OK... who am I REALLY?

[LucasM]

Well, let's see... what would anyone want to know about me...?  [Probably nothing.]

I cut my humor teeth on the superb punning and wordplay of 'Beany & Cecil' and Bullwinkle, and later George of the Jungle and the Archie Madhouse comics.  Also the intelligent humor of Bugs Bunny cartoons and the 'Dick Van Dyke Show' (the original).  My parents were both funny, but not extremely so.  Interestingly, however, it was my FATHER who turned me on to BOTH Monty Python (when I was about 14) AND Mystery Science Theater (when I was about 35).  It was Mystery Science Theater - in its fourth season - that single-handedly got me to finally break down and get cable TV.

I've probably always been the funniest person in my family, but I had a few friends that could keep up and we would riff off of things that were said, getting increasingly 'out there'.  Not a competition, but a 'let's see how far we can take this'-type thing.  I saw that same type of comedy-comaraderie in MST3K where they got JUST as 'out there' as we used to [or at least as far 'out there' as they could get within the 'G' rating of their show ].  So I felt RIGHT at home with them.  [It also helps that I am only a TAD older than Mike, Kevin and Bill, so their cultural references are perfectly 'age-appropriate' for me.]

Up until three auto accidents made it impossible to do so any longer, I was a Clinical Psychologist with a specialty of neuropsychlogy* (that's the study of the brain's effects on behavior... ironic because it was the head injuries from those auto accidents that prevent me from working [or doing much else]).  Though following conversations and processing spoken language in real time is VERY draining for me, I can function fairly well doing things like posting and/or e-mails, but not for long periods in any given day.  Occasionally, when VERY rested (or, oddly enough, when I am WAY past my mental capacity), I can be humorous in real time still.

Let's see... favorite novels: Heinlein's 'Time Enough For Love' and Gaiman and Pratchett's 'Good Omens'.  Favorite non-novel book: Michael J. Nelson's 'Mind Over Matters' (funniest thing I've ever read!)  Favorite movies: 'Bride of Frankenstein', 'The Mummy' (Karloff, not the new trash), and Ray Harryhausen's '20 Million Miles to Earth' and 'Jason and the Argonauts' [I used to do model/clay animation in my late teens].  Favorite retired TV show (other than MST3K): 'Firefly'.  'Ghost In the Shell' (both seasons) follows close behind for its intelligence.  Now, MASSIVE plot-holes or no, I still like 'Heroes'.  And I love 'Robot Chicken'.

Music?  I like a WIDE variety.  I have a tune or two by Hilary Duff and Mylie Cyrus in the same iPod as tunes by NIN and Marilyn Manson.  I can find gems most anywhere.  There are VERY few musical styles I really don't like, but my favorite types of music are complex &/or unusual.  In the 70s I was into fusion jazz, but now my preference is for sort-of a Westernized world music, e.g. Afro-Celt Sound System, Yello, Banco de Gaia.  My all-time favorite musician/composer remains Jimi Hendrix, with the Dave Clark 5's 'Chiquita' probably the earliest STRONG influence on my later musical preferences that I know of.

Oh, and my avatar is my cat.



[uh.... 'too much information?']




*I just reread this after its been up here a while and realized that I'd originally typed "neuropsycholoGOY"...  That, obviously, is the study of NON-JEWISH brains' effects on people's behavior.   

[RVR II]

You're... Tasty!

[LucasM]

You're... Tasty!

That's what SHE said!!

[Wait... that actually works here...  ]

[RVR II]

Yeah.. That's Cool!

[BlueBell]

LucasM,

you sound like a kindred spirit.   It's not easy to deal with physical traumas and it sounds like you're doing it similar to me --- with comedy.

I wish you well.

hey,  being an animal lover  (I'm assuming with your cat avatar)  have you checked out

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

for cat humor

or 

www.ihasahotdog.com

for dog humor

I'm an animal lover and I like the goofy humor on the above 2 links. 

there's also a lolcat translator, sort of like babelfish,  that allows you to translate any conversation into the animal format. 

http://speaklolcat.com/

you might like it - I do.
  I made up one of my my friend and her dog during her summer walk.
Her dog is hilarious and is in all her family photos so I couldn't resist doing one for her.

I'll insert it for you. 

[anais.jude]

Your kitty is soooo precious! We have a thread for postiing animal pics...let me see if I can find it.


and here it is:
http://forum.rifftrax.com/index.php/topic,3699.0.html

[LucasM]

Thank you BlueBell and Anais.Jude for the links.

I knew of lolcats, but not of the 'icanhascheezburger' and other sites.  Thanks, I'll check them out.

