M&M: Agatha Christie's Poirot: Hallowe'en Party

Dear reader,

at first I thought for a long time whether to write about “The Exorcist” today or the episode “Hallowe'en Party” (season 12, episode 3) of “Agatha Christie's Poirot”. “The Exorcist is a classic horror film. So it would certainly fit and I will definitely write about it some time. Today I feel more like going for that episode however, because Hercule Poirot says something in it, which may change the reader's mind a bit about Halloween, too. He doesn't like Halloween much and especially not the tradition of horror and horror stories. He turns off a horror story on the radio, because he can't stand listening to it anymore. He investigated too many real murders to be “entertained” with a fictional one today.

Hercule Poirot is a belgian private detective, who is always willing to help out friends. So it's no question for him to go right away to help his friend Ariadne Oliver, when she calls him. During a children's party at Halloween, the girl Joyce tells everyone present, that she saw a murder. Although she only understands now what she saw and that it had been a murder. One of the children's games was apple bobbing, in which apples are put in a bucket full of water and they're supposed to eat them without using their hands. Joyce is found drowned in that bucket with the last apple in it.

Nobody but Hercule Poirot believe what Joyce said. She's just a kid after all. Also she was known to exaggerate and story telling a lot. What kind of a murder was she supposed to have witnessed? But Poirot finds out that over the past years, there had been three deaths and Joyce might have told the truth about one of them after all.

I haven't read the novel by the same title (yet), on which this movie is based. So I can't tell how “well” the movie is done in comparison. I do however like the episode. A murder on a child and Halloween are two scary themes in one movie. Certainly exactly what attracted the writer of the episode, Mark Gatiss, most about it, too. I know how much he likes Agatha Christie or a good detective story and horror and all things scary. Like I wrote before, I'm one of those “later fans” of Mark Gatiss. So it's no surprise that I like this episode written by him.

Hadley Freeman from the Guardian seems to have similar dislikes for certain behaviour of people on Halloween like Hercule Poirot. Although in her article Why are Halloween costumes so ‘slutty’?, her focus is more on why so many women costumes are so unbelievably short and show much skin. In october! Rightly so, she suggests to get the women in those costumes a good pullover so they don't freeze that much. The other day I stumbled upon a website with Halloween costumes. I couldn't forbear and check the women costumes. Indeed all the costumes I saw, where short and designed to show much skin. I wouldn't actually walk the streets and collect suits. But even just to go see some friends for an evening together, I wouldn't put on one of those short things. Way too cold!!! I prefer going with Mark Gatiss' edible(!) or rather drinkable authentic fake horror movie blood. But I'm getting off-topic here... I want to close this post with Hercule Poirot's final words of the movie, which are:

“Halloween is not a time for the telling of the stories macabre, but to light the candles for the dead. Come, mes amis, let us do so.“

Until next blog,

sarah

The truth about too positive thinking: the bitter pill

Dear reader,

for the first time I prefer the german idiom (literally “the sour apple” or “biting the sour apple” actually) to the english “biting the bullet” or “swallowing the bitter pill”. Often I like the english idioms more. In this case though, fruit-wise, the german one fits better after my The lemon post than “biting the bullet” or “swallowing the (bitter) pill”. That's not the truth about too positive thinking. That's just something I noticed for myself and it doesn't even have to be the truth at all.


Gabriele Oettingen from the university of New York is researching self-regulation of goal setting and goal disengagement. In 2011 Oettingen and her colleague Heather Kappes did an interesting experiment. They deprived participants of the experiment of water. But they let them experience a guided visualisation exercise in which they pictured a glass of cold water. After that they measured the blood pressure and found that the exercise drained their energy and made them relaxed. They felt less compelled to actually get the real glass of water to satisfy their very real thirst.


