmas tree every year.  I think they're beautiful. I love getting gifts for my family and friends, even though my gift-wrapping abilities are such that the presents I give usually look like they were wrapped either by a four-year-old or an unusually artistic gorilla.  I like a lot of Christmas music -- "O Holy Night" and "What Child is This?" are two particular favorites.  (I do have to admit, though, that I find "Frosty the Snowman" and "The Little Drummer Boy" so annoying that I nearly break my index finger turning the car radio off when they start playing.)

And most of my atheist friends are the same way.  We have no problem with anyone celebrating Christmas, or not, as they see fit -- as long as (1) it's not forced on anyone, and (2) Christmas displays aren't paid for at public expense.  If you follow those two rules, you can have a Christmas scene out on your lawn with lights so bright that it disrupts flyover jet traffic, as far as I'm concerned.

But that hasn't stopped the idiotic rhetoric from starting.  And this year, it's directed at none other than Starbucks, because they changed their holiday cup design from having reindeer and snowflakes to a simple red-and-green.

Well.  You'd think they were proposing terrorist attacks on Whoville, from the reaction that got.  Here's a smattering of responses:

From conservative British MP David Burrowes: "The Starbucks coffee cup change smells more of political correctness than a consumer-led change." 

From Christian Institute's spokesperson Simon Calvert: "What is it about Christmas that Starbucks are [sic] afraid of celebrating?  Haven’t they heard it’s the most wonderful time of the year, and the season of good will to ALL men?" 

From social media commentator Chuck Nellis: "My Christmas mentality: if a store won't promote Christmas re Starbucks, I'm not spending my hard-earned money there." 

From a poster on Twitter, in response to the story about the change on Breitbart News: "Since you're running away from Christianity, I'm running away from you.  Just exercising my financial choice." 

From Christian radio personality Joshua Feuerstein: "Starbucks has removed Christmas from their cups because they hate Jesus...  The Christian majority in this country has awakened and are demanding that our voice be heard."

Trust me, Joshua, we never have problems hearing the Christians of your stripe. given that they always seem to be screaming with outrage over something even though they are, as you point out, still the majority in this country and in control of damn near everything.

It seems like people of this mindset would not be content until every business, everywhere, plasters their walls with "Merry Christmas" and "Jesus Is The Reason For The Season," and blares Christmas carols from their speakers 24/7.  Anything less is a deliberate and personal attack against everything holy.

What makes this wryly funny is that one of Starbucks' most popular seasonal coffees is called "Christmas Blend."  ("Just right for the season," the description says.)

I wonder if the people who are screeching about this realize how rapidly this sort of behavior makes you lose your credibility.  Take for example Colorado pastor Kevin Swanson, who at the National Religious Liberties Conference last week had a complete meltdown in public and said that god was going to wreak destruction on the United States because of Harry Potter, despite the fact that the books were written by a British author, are set in Britain, and generated a movie series wherein the parts were played by British actors.

God, evidently, is not known for his accurate aim while exercising his "smite" option.

So anyway.  It's doubtful that Starbucks is anti-Christmas, given that the cups are still red and green, and a business deliberately cutting itself out of sales during the Christmas season would be kind of stupid financially.  Baby Jesus is unlikely to be upset if his image isn't broadcast everywhere; we all know that Christmas is coming, okay?

Let me end with an admonition from the War-on-Christmas cadre's favorite book, specifically Matthew 6:6: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."

Spellcheck eugenics

And to end the week in an appropriately surreal fashion, yet another reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link that gives you instructions to see if you're one of the targets of the Illuminati.

The website Corruptico: All Answers Exist Within Your Actions (whatever the hell that means) a post appeared called "Microsoft Word 'Spell Check' Embedded Eugenic Code," wherein we learn that to tell if you're destined to be executed when the New World Order arrives, all you have to do is type your name into a Microsoft Word document and see if it flags as misspelled.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Here's how the author explains it:

There’s a program for that. One created by no other than Microsoft Crypto Jew eugenicist himself, Bill Gates. 

According to US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton’s first nephew, Greg T Dixon, a Masonic High School friend and informant deeply connected to Freemasonry, included within Microsoft’s Word “spell check” lies embedded code that filters out the names of people not making the elitist final eugenic cut. 

