Delusions of Grandeur01 Feb 2010 09:49 am
Quarterly Journal Of Experimental Guessology
By NelsonThanks to Mankytoes for finding this chap generously sharing his expertise under an article about the REM song “Everybody Hurts”.
As an expert on depression I can assure you that if you are depressed then you want to avoid this song completely. It’s a neat song if you’re in a reflective mood yes, but depression… oh no!
David, London
I’m glad you’ve finally published your research on the BBC site, as it ties in neatly with my own work on this subject (which I published on the back of a pay-and-display parking ticket and then dropped into the canal).
46 Responses to “Quarterly Journal Of Experimental Guessology”
Much akin to an expert in the field of asteroids crashing into the Earth saying, “In my expert, Asteroids crashing directly into the Earth is a bad thing”.
Thanks for your insight David, that’s an opinion I can take to the bank!
Yes… first!
Anyone even slightly schooled in depressing songs knows that “Everybody Hurts” is for fucking amateurs – he should try “Gloomy Sunday”, guaranteed to make professional-level manic depressives top themselves – but unfortunately not David of London.
I’m an expert on wanking, and I too have a piece of paper with something you wouldn’t want anyone to see that I dropped in the canal. Although I’ll guess you’d prefer to look at that than anything produced by David.
As an expert on vomiting I can assure you that you need to avoid David, London at all costs. If your in a pugilistic mood then he’s not too bad, but if you’re even slightly queasy … oh, no!
If he’s into theories, David needs to meet Anne Elk.
Unfortunately this is not confined to David, London; the phrase “expert by experience” has crept into mental health terminology, denoting someone who’s been through it and wants to help others.
It’s better, though, than another term for those, who were designated “user champions”.
Considering that “Everybody Hurts” is a plea to stop depressed people from topping themselves, I feel the resident depressionologist may have missed the point somewhat. Shiny Wanky People.
It’s not just mental health. Every news story is obsessed with it. As if knowing someone who’s been stabbed, blown up or on a waiting list makes you an expert in social policy, military tactics or hospital management. At least you you have to actively seek out HYS on the web. Having it rammed down your eyes and ears when you try and watch the news is exasperating and a little creepy. My headspace feels violated … or something.
Can we ask the CIA if they could sit outside David’s house with REM on a constant loop, then we may be spared his theories when he tops himself.
Actually, can we experiment first with John Adair?
I’m an expert on colonic irrigation and I would definitely say that the top deck of the number 66 to Erdington is a place to avoid if you fancy a quick flush in peace.
In the same way that anyone who has been shot, blown up, fallen down a well or is suffering from an un-pronouncable disease is a hero.
Don’t forget, having a shag and then being too dumb to use contraception makes you an expert in social policy.
Cf many newspaper articles beginning “as a mum….”.
From HYS ‘Should assisted suicide be legalised’*
*My apologies, the Husband hasn’t had a chance yet to show me how to do hyperlinks, though now that I think of it, his tutorial on doing blockquotes did start with the words, ‘Now open a tab in google and type in HTML blockquotes…’.
Yeah, at least you can turn the computer off. It’s not so easy with the TV.
Labsnark’s arse wibble logic entirely misses the paradox that in order to be a true expert on assisted suicide you would have either a successfully attempted suicide & there for be erm…. dead! Or have successfully assisted a number of people in suicide/death which would then make you either Harold Shipman who is also dead or in the eyes of the current law at least an accessory to manslaughter & thus reluctant to discuss your expertise.
Yes, yes, thankyou Goldstein. I have to find out what’s going on from somewhere, though! The only place that seems to be free from editorial and random samples of public idiocy is the news service on the wii.
Ceannair
“Cf many newspaper articles beginning “as a mum….””
I’ve had many infuriating conversations along these lines, where people claim special rights to have an opinion based on thier having a kid. These goes from the right to violently kill a kidnapper right through to the appropriate age for a mobile phone.
It calls to mind a rather nice scene from Family Guy:
“Brian: Awww man I’ll tell ya, now that I’m a parent I can’t even watch stories like that, I just think, you know, I just think oh my god what if Dylan were on that [crashed] plane?
Oh my god! I just don’t know what I’d do! I don’t know what I would do.
Glen: Yeah, yeah I understand that’d be tough
Brian: Oh Oh no oh no, no no no Quagmire, no you do not understand. Until you have a child, until you have a child, you do not understand. Okay.”
Mixing up my grammar was never going to be auspicious start to commenting on a site like this.