Oliver Burkeman from the Guardian writes in his article How to be fitter, happier and more successful: stop dreaming and start getting real, that these findings are actually the reverse of what's very commonly known and assumed. Thoughts of the quite popular and well known The Secret come to my mind, which is full of examples of people more or less wishing for a positive future and then getting it.Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues show that this intensive imagining is just one way to failure. A positive, new future doesn't come from “thinking up” a perfect world, but actually taking actions and that's other and new actions from what has been done before and brought unsatisfying results. Remember Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Therefore my idea of “thinking yourself thinner” as described in my Thinner too: with savvy - weight and see, was meaningless in the end. At least it's not the only way, if you want to be thinner. Especially girls or women can be seen again and again wearing tight cloths. At least that's not the only way to go, if someone wants to be thinner. In any case, there isn't just this one thing someone has to change or do to be thinner anyway. Tighter cloths can help in some ways. But what some, especially girls and women do, is not helping the “thinking yourself thinner”, but looking like a stuffed sausage and making it visible for everyone else just how not fitting those close are for them, which is certainly not at all the way to do it. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation, Oettingen describes the WOOP method. WOOP stands for “wish, outcome, obstacle, plan”. On the WOOP homepage you can not only find more information like WOOP in 24 hrs to listen to and other downloads and help for interested people. WOOP is the idea that not everything is beautiful and perfect with thinking of it that way. The outcome, more specifically one specific outcome you imagine from that changed future helps. The very popular ignoring or “fighting your way” through obstacles may work sometimes. The second “o” (obstacle) in WOOOP and the “p” (plan) help making plans for what to do when ignoring isn't helping the reality and your original goal seems to fade away. That's how so many good ideas fall through after all: a missing plan for what to do when obstacles are there.


Until next blog,
sarah

The lemon

Dear reader,

imagine yourself sitting at a table. In front of you on that table is a lemon. It's fresh, bright yellow. Take the lemon in your hand. Feel its structure. It's pretty smooth, but has those tiny dots on the surface of the skin. Now take a knife and cut the lemon in two halves. You can smell the fragrance and some of the juice gets on your hands. Take one of the halves and cut it again. More of the smell in your nose and more juice on your fingers now. Do you dare taking one piece and licking the juice once or actually biting a bit off the lemon and chewing it?

Well, did you have to swallow when you read the first paragraph? I don't know what happened for you reading the first paragraph. But my mouth was watering as I was thinking about that lemon and writing that paragraph.

The effect comes, because our mind isn't very good distinguishing between thoughts and reality. When the thought is detailed enough, our (bodily) reactions to it, are as real as they would be with the real thing.

Picture your own future positive and in details and your half way there. In my entry Darn mirror neurons! I told you about a similar phenomenon, that the same parts of our brains are active when we watch people do something and don't participate, as if we were joining in.

I don't remember where I read it or heard it. I will add it, if I find it. In any case there was this experiment, where people had their arm in a cast and couldn't move the arm, of course. The people of one group were told not to move their arm. The participants of the other group where shown certain exercises for the arm for when the cast came off. Although the arm was in the cast and therefore immobile, they should still imagine doing the exercises for real. When the time was up, they found that the decrease of muscle mass of the people's arm of the second group was less than for the first. Interesting how much positive thinking helps, isn't it?

All assumptions are really true. The conclusions we make, which includes scientists and self-help gurus, aren't quite correct though.

However since it's pretty late now and I should go to bed a bit earlier sometimes and I like the fact that people follow my blog and read several posts, I will tell you the negative consequences of too positive thinking in the nest post. Yes, there is such a thing as too positive thinking with consequences, which could sometimes be very negative indeed.