The program works simply enough, for which anyone, even children, can easily access to check and see their chromosomal eugenic status. All you have to do is type in your last name (surname) to see if it is underlined by a red squiggly line underscoring the surnames of those NOT making the genomic eugenic cut. 

That it, you’re done!

Which brings up a variety of questions, the first of which is, what the fuck is a "Crypto Jew?"  Is this some kind of superhero who runs around with a yarmulke and a black cape, defending liberty by using pieces of matzo like ninja throwing stars?  Because that would be kind of cool.  My wife is Jewish, and if I knew she had a secret identity that involved fighting crime by wearing a mask and slinging kosher food at wrongdoers, it would make her even more awesome.

But considering the claim itself, we're on shakier ground.  Spellcheck?  Really?  It couldn't be that the spellcheck feature includes lists of the more common names, so that you don't get flagged every time you write "Smith?"  I guess I'm fortunate; my own last name is also an English word, so I don't get red-lined.  Lucky thing:

Apparently, many people who are being told they are elite and making the “eugenic cut” are actually not going to be around after the Democide, if the true elites have their way, by proxy, their names were purposely left off of earlier editions of MS Word, and this is why older versions prove more accurate. 

Go ahead. If you dare, type your surname into MS Word to see your fate, it’s a fun and simple way to see what side of the railroads tracks you’re on. 

Just remember that, if the RED LINE appears, your fate is most likely sealed, and you will probably be killed at a FEMA death camp here very shortly via a hollow point bullet to back of the head.

Well, I'm not sure I would call this "fun," since it involves death camps and gunshots to the head, but it certainly is... interesting.

I do have a few questions, however.  What if your last name gets flagged and your first name doesn't?  This seems kind of unfair for people of Polish descent, such as "John Szczpanski."  Do Our Evil Overlords kill him because of the Szczpanski part, or let him go because his first name is John?

And what about people whose parents were trying to be clever, and gave them first names that appear to be deliberately misspelled?  A few years ago, I taught a girl whose name was "Kaytlyn."  This gets autocorrected to Kaitlyn (in fact, I just had to type it three times to get the Blogspot software to believe me that NO, THIS IS REALLY WHAT I WANT TO WRITE, DAMMIT).  Is this some kind of plot on the part of the parents to get rid of her?  This happens all the time to my wife, whose last name is Bloomgarden.  Autocorrect separates it into "Bloom garden," and then the red lines go away.  Is it telling her, "Maybe you really want to start spelling your name like that from now on.  Hint hint wink wink nudge nudge?"

So anyway, I encourage you to check your own name.  (Sorry for the bad news if you're Polish.)  I'm lucky -- neither my first, middle, nor last name gets red-lined.  Of course, the Illuminati Crypto Jews may change their minds after reading this post.  I'll be able to tell if I start getting mail addressed to "Gordin Bonnetski."

The dying of the light

I was challenged by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia to take on a topic I've never discussed here: end-of-life decisions.

She said:

The Humane Society is for "humane" treatment of animals.  "Humane" is supposed to embody the very best of human attributes.  It's "humane" to put a dying or mortally wounded animal out of its misery.  It's murder to do the same for a human.  What would Skeptophillia say about this?

At first I was reluctant, and to be honest, it was from nothing but cowardice.  I responded:

I've tended to shy away from purely moral questions -- to me, morality is very private, and best left to each person's conscience.  That said, I agree with you, and if I knew I was incurably ill and was going to be a burden to my family, I would unhesitatingly choose euthanasia for myself.

Which was disingenuous of me.  And she called me on it:

I'm... interested in what a discussion would be which says we are bound by "God" to allow humans to go through suffering which we would arrest a person for standing idly by and watching an animal go through.  That same "God" who killed 99% of the population of the earth several times?...  I'm just surprised that you take on religion, but "shy away from purely moral questions."  NOT a criticism -- just a conundrum?

Which, of course, was spot on.  And the whole thing came into sharper focus with the story that hit the news last week of five-year-old Julianna Snow, who is dying of an incurable neurodegenerative disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome, and whose parents have made the decision that if she has another episode -- nearly a certainty -- she will be taken home and allowed to die rather than going back to the hospital for more excruciating treatments that will ultimately not be successful in any case.

