The Way We Were
Posted at 5:20 AM on April 7, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(29 Comments)
Memories, like the corners of my mind. Misty water-colored memories ...
Dr. Kyle wrote from Genway, the supermarket for genetically enhanced food:
What a wonderful and exciting new world science is giving us!
Researchers have identified a key brain chemical that helps create long-term memories!
I love chemicals!
With the right mix of chemicals, you can make anything happen.
Or UNhappen!
Picture it! Foods to help you recall things you know that you didn't even know you knew!
Imagine! A Genway Memory Melon!
Take a bite and be transported back twenty years.
Take another bite, go back all the way to the womb!
Call mom and tell her you remember EVERYTHING, right down to the gurgling of her stomach right next to your ear.
She'll be delighted, or appalled. Either way, she won't forget it.
Or will she?
Because once we've mastered chemical enhanced remembering, we can tackle dis-remembering. We'll create a whole new line of Forget-it foods.
Genway Forgetful Falafels. Forgotten Fennel. Forget-me Fishsticks.
Eating these foods would be like eating your own recollections. The bigger the bite, the smaller your recall, until everything you know gets swallowed by you and banished to a dark place from which there is no graceful return!
Could specific memories be targeted for annihilation?
I don't remember what the article said about that, but why not?
That would be the very best situation.
I've done a lot of things I'd like to forget.
And I've done even MORE things I'd like other people to forget.
I dream of being able to erase our customer's bad food memories the moment they walk in the door!
All those negative experiences you had with Okra would be gone.
Your "thing" about shrimp could vanish.
Our sample ladies would meet you at the door with a Forget-me Fishstick.
They'd force one into your face, and the fun would begin!
Change your head around with a Memory Melon!
Lose a troublesome portion of your mind with a Forget-me Fishstick.
Genway tailored brain food. Look for it!
If you could choose to remember or forget a lot more than you do right now, would you? Even if it meant eating one of Dr. Kyle's fishsticks?
Comments (29)
Dale - oh so good to hear from Dr. Kyle! and he looks just like i imagined him to look!
thank you so much. still on dial-up so no RH again today. i think i need a bite of forget-me fishsticks... i'll ask you to play that "i forget everything" song - not that i'll hear it, but i'll imagine.
good morning, everyone!
What??? You want me to remember what I've been trying to forget for years? No Forget Me Fish Sticks for me, thank you very much!
Oh, I apologize, I obviously overreacted. I clearly DO want the Forget Me Fish Sticks...may I have them without remembering what I want to forget? Please?
Barb in Blackhoof, my phone and dsl (thanks to Qwest) are working...come over for breakfast and we can listen and forget together. Hot cereal with local maple syrup and warm goat milk...fresh ground coffee...come soon.
Good morning, everybody -
I'll pass on the memory fishsticks, too, Cynthia. When I want help to recall those few wonderful moments in my life (like Winky Dinks), all I need to do is make some vague reference to it on Trial Balloon, and suddenly everyone's helping me out as if I were Bubby Spamden!
There's a great book by Anne Ursu, her first novel, called "Spilling Clarence", which is about chemically induced memory floods. After reading that, I'm glad that I can forget as much as I can.
How about some "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"?
In the bakery Genway could carry Proust's Memory Madelines. I am sure they would sing "I remember you."
The article claimed it could erase individual bad memories. They of course had only tried the molecule on animals. How many bad memories can a lab mouse have?
Have an a-maze-ing day!
I could always use more memory but not if I must eat Dr Kyle's genetically engineered culinary creations.
Good morning, all!
Another odd memory book is "Times Arrow" by Kingsley Amis...The main character goes backward in his life, starting out as an old man with some experiences blocked out that become clear as he goes backward to some abhorrent actions he committed.
The dangers of remembering...?
Good morning RH,
Beth-Ann, that was a great lab mouse line!
Cynthia, the book "Times Arrow" sounds kinda like the Benjamin Bottoms movie. Any more I find it difficult to remember what I want to forget, but I wouldn't mind forgetting that I sat through the duration of that film.
Mom, you mean Benjamin Button. But good one! Also, I'm certain you remember things about my early childhood that never happened, so I'm not sure you should be eating any fishsticks. Speaking of my early childhood, I've already found my Genway family of memory products - it's called YouTube. I may or may not have stayed up until 3 a.m. on more than one occasion watching Sesame Street skits from the early 80s. Those were the classic SuperGrover years.
Donna, I haven't seen Benjamin Bottoms...but the book was so-so...did Benjamin end up/start out as a concentration camp doctor during WWII like the Times Arrow book? (oh, oh, I hope I didn't spoil the story if someone wants to read it...forget what I just wrote!)
Another fun memory piece is "I'm Herbert" from a set of one acts called "You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running" -- an elderly couple trying to remember pieces and people from their past. Very funny.
And after a Saturday rehearsal of the play, I was blessed with not recognizing my ex-husband when he spoke to me at the funeral I attended after...an occasion when forgetting is truly sweet (revenge).
Which reminds me of a song from Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris..."I Loved..." sung by Elly Stone.
Apologies for being so wordy this morning, I must be trying to make up for being absent yesterday.
Good Tuesday all!
