Monday 15 August 2016

Credo


While we are on the subject of myths handed down from generation to generation (and while I wait for a useless courier to deliver a parcel) were you - as I was - told by some teacher at school that every glass of water drunk in the world contains a small percentage of Julius Caesar's urine?

And did you believe the patently unbelievable when you heard that the average human swallows about 2000 spiders in their sleep over one lifetime?

A mature friend of mine who likes hamburgers told me - with a look of panic in his eyes - that he had read that every hamburger that is eaten takes 10 years to digest, and most people are walking around with great lumps of hamburger rotting away in a dark corner of their gut.

How on earth did that one come into being, and - even more inexplicably - how did it attain any credence whatsoever?

Well, here's one theory: It is a fact (so I am told) that your body completely changes its cell tissue over a cycle of about 7 years. You sort of turn inside out over that period, and either the cells fall off as dead skin, or you burn them as energy or excrete them along with the hamburgers. This is one theory which could explain the 'seven year itch', but even that notion - that you wake up one day to find you are married to a different person - is just a feeble excuse for adultery.

Now take a mischeivous or unscrupulous person who happens not to like hamburgers, not to like MacDonalds or not to like the way that cereal crops are being grown to feed cattle  for the hamburger market and not starving humans, then give them the seven year turn-around biological explanation, and it is just a short step to create a myth about hamburgers being completely indigestible. Put it in print and it will become verifiable, and these days getting stuff into print is as easy as writing this blog.

People will naturally believe things which they either want to believe, or do not want to believe, and they don't have to involve statistics (73% of which are made up on the spot) at all.

What is the most ridiculous thing which you have found yourself believing in, if only briefly?

30 comments:

  1. I toyed with the idea that Cliff Richard was not gay once.

    ReplyDelete
  2. After I gave up smoking, I did have the idea of starting again after seven years; but with the lungs of a new born baby.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. p.s. I don't think I've ever eaten a Beefburger!

      Delete
    2. Nobady has ever eaten a beefburger. What you may not have eaten is a beef patty reputedly invented in Hamburg (as were fish and chips) and called a Hamburger. (Pendantic? Moi?)

      Delete
    3. I am now searching for a town in Germany called Beefburg...

      Delete
  3. I'll have to think about this and get back.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not so easy to pull the wool over your eyes, I can tell Joanne.

      Delete
  4. I briefly believed in God and then realised it as a silly idea created to control the masses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So now you believe in gods? Were they an idea to control the Celts?

      Delete
    2. I think of them as mythological archetypes.

      Delete
  5. You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't believe it. Come on, admit to something. You are amongst friends.

      Delete
    2. What did you ask?
      That is my reply.

      Delete
  6. I used to believe in Santa Claus.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think you used to go along with it to humour your parents - you know, 'I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus...'

      Delete
  7. All of the common ones ...... carrots help you see in the dark, eating your crusts will make your hair curl, sitting on concrete gives you piles, be wary of silver - haired men who sell candlesticks ..... the ones that we were all told !!!!!!
    ...... and Sue, what on earth are you talking about ..... Santa Claus comes to our house every Christmas Eve !!
    .... and Cro .... although I'm not a massive hamburger fan, a homemade one can be quite delicious. They do say that beef can take years to digest .... I can sort of see that as it takes a while to break down. XXXX

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well concrete and piles is true. Same with hot radiators. I need to know what you should be wary of as far as the silver-haired blokes selling candlesticks goes - it could be true.

      Now you go and blow it by admitting that you believe the hamburger myth. Do you think it takes you 10 years to digest a steak?

      Delete
    2. No, I don't think that beef takes 10 years to digest .... I just think that it could take a bit longer and maybe a few sinewy bits stick to the sides of the intestine .... apparently Elvis had a lot stuck there .... he ate a hell of a lot of beef burgers ... but, hey, what do I know !!!!! XXXX

      Delete
    3. Elvis's problem was that his peristalsis stopped short of his arsehole by about 6 inches. This was a medical condition which caused a heart-attack, and was exacerbated by poor diet and drugs. But hey - what do I know? Basically, anything you cannot digest goes straight through, otherwise everyone would be walking about with pounds of sweet-corn in their gut, like a bird's crop. Think about it (if you must).

      Delete
  8. The millennium new years eve one....that clocks and computers and planes would get all discombobulated and malfunction....but as I drank champagne and danced that night I thought...'oh well'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I was slightly worried about that, then reason kicked-in and I understood the run-up was a bonanza for geeks.

      Delete
  9. I totally and completely believed in Father Christmas until I was six when my best friend told me it was your Dad. I asked him and he said 'of course not', so I believed for another Christmas after that until finally my mother told me the truth. Did rather shatter my dreams, but then I was an innocent child in those days.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My brother told me when I was about five, but later, my then 20 year-old sister swore she heard sleighbells in the sky one Christmas night. She is a Jehovah's Witness...

      Delete
  10. I still check out my bed for spiders every night, just in case! If I woke up with a spider in my mouth I would actually die!

    What about the myth that if you die in your dreams, you die for real?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you don't wake up, you are dead.

      Delete
    2. Good answer, Potty. I once had a lucid dream where I was about to fall several stories onto a concrete pavement, and I remembered the story about not waking up, so I tested it by letting myself fall.

      When I hit the ground, I woke up with a start, and my whole body was wracked with pain. It hurt like fuck, but I survived. Another myth exploded.

      Delete
  11. Jack@ wins the prize for honesty here.

    ReplyDelete