"She made it clear that she doesn't want to go through the hospital again," Julianna's mother Michelle wrote.  "So we had to let go of that plan because it was selfish."

The whole thing took on a more awkward twist when it came out that the discussion the Snows had had with Julianna hinged on her being told that she didn't need to be afraid of dying because she was going to go to heaven afterwards.  "So if you get sick again, you [said that you] want to stay home," Michelle told her daughter.  "But you know that probably means you will go to heaven, right?  And it probably means that you will go to heaven by yourself, and Mommy will join you later."

This appalled a number of people, all for various reasons.  There were people who lambasted the Snows for allowing a five-year-old to make decisions which (in their opinion) she was too young to understand.  Non-religious types said that comforting a child by holding out a false hope of heaven was wrong, and could induce her to choose death because she was being duped into thinking there was an afterlife.  Others said that it amounted to euthanasia, which is immoral, period.

And all of it brought into sharper focus the questions surrounding end-of-life choices.

First, let me say that I hope with all my heart that I never have to be in a situation like this with someone I love.  To be responsible for making the decision of when enough painful medical intervention is enough has to be one of the hardest things anyone could be faced with.

That said: do we really believe that the quantity of life is all that matters, that to extend it by hours or days is the goal regardless of the cost in suffering or the quality of life that would result?  Let me say it again: this girl is dying.  Her condition is progressive, incurable, and agonizing.  It's all very well to say, "Maybe they'll find a cure" -- but the likelihood of finding a cure fast enough to help Julianna is nearly zero.  Is "death later" always a more moral choice than "death sooner?"

As to whether she's capable of understanding death -- probably not, or at least not in its entirety.  But hell, who can?  What she does understand is suffering, that there's no treatment that's going to make her better, that the rest of her short life is going to be spent in devastating pain.  And she understands that death will end that.

What about the parents' holding out the hope of heaven for her?  As an atheist, I might be expected to criticize this, but I can't.  These are grieving parents comforting a dying child.  As a parent myself, I know that I have felt at times like I would do anything to take the pain from my children.  I don't think that what they're telling her is true, no.  But if it gives some emotional comfort to a scared child who is facing an inevitable agonizing death, regardless of what medical science can do?

I can't see that there's anything morally wrong with it.

The quality of life is more important than the quantity.  There, I said it straight out.  The worth of a person's life is not measured solely by its span, and artificially extending someone's life in the case of a progressive and incurable disease is not always the more ethical choice.  How much each person is willing to go through to live should be solely their decision -- when to stop fighting, when to accept death rather than continuing the torture in the hope of a few more months.  

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Stephen King wrote in Danse Macabre, "Most of us would like to die peacefully in our beds at age eighty (preferably after a good meal, a bottle of really fine vino, and a really super lay)," and I certainly can't argue with that.  The truth is, however, that few of us are so fortunate.  The idea that we provide our pets with more options for putting an end to the misery of an incurable disease than we do our loved ones casts our own sense of morality in an awkward light indeed.

About my own life, I am as clear as anyone can be when considering such an emotionally fraught question.  If I am facing a life of pain with no hope of improvement; if I am facing the devastation of a disease like Alzheimer's, with the prospects of being a burden on my loved ones for care; if I am being kept alive only by being hooked up to life support -- let me choose death, by whatever means it takes.

Ghost radio

I got an email yesterday with two links and a message.  The message said:

Wondering what you think of this.  I'm not convinced but I think it's interesting.  This guy says he's made a device that can allow two-way communication with the dead.  The messages he picks up do seem to be answering specific questions and comments he's making.  Not just random words or phrases. 

Watch the guy's video and see what you think.  I'm keeping an open mind about it, but I'm curious what you think. 

Sincerely, 

T. K.

The links he provided were to YouTube videos made by a guy named Steve Huff, selling software that is called "The Impossible Box."  He claims that this software is manipulable by the disembodied spirits of the dead, who apparently surround us.  The first link plays audio recordings of messages that Huff has received using the software; in the second, he explains to us how he thinks it works.