Until next blog,

sarah

Only a job part 2

Dear reader,

this goes to show, how little I take notice in some things. Or maybe it shows exactly the selective perception typical for Sherlock Holmes, too. After all, he too wouldn't care about trivialities and gossip. Some people are fans of actors and watch just about everything they could get their hands on with them in it. And some fans, mostly late ones, are especially odd. Mark Gatiss, portraying the older brother, Mycroft Holmes, in the BBC series “Sherlock” is consequently seen as Mycroft and not Mark Gatiss. Before “Sherlock” he was known for being one of the four creative forces of The League of Gentlemen. Noticing Mark Gatiss as Mycroft Holmes though, you'll find comments to The League of Gentlemen clips on Youtube like “Mycroft!!!!” or “So this is what Mycroft is doing in his spare time.” (Never mind my doubts that Mycroft actually takes some time off work...) I can actually sort of understand it somehow. I am, after all, one of those sad fans, who finally noticed him really with “Sherlock”. But for me Mycroft Holmes is Mycroft Holmes and Mark Gatiss is Mark Gatiss. He plays Mycroft Holmes, but nothing more. He also played many other characters, especially in the three seasons of The League of Gentlemen. An extremely creative group they are!

Stephen Fry is another actor, at least equally creative and versatile like Mark Gatiss. He too played Mycroft Holmes, namely in Guy Ritchie's second Sherlock Holmes movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. I needed even longer than it took me for the first one, of which I wrote in Price and prejudice, to finally watch it. I like Stephen Fry a lot, but I can't stand Hans Zimmer and as a soundtrack fan, I'm probably more aware of the music than others. Also I thought the story as a whole was somehow confusing this time. I didn't like the movie. Stephen Fry was good and fitting and I did like some scenes. But I'm sorry to say, that's about it.

Maybe I'm just an atypical fan. But I found a picture of Mark Gatiss with Stephen Fry and Mark Gatiss' caption "The two Mycrofts! A two pint problem..." (referring to Sherlock Holmes' “three pipe problem”), before my mind actually made that connection. Of course! The two Mycrofts! Others were head exploding and fainting just seeing that picture of the two Mycrofts, as you can read from the comments, when my first reaction was, “Oh, Stephen Fry and Mark Gatiss together.” I like the two of them really a lot and I liked to see them together. But obviously my mind just doesn't make certain connections or at least not as fast as would be normal for others. Whatever. It seems that I'm just not ordinary.

Until next blog,

sarah

M&M: Patch Adams

Dear reader,

August, 11 this year was a strange day for me and certainly also for a friend of mine (you know who you are). On the previous evening we chatted about comedies and actors. We found that we both like Adam Sandler and also Robin Williams. I thought to myself that I wasn't aware of what he had been up to the past couple of years, didn't hear of him for a while. But I was too tired to check just then. I went to bed and the next morning I read in shock and total surprise my daily mails from the Guardian newspaper with latest news. Robin Williams was dead. When I went online with my chat programs, I read that my friend had already read the sad news, too.

So with some delay now, this M&M today in memory of Robin Williams. Philip Seymour Hoffman is an actor, probably unknown or by not too many German speaking people. In “Patch Adams” he's a fellow student and room mate of Patch Adams. Philip Seymour Hoffman died this year (February, 2^nd) and I write this entry in his memory, too.

Patch Adams is a movie from the year 1998 and tells the true (as always with feature movies, for dramatic reasons not always the very true) story of Hunter “Patch” Adams. Okay, I know close to nothing about the real Patch Adams and many (online) reviews about this movie are rather negative. Since I know only very little about the “real” Patch Adams and this is a movie review anyway, I'll only stick to what's in the movie.


Hunter Adams is suicidal and admits himself to a hospital for treatment. His room mate is a man, who keeps him awake at night with a squeaking bed, because he needs to go to the toilet, but doesn't dare out of fear for the squirrels he sees. Adams starts a squirrel hunt then and shoots the squirrels (with his hand miming a pistol). After a wild squirrel shooting, the room mate is finally able to go to the toilet. Adams is impressed that he was able to help another person with humour and decides to study medicine to help even more.

During his studies, Adams notices that he doesn't have to learn much. We actually never see him sticking his nose in his books. (I don't know how much this was true. Although there are some lucky ones, who really don't need to do much to learn and remember things.) Adams notices something else, too: the doctors seem often very functional and stern and distant towards patients. Once they talk about a patient in the hospital as she's lying in bed, surrounded by the students and the doctor. They talk about her illness (diabetes with poor circulation and diabetic neuropathy), also treatment (shocked the patient hears the possibility of “amputation”). Then Adams asks, “What's her name?” All just look at him. “I was just wondering the patient's name”, he says. The doctor has to look at the chart. “Marjorie.” “Hi Marjorie”, Adams greets her smiling at her and addressing her personally.

