First there is a flower, then there is no flower, then there is

Disney's Fantasia is one of those highbrow thingammies that you're supposed to appreciate because it's Culture.

It's high culture that is Good For You, like some kind of medicine you have to swallow for your own elevation. 

It was meant to give children a clinical dose of classical music with all sorts of fun cartoons to watch while they suffered through it. They got Beethoven. They got Tchaikovsky. They got Moussorg-whatever-his-name-was, the big guy on the mountain. 

I don't think a child ever liked Fantasia, and certainly no child ever loved it. Most adults were likely kind of bored with it too, but trundled the family off to see it anyway as a sort of educational duty.

Fantasia bores ME to death, and I have never even seen it. I fell in the generational cracks between the movie's release in 1940, and the tepid bits that appeared on TV on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (which, of course, we watched in black and white). I don't think I saw more than five minutes of it at a time.

But speaking of black and white!

I never knew there was anything disturbing in Fantasia except its length, its pomposity, and those dinosaurs killing each other to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Now I know. There was a little black girl in there who was excised. I mean, cut out. Cut RIGHT out. Cut out because her very presence was seen to be offensive.

She was offensive sort of the way Mammy in Gone With the Wind is now seen as offensive, and yes, I sort of get it. Personally I love Mammy in Gone With the Wind because she is the glue holding the whole thing together, and her character, though limited by the strictures of the servant role, is powerful and nuanced. All Scarlett does is run around looking gorgeous.

But that aside: there was, in Fantasia, in the Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony section with all the centaurs and cherubs and Dionysian types capering around, a small character named Sunflower. Sunflower existed, then she didn't. She made one appearance on TV which I don't remember (for surely Fantasia was never shown in its entirety on TV). But when the movie was theatrically re-released in the late 1960s, all trace of Sunflower had been removed.

Excised.

It was as if the little black centaurette had never existed.

This is a solution, is it not? Getting rid of something that is a problem. But it has disturbing echoes of The Final Solution, in that it says "hey, listen, folks, WE never displayed racist attitudes in our cartoons!" Nobody here but us white folks.

Here is an analysis of the whole mess from a film site (so I don't have to explain it any further - I'm lazy today):

Was it wrong for Disney to censor Fantasia to remove the character Sunflower?
One of the most controversial aspects of Disney's Fantasia is the censorship of the character Sunflower from the Pastoral Symphony segment of the film.

Sunflower is a centaurette (female centaur) who is depicted as being a hybrid of a young black girl and a donkey. She is shown performing duties as a servant to the other centaurettes who are depicted in a wide variety of pastel colors.

Beginning in the 1960s, Sunflower was deemed a racist and negative depiction of black people, and her scenes in the film were deleted. Beginning in 1990, the scenes were restored, but the shots she was in were cropped so that she could not be seen.

ranna.deviantart.com

There is much debate over whether she should've been removed from the film. There are those who say that she should be censored in order to move away from the attitude of depicting black people as negative stereotypes. Others say that she shouldn't be censored because such portrayals were very common in animated films of the time, and that removing them is the same as saying that they never existed in the first place. Some believe that there should be a middle ground; in other words, for example, the late film critic Roger Ebert felt that the original should be preserved for historical purposes, but that the censored version should be the one made available for mainstream consumers, in particular children.

                          atomicfireball.deviantart.com


Also of note: There are other black characters in the segment. There are two identical unnamed centaurettes who are part young black women and part zebra and another young black girl centaurette named Otika who in the original rolls out a red carpet; in all versions currently available, Otika is digitally removed so that the red carpet appears to unroll by itself, and the zebra centaurettes have never been altered or removed from the film.

(Note. I don't remember seeing those zebra-ettes before, but did I look? I see them now, and they're gorgeous, though I still notice echoes of servitude in their actions because they're waiting on that fat drunk guy.) 

Hattie McDaniel liked to say "I'd rather play a maid and be paid $100.00 than BE a maid and be paid $2.00." Or words to that effect. She had the right attitude: if you're restricted to roles that reflect the racist stereotypes of the times, then play the hell out of those roles, transcend the stereotypes and win an Oscar. 

But you can't do that if somebody just took an eraser to you and made you disappear.

