“What a piece of work is a man!” said Shakespeare; and while it’s possible he was merely gazing into the mirror and feeling his own biceps, he was probably referring to the human mind. A mysterious thing, the mind. One man discovers the principle of electromagnetic anti-gravitational polarity, and wins a Nobel Prize. Another one owns and operates a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. Perhaps it is the same man wearing a different suit, but in that case he is moonlighting and should declare his second source of income (the Nobel Committee).

The point is, few students of the mind have any inkling of its innermost workings, particularly at the subconscious, or street-level. One who did during the first half of the 20th century was Dr. Aloysius Gilbert, dream researcher and founder of the Gilbert Institute for Advanced and Gruesome Studies, which has given hope to so many. Dr. Gilbert was originally a follower of Freud, till one day Freud noticed he was being followed, and spun around suddenly to confront him.

“Just what are you looking at, eh?”

“The back of your head,” replied Gilbert, with the candor that was his genius. Freud was so moved by his frankness that he immediately rubbed out a lit cigar on the young man’s bald spot. The two became fast friends, remaining inseparable throughout the next 30 minutes, until they broke intellectually over who would pay for the cigar. Afterward, Gilbert credited Freud with teaching him “everything there is to know about eczema, and then some,” and how to get big laughs at parties by impersonating a meerkat.

He soon had a flourishing psychoanalytic practice in Vienna — one so lucrative, in fact, that his wife Grimelda could never comprehend why he persisted in renting himself out as a cuspidor on weekends (poverty had been his close companion during childhood, although when the two met later at a class reunion they hardly recognized each other).

But in treating thousands of refried psyches he sometimes resorted to methods that were, like those of Colonel Kurtz, “unsound.” One former patient charged that, under hypnosis, he had made her don a little sailor suit to “do the hokey pokey.” Worse, none of the respectable journals would publish his papers on dreams, forcing him to send his feverish theories to the only outlet open to him, Scatology Today, where the following cases and comments by Dr. Gilbert first appeared. These are the pivotal works which, in their collective unconsciousness and their intuitive grasp of dream symbology, Carl Jung declared “every bit as profound as the lyrics to ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat.’”

* * * * * * *
CASE OF ANNA S. My new patient, a typical bourgeosie, will not lie down on the couch without first compulsively sweeping it clean of imaginary insects. Even then I have to sit on her chest to keep her there. All this because one little silverfish happened to explore her underthings at our initial session. Will I never understand the id? This morning she related an important dream:

“I am in my apartment, which is the same as usual except that it has been repainted a cheerful shade of black and a new wing has been added to accommodate the wax museum exhibit of my family. A surprise party is being thrown in my honor, and I am delighted to no end until I realize I was not invited. Suddenly depressed, I sit down on a miniature schnauzer I used to play with as a child, and begin to weep. But the dog accuses me of being a sentimentalist and of putting on weight besides. I become suicidal, and am just about to end it all by eating my mother’s cooking when my own voice, coming from the clock radio, announces that I have won the Joseph Goebbels Look-alike Contest. Overcome with joy, I awake and slit my wrists.”

What a lucid expression of wish fulfillment! Clearly, Anna S. is less concerned with the normal childhood traumas than with the fact that she was never given a last name, and has had to make do all her life with a middle initial. Even becoming a high-ranking Nazi would be preferable, though it would require a complete change of wardrobe. When I pointed this out to her she seemed very grateful and kissed my hand, then bit down as hard as she could on my ring finger, an obvious display of jealousy which nearly caused me to achieve escape velocity.

CASE OF ERNST A. This afternoon as I was mopping up my office (with my receptionist) I spotted a small boy fondling the cushions on the couch. After cuffing him soundly, I asked him how it was possible for a child his age to grow a full-length Vandyke. He explained that he was not a child at all but an adult whose growth had been stunted by guilt, and that the couch had reminded him of his mother.

“Oh? And when did you last have your mother reupholstered?” I asked.

“Only yesterday,” he replied. I knew he had come to me in the nick of time. In a fearful sweat, he told me his recurring nightmare:

“I am strolling alongside the Danube admiring the view and trying to work up enough courage to throw myself in, when I see a beautiful rainbow arching over the river and ending somewhere in the Vienna Woods. Suddenly I am in the heart of the forest, and it occurs to me that I have forgotten to bring any insect repellent. This strikes me as very funny at the time, but when I try to laugh the only thing that emerges from my lips is a tiny flag reading ‘Ha ha.’ I become alarmed, and decide to hide under an oak leaf until spring comes. Before I can touch it, the leaf turns into a leprechaun standing by a pot of gold. The leprechaun confides that he is merely waiting for the gold market to hit a new high before he liquidates his assets, but that if I give him the magic acorn I can have the whole pot for practically nothing. Just as I am about to ask, ‘What acorn?’ he disappears, and I wake up under the bed.” He sighed as he concluded his story.

