Things that annoy me

[simont]

Underambitious fantasies. My back was itching in the pub last night, and I couldn't quite reach the right spot to scratch it. ‘If only,’ I heard myself think, ‘I had a slightly longer arm.’

Ridiculous! If I'm going to allow myself to fantasise counterfactually, why didn't I just fantasise ‘If only my back didn't itch in the first place’?

Comments

[simont]

This is a comment which I'll immediately screen after posting it, so I can later unscreen it to prove that I thought of the obvious joke about Haggunenons and not being able to drink coffee before anyone else posted it. Which I'm sure someone will.

[strongtrousers.livejournal.com]

Because having a slightly longer arm would be a useful improvement in many more situations than having a non-itchy back. Think of all the exciting reach-based possibilities!

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

I think having an itch and scratching it is FAR more satisfying than not having the itch in the first place!

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

If you'd said that to me when I was about 8 or 9*, I'd have given you rose-hip seeds so you could make your skin nice and itchy :-).

*I was quite late at learning not to be literal...

[huggyrei.livejournal.com]

I am flexible enough to scratch any point on my back, although I often find the larger problem is that it's difficult to precisely locate the itch. However if I had longer arms, I would be able to reach the bars on tube trains, not to mention several frustratingly placed windows in my house.

Daft response

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

As a daft stocking filler last year I bought Sion a telescopic back-scratcher. It's actually had quite a lot of use :)

ooo - and I found a picture.

http://www.latestbuy.com.au/telescopicscratcher.html

[gerald_duck]

Give a man a non-itchy back and he'll be comfortable for a day; give a man a slightly longer arm and he'll be comfortable for the rest of his life?

…and now my back itches. Drat.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

From Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter:

A friend said to me, "My uncle was almost President of the U.S.!" "Really?" I said. "Sure," he replied, "he was skipper of the PT 108." (John F. Kennedy was skipper of the PT 109 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Torpedo_Boat_PT-109).)

In everyday thought, we are constantly manufacturing mental variants on situations we face, ideas we have, or events that happen, and we let some features stay exactly the same while others "slip". What features do we let slip? What ones do we not even consider letting slip? What events are perceived on some deep intuitive level as being close relatives of ones which really happened? What do we think "almost" happened or "could have" happened, even though it unambiguously did not? What alternative versions of events pop without any conscious thought into our minds when we hear a story? Why do some counterfactuals strike us as "less counterfactual" than other counterfactuals? After all, it is obvious that anything that didn't happen didn't happen. There aren't degrees of "didn't-happen-ness." And the same goes for "almost" situations. There are times when one plaintively says, "It almost happened," and other times when one says the same thing, full of relief. But the "almost" lies in the mind, not in the external facts.

[simont]

Mmm. But the question is, why does the part of my brain that comes up with these fantasies before I get to think them through think it's more plausible to have a longer arm than a non-itching back, given that the former has never happened to me whereas the latter happens all the time?

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
-- Robert Browning, clearly not suffering from an itch

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, you're a programmer, and you had an itch... why didn't you write some free software to scratch it for you?

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

Insert statement about coffee here.

[simont]

For a while there I thought nobody was going to say that! But I predicted right after all. <f/x: QI hooter noise> :-)

[aiwendel.livejournal.com]

or you could go for the less exciting but achievable ambition: a slightly more flexible arm...