Posts Tagged ‘psychology’

At a glance, the above post makes me sad – sounds like the love they have has finally come down from the “above highest mountain” or “circling multiple earths” level. Why is that a good thing? Well as you can see from my dictionary post, I really don’t think love bordering on Obsession is a good thing. But heck, for all I know they obsessed over each other night and day and both loved the attention.

I realize this isn’t as funny as usual, however perhaps this is one of those informative posts. Ones where I take a moment to tell you something factual, such as the fact that obsessions can lead to such uncomfortable feelings that people develop behaviors just to get rid of the nagging obsession. So perhaps your obsession is the safety of your family – that’s not a bad thing right? You think about Ninjas attack them at night while you sleep, and you’re determined to stop that.

Yea, stop this guy!

so you decide that the only sane thing to do is lock your door, and make damn sure it’s locked, by say unsetting and setting the deadbolt a few times to make sure it’s really locked. I’d say 100 times ought to do it. If you agree, congratulations, you’ve just created a compulsion!

He’s obsessed with mountains & dorkiness 

Now that you’ve got an obsession & a compulsion, you may qualify for a disorder. How Fun… OK, not really.

So if you’re love is above Tallest building and Roundest Earth levels, just be careful – don’t want it going too far!

Oh, and remember how I said this wasn’t a funny post, after looking at that last picture, perhaps I was wrong.

Highlight any portion you want:

Dear Jon,

Why is it that the waiter or waitress always comes up to you to ask a question just after you’ve taken a bite of food?

Alyson, New York

Dear Alyson,

Ah yes, those sneaky wait staff and their ploys to make you look stupid. “How is everything?” “hrmmmphft!” you reply, and they smile and think about how much they’d rather be doing anything else than smiling at you. It must be an organized conspiracy right?

Well, probably not. Now I’m not saying their isn’t an international Wait Staff Forum that doesn’t advocate sneaky things like this, but it’s far more likely that you’re falling victim to something called the Availability Heuristic. This fancy rule-of-thumb simply states that things that are more memorable are judged to occur more often. Each time the waitress comes up to you and asks a question while you’re mid-mastication, you probably think “Damn, this is a horrible time to ask me this stupid question”, and you make a memory about how they asked at this specific time. However when you’re just sitting there chatting about the pros and cons of buffalo wings, and they come up and ask a question, you rarely have the same thought (Unless you are really intensely debating the wings). Later when it happens again, you can easily recall the “while eating” times, but not the “While talking” or the “while thinking” or “while doing nothing” times. Thus you’re more likely to think the wait staff is plotting against you because it seems they come while you’re eating more than they come at any other time. Just one way your mind likes to make you paranoid about other’s watching you eat.

Cheers,

Highlight any portion you want: