come_to_think: (Signature)
2013-03-07 10:47 pm
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The balance of my mind

Some time ago, I learned that British coroners, when returning a verdict of suicide, were fond of using the phrase "while the balance of his/her mind was temporarily disturbed".  While the balance of my mind was temporarily disturbed, it occurred to me that the wonderful irony of that "temporarily" was by no means confined to suicide, but would improve the recording of any human action whatever.  So I opened half a dozen biographical books and extracted a past-tense sentence from each at random:

While the balance of his mind was temporarily disturbed, Agee soon noticed the ardent, frightened girl from Utica.

While the balance of his mind was temporarily disturbed, he ordered that this horse should be kept as long as he would live, and it was so.

In 1946 and 1947, while the balance of his mind was temporarily disturbed, though he continued to live with Chester Kallman, Auden found himself involved in a heterosexual relationship as well.

Mr. McAllister, by the way, while the balance of his mind was temporarily disturbed, lost by seven times the size of his previous defeat.

While the balance of his mind was temporarily disturbed, this multi-talented jazzman organized his own Dixieland band at the start of the Roaring Twenties.

While the balance of his mind was temporarily disturbed, Kraemer hated the "ugly German."
come_to_think: (Default)
2011-07-24 11:16 pm
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Perverse responses to the null TAT

I have been rereading a book, preparatory to citing it in a future LJ posting, that makes use of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT --- the test in which a person is shown pictures and asked to make up stories about them).  I took the test several times when a child, and remember one or two of the pictures and my responses.  I had forgotten, tho, something the book mentions: that one of the "pictures" is completely blank.  I suppose the idea was that you were to make up a story without any prompting; at any rate, I suppose that was what I did at the time.  On imagining it now, tho, I immediately came up with two literal-minded responses:

1.  Since nothing is depicted, an empty universe (the vacuum) is intended.  It is currently speculated, however, that the vacuum is unstable, and is bound to decay into an exceedingly dense world that explodes & then condenses into stars & planets, some of them inhabited by organisms that give & take tests.

2.  This patch of white represents the field of view of a man staring at a featureless whitewashed wall.  He has been told to face it, but has not been told to close his eyes.  In a few seconds, he will be shot in the back of the neck.  His body will be removed, and the wall will be scrubbed & whitewashed again.
come_to_think: (Default)
2010-11-15 06:35 pm
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Day 29 -- My aspirations, in great detail

To die in my boots, and not to be a nuisance in the meantime.