Greetings All! I always love hearing from Dr. Larry Kyle. He's clearly a brilliant scientist with forward-thinking and paradigm-busting products and ideas -- but nothing I would want to try!
Food is best in its simple and natural form as Mother Nature designed. Perhaps Dr. Kyle could channel his brilliance into making organic food less expensive!
While the memory enhanced foods are certainly tempting, I prefer my memories intact as they are. All the love, beauty, pain, angst, thrill, fear and anger make me who I am.
There's a great line from Capt Kirk in one of the lesser Star Trek movies. The character, Sybok (Spock's half brother) has the ability to release a person's most painful memories. Kirk refuses and says, "I need my pain -- it makes me who I am" -- or something to that effect (be sure to include W. Shatner's rather melodramatic acting style).
That's my take, anyway -- philosophically.
Lora - thanks for the correction, many times over in the past and future....
Yea - Benjamin Bottoms is a storybook character, right?
Love, Mom
Good Morning!
Having a good case of Halfheimers much of the time, memory enhancement seems like a good thing. I'm not sure I will pursue the Genway solution given that we are well down the organic/healthy eating path. We're not without missteps of course but I'm pretty sure those were organic Cheeto's we had the other day! Haven't seen Benjamin Buttons and perhaps won't add it to the list particularly if one risks leaving thinking about Benjamin's bottom :-)
I'm hoping today will be a memorable day!
Thanks for Gordon Bok...
I have to admit I could use some help in remembering, but only things like where are my glasses and did I leave the stove on? But Genway products kind of scare me.
Hey Barb, I have to say I am LOVING my HD radio, it's so much more reliable and radio-like (sounds good, goes wide area) than internet streaming. It was not expensive (Sony tuner about $80, connected to my stereo), maybe you should check it out?
Dr. Larry Kyle is back? You know some of us are worried about the side effects of his kind of genetics. This doesn't seem to worry Dr. Kyle.
What would the negative side effects of manipulating memory be, apart from the potential for odd growths developing on our heads. Would your head explode if you tried to regain too many lost memories? Would you mind dissappear if you tried to get rid of too many bad memories?
Perhaps Dr. Kyle has already released his memory products secrectly. That might explain the bad behavior of the bankers who forgot that they shouldn't lend out money that they don't have.
Just a quick correction: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Benjamin was born in 1860 and aged backward from there.
According to Wikipedia, the movie differs greatly from the short story in the storytelling. Just FYI ...
Kim...re: hd radios...Barb and I live outside the range of the hd broadcast on KNOW 91.1....so sad. I would love to be able to just turn on a radio rather than wait for the computer to come to life in the mornings. Alas, the Duluth MPR stations are not broadcasting Radio Heartland...so sad.
THANK YOU for playing Steady On by Storyhill from the concert a few weeks back. That is an amazing piece of music and that performance was nearly heart-stopping for its power and beauty. I can't wait until they put that on a CD.
I always thought that I'd be the first in line to volunteer for the forget fishsticks but maybe not. I saw the movie "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and now I'm not so sure. It's the first movie I've cried at in years.
On this one I'm in agreement with Ruth Moody of the Wailin Jennys:
"For we've all made mistakes that lead us astray
But every time they've helped us get to where we are today
And that's as good a place as any
And it's probably where we're best off anyway."
Heaven When We're Home (on the 40 Days album)
Although I do not approve Dr. Kyle's methods for genetic manipulation, I find that his inventions are "very" interesting. Too bad Dr. Kyle can't come back in person so that we could hear his crazed laugh.
Could I choose to remember certain things, or would I have to recall everything? If I could choose, I would love to have memories/more memories of my dad and grandma and grandpa. If I have to recall everything, I think I will pass....
Today, I find myself trying to recall more about "The Cannon Mess".
I think my sister must have been one of the test subjects for Dr. Kyle's products. She always "remembers" things from our family past that none of the rest of us remember. And she remembers these details with great zest and relish while the rest of us look at each other and roll our eyes!
Thanks Joanne for the great Star Trek line... I also liked that line alot. That's kind of how I feel about my memory... if I wipe out the yucky stuff, might I accidentaly wipe out something else!
Thanks to everyone for the comments about Memory Melons and Forget-Me Fishsticks.
Clearly Dr. Kyle will have his customers on an ethical and moral see-saw if he ever brings these products to Genway.
And thanks also to Craig who corrected my mistake about the Storyhill "Steady On".
I said it was a new song and hadn't been recorded.
Wrong on both counts.
But Chris and Johnny did indeed stop the show two Saturdays ago with their performance of this song at the Fitz!
two quick things late in the morning--
i definitely WOULD eat a memory-deleting food if it just took away specific, selected memories---there are a few i could just really do without at this point in my life.
and i feel i must speak up for the lab mouse---think about it; an experimental subject, at the mercy of whatever the scientists come up with to do to the poor thing----i'm pretty sure the lab mouse would like the memory-deleting food too, and that it would be humane to provide it.
sign us up, dr. kyle----
I don't know why I think this matters, but Benjamin Bottoms, turns out, is a brother to Sam, Joseph, and Timothy - all actors. The storybook character I had him confused with is Benjamin Bunny, cousin to Peter, from Beatrix Potter's tales. Neither of these Benjamins look very much like Brad Pitt.
The correct movie title is The Lady aqnd the Tramp
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