In time he also makes friends with patients and is able to give them some treats and grant them wishes. Some find it “a little disturbing”, that he's sneaking into a room full of kids (the children's ward) and “acting like a clown”. Surely he was eccentric in that scene. Surely I personally couldn't get out of myself like that. Simply because I'm too shy and introverted for something like that. But “disturbing”? Because he's a man among children? He isn't a child molester! He wanted to make the children laugh and they were happy! What's so wrong about that?

Like many Hollywood movies, this one too can't come without a love story. Patch Adams befriends with female student. At first she only wants to study and not make friends, tells him that, too. Some say that Patch Adams is pushy and reckless, forcing his will and happiness on everybody else. I read that just now, as I was reading some comments at the imdb.com Patch Adams forum. All I can say is that I didn't see this movie and certain scenes in that way so far. Anyway, his girlfriend meets this mentally disturbed patient as the movie goes on, which leads Patch Adams to a faith and life crisis for a short time. (From what I read, this student/girlfriend never existed. One might wonder why all of that is in the movie then.) She meets this patient when she and others help Patch Adams starting a free hospital, even though they're still students. Because Adams is shocked when he sees that desperate relatives are first asked to fill out forms and give information when their sick partner is clearly in pain and in need of immediate help.

The fact that Patch Adams is always happy, seemingly never learning and still gets top grades and that he's practising medicine without a doctor's degree, leads him to almost not be able to finish his studies. So he goes to the court and that fight fills the last about 15 minutes of the movie.

Like I already wrote, I don't know much about the life and works of the real Patch Adams. It may also be questionable why Patch Adams gets this girlfriend, who has to go through what we see in the movie. I have no idea how eccentric the real Patch Adams is or isn't and whether Robin Williams' portrayal is realistic or not. Some critics ask in a provocative way if you really like to be treated by a doctor wearing a red clown nose. I'd like to tell those people one thing. A couple of years back there was a hot summer and I went to see a female doctor. It was so hot that most girls and women wore short t-shirts or sleeveless tops. When the doctor came into the room, she didn't have her coat on. She asked me, if I was okay with that. I don't remember, what I actually said to her. Certainly something affirmative. Today and in hindsight I might have asked her, whether her knowledge is in her coat or in her head and depending on it, I would have insisted on the coat or not.

Tastes differ. Nobody has to like the movie “Patch Adams” or watch it. I still think some thoughts expressed in that movie are important: being friendly to the patients, asking them every now and then, how they're doing or what they would like, instead of talking about then in their presence in a sort of “Mrs. Broken-Leg” and “Mr. Terminal Cancer” sort of way. Especially the American health care system is in need of a change. The idea of a free hospital therefore is commendable and worthy of support. For fans of Robin Williams, who didn't know Patch Adams and his works, at least he showed them that and I think that's a good thing.

Until next blog,

sarah

We're all humans part 2 or: Why I don't watch feature films set in germany anymore

Dear reader,

I don't watch feature films set in germany anymore. I do watch feature films, which aren't set in any particular time. But when they're set in a certain time, it seems that the german film industry and other countries, know nothing other than the nazi time. Certainly it's important that this time is never forgotten. I'm also sorry for what happened to those, who lived during that time. Still does every single film set in germany or where the time it's set in is relevant, be in the nazi time? Oh, I almost forgot. Alternatively: the time the wall still existed or when it fell. It's important to remember and something like that should never ever happen again. I'm just annoyed, that practically every historical germany type of feature film is reduced to that time in german as well as foreign films.