For what it’s worth, being “shot, blown up, fallen down a well” probably makes you a certain mad monk from Tsarist Russia, as much as a hero. I for one would certainly like to hear his views on immigrant shops and banning daytime pj wearing.
Still on HYS ’should assisted suicide be legalised’, still strangely enjoying my day off. Came across Barry from Manchester:
What a rousing defense of the rights of minor celebrities to have their say.
On topic… let me get this straight.
An overrated REM track has chosen by smug people in some music biz ivory tower who think that its tone of condescension has genuine empathy with the very real and brutal suffering in Haiti – which they can’t imagine, but think they can solve by singing and making consumers buy the record rather than putting their own hands in their pockets and bothering to try to address the problem themselves.
Damn … I’m expressing an opinion here… better reel it in before I go HYS postal.
“Everybody Hurts”.. just some people hurt a hell of a lot more than us, thankfully! Hell yeah, your entire country got flattened, but I once had a mortgage offer fall through at the last minute. Everybody hurts, eh?
Reminds me of Live Aid – “Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”. Not very charitable sentiment really, when you boil it right down.
HYS is better than sinister scientific journals because you can actually see how many peers reviewed the research.
Speed reading through HYS comments seems a sensible preventative measure, and works for me most of the time, with the occasional exception…
John wrote:
I read:
Don’t get me started – I’m raging.. absolutely raging.
This isn’t even slightly relevant to the topic but I just enjoyed it so much I had to share. From a India Knight piece in the Times about ‘our growing acceptance of gays’:
I know! And if I suffocate my granny so I can claim my inheritence I get sent to prison, but if I need to see a doctor I can! Free of charge!!!!!
What the fuck? NewLiebour gone mad!
Category mistake. There are no nice scenes in “Family Guy”.
I say that as a parent. A family guy, if you will.
Might not be around for much longer if hardworkingbrit has his way?
hardworkingbrit believes that cardiology is only good for a job in Clintons, while biology is over there with gayology and lesbology.
I’m tired of being told that my PhD in Animation Studies from Disneyland University isn’t a proper degree.
Coat.
Yeah forget biology, pharmacology, zoology.
This saloon bar moron’s grasp of university funding is lamentable. I’d love to put him in an interview room with HEFCE officials for say three minutes.
There’s irony, right there.
I love when people confuse PhD thesis titles with degree courses. He’s genuinely wandering round thinking there’s whole classes of undergraduates happily working away towards their BA in that.
Laurence Craig… no relation, I hope? For your sake, that is.
There’s irony, right there.
Ah, a regional stereotype. I almost missed it, wit me peeerm goin in me eyes an dat. Kidder.
I much prefer Atmosphere by Joy Division. Far better for a manic depressive.
Everybody Hurts just reminds me of splitting up with my bird of one and a half weeks then wanking off too much over the kays catalogue bra section.
Remember kids, if you see any depressives listening to Everybody Hurts, Kadir-Buxton them in the face.
All of them.
Until they cum.
As a Critical Theory nerd, I offer – free of charge! – to sit hardworkingbrit down and explain to him why the ‘ologies’ are so important. A few hours explaining the works of Baudrillard, Adorno and Irigaray should help change hi… oh. Never mind.
Where’s Slavoj Zizek when you need him?
You’re all tossers! Bwah hah ha!! (I bet this hurts you deeply) Bwah hah ha!!
I expect he means doing stuff with test tubes and wearing a white coat and glasses, like scientists do in TV adverts, and none of that faffing around with large hadron colliders and climates..
soft cunt, he should try listening to “suicide is painless” on endless reruns of M*A*S*H
@La Spesh
Ooh,I’ll have him after you, give him a touch of Serres, Latour, Geertz, Garfinkel and Haraway – that should cover soci-, semi-, anthrop- and ethnomethod-ologies.
If that doesn’t work, I do have a baseball bat handy.
I remember the first time I touched my prostate. It was almost as good as the first time Times Online published my hideous text-wank. But not quite.
@Dr Mal – if he gets through the second half of my talk, including Foucault, Althusser, all the French Feminists and a full hour of Derrida, he is all yours. But seriously, I think he’ll break at Kristeva.
PS Can I listen in to yours if I fail? I love me a bit of Haraway. Then we can twat him together afterwards. Happy days.
“The top deck of a 66 to Erdington is a place to avoid …..”
The 66 is operated by single-deckers.
Have you been sitting on the roof again?
I’ll get my anorak ……