This article is classified "Real"
There is a phenomenon known to everyone which has never been exploited to
its full use. You all know that sometimes, when you hear a song on the
radio in the morning, it keeps going round your head all day long. This is
the Internal Walkman functioning, yet without direction or aim. It is too
wonderful a treat of evolution not to make full use of it, so I will give
some tips on how it works and what you should remember about it.
How to make good use of it? Well, we know that only one or two tunes are in
our heads at any one time, mostly silly tunes that have a high potential for
settling in our memories. Unfortunately, the sillier the tune, the more
settling potential it has. This can not be avoided, so choose your tunes
well. To record the songs you want to listen to, you have to play them on
your CD or tape recorder several times in the morning. Be careful, though;
your memory does not have a large capacity for readily available tunes, so
don't try to store too much. The last song heard is often the one best
remembered.
This storing process has some aspects to it that make it different from
ordinary (hardware) ways of recording. The quality of the recording varies
from song to song, and from time to time. Bits of music get lost and only a
rough idea of the song remains. Fortunately, that does not matter, because
our brains make us believe that we *do* hear every detail of it, and mostly
of the bits we like best! Parts of the song we don't like at all are easily
filtered out [1]. In short, although we forget whole parts of the song, we
believe it is reproduced perfectly. That gives a feeling of satisfaction
every time we use the Internal Walkman. When we get home again, however,
and we listen to the original, we notice that we forgot lots of interesting
details. Again we are happy, this time because we hear those parts again
and appreciate them, because they make the song sound fuller. Twice
satisfied for the price of one!
There are a few things you have to think of if you want the Internal Walkman
to work according to your wishes. You have to take care that the song
doesn't get polluted, or replaced altogether, by a song with much more
potential for settling and annoying you. Just make sure that you don't hear
any other music anywhere, and especially no annoying whistling people. They
are capable of whistling a nursery rhyme that will stick with you for weeks.
Another thing you need to practise is to shut the Walkman off. It happens a
lot that during exams a song gets stuck on a single word, which keeps
repeating over and over and over and over and over and over and over and
over and over again, keeping you from your concentration and making you fail
the test completely. Little does mankind realize that black-outs during
exams are *always* due to failing Internal Walkmans. I'm afraid I haven't
found a cure for that yet, so guess you'll just have to practise.
You may think that this Internal Walkman is far outperformed by a real
Walkman, because with it you can listen to the original music, and so much
of it too! That may be so, but there are numerous situations where the fact
that the Internal Walkman doesn't take up space, doesn't use batteries, is
not annoying to everyone because they hear nothing (unless you sing along
with your thoughts), and can be used everywhere [2] make it a far superiour
apparatus.
So start using the Internal Walkman [3] sensibly from now on. It is far too
wonderful not to.
[1] Unless, of course, the storage potential of the annoying bit is very
high, which it usually is.
[2] Except of course where other music plays; in that case the original
track is lost immediately, and can only be regained in complete silence.
[3] [Editors Note:]
It is of course noted that "Walkman" is a trademark of the Sony
Corporation. No breach of trademark is intended. Of course we don't
mean to say that someone has actually built a miniature personal stereo
and inserted it into your skull. If you think that then you just may
have missed the point.