When I was studying, a student, who was about 20 years old, told us she had been to england once. She found some nice friends there. They walked away from her though, after they found out that she was german. Nazi. Yes, of course. Someone just 20 years of age is certainly a nazi, because she's german. Okay, there are still nazis around today, neo-nazis. So someone could possibly be a nazi even today and being young doesn't mean, they may not be one. But that doesn't mean every single german is also a nazi! Suppose her parents got her when they were about 30 years old. That would make her parents about 50 years now. So not even her parents lived during the nazi time, much less are they inevitably nazis, because they're german.

I liked the Hellboy movies by Guillermo del Toro. I already reviewed his movie Pan's Labyrinth last month. What I didn't like at all about the first Hellboy movie, was the prologue, the beginning. That's set in the nazi time, yes, with the bad germans. And because Hellboy, a devil, already is a good guy and the nazis are no longer as strong as they have been before Hitler's death, the movie needs another baddie. The classic baddie of the russian history is Grigorij Rasputin, the so called “faith healer”, who helped the tsar son on a regular basis. Some to this day see him as a sort of devil, or in fact “the” devil himself. Regardless what he was (first of all, he was a human, like all of us), he was an interesting person. I will write more about him in separate entry. I don't know yet when that will be.


In my entry Pride and prejudice I already wrote that I like the film music composer James Newton Howard and that I enjoy listening to his music. In 2008 the movie Defiance came out in cinemas. Maybe I'll write about that some day in a M&M post. Even though it's not one of my “favourite movies”. It is a good movie. I found it, because I was a bit more aware of what Daniel Craig was doing and I had seen him in the James Bond movies. When I read that James Newton Howard scored the film music to it, I listened to that. “Naturally” I liked what he had composed. With certain people I know, even when I don't like the movie, I can trust those people and enjoy it still, because of them. I liked James Newton Howards music enough, to make me curious. I read that the movie was about sibblings in russia, who were hiding and helping other nazi regufees. The movie is based on a true story. It seemed to me to be more of a sort of modern Robin Hood version rather than “the bad nazis once again” story. I'd describe that movie to others that way in fact. Yes, people are fleeing from the nazis. It's about a group of people, who start a new life in the woods and are willing to make this new home safe and defend it. But it's not so much about the nazis as such in the movie. To me it really is more like a Robin Hood story and without knowing the true, historical details of the life of those brothers, I liked the movie and find it worth watching. Defiance was however the only movie set in the historical nazi time, I deliberately watched. Valkyrie on the other hand did get good reviews, as far as I know. The Stauffenberg assassination attempt was talked about a bit in our history lessons a bit. I don't remember much about it though. So actually it is a suspenseful aspect of german history. And yet I delibertely didn't watch the movie to this day. Add the fact that Tom Cruise is in that film and I don't like him that much. Maybe it is a good movie. I'm willing to be convinced to watch it once, if it's really worth it. Right now, it's just another movie in the line of “the forever bad nazi” movies.

With all respect for what happened and for the persons, who suffered then and to this day, with all respect for history: it's starting to be enough for me. Write to me. If you know good movies, I am in fact open, despite maybe sounding bad, annoyed and closed. I am open for watching movies set in the nazi time or at the time of the fall of the wall or something. But I will not just like that watch those movies, because they're on telly just now or because everyone is rushing to watch them in the cinema. Because I think, those masses of nazi movies especially don't help other countries, to change the image of the bad german everlasting nazis. Certainly not all british or non-germany are as uneducated as those sad friends of that student. I still wish that they'd start making other movies now about germany and the germans and that germans aren't only the bad guys of the movie.

Until next blog,

sarah

Remember not to forget

Dear reader,

I think Albert Einstein was right when he said, „The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Sadly this happens far to often and far to quickly when one is looking for something and can't find it. At least for me anyway. This happened again actually the day before yesterday.

Normally I keep a couple of things only at very few specific places and never anywhere else. I taught myself to do that automatically with my flat keys for example, to avoid looking for them for long and so I don't lose them. I keep the keys to my dad's flat, say, almost all the time in a certain backpack and in a specific inner pocket there. But a few days ago I had them in a different backpack, haven't been at my dad's, but I was in the neighbourhood and just in case, I had those keys with me. I did see those keys in this other, unfamiliar outside pocket several times the days before two days ago. I knew where they were. In the small outside pocket of the smaller backpack. I had seen them there the previous days again and again when I had the backpack in my hand and the outside pocket had been open. And yet I only checked the bigger pocket and also repeatedly(!) completely emptied the big backpack. It took me almost a quarter of an hour to finally take the small backpack again and for once also check the outside pocket to find the keys again.