We never let Sunflower have a chance.  She was cute, but a little disturbing, like Buckwheat in The Little Rascals. The thing is, The Little Rascals was ahead of its time: it depicted white and black kids all rolling around in the dust together, which no one else was doing. And Stymie, the solemn one with the bowler hat, was just the coolest character ever - I liked him way better than any of the white kids.

I find it interesting, though. First there is a Sunflower. Then there is no Sunflower. Then there is. Hello, folks. I'm back. I have my existence again, and I am here to tell you that THIS is the way it was in the 1940s, back when people were frankly racist and didn't try to dissemble. If you're not happy about it, you can try to get rid of me, but somehow or other, who knows when, I'll be back to haunt your conscience/consciousness again.

yvxgreatxboss.deviantart.com

POST-BLOG I-DIDN'T-SEE-THAT-BEFORE: Of course, if the animators were kind of uncertain about Sunflower's presence, it's likely they would start making errors, or at least be inconsistent about her appearance. If you watch the tiny clips which I giffed (since they were only a few seconds long in total), you'll note that there's a sunflower in her hair in SOME scenes, but by no means all. Sometimes it's just not there, only those little rags her hair is tied up in (and not even those, in some places). These scenes weren't meant to take place on different days or even different hours or minutes. So what happens to the sunflower? Why can't the animators get it together on how her hair is supposed to look? They wouldn't do that to Snow White, would they? 

APOLOGIA. For my habit of not always giving credit for certain kinds of artwork, I'm making amends here and now. 

deviantart.com is a fantastic site. I'm envious every time I look at it, because I can't make representative art to save my mortal soul. I might as well use a sharp stick and a little pile of dog shit, for all the results I get. But these Deviant Artists are superb, soaring in their talent and imagination. They display their art in a kind of vast internet gallery that gives the public a chance to admire and enjoy it, but in no way, shape or form can I claim it as mine.

So I've posted links to their pages on each of these superbilicious renderings of Sunflower, a Disney character reimagined not as a subservient, minority, or erased character, but as a gorgeous and powerful exotic her own right, a mythic creature whose beauty puts those pastel pink-and-blue horsettes to shame.

Addenda to the addenda . Though I love those gorgeous uncredited zebra centaurettes in Fantasia, I'm not keen on the fat, lolling, drunken Dionysus figure that goes with them. So here are a nice couple of crops.

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May you stay forever young

I'm not doing this properly at all, because I'm in a hurry and not spending proper time on it. But I just found out William Shatner (one of my Glass Character obsessions) just turned 85. Yes. Eighty-five. THAT.

When you look at poor old Bob Dylan, in photos of him from the '80s and '90s, he looks like 20 miles of bad road. Shatner? I always think he made a deal with the devil, but he must have gotten the best part of the bargain.

When you see him walk confidently onstage now, you think: there's a good-looking man in his 60s, ruddy of complexion, obviously not Botoxed or facelifted like those awful male ruins, Burt Reynolds and Mickey Rourke. That's just him.

My daughter and I used to talk about "good-smelling men". Harrison Ford: good-smelling. Tom Cruise: (marginally) good-smelling. Brad Pitt: blecccchh.

Shatner's good-smelling, he makes the list. You can just tell.

Two people I always hoped to meet, and never will: Shatner and Dylan, both of whom made deals with the devil in their own way.

Whether it's genetics, good bones, spirit, will, or a combination, Shatner has come away with the prize: he never seems to age. Like that guy on Star Trek who was all those different famous people. . . and we sadly watched Nimoy shrivel away in the past year, the two of them exactly the same age, and spiritual brothers.

Never mind, got to go now, hate to slap this up but can't finish it now. The last two gifs are from videos taken about ten days ago. Right up to date. Try to believe that man is 85.

Darkness at the break of noon

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.





Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fools gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proved to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.





Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to you ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.





As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their marks
Made everything from toy guns that sparks
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand without nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.





A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to
satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.





For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despite their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.





While some on principles baptized
To strict party platforms ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God Bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue
on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.





Old lady judges, watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.





While them that defend what they
cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.





My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me ?

And if my thought-dreams could been seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.





So What Does The Poem Mean? or - how to macerate a great lyric.

Like everybody, I listened to this as a teenager and said, oh wow. I said, somebody understands me.