And, of course, I'm off to post some pics to the forum 'pets' topic now.   

Thank you, BlueBell, for the kind wishes.  I do hope that whatever happened to you has SOME chance for improvement long-term.  And yes, without comedy, I'd be a bitchy, complaining old man (and probably having to take a LOT more Vicodin than I do for the neck/back 'soft tissue' damage sustained in the same three accidents as gave me the head injuries).

[LucasM]

Since a couple lengthy answers I made to questions were only very tangentially related to another thread, I moved them here.  They are:

Oh that reminds me Lucas, I find cognitive processes fascinating (that was my favourite section of my psychology A Level). You said that talking books are harder for you to concentrate on than the book itself. How do you do with dramatizations of books or audio dramas in general?

I too, love brain/mind functioning.  Because of that, I went to grad school, and before my head injuries I was a Neuropsychologist.  [That is - depending on your conceptualization of the universe - either a massive irony, or else 'some higher part of me' guiding me into that career so I'd be better prepared to deal with my life when something directly related happened to me.]

To answer your question: One of the things most affected (therefore most draining) for me was 'auditory receptive language', so anything with just speech is problematic and takes huge amounts of energy.  It takes much less energy if there is someone right in front of me talking, but even there it doesn't take much longer before my attention drifts off, unless I expend huge amounts of energy staying focused.

But, to expand on what you wrote, the difference between sitting and listening to someone talk (where I can use body language and even lip reading to 'lessen the load' on the requirement to comprehend 'pure' auditory input), and - say - watching a movie, where actions (usually) support what is being said, makes a huge difference in the energy demands.

So, for me, the hierarchy of 'draining stuff with auditory language' is basically (from 'most draining' to 'least draining'):
voice only, 'dry' speech (e.g. lecture)
voice only, speech with inflection (e.g. expressive reading)
voice with physical presence (using 'supplements' of body language/lip reading)
voice with action (films, TV, for example)

Reading takes less energy than the top two there, and may be about even with the third (voice with physical presence), which leaves me - obviously - with limited contact with people, as 15 minutes of either takes hours - sometimes days - to recover from.

But since the major problem is receptive language, I can write FAR longer than I can read (as anyone seeing any of my posts can attest  ), and so, with reading less draining than talk either on the phone or in person, any friends that decided they could tolerate the 'new me' shifted to e-mails after the third head injury.  Some, however, did not, as they simply were guys who 'don't write'.

Although possibly bordering on 'overshare', that is - I believe - what you were 'aiming at' with your question on dramatizations, wasn't it?  That, if there's 'more to go on' than just words, is it easier?  The answer is 'yes: but it's incremental' (and - if I'd left it at that simple sentence - would've likely been an unsatisfying answer  ).

Or am I misinterpreting what you were asking?



EDIT:  Sorry, sort-of hijacked the thread here, with a LOT of writing having nothing at all to do with New Moon, other than basically expansion on what I wrote related to my being unable to read it even if I wanted to. 

[LucasM]

And then this other post that was much more about me than it was related to the thread's topic:

Or am I misinterpreting what you were asking?

No, that was pretty much it; I wondered if there was a noticeable difference between listening to a single voice reading a text and multiple voices plus sound effects and the like (which makes it a bit more like a movie without picture, I'm at school for sound design so I'm interested from that perspective too).

Interesting stuff.

Thanks.  Hopefully we aren't the only ones here who think so. 

From the sound design aspect, one of the other things that happens with many (actually probably most) head injuries is that the ability to 'filter out' unwanted sounds becomes impaired.  So sound effects, music, other voices - if they are present at the same time - make it much more difficult to hear and comprehend the content of what you are trying to focus on (one of the reasons why, if I'm mentally tired, I can't watch a RiffTrax: simply can't attend to both the film and the comments going on at the same time, so I end up not really hearing either, while still exhausting myself further by trying).  Things like crowds are absolutely maddening to most people with head injuries, and 'cocktail parties' are virtually impossible, as the ability to filter out other voices simply doesn't work.  [To get the feeling, try, in a group, to hear everyone's conversation at the same time, and still see if you can respond to the person in front of you.  Now imagine that thinking coherently itself takes effort, and you'll get a bit of the idea.]

Oh, and with me, part of the reason that receptive auditory language is so difficult is because my second head injury was a car hitting me from the side, where the exact area dealing with hearing language (in the left temple) was the area that got the major impact (smacking against my door's metal window frame).  It was after that I had to stop seeing clients for therapy, as I was no longer capable of hearing and understanding what they were saying.