Just another tactic of Satan and his minions

The other day I was making dinner with the TV on in the background when I suddenly thought I heard a commercial spokesman say, “Kick ass!”

In my shock, I quickly turned my head to see it was an antacid commercial. The guy was actually saying, “Kick acid with Rolaids.”

Now, we all know the intended interpretation was in line with my first impression. That’s what advertisers are famous for. It’s all this subliminal programming, etc., etc.

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In the newspaper today was a story about how McDonald’s Corp. is defending its Happy Meal little yellow “Minion” characters in the face of customer criticism that dialogue from the talking toy includes swearing and curse words. Of course, McDonald’s swears their product spews only innocent gobbledygook.

The Associated Press article went on to explain, “Nonsense speech will sometimes sound a bit like a real language, and experts say human brains are also wired to look for meaning in noise and images. So people will sometimes hear words in gibberish — including words they might think are inappropriate.

" ‘The brain tries to find a pattern match, even when just receiving noise, and it is good at pattern recognition,’ says Dr. Steven Novella, a neurologist at the Yale School of Medicine. ‘Once the brain feels it has found a best match, then that is what you hear. The clarity of the speech actually increases with multiple exposures, or if you are primed by being told what to listen for’ — as most people who heard the toy online already had been.

“The technical name for the phenomenon is ‘pareidolia,’ hearing sounds or seeing images that seem meaningful but are actually random. It leads people to see shapes in clouds, a man in the moon or the face of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich . . .

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An old article (Feb. 27, 2000) I have in my files from the New York Times Sunday Book Review section, written by Liesl Schillinger, explains that while the brain's neocortex is responsible for writing, speaking and hatching schemes, it's the brain's limbic brain that makes up our "repository of emotions, instincts and implicit memories of nurturance, grievance and deep preference."

It is the limbic brain, common among all mammals, that "allows mammals to form attachment bonds with one another," the article says. "Love is definitely limbic."

As an illustration of how the limbic brain works in conjunction with the neocortex, the article gave the sentence: "THE cht MEOWED AND PURRED."

"If you read the sentence," the article explained, "your mind will correct 'cht,' both because the brain knows 'cht' is anomalous and because it remembers that it has seen the word 'cat' near the words 'meow' and 'purr' thousands of times.

 

"The implicit limbic memory of stroking a cat or having it twine between your ankles is awakened every time you read the word.

"By the same token," the article continued, "a woman (call her Lady X) who habitually indulges the memory of a certain dark and brooding man (call him Man X, whose glance was, to her, electric, who had crooked teeth, liked a certain kind of food and listened to Josh White) burns thousands of links to him into her brain.

"Long after he's gone, the neurons in her neocortex will forge a new connection every time she sees crooked teeth, hears 'Careless Love' or smells Indian food—and these neocortical facts will rain down on her limbic system, irrigating the trench of memory where Man X resides.

 

"Anyone she meets who resonates with Man X registers as warmly and familiarly as 'cat.' Anyone else is 'cht,' anomalous, a mistake—depending on his context."