Here are a few of the messages he received:

• I am the portal
• Let there be light
• The light will surround you, Mr. Huff
• Blessed art thou
• Olee's at your side
• The devil's gonna profit from you

And so forth and so on.  The software is available for download for $49.95 (and can be purchased here).

So I watched both videos, and predictably, I'm unconvinced.

The way it works, which he does get to on the second video (about halfway through), is that the software scans internet radio, and pulls out words and phrases that it then plays for you.  Allegedly, this software only turns on when the ghosts have something to say.  "There is no continuous scan of audio," Huff tells us.  "The scan only starts when the spirits want to speak." 

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

When it comes to explaining how the programmer created code that can specifically be manipulated by the dead, he's a little cagier.  The Impossible Box contains "software with all kinds of tech," he says, giving no other real details presumably to protect his proprietary interest, but also preventing any kind of critical analysis of what's really going on in there. 

The real problem here, though, is the same one that plagues attempts to demonstrate that rock musicians have engaged in backmasking -- hiding demonic messages in songs, so that when you play them backwards you hear voices saying things like "Here's to my sweet Satan."  (That one is from one of the most famous claims of backmasking -- in Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven.")  As Michael Shermer points out in his wonderful TED talk "Why People Believe Weird Things," the message only becomes clear when someone tells you what the demons are saying via a caption -- just as Huff does in his video.  Before we're primed by being told what the message is, it more or less sounds like gibberish.  "You can't miss it," Shermer says, "when I tell you what's there."

The other thing that is troubling is the question of why ghosts have to have source audio in order to speak.  If they can manipulate software, you'd think they'd be able to do the same thing without having to rely on picking out words from internet radio.  He tried making a "spirit box" that used white noise instead of scanning radio, Huff says, and it didn't work.  "Spirits have a hard time forming words out of white noise as a source audio," he tells us.  "They need audio with human words to really be able to leave you sentences "

Which I find awfully convenient.  We're given garbled phrases, made up from words pulled from internet radio, and we get to decide what it is we're hearing, and then assign meaning to it.  While it's possible that we're talking with ghosts, what's more likely is that we're seeing some kind of audio version of the ideomotor effect, where our own subconscious decisions and expectations of meaning are creating a message where there really is none.

Now, let me conclude with saying something I've said before; I'm not saying that the afterlife is impossible, nor that spirits (should such exist) might not try to communicate with the living.  All I'm saying is that the evidence I've thus far seen is unconvincing, and I find the perfectly natural explanations for what is going on in The Impossible Box (and other spirit communication devices) sufficient to account for any ghostly messages Huff and others have received.  If anyone does decide to shell out the fifty bucks for the software, however, I'd be really interested to hear what your experience is with it -- and especially, if you got information from Great-Aunt Marjorie that you couldn't have otherwise got, and not just vague messages like "The light will surround you."

Until then, however, I'm afraid that I'm still in the "dubious" camp.

Bee all and end all

It's unfortunate how wishful thinking can turn off the rational parts of your mind.

I know we all want to live healthy for as long as possible.  There are a lot of scary illnesses out there that everyone would love to avoid.  But this fear drives us sometimes to pursue preventatives and treatments that are completely bogus -- in our desperation to avoid disease, we grab on to anything that seems even remotely possible.

I can't think of any other explanation for the link a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a couple of days ago, in which we learn that to avoid getting sick, people are breathing air from beehives.

Here's the pitch:

This is a place in Slovenia.  It's proven that breathing air from a beehive is very beneficial for ones [sic] health.  Hive air contains ingredients that boost the body [sic] healing capacity.  This is just more evidence that backs up why it is that beekeeper [sic] a have the highest life expectancy in the world.  Everything the Bee produces is of the highest value to humans.

…Beekeepers have the lowest incidence of cancer of all the occupations worldwide. This fact was acknowledged in the annual report of the New York Cancer Research Institute in 1965. Almost half a century ago, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 9(2), Oct., 1948, published a report by William Robinson, M.D., et al., in which it was claimed that bee pollen added to food (in the ratio of 1 part to 10,000) prevented or delayed the appearance of malignant mammary tumour. 

