I'm sure there will be some debate as to whether the hip bone is too high up the body, but the thigh bone is connected to it, so I'm using that as my excuse.
11. Introducing Michael Knight’s car!
As I'm sure you're all aware, Michael Knight drove the Knight Industries Two Thousand... KITT.
If Ernie guessed the link yesterday in double quick time, it may well be that the idea was already in his head.
When he emailed me with the idea for last week's SS, he mentioned he'd been trying to put together a Legs and Feet Snapshots, but went with the Left Right one instead. I almost replied, "Glad you did - because I've got a Legs & Feet Snapshots ready to go... and then I thought, "D'oh, if you do that, you'll give him the answer!" So I kept schtum. But great minds and all that...
Roland arrived at Grange Hill a year or so before I went to High School. He didn’t have a good time of it, being the fat kid who everyone picked on… his only friend being annoying Janet with the whiney voice. He was singled out by school bully Gripper Stebson, who made his life a misery, and towards the end of his first year, he ended up in hospital after running out into the road in front of a speeding car.
I missed the episode where Roland got run over, so somehow I managed to convince myself things had got so bad he’d tried to commit suicide. The internet tells me, years later, that it wasn’t actually a suicide attempt, but Grange Hill went to some dark places, so I’m not 100% convinced.
The reason I’m telling you about Roland is that when I started High School, the bullies and the wags soon twigged to the fact that I share the first three letters of my Christian name with the Grange Hill character played by Erkan Mustafa. And even though the end of my name was different – who cares? Rol became Roland… and the sound of kids mimicking whiney Janet’s catchphrase, “I only want to help you, Ro-land…” was soon echoing through the halls of our Secondary. And I hated it.
Author and neurobiologist R. Douglas Fields created the acronym LIFEMORTS to summarise nine triggers in our brains that cause us to get angry, lose our shit and full on HULK out. Last time, we looked at the first of these – L for Life or Death Situations. Today, we’re looking at I… for Insult.
I’d argue that many times, getting hit by a stick or a stone – even if it caused us the long term inconvenience of a broken bone – is preferable to many of the insults we’ve received in our lives. The insults the cut us to the quick. The insults that we lay awake at night recalling. The insults that leave permanent scars.
Unsurprisingly, scientists have studied the way our brains react to insult, and they compare the effect to a “mini slap in the face”…
The researchers found insults uttered by a fictitious person triggered short bursts of brain activity in the front part of listeners' brains, regardless of who the insult was directed at, themselves or somebody else.
These very rapid responses, which the researchers say are akin to a slap in the face, did not diminish over time; offensive statements continued to grab the brain's attention, generating large responses of similar magnitude, regardless of how often the invectives were heard.
Insults elicited a larger response in brain activity than compliments, and they continued to do so throughout the session, the experiments showed.
Ouch. Insults have a bigger impact and stay with us longer than compliments. So much for “names will never hurt me”!
It's a telling reminder of how our brains tend to fixate on negative events more intensely than they do positive things – what's known as the negativity bias.
Get that – what they’re basically telling us here is that our brains are much more likely to brood over negative things than they are to get zuzzed up by positivity. Our brains are essentially miserable emo/goths. It’s a wonder we’re not all on Prozac.
The reason our brains don’t like being insulted goes way, way back to the dawn of man when our very survival often depended on being part of a fledgling community, and hierarchies became suddenly very important. The higher you were up the hierarchy, the more chance you had of surviving. Of getting food and water, or having others help you by sharing resources and skills. Of finding a mate and being in with a chance of passing your genes on to the next generation. However, even back then, there were lots of buffoons who made it their business to try and batter other people down, and if they couldn’t do it physically, maybe they could do it verbally. The insult became as much a threat to our position in society as the stick or the stone… and our brains, whose primary job is to keep us alive, began to realise that insults could be deadly.
When Swanny chanted out, “I only want to help you, Ro-land,” and the other kids laughed, he was knocking me down the hierarchy ladder, and cementing his own position near the top. And this made me angry.
According to Psychology Today though, Anger is the absolute worst response to Insult. Whereas the strongest way to respond might well be… acceptance.
When someone insults us, we ought to consider three things: whether the insult is true, who it came from, and why. If the insult is true or largely true, the person it came from is reasonable, and his or her motive is worthy, then the insult is not an insult but a statement of fact, and, moreover, one that could be very helpful to us.
Which seems fair enough… although in that case, it is really an insult? Aren’t we just talking about constructive criticism there? Some people have a hard time with that too – any form of criticism – but it still differs from an insult.
On the other hand, if you think that the person who insulted you is unworthy of your consideration, you have no reason to take offence, just as you have no reason to take offence at a naughty child or a barking dog.
I think that as we get older, it becomes a lot to ignore insults from dingbats who aren’t worth expending a breath on… but when you’re a teenager, that’s much harder. Everyone’s opinion matters to you in the deadly hierarchy of the school yard.