“Where, exactly, did you say this pot of gold could be found?”

“Nowhere,” he answered, pretending to look confused. “It was just a dream.”

“Don’t play games,” I warned, backing him against the wall.

“No, please!” he begged as he tried to edge out the door. He was about to run for it when I snatched him up by the scruff of the neck and thrashed him back into his dream world. Then I lifted the magic acorn from his shirt pocket, loaded my Luger, and went for a walk in the Vienna Woods.

Kurt Luchs has written for some of the most respected publications on the planet, including but not limited to The Onion, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and The Talking Mirror. He currently edits www.thebigjewel.com and is exploring a new career as a Nebraskan Freedom Fighter.

Even if we can’t spell the word, we’re all familiar with mnemonics.  Anyone who’s been to grade school has learned about the light spectrum with the help of The Right Rev. Roy G Biv.  Anyone studying North American geography has learned that HOMES is an acronym for the Great Lakes.  Anyone who has seen the movie Johnny Mnemonic knows that Keanu Reeves sucks at life.

Mnemonics are devious little tools employed by teachers to ensure their pupils will remember insignificant bits of information that their brains would otherwise discard to make room for more Miley Cyrus lyrics.  It is because of these insidious devices that adults are still able to recall the order of operations (My Dear Aunt Sally), the notes on the lines of the treble clef (Every Good Boy Does Fine), and the proper spelling of “because” (Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants) decades after this information was relevant.

My primary problem with grade school mnemonics is not so much that I can’t forget the things I wish I’d never learned.  It’s the banality of the mnemonic phrases themselves.  They mean nothing and they propagate lies.  Think about it.  Most kids don’t have an Aunt Sally and half the ones who do probably think she’s a bitch.  I bet small elephants confuse the hell out of big elephants.  And how many of the “good boys” from your elementary school are doing fine today?  Surely not every one of them.

If we must continue using these devices, let’s do two things: (1) use them to remember important things and (2) have the phrases themselves teach something helpful.  I have provided a few examples to get the revolution started.

Montreal, North Vancouver, Edmonton, Mississauga, Ottawa, Niagara Falls, Iqaluit, and Calgary.

A random smattering of Canadian cities? Nope.  It is a selection of tour stops from the Bare Naked Ladies’ unforgettable 1997 tour of Canada AND a mnemonic for the correct spelling of “mnemonic.”

Sweet, huh?

If I were to briefly summarize the last 45 minutes of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope by saying: Obi-Wan dies; Han and Chewbacca save Skywalker, you would have a concise understanding of arguably the second best film in the saga.  BUT, you would also have a mnemonic for the starting lineup of the Houston Rocket’s 1995 NBA championship team (Olajuwon, Drexler, Horry, Cassell, and Smith).  Two for the price of one!!

See what I mean?  Why can’t our mnemonic devices do twice the work: inform and remind?

For example, imagine hearing these shouts while hiking through a dense forest:

Ahhhhh! Aaoooww!  Stop-it!!!  Anyone?!  A-little-help-here!?!  AHHHHH!  Ewww-there-goes-my-leg!!  Noooo!! AHHHHHHH!!

You might realize that the speaker was being eaten by a bear, but you probably would not realize that his cries for help were also a list of the seven continents in order of Olympic medal count from least to greatest (Antarctica, Australia, South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America).  Neat, huh?

Similarly, if I showed you this note I received from my ex-girlfriend Beth last month:

Dear Cheating Asshole,

We’re through.

Love (Hahaha! – kidding),

Beth Gardner

You would learn valuable lessons in brevity, irony, and the importance of deleting incriminating text messages, but you would also have a memorable mnemonic to help remember the eight UN Secretary Generals in no particular order (de Cueller, Annan, Waldheim, Thant, Lie, Hammarskjöld, Ki-moon, Boutros-Ghali).

These are the kind of mnemonics I would like to see more of.  I have no interest in learning that Kids Prefer Cheese Over Fried Green Spinach just as I have no interest in what it purports to teach (the order of biological taxonomy).  I want useful mnemonics to help memorize useful information.  Like this last one.  If you memorize the following paragraph, not only will you have a better understanding of New Jersey’s socio-political climate, you will also have a tool to help remember the last names of the 44 American presidents:

What ­about Jersey?  Mafioso, murderers, addicts, juvenile vagrants, and Bonjovi.  Here they praise these felonious people.  Blighted little Jersey: guns, hookers, Goombas, AtlanticCity.  “Come home, criminal miscreants” reads the tourism website.  And here come the hucksters, racketeers, trannies, and every korrupt-cop.  Jersey, News Flash: Criminals rarely benefit children, businesses, or organizations.

Gaze upon my beauty and tremble, oh fallen humanity! Look down on my naked form writhing in this sink you call a bathtub and ponder my immeasurable capacity for good or evil. I am all that you are not, all that you once were, and all that you most fear. I am the beatific, unspoiled future of the human race, and you are rightly terrified in my presence. I realize you don’t often encounter a pure potentiality that has yet to be actualized by education and sensory stimuli, and your offerings of many-colored rattles, things to suck on, and scented wipes for my unmentionable areas are received with gratitude. However, your attempts to equip me with empirical familiarity with the objects of this world are not appreciated and I ask that you cease and desist posthaste…

Read the rest of this article at: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/5/20woodyard.html

THE “HICCUP DEFENSE”
Show me someone who has had the hiccups, and I’ll show you a person who asked — no, demanded — that someone scare the hiccups out of them. The facts show that my client is the real victim, guilty of being a devoted wife, wanting only to please her husband. Upon his request, she attempted to scare his hiccups away. She did what any of us would do — she grabbed the nearest flamethrower and unleashed a scare-inducing blast of fire. But my client didn’t fully understand how to operate the flamethrower. You know how obfuscating instructions can be. Have you ever tried to assemble something from IKEA? So yes, my client accidentally turned her husband into something resembling a marshmallow that fell into a campfire. But the fact is, he never hiccupped again. As for my client, she lost a husband. Let’s not forget that.

THE “I’M JUST NOT A MORNING PERSON DEFENSE”
My client is much like my nephew. If he doesn’t get his sleep, he — like any of us — gets cranky, irritable and, if we’re being honest, homicidal. He simply isn’t a morning person and shouldn’t be held responsible for any actions before noon. The gentleman from the phone company knocked on my client’s door sometime between 9:45 a.m. and 10:10 a.m. This may not seem like an ungodly hour, but my client is jobless.  He is the victim of a plummeting economy and a bruised ego that won’t even allow him to seek employment. Mornings are hard for him. That fateful early morning knock — a knock we can all agree was a mistake — is the reason a man was dismembered, placed in several trash bags, weighted down and tossed into the East River. Or was it? The prosecution failed to mention that the “victim” was single, in his mid-thirties, never married and had no kids. Makes you wonder. Was he a violent man? A drug-addled miscreant posing as a phone technician? Was he an aspiring gang member whose final stage of initiation was to kill my client? Who am I to say? But then again, who am I to deny any of that? The prosecution certainly didn’t address those possibilities. Regardless, may the “victim” rest in peace even though he disturbed my client’s rest before noon.

THE “THERE WAS NO PRICE TAG ON THE CAR DEFENSE”
Goodwill. Is it not what we all seek in ourselves — and others? Apparently, kindness doesn’t exist at car dealerships. Browsing the lot, my client stumbled upon a car that he believed was free. After all, there was no sticker price on the window, nor was there a price painted on the windshield. Not wanting to bother any of the salespeople, my client selflessly arrived at the lot at 2 a.m. despite being exhausted — and high. He hotwired the car for a test drive, which he enjoyed even if it did pull a bit to the left. (By the way, the alignment should be fixed by the dealership as the vehicle in question is still under warranty.) The point is, he liked this car, understandably believed it was free and kept it. My client is guilty of only one thing: trusting in the kindness of others. Your honor, you’re a patriotic, proud, strikingly handsome American who will never forget 9/11. What’s more, if you look in the upper right hand drawer of your desk, you’ll notice you are also $20 richer. Please reflect on that before making your decision.

THE “GUY KINDA HAD IT COMING DEFENSE”
I’m not sure how this case even made it to trial. It should have been thrown out on precedent. I cite McMillan v. Fillmore, a case involving a childhood bully (McMillan) and the bullied (Fillmore). Years after the bullying, Fillmore and McMillan met by happenstance: Fillmore accidentally ended up in McMillan’s bedroom in the dead of night, accidentally unloaded a series of bullets on him, reloaded and inadvertently emptied another cartridge into the recently deceased McMillan. The jury in that case agreed with the defense: McMillan, a dick, had it coming. Now that case — which isn’t real, but could be — applies directly to this one. The torment my client faced on the playground each day as child, resulted in 38 bullets being fired into the body of his tormenter at close range 19 years later. The “victim,” may he rest in peace, kinda had it coming.

Frank Ferri is a copywriter who thinks he’s funny.  His work has previously appeared in McSweeney’s, Yankee Pot Roast, and The Big Jewel.  You can visit him at frankferri.com.

A Performance Review From My Boss, The Inebriate

I would also like to offer my most sincere thanks to Joel Bobbett for his significant thematic and humorous contributions.

The kind people at McSweeney’s have finally allowed their editorial standards to sink low enough to consider my writing.  They have consented to publish one of my articles on their website.  Check it out here:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/1/14woodyard.html

It’s not much, but at this point, publication on the website of an obscure, underfunded publisher is enough to get me pretty excited.