Years ago I was looking for glasses once with blue tinted eyeglasses, which I have had. But did I have them still? In the past I had glasses at all times. Only a couple of years ago I started wearing them only occasionally. That's why I never used the sunglasses with the tinted eyeglasses. They didn't have the glasses I would have needed for my eyes sight. Did I have the glasses still? I checked every possible drawer of two specific cupboards in my room, also two drawers in the hallway. Several times. Because it's so much fun and suddenly the biggest things could have become tiny and hidden and be overlooked. I thought of Einstein checking everything the second time. After the third time I cursed myself for checking again, although I had found nothing the first two times already. I thought to myself, “I'll go to the living-room ask my mum. Maybe I don't even have the glasses anymore anyway. Checking a 100 times wouldn't help then. Maybe she knew something. Should I still have the glasses, I trust my unconscious and wish for to just walk up to the right drawer to find them there.” I went to my mum. She knew what I was looking for, but couldn't remember if we still had the glasses or not or where they might be. I went back to my room. Purposefully I stood in front of a commode where the guinea pigs and their cage were sitting on. There is only one drawer there where the glasses might be, in which I keep necklaces and earrings and also a big magnifying glass with a horn grip, too. If the glasses were there at all, it would be in that drawer. The other drawers had paper, note books and notes. I really pulled out the drawer this time and in the back of a corner there really was the small blue paper box in which I kept the blue tinted eyeglasses. I thanked my unconscious for guiding me to them that way.

Many scientists agree now that our brain never forgets and in theory we could remember everything that happened once. The individual information gets displaced by other information and new information and with that they fade into the background so much that we seemingly forgot them. Methods like the memory palace can help to organise and sort through thoughts and memories and find them faster, have them more “handy”.

Dr. John Watson gives a quite good description of how the memory palace works in “The Hounds of Baskerville” (Sherlock season 2, episode 2). Sherlock Holmes knows that he's got important information in his head “somewhere buried deep”. He tells John and Dr. Stapleton to get out, he'd go to his mind palace now.

“His what?”, asks Stapleton confused.

John explains to her, “Oh, his mind palace. It's a memory technique, a sort of mental map. You plot a map with a location, it doesn't have to be a real place. You deposit memories there. Theoretically, you never forget anything. All you do is find your way back to it.

“So this imaginary location could be anything?”, asks Stapleton. “A house or a street?”

“Yeah”, confirms John.

“But he said "palace"”, bursts out Stapleton. “He said it was a palace!”

“Yeah, well, he would, wouldn't he?”, says John almost a bit bored and maybe a bit annoyed that his friend has to boast with a palace in his head.

The way to information or memories is in fact important, too and doesn't have to be a mental walk or visual, seen in your mind. In “Dynamic Learning” by Robert Dilts and Tod Epstein, Epstein describes his work with an old lady. With her eyesight fading, she also had difficulties remembering certain things, which didn't cause problems before. Epstein noticed that the lad was visualising and thinking in pictures to retrieve memories. With fading eyesight, it became more difficult for her to see in hear mind. Epstein helped her getting back to memories through other senses. Which helped her memory getting better again, too. Before reading “Dynamic Learning” I only read in Thomas Harrison's books about the memory palace and after Derren Brown's “Tricks Of The Mind” I started creating a sort of system for myself. The suggestion that the way we retrieve information and that the senses we use for that are relevant as well, was new and an important aspect. It didn't change anything for me personally, not that I'm aware of anyway. Nevertheless it is something especially people working with other people, old people specifically, should keep in mind. Apparent memory loss doesn't necessarily have anything to do with not remembering.

Until next blog,

sarah