Ironically, at this stage in his life anyway, Bob Dylan was far too acidly hip and self-involved to understand anybody, or want to bother. So how did he fish out lines like "he not busy being born is busy dying"? It's one of those statements that sounds as if it's always been there. And at the same time: why didn't anyone think of that before? I get that same feeling listening to Gershwin. Sometimes I think they're the same person, in fact (and I'll try to find the video of Dylan singing "Soon" at a Gershwin tribute. Like every other songwriter breathing on the planet, he more-than-appreciates Gershwin's greatness. Perhaps more than the average dunce-headed non-genius ever could.)

There's an odd sort of parallel with Gershwin, in fact. Dylan is still a songwriter's songwriter, someone more deeply appreciated and envied by other artists than by the general (ignorant, though sometimes too-adoring) public. That means lots and lots of covers, most of them pretty watered-down. They come out about as good-sounding as Dylan's covers of other people's stuff - lousy, in other words.

I can't illustrate this thing, the whole idea is stupid. I have something on my mind, WAY on my mind. A former friend of mine died, or maybe didn't, over the weekend, on Easter Sunday in fact. I got this cryptic message from his partner. They are both named Paul. The Paul who maybe-died, maybe-died on Easter Sunday: had a stroke from which he was not expected to recover. But I still don't really know if he is "dead".

Paul was/is (?) a spiritualist medium who set up his own church on the Island. Always a bad idea. The last time I knew someone who set up his own church, it quickly turned into civil war, a kind of spiritual Rwanda which sent everyone running for cover, permanently scalded.

Can't say it was that bad in his church, because I wasn't there, but I do know that whatever psychic ability he had dissolved in self-importance long ago. It turned into his own little fiefdom, rife with adoring blue-haired old ladies being fed whatever he was manufacturing on that particular week.

I know how I am supposed to feel. How I DO feel is confused. I've never in my life put a curse on someone before, but I did, I got my mojo working because of some things, a lot of things, he said and did to me.

How does it happen, how can it come to be, that you can be abused for so many years you don't notice it any more? How much anger accumulates? Is it really possible to curse someone? And this was all over Gershwin, my time-travel writings about him which he at first took very seriously, then mocked, disparaged and even expressed contempt for. He would only be threatened so far by an amateur like me. Ultimately, he accused me of making it all up to impress him.

Years ago he read a tiny sample of a novel I had written and dismissed it as a "zany soap opera". Told me to be very, very careful about sending it to publishers for fear of what they would tell me about it. He did not understand why I broke off the friendship and believed I was being oversensitive. Years and years later he wrote me an apology, saying I had stirred up his issues which caused him to flee in terror. I forgave him, not realizing that what he really said was "look what you made me do".

I never expected to write about this, probably shouldn't. Of course you can't put a curse on someone! My Haitian voodoo stage now seems rather laughable, and it sure didn't help my book sales. Those yarn dolls are a hobby, a habit, I make versions of them with my grandkids for fun. The one thumbtacked to my bulletin board with a little noose hanging beside it is just for decoration.

Bob Dylan once gave an interview for 60 Minutes in which he said he had made a deal with the devil. He has an uneasy but obsessive relationship with fame. He needs to be in the public eye, I can see that. But has lost an arm in return.

Like Bilbo Baggins, his life has been stretched out thin by wearing, however briefly, the Ring of Power. Now he cannot die, as perhaps my friend, ex-friend, curseworthy quasi-friend cannot die, or is dead already and hovering around like an oppressive shadow.

WTM moment (wait-there's-more): I don't know why it takes me so much time to make these connections! I started thinking back to when and where I first met Paul, decades ago. It was in a class he taught at Douglas College called The Anthropology of Religion. This wasn't religion as in hallelujah and God and let's put our bucks in the collection plate. This was in the realm of datura, toad-boiling, poison darts, and fatal curses that literally strike people down in their tracks. It was "primitive" medicine, juju/mojo at its finest, and darkest. Hey, here's where I learned it all, folks! - at the feet of this strange figure who became so alienated from himself, or others, or at least from any sense of humility. It seemed laughable I'd try on any of this myself, and of course we all know it has no effect anyway. Doesn't matter whether I got my mojo working or not. I'm not even sure if the man is dead.

Ring Them Bells

Fifty Shades of WTF?

