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