It’s Not What You Think – It’s When

The nice folks at Scientific American are at it again, generously dispensing much-needed wisdom to the 99% of us dolts out here dragging our knuckles. Recently a gentleman from Whoknowswhere, Cyberspace emailed them wondering why it is impossible for the human brain to take a timeout and stop thinking, if only briefly. The short answer was: It's evolution, stupid. Nah, just kidding - they didn't actually say 'evolution'.

Apparently, if our brains had not been designed as eternal thinking machines, we would have ended up on the unpleasant end of the food chain instead of up here at the top with the monkeys and the sharks. That leads me to believe the lower organisms have a sort of OFF switch upstairs, or maybe it is more like a motion detector - their brain lolls about in Energysaver mode, until the shadow of a shark or something else equally toothy passes overhead. Then it bombs on like my grandpa waking himself up from a Sunday afternoon sofa nap with a big snore snort, and said organism gets the heck out of Dodge, all wild-eyed and ziggity-zaggety.

As a human, naturally my brain was thinking during the entire time I was reading the article. I was thinking about where I would get my next Twinkie and how much it would cost. Also, I was thinking how often I have wondered the exact opposite of Cyberspace dude's question: not 'why are we thinking all the time?' but 'what was that person thinking?'. In fact, I'm gonna go ahead and call BS on this whole 'can't turn it off' theory. There are plenty of examples where more or less fully evolved humans ARE NOT THINKING ANYTHING AT ALL for considerable stretches of time.

Sometimes said human is me. Like the time I left four London broils luxuriating in a red wine and mushroom marinade defrosting in the kitchen sink when I went to work. Upon my return the steaks had mysteriously disappeared, but the remnants of ziplock bag and my dog's food coma suggested what became of them. My first thought to myself was 'what was I thinking??'. BTW not to worry, no dogs were harmed in this story. A) she's a big dog (60 lb lab) and promptly barfed up every last one of the steaks in near pristine condition; and B) here at Dog Heaven (where all good doggies are fed raw London broils) we subscribe to the philosophy that it makes no sense to discipline the dog hours after the crime has been committed, so she escaped with a stern look, some finger-wagging, and a few choice words not fit for publication here.

But enough about me. What about all those people we see on the Seen at Wal-Mart websites? You know, the ones with photos of customers like the 70 year old dude with the ZZ Top beard, more tufts of white hair on his back than on his head, wearing nothing but a stained banana hammock and dollar flip flops, calmly swiping his debit card and waiting for his receipt like it was the most natural thing in the world? Or the charm school graduate in tube top and cutoffs, exposing so much gravity-defying excess flab that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is currently studying her pictures for possible use in designing space station attire? Can you honestly tell me they were THINKING ANYTHING before they left the house?

We can look to the world of crime for more examples of disengaged brains. Consider the case of the South Dakota mom in attendance at her son's Boy Scout meeting. Imagine her surprise when the guest-speaking local policeman's drug-sniffing dog discovered the bag of pot she had in her purse. How about the California bank robber who, not in possession of an actual gun, instead tried the time-honored tradition of using his thumb and pointer finger to make the shape of a gun in his pocket. Unfortunately, he could not remember to keep his 'gun' in his pocket during the robbery.

Thanks to the 'entertainment' industry, we have plenty more examples to back my theory. What about the genius who cast Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor in the recent made-for-TV biopic? Who green-lighted a sitcom based on the GEICO commercial cavemen? Asked Rosanne to sing the national anthem at a Padres game? Jersey Shore? Honey Boo-Boo?

We haven't even talked about the fertile ground of politics (oh how I long for the days when all I had to worry about was the impolitic choice of Sarah Palin for VP) or YouTube (Redneck Hey Watch This videos prove my point in under thirty seconds). Rather than providing cutesy answers to problems that don't exist, I think Scientific American needs to come up with a fail-safe method to determine when our brains need to be ON. I even have the perfect laboratory environment in mind: the nearest Wal-Mart. It's not sterile, but the experiment subjects are unlimited.

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