Article: Brain Itch Songs

Beyonce has finally infiltrated my house. My kids and my wife are all singing “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Nonstop. Every day. It’s the answer to every question and the response to every statement. It’s worse than waterboarding. I’d leave, but I know they’d follow me.

There are songs you wish you could forget but can’t. They’re like a virus that won’t leave your system no matter how hard you try. You’re in the shower, and before you can stop yourself “Y.M.C.A.” pops out of your mouth. You catch yourself chanting, “Who let the dogs out?” in the car. You respond to a friend’s recent troubles with “I get knocked down but get up again.”

You try to erase these unwelcome melodies by thinking about something else. Nothing. You sing them ten times really loud and fast, hoping to push them out of your head. No luck. They won’t leave you. You’re afraid to go out at night. You used to be so much cooler than this.

Go easy on yourself. You’re not to blame. There’s a name for the affliction, and it’s called “brain itch.” And the type of song that causes the brain itch? That’s an “earworm.” Dr James Kellaris of the University of Cincinnati has studied the phenomenon (for real). It seems the combination of repetitive words and unchanging melody makes for the perfect earworm. We’re helpless against its power.

Here are the all-time itchiest of the brain-itch tunes. You can rest easy knowing that it’s not really you singing that song. It’s that earworm dug into your mind, like in the movie “Scanners.” At least now no one can blame you when your friends ask what you want for lunch and you say, “I want my baby back, baby back.”

THERE’S MORE: See our gallery of all 10 of the worst brain itch songs.

HANSON: “MMMBOP”
Produced by the Dust Brothers (the dudes who brought us some of Beck’s, the Beastie Boys’, and Tone Loc’s best work), this tune from the Tulsa brothers’ major label debut was originally written as a ballad. Definitely not the tune to seduce a date.

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Fuji Fine Pix – Hot Or Not Edition

Hanson was featured in a write up about a “new edition” of a FujiFix camera. Poor 1997 Isaac.

Every new camera on the market is touting some powerful facial recognition software. But according to Gizmodo engineers, there’s a lot more that can be done.

Straight from our R&D department, we’ve received this crude mockup of a “Hot or Not” Fuji Finepix camera. It features:

• Attractive Facial Recognition
If you’ve got it, flaunt it! Finally, a camera made by beautiful people, for beautiful people. A heart-shaped matrix surrounds the heads of worthy and automatically snaps the shutter at peek hotness levels (smiles, lustful gazes, or just staring off in the distance with absolutely nothing, and we mean nothing, going through your mind).

• 14 Megapixels
Take sharp photographs that can be enlarged for family, friends and guys who say they’re agents! Choose between “billboard” and “ultra big billboard” sizes and just wait for your face to go on the next Gap sign, or just a very high resolution amateur pornography site.

• Audio Alert If “Third Friend” Detected In Frame
While competitor’s products can become confused if two hot friends are standing next to a third, unattractive friend, snapping a shot none the wiser, the Fuji Finepix is equipped with a blazing fast processor that picks out the frumpy with greater accuracy than humans in clinical trials.

• Ugly Facial Deletion
Maybe it was a platonic friend. Maybe it was just a fat kid. It’s not their fault (well, maybe it is), but the last thing you need is to fold photos in half to cut out the troll standing beside you. The FinePix will autocrop the ugly subject out, or just put a big “X” over their face along with some stink lines.

• Self-Portrait Mode (may not function for all customers)
A special auto shutter takes shots as soon as your beautiful face enters the frame. And it will not stop taking pictures until it either runs out of batteries or you gain the freshman fifteen.

• Wireless Uploading to Facebook
The Finepix makes sure every single picture you ever shoot uploads instantly to Facebook, in duplicate, just in case. Automated metatagging includes “hot person who would never think they were hot” and “Barbizon 2009.”

Coming Christmas 2009, pending our lawyers can figure out the clear licensing issues and those ab growth pills we ordered out of the back of Men’s Fitness ever start working.

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