whan i was in grad schol my theseis was gona be about langauge. specificly the phanoumenon whare u prepeat a word agan an agian until it begins to seem arbatrery an stragne. wierds u rigight ouut!

the idea was to mesure quanitativly how logn it takes for that to hapen with difernt words. 'galoshes' for example turns wierd real real quick. but 'osprey' stays normel for longer than youd expect. also does it take logner or snorter if u say em out loud. an is it differant if youve got a dozan ppl chanting a word tagether in a groop.

if that aint a origanal contrabution to human knowlege im damned if i know waht is.

so i aplied for a reserch granat an i was havin visions of rooms ful of paid valunters sayin 'quack quack quakc' or 'catagory category catigory' oer an over for days on end. an me in a white coat presidin benignly over teh whole operation.

the grent came thruogh ok but teh truoble was i culdnt get any volanteers so i hada do all teh repeatin myself. so there i was walkin aroun campus sayin 'duodecimal duodecimal duodecimal' all the time. an after a whial aphasia kickd in. culdnt comunicate worth squat! an then the vertigo. real bad. in fact i endet up in hte hospitla an i culdnt even tell em what was wrogn. i was just kinda rolin aroun and garglin. nevar did finish teh thesis.

an thats how i gave up on teh life of hte mind an took up my presant ocupation.

update! jul 7 2005

...to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind...

tahts from e.a. poe. 'beranice'. 1835. thanks to our interepid new reder dint! he also says 'Jane Austen also mentioned it somewhere but I can't remember the quote.' but jane ostan can bite my ass quite ferankley.