As kids, we’re more likely to return the insult… I know you are, you said you are, but what about me? That doesn’t quite work when the insult is linked to your name though. I suppose I could have tried to come up with an equally stinging riposte linked to Swanny’s name – yeah, well, you look like a swanee whistle (maybe I could have imitated the sound of a swanee whistle every time he walked past?) Or could I have compared him to a Swan Vesta – you’re a hothead, Swanny… where’s your vest? It’s hardly Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, is it? And chances are he might just have (to use another swan analogy) broken my arm in return.
The fundamental problem with the put-down, however brilliant it may be, is that it equalizes us with our insulters, bringing them up to our level and us down to theirs. This gives them, their behaviour, and their insult far too much legitimacy. Returning the insult also risks injuring the insulter (who, in all probability, is fairly fragile) and inviting further attacks.
Depending on the power differential in the relationship, fighting fire with fire is rarely a smart move… not when the other side has bigger fists and is more than prepared to use them.
If you can’t use humour to deliver a stinging rebuke then, perhaps you can use it to defuse the situation in another way? When Swanny piped up, “I only want to help you, Ro-land,” maybe I should have replied, “Cheers, Swanny – any chance you can do my Maths homework for me?” Or turn the mockery back on myself to show him it didn’t bother me at all. “Ouch – that hurts. I’m going to have to go do what Roland would do in this situation… eat a few pies and wash them down with a gallon of Irn Bru.” Of course, it’s all very well thinking of witty ripostes after the fact (shades of L'esprit D'escalier), particularly 40 years after the fact! But I think eventually this was the strategy I began to adopt in terms of dealing with insults. I got in there first. I insulted myself, put myself down, before anybody else could. Take the insulter’s power away by showing them I had an even worse opinion of myself than they did. It works… to a point… but no wonder I ended up with low self-esteem.
When I started the Celebrity Jukebox feature (and back then, it wasn't just for recently deceased stars), the idea was to measure a celebrity's fame or notoriety through the number of times they've popped up in pop lyrics.
With Brian Wilson, the cultural impact is beyond compare. Yes, you can hold up Elvis, or John Lennon maybe, Marilyn or James Dean, as icons who have had more songs written about them than Brian. But they were marquee names. Brian Wilson's marquee name was The Beach Boys. I haven't even looked to see how many songs there are that mention his band... but I'm betting there won't be as many as mention the man himself. What a legacy...
There were plenty more where they came from - as always, I listened to them so that you don't have to. And let's not forget the bands who took his name... although not in the best of taste sometimes. Still, fame is fame.
Best video today comes from Canadian musician Rich Aucoin. The title might seem inappropriate right now, until you realise the acronym stands for All Living Instantly Vanquish Everything. Which I can interpret as "Brian beats everyone" (even if he's dead)... though I'm happy to concede that might not have been Rich's interpretation. The video's a wonderful tribute to the life of the legend though.
These were just the songs that mention Brian in the title. There's a whole other post about lyrical name-drops... I bet you can hardly wait.
Another query I stole from Richard Herring's book Emergency Questions, with the hope of hearing your answers...
What's the best advice you've ever received and ignored?
Sometimes I wonder about this. Chances are though, if you ignore some advice and end up regretting it, you'll probably edit your memories to forget you were ever given that advice in the first place. Well, that's how my memory works, anyway.
My parents would have loved me to go to university after my A Levels, but I was determined I wanted to go work in radio for no money instead*. My parents never pushed me though... they let me make my own mistakes and find my way back. Possibly this came from my brother who left school to pursue an accountancy course, hated it, quit, got a milk round, saved up, bought himself a digger and went on to become a very successful builder. Maybe they thought I would follow a similar path.
(*Literally: for the first couple of years, I did not get paid.)
I didn't, but I did eventually end up going back to university while I was working nights at the radio station, thereby having my cake and eating it. Because as well as wanting to be a DJ, I also wanted to be a writer. Somebody probably should have given me some advice about that as well.
It might have been better had someone advised me to go away to university rather than staying in my hometown... socially, at least, it might have made more well-adjusted human being... but on the other hand, I did finish uni without any student debt, and there's not many people who can say that.
Put your Umbrella away and stop staring at your Diamonds (maybe put some clothes on too) because it's time for the answers to this week's Saturday Snapshots.
Some fierce competition yesterday morning between Rigid Digit and George... I think RD just clinched it, but it was pretty close. Good support from the rest of you, although I don't think anyone cracked my fiendish cryptic crossword clue for the Eddie Reader song. Thanks for playing, as always, guys...
It took me ages to remember what Dido had to to with Otis, since it seemed obvious that "resting on the harbour wall" referred to (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay. Then I remembered: "Dido resting" was an anagram.
Take A Bow if you got them all right... more next week.
(Who knew both Madonna & Rhianna had songs called Take A Bow? Made my job much easier this weekend.)