What goes around comes around. Or so they say. Never was this more satisfyingly proven than in this instance, in which the worst book I never read became a sort of throwaway, the kind of thing you give to Goodwill because you're never going to wear/read it again. In spite of the fact that a movie sequel is in the works, if not out already, at least some readers are tiring of the tawdry world of women enjoying getting the shit beat out of them. That kind of mindset sank the Ghomeshi trial sufficiently that he walked free - a fact that hit me so hard that I haven't even been able to write about it, much as I saw it coming. Why this strange phenomenon happened in an Oxfam store in Swansea, Wales, is anyone's guess, but maybe they just have better literary taste there, a hangover (!) from their most illustrious literary son, Dylan Thomas. Well, or at least their drunkest literary son.

Fifty Shades of Grey: the book you literally can’t give away

A branch of Oxfam in Swansea has asked donors to bring ‘less Fifty Shades and more 60s vinyl’. Are Britain’s charity shops stuffed with more bestselling soft porn than they know what to do with?

Emine Saner   @eminesaner

Wednesday 23 March 2016

With almost enough copies of Fifty Shades of Grey to build its own sex dungeon, a branch of Oxfam in Swansea has asked people to stop donating the erotic novel or any of its sequels. “We appreciate all your donations, but less Fifty Shades and more 60s and 70s vinyl would be good,” wrote Phil Broadhurst, the shop’s manager, in a post on Facebook.

For a while, Oxfam published a list of its most-donated authors; between 2009 and 2012, Dan Brown was top. Could EL James and her Fifty Shades have beaten the Da Vinci Code author? “I think Dan Brown is still pipping it, actually, but [Fifty Shades] is up there,” says David Taylor at the Oxfam bookshop in Salisbury. Copies of Fifty Shades there are sent to the local depot for redistribution to other shops; his branch doesn’t sell it. “It sounds snobby, but there are 10 charity shops in our street and you can buy it in any one of them,” he says. “There’s no point in us selling it.”

Other bookshops are not reporting much in the way of bestselling soft porn. “We get our fair share,” says an employee at a British Heart Foundation shop in Edinburgh, but it isn’t one of the shop’s most-donated books. “I don’t even think we’ve got any in,” says the manager of a charity shop in Liverpool.

At the Red Cross bookshop in New Romney in Kent, only two or three copies of Fifty Shades have been donated. The most-donated books, says assistant manager Lorraine Logan, “would probably be Lee Child, Karin Slaughter, that type – crime fiction”. They also get a lot of military history and books about the area. “We’re in a quiet little town,” she says. I think she’s implying it’s perhaps not a hotbed of S&M enthusiasts. Quite what this says about Swansea I’ll leave to the imagination.

. . . And speaking of Swansea, birthplace of that poet once voted "the drunkest man in the world", I found a pub with his name on it in his home town. Reviews were rather tepid, averaging 3.2 out of 5. I've included some of the more memorable ones.

Dylan Thomas - Fayre & Square

Swansea Enterprise Park, Llansamlet, Swansea, United Kingdom

3.2
24 reviews

went there this afternoon, had a "codfather and chips" myself and for my wife, i should have complained immedietly but my wife said to leave it, the batter was overcooked and greasy with not much fish which was mostly grey, it is repeating ...More

Lack of staff and food was not so good for what you pay. Nacho and pulled pork starter with severe lack of pulled pork for £7.. avoid.

Had a gd time and gd staff.plus gd food

My food was cold. And the waitress spilled my desert on me. I complained to the lady in charge and she said she would send me a letter authorising a next free visit for 2. The letter never came. Obviously a ploy to get rid of me and my wife. Customers are not important to them that's why you pay upfront.

Food was ok but wait 10 minutes for drinks food went cold very short staff behind the bar only 1 service

Ok for cheap food and a pint, but poor service due to lack of staff

You get what you pay for. Buy cheap buy twice. Both appropriate for this establishment.

For the price the food is very good.

My 6 year old ill plus me an my partner has had food poising

We had food poisoning after eating here

This is a place we have been visiting for a number of years as it is local. It used to be brilliant then slipped drastically for a time but we believe has recovered. Many other people must think so too as it is usually relatively busy when we go midweek. It is not fine dining by any stretch of the imagination but food is USUALLY good and ample portions. We are a family group of older generation i.e. 50's - 90's and they cater for the tastes of the group which is all we want.