L.J. Hayes, M.D had the courage to announce, “Bees sterilise pollen by means of a glandular secretion antagonistic to tumours.”  Other doctors, including Sigmund Schmidt, M.D., and Ernesto Contreras, M.D., seem to agree that something in pollen works against cancer. 

Dr W. Schweisheimer also said that scientists at the Berlin Cancer Institute in Germany had never encountered a beekeeper with cancer.  A French study concerning the cause of death of 1,000 beekeepers included only case of a beekeeper that died of cancer. The incidence of cancer-caused deaths in a group of French farmers was 100 times higher than the group of beekeepers. 

Till date, no study has faulted the fact that beekeepers have very low, almost negligible incidence of cancer worldwide.  Due to the weight of this fact and coupled with his experience, John Anderson, Professor of beekeeping, University of Aberdeen, unequivocally declared: “Keep bees and eat honey if you want to live long. Beekeepers live longer than anyone else”.

The problem is, the basis of this claim -- that beekeepers have a lower (or zero, as the post claims) incidence of cancer than the rest of us -- is simply untrue.

 All the way back in 1979, J. A. McDonald, F. P. Li, and C. R. Mehta decided to test this claim (which does date back to the mid-20th century).  Unsurprisingly, they found no correlation at all between beekeeping and low cancer incidence:

Beekeepers had a slightly lower than expected fraction of deaths from cancer.  The deficit of lung cancers in male beekeepers was significant (p less than 0.05) and may indicate that fewer beekeepers were cigarette smokers. The frequencies of other cancers did not differ significantly from expectation...  Mortality from diseases other than cancer showed no unusual patterns.  At least two persons died from accidents directly related to the care of beehives.  Analysis of a subgroup of 377 males with major roles in the beekeeping industry showed no substantial differences in distribution of causes of death.

But that hasn't stopped people from doing things like claiming that honey is better for you than sugar (honey basically is sugar, or a concentrated solution thereof) and that "bee pollen" is good for your health.  In fact, there have been no studies supporting any positive health effects from ingesting "bee pollen," and at least three cases of people experiencing life-threatening anaphylaxis after taking bee pollen supplements.

"Natural" doesn't mean "good for you."  Nature is full of toxins, and there's a significant fraction of nature that would love nothing better than to kill you and eat you for dinner.  And while bees are certainly beneficial insects -- the decline of bees from colony collapse disorder should be of tremendous concern to everyone, given the role of bees in pollination -- that doesn't mean that attaching a hose to a beehive and breathing air from it is going to do anything but piss off the bees.

This didn't stop people from waxing rhapsodic about the curative powers of bee air on the original post.  Here are just a few of the comments, so you can get the flavor of the conversation.  You're going to have to trust me that spelling and grammar is as written, because I don't want to use up my daily allotment of sics this early in the day.

Bees are our medicine.  Honour and respect our companion to evolve.  Bees don't respond well to greed. 

Alot of things I think would help ease and even cure alot of the sickness in the world today.  I do believe there was medicine before any of us were born that would work better.  With the manufacturers of the drugs all the accessories that goes with on inhalers needles etc. Is worth billions and they don't want to cure a dam thing.  I believe the make drugs just to keep illness under control so we the consumer still has to buy there product just like buying your milk an bread. 

I knew that bee keepers on Russia had the largest group of centurions I knew it had something to do with all the bee pollen and honey they were eating.  But huffing bee hive air ... cool

I have to admit that the last comment defeated me for quite some time, which I attribute to my not having had any coffee yet.  I simply stared at it with my head tilted to one side, wearing an expression similar to my dog's when I explain difficult concepts to him, like why he shouldn't roll in dead squirrel.

The other shoe dropped eventually, of course.  And I do think it would be cool if people who lived 100 years got to be centurions.  I think that on a person's 100th birthday, they should receive the entire outfit and be allowed to wear it wherever they want to.

But I digress.

It'd be awesome if there was some cheap, readily accessible preventative for diseases like cancer.  The problem is, if there was something like that, we would have found it by now, and its therapeutic value would have been established by scientific studies.  

So cancel your trip to Slovenia.  Your best bet for staying healthy is still eating a balanced diet, maintaining a reasonable weight, finding ways to reduce stress, and exercising frequently.  And if you can't manage any of those things, bees are unlikely to help.