Well I can't review the food as after standing at the bar for ages, when the barmaid finally arrived she told me I had to join the queue of about 8 people ordering food, all of who had arrived after me.
I told her I had arrived before them but she wouldn't have it, so I left!

Awful place!!

Ordered food waited 1 hour food was cold and tasted vile never again what a disappointment to us all it tasted bit funny to

POST-POST RUMINATIONS. This can't be true. I mean, the whole story of Fifty Shades in the Oxfam store.

THIS can't be true. . .

. . . and THIS can't be true. . .

. . . or not to this extent, anyway. That igloo-looking thing would require HUNDREDS of donated copies of Fifty Shades. There aren't even that many people in Swansea, let alone older women with dirty minds who were willing to shell out however-many-pence for this thing a few years ago and are now bloody sick of it all.

The copies look identical, and they wouldn't. There would be various different editions, as there always are with bestsellers. Some would be without their dust jackets, or even their covers if the readers had gnawed them off in a fit of frustrated horniness.

This just doesn't make sense to me.

Are these really copies of Fifty Shades at all, or fake books? If they are, they were remaindered by a large retail chain, or perhaps sent over by the publisher (though it's unlikely they'd want to sell their product by donation in an Oxfam store in small-town Wales). Or this is a display in a whole different store, maybe in another part of the world - who's going to know, anyway?

And who in Swansea has the cleverness to make a stack of Fifty Shades symmetrical enough to rival Mr. Whipple's giant tower of Charmin Bathroom Tissue?

I am sure it's a hoax, though even Snopes hasn't caught on yet. I think it's meant to poke good-natured fun at the book, at Swansea, at Oxfam, at - oh never mind. I'm not even sure any more.

We've been Onioned here. Now I feel just a little bit foolish.

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She will be missed

Leftover sexy Young Frankenstein gif

. . . that I couldn't find a space for anywhere, but I made it so here it is.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Abby Normal: or, how do you work this thing?, part II

The article below (not written by me, I'm borrowing it not-for-profit) is a followup to my last post about home brain-zapping devices. This one is a "brain wearable" (I am not kidding you), which is some sort of ultra-sophisticated iphone that you strap to your head. Here it is described as all good, with no risks. It relaxes you, it invigorates you, it helps you think with blinding lucidity and get an advantage over the next guy with all the predatory grace of a Bengal tiger.

But as with taking a martini to relax and de-stress after work, one may be fine, but ten may be fatal. If you use this thing day after week after year, if you do in fact get addicted to it (and people get addicted to everything these days), how will you ever function without it?

What if your battery dies mid-thought?

Will it, in fact, REPLACE thought altogether, and induce a euphoric, highly-desirable, permanent vegetative state?

And (more important than anything!), will it enhance sexual performance? Can it be turned up or down to get just the right degree of stiffness (for no woman in her right mind would ever go near one of these; it's a strictly testosterone-driven trip)? Can it be adjusted for length of performance: one second; ten seconds; THIRTY seconds (to automatically drive your partner to moaning orgasmic heights)?

Think of it. Sex can be dialled up or down now, pre-set, and the gizmo can just take over for you. Call up your girl friend, tell her your problems are solved and you don't need that pesky counselling any more. I can see this taking Silicon Valley by storm.

Myself, I'm more interested in the Donald-Trump-obliterating aspect of the thing. There's a guarantee on this: says so right in the brochure, actually, but the risk to your cerebral cortex is considerable. One thousand frontal brain cells have to die to kill one memory of Trump.

But hey: who needs a cerebral cortex when you have an app that will literally reboot your brain?

Turn that thing up to eleven!

Thync CEO: Merging biology and technology will dominate this century

The story behind the miracle brain-zapping wearable

Wednesday February 18, 2015 By James Stables

Isy Goldwasser risked everything to launch Thync, the mood altering brain wearable that was the talk of CES 2015. When he quit his job at chemical engineering company Symyx in 2010, Goldwasser knew he wanted to create a device that could tap into the inner workings of our brains and emotions; the problem was, he didn't know how.

"It began with a huge risk. We knew there was a way to activate brain cells and pathways, but it was just a case of how. We wanted to give people access to their neural circuits," Goldwasser told Wareable.

The company's CEO is at his office in Silicon Valley. It's 9am and he's already plugged himself into Thync, his neurosignalling wearable for a shot of 'energy' Vibe. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Wareable office is about to go home, where – at some point in 2015 when Thync is released – we will be able sit down to enjoy a similar dose of 'calm' after a long day.

Like a futuristic espresso or a wearable technology whisky on-the-rocks, Thync is designed for those sluggish mornings or winding down after a long day. And Goldwasser's team are using it daily, and see others doing the same.

"I had the belief that we could find those pathways and tap into the delivered benefits. That meant I had to go looking for technology, and a lot of it didn't work," he explained.

"That's not being a smartarse. You go on a journey and try different directions. That's how you get ahead of the whole world."

On that journey Goldwasser met Dr. Jamie Tyler, a professor of Biological and Health Systems Engineering at Arizona State University. His 'U+ technology' made the product a reality, and Thync was born.
Choose your vibe

Thync is a small unit that works by placing small electrodes at the base of the neck. When you wear the device, a low current stimulates the nerves and cells in the brain, controlled by a smartphone app. You use the app to choose a "Vibe" to tune your brain too.

"We as humans aren't wired to call up our biology. But imagine if you could control your decisions when you want to, control your focus when you want to, or your creativity or self control, life would be a lot easier.

"We knew that Dr. Tyler had worked on ways from the outside in to activate nerves and brain cells. And we know that the pathways and networks make us everything we are," Goldwasser explained.

"So at the most basic level it began with the belief that if we have great people, we will find the pathways and network that we will tap into that will lead to benefits, to improve people's lives," he said.

What's more, Goldwasser said that the rise of Apple Health and Google Fit are paving the way for this kind of product.

"The proliferation of apps in healthcare mean that people are excited to do something different. Especially when it's an alternative to having a drink or taking a tablet, when those things are clearly unhealthy."

Whether Thync's indeed healthier isn't the decision of Goldwasser, it's that of the FDA, and the US medical regulatory body has done the company a favour by changing its guidelines over wearable devices.

"We're working with the FDA. It's great because they changed the guidelines last month, which separate what a wellness device is from a medical device. We certainly fit the wellness device category. We're non invasive. So we're in the right place with the FDA."

With FDA regulation off the cards, it means that Thync is on for a 2015 launch, though understandably, Goldwasser couldn't be drawn on the specifics.

Frontier psychiatry

The problem for Goldwasser was that the promise of a device that can put you in charge of your deepest emotions sounds too good to be true, and if it wasn't for his reputation, it may never have got off the ground.

"If it wasn't for my success at Symyx, no-one would have touched Thync. It was way too academic, it was a science experiment.

"I was really attracted to the frontier where biology and technology happen. Technology and biology will merge and react over time. If there's one frontier that will dominate this century, it's this one."

Biology and technology may be the future tech of the century, but here in 2015, there's plenty of it around. From advances in biotechnology, exoskeletons, cancer detecting bands to digital spinal chords, silicon and flash are melding. But unlike the emotion sensors, brainwave detecting gadgets and lucid dreaming wonder wearables, Goldwasser says that Thync is the real deal.

"What we have is unique, and while other companies are exploring the same area, one thing makes us different: we're not sensing. Sensing doesn't work. We activate what's already there."

It makes perfect sense, yet once the barriers of biology and tech have been broken down, could we go beyond energy and relaxation? Is it possible to go beyond emotions, and start helping people become better at sport or academically superior?

Goldwasser says that "the focus of Thync isn't on changing people, it's about giving them access to what they already have." However, that doesn't mean it's not possible to use the same techniques to unlock 'superhuman' powers.

"Theoretically, we could start making someone better. We're not going there, but people will."

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How do you work this thing?: Electroshock in the home

No kidding, the things I find. Now people are shocking their brain. They're buying these things on Craigslist or eBay, possibly used or faulty, and sticking electrodes on themselves because they heard somewhere that it "might help" with Parkinson's, depression, and whatever-else you want to get rid of.