Open season on Snorky

I know that there are many important things in the world I could be blogging about today. I could be devoting my writing to analyzing the candidates for the presidential election.   I could be posting about a prototype fusion reactor about to be turned on in Germany, which (if it works) could revolutionize clean energy production.  I could be discussing the ongoing problems in the Middle East.

But no.  My topic for the day is: why the hell do I have the theme song from The Banana Splits stuck in my head?

For those of you who are too young to remember the 60s, or who were, shall we say, otherwise occupied at the time, The Banana Splits was a short-lived and rather ill-conceived Saturday morning cartoon.  It ran, insofar as I can remember, on the variety-show model, with a number of short clips (both animated and live-action), music, and so forth.  It was hosted by a foursome of actors in animal suits (the eponymous "Banana Splits") -- Fleegle the dog, Snorky the elephant, Bingo the gorilla, and Drooper the lion.

It was, in a word, weird.  It is second only to H. R. Pufnstuf as being the trippiest Saturday morning cartoon ever aired.  And for those of you who haven't heard of this amazingly freaky cartoon, the only way I can give you a flavor for it is to imagine what would happen if J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a script for an episode of Barney and Friends while on LSD. 

You think I'm kidding? Ask anyone over 50. Or check out the Wikipedia entry, which gives an interesting take on the series, as well as many links to related sites.

But I digress.

Anyhow, the theme song of The Banana Splits -- whose lyrics I kindly won't share, partly out of consideration for my readers and partly because the bit of it that is currently whirling around in my brain consists mostly of "la la la" -- is one of the worst earworms in the world.  An earworm, as defined by psychologist James Kellaris, is a song, jingle, or fragment thereof, which gets lodged inside your skull and will never ever ever leave, even if you try to remove it using an electric drill and a shop-vac, until finally you go completely and totally MAD AND BEGIN TO FROTH AT THE MOUTH AND START CALLING ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS WHO ARE HUNTERS AND ASKING THEM IF THEY WOULD HAVE AN ETHICAL PROBLEM WITH KILLING AN ELEPHANT NAMED "SNORKY" EVEN THOUGH ELEPHANTS ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES.

Whoa, sorry, got a little carried away, there.  And perhaps I exaggerate a tad.  Even the most annoying earworm will eventually leave, but often only because it's been supplanted by an even worse one.  So once I have the theme song from The Banana Splits out of my head, who knows what musical adventures I have to look forward to?  Maybe "Copacabana."  Or "Benny and the Jets."  Or the "Kit-Kat" jingle ("Gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar.")  There are so many my brain can choose from!  I can hardly wait!

The worst of it is considering what a waste of mental energy this must be.  When I think of the amount of brain space I'm currently devoting to keeping "la la la, la-la la la, la la la, la-la la la" ricocheting off the inside of my skull, it just makes me depressed.  I could be writing a symphony, coming up with a Grand Unified Field Theory, solving world hunger, or figuring out why Carly Fiorina appears to be physiologically incapable of uttering a true statement.   But no. I'm sitting here, going "la la la."  And worse yet, writing about it.

Good lord, I just realized something.  Now I've infected all of you.  I'm really sorry about that, truly I am.  And if all of you go out and infect others, it'll be... it'll be.. a pandemic!  Bananasplitsitis!  US productivity will grind to a halt!  (The Russians and Chinese are immune, because during the 60s they were too busy having Cultural Revolutions and Great Leaps Forward and Sputniks and Missile Crises to come up with pointless, psychedelic cartoons.)  World markets will collapse.  Pandemonium will ensue.  And it will all be my fault.

Wow.  I feel just awful about this.  I think I need to lay low this morning, just to recover from the guilt feelings.  Find something to take my mind off all the trouble I've caused.  Maybe relax, daydream a little.  Daydream about... about a magic land... where everything is alive!  Filled with whimsy and weirdness!  Where the mayor is a brightly-colored dinosaur!

Ahem...  "H. R. Pufnstuf, where'd'ya go when things get rough, H. R. Pufnstuf, you can't do a little 'cause you can't do enough..."