The problem? There are no instructions! If there are instructions, they're probably badly-translated, like the How To Stop The Smoking thing I just posted. Unintelligible. So you have to guess at what you're supposed to be doing, or else go on one of those online forums. You know the ones I mean. A ragbag assortment of ill-informed opinions flavoured with paranoia about mainstream medicine.

This all seems about as safe as doing surgery on yourself, but in this era of home medicine, anything is possible and almost everything is unregulated. I can understand people's reluctance to go to the doctor. If I go to the doctor with a troubling symptom, s/he is likely to give me something to make the symptom go away. End of story. Whether it's pointing to cancer, heart disease or Parkinson's, symptom gone = patient well, or at least not complaining any more.

So I can sort-of understand this, but I'd never buy one, any more than I'd buy a used vibrator. It might short out on me and cause all kinds of trouble.

But if THIS shorts out on you, you might be in the worst sort of trouble.

Experts wary of electrical brain stimulation at home

BY ERIN ELLIS, VANCOUVER SUN MARCH 27, 2016 8:28 PM


Researchers are testing mild electrical stimulation to improve brain function and mental health, but warn do-it-yourselfers to be wary of treating themselves with models available online.

Dr. Fidel Vila-Rodriguez, director of the Non-Invasive Neurostimulation Therapies (NINET) Lab at the University of B.C., is starting to lend devices for home use to people with Parkinson’s disease and depression that will deliver a weak electrical current through electrodes placed on their temples.

The machines in his experiments can’t be adjusted above two milliamps — similar to the power created by two AA batteries. In contrast, some unregulated brain stimulators sold online can deliver about 10 times that amount of current, something he calls “worrisome.” It is an amount of electricity still small enough that users might not notice an immediate effect — or danger.

“You may feel just a tingling sensation, so the perception is of low risk, in part because of that. But the truth is we don’t really know about these unregulated devices,” he says.

Vila-Rodriguez’s research uses machines approved by federal authorities. “We’re using a bonafide medical device licensed by Health Canada.”

In contrast, products sold online with names like Thync and Foc.us are in a grey area, approved by no government body in North America. They are not classified as medical devices by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or Health Canada. Yet their websites promise better brain performance, relaxation or energizing as desired.

Stanford University law grad and former UBC masters student Roland Nadler has a small collection of them which he doesn’t use on himself, but rather as examples of gaps in government regulations.

“These devices are a bit before their time. Or if they have a future, it’s almost always going to be with a professional intermediary,” says Nadler, currently a fellow at Stanford University’s Centre for Law and the Biosciences in California. “It’s too complex and sophisticated of a technology for most people to do at home.”

There’s an 8,000-member discussion group on the networking website Reddit about transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, filled with home users asking each other how to use the gear, which comes with limited instructions. “What positions of the electrodes are used for depression? It is surprisingly difficult for a me to find a no bull**** guide on accurate placements. Can anyone help?” Or, more alarming, “How can I tell which cable is the anode and which is the cathode? Are the blues one and the whites others?”

Nadler says this sort of chat shows how difficult self-treatment can be. Placing the electrodes is a key step, and some sets make it easy to confuse the cathode, which is positively charged, with the negatively charged anode. Depending on the condition under treatment, the current must flow in a specific direction to a specific area of the brain. Reversing the prescribed flow of electricity could excite the brain when the user sought calming effects — a mistake someone seeking relief from insomnia, for instance, might not want to make.

“Getting the anode and cathode mixed up is serious business,” says the understated Nadler.

But the lure of better living through electricity is compelling for amateurs and professionals alike.

P. S. (or P. B.): yes, I know I just used this image, but it's great, isn't it? She seems like the kind of person who might stick electrodes on her head for a do-it-yourself version of electroconvulsive therapy. 

I wonder now, in this age when people become addicted to absolutely everything, if they might become hooked on these DIY brain-shockers. Or use it as a kinky sex aid, with role-playing: you be Frankenstein, I'll be the mad doctor! You be Bugs Bunny, I'll be the chicken! You be Jack Nicholson, and. . . you get the idea.

If ten volts feels good, could twenty feel even better? How about a hundred: will that erase all memory of Donald Trump?  If all that juice doesn't heal or treat anything, it might obliterate all trace of symptoms so you no longer care whether you're sick or well. Just keep turning up that dial, the one that goes to eleven. . . 

This could catch on.

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