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NEWSFLASH - JUGGLERS LINK TO BRAIN GROWTH
* JUGGLERS LINK TO BRAIN GROWTH German researchers have discovered that juggling can affect brain growth. Scientists at the University of Regensburg found that in many people who learnt to juggle, certain areas of the brain have grown. The team studied 24 people who had no juggling ability. They were scanned using voxel-based morphometry, a technique which measures concentrations of brain tissue. Twelve were asked to learn to juggle, while the other half were not. The jugglers were found to have more brain matter when tested three months later, while the non-jugglers had no change.
“The strangest thing is that they didn't discover their eyes moving independently as they try to watch all the balls at once”
Jugglers may have bigger brains
but can they keep 'all the plates in the air' in life?
I suppose when you are a student and tossing beanbags around all day then one needs a bigger brain, than say, having to 'juggle' kids school runs, three jobs, an oversexed wife and remember in which order your direct debits go out so you can stop the bailiffs coming around. Don't get me wrong I can see the benefit of juggling. But if it aids concentration and brain growth, why do people who are so very good at it always end up running away from home and become a clown?
Juggling is not exactly sexy, is it? Standing in the middle of a nightclub in the vain hope of impressing a girl by playing with your balls all night.
You see juggling is 'keepy upy' but with your hands. So jugglers, 'juggle' because they always ended up in goal at school. They have a very keen eye and in a strange burlesque way are expected to act the goat in a harlequin suit on charity floats once a year. They will perform for money and are not as shy, as say, mime artists who will not ask for it. Mime artists are also found as guests on shit morning TV programs because they get paid too little to sing live and have to just pretend. Jugglers are also found on live shopping channels when they demonstrate how not to drop things while on camera.
Jugglers today feel it is sufficient or legitimate theatre to sleep in their clothes and sell the Big Issue. They still manage to make a spectacle of themselves though. Especially after two cans of Kestrel Superbrew.
Scientific evidence bear out that jugglers are more calm and collected. More time managed with work and life balance. Have a sense of inner peace. Make better lovers. This is all because in order for you to juggle effectively you have to live in a Feng Shui environment. Some believe this is to provide a path of uncluttered spiritual awareness. I believe that all the furniture and ornaments need to be removed first because they will get damaged while you have to practice during the commercials. After too many screams from your mother, "How many times have I told you, not to play with those things in the house, you'll break something."
Juggling may be perceived as a medieval art and thus part of the ancient fabric of folklore. Brought to us thousands of years ago from the Orient, Marco Polo never went anywhere without a handshake buzzer and his leatherey old beanfilled bags. Sometimes he would leave his Aunts at home. But you can't expect him to travel all that way without stopping for a little 'juggle' now and again, can you?
Juggling is as old as the first Celts. Then juggling was celebrated by vaudeville and now David Blane. Jugglers can be found at the very best corner cafes of Covent Garden where they will watch you with interest trying to balance five cokes, and three 'dogs' with fries, while you look for some loose change.
Jugglers are the sort of people at dinner parties who when they run out of anything to say, or may be asked their thoughts on the Hutton Enquiry will start spinning napkin rings in the air. If you really get them stuck on the main principles of the Maastricht treaty they will try hard to dazzle you with their tireless dexterity by whirling your house pets, garden implements and children around the parlour.
It's not an art. It's just takes lots of practice. Anybody can do it? Apart from Ozzy Osbourne. He's bound to fuck it up.
If you are boring but still a bloody great 'show off' then juggling is for you.
How imperative is juggling to society? Will it get you a job at Argos? I don't think so. Will it help you park the car any better? Not. Will it stop you backpacking? I very much doubt it? So what good is juggling to man or beast?
If you have large breasts its almost impossible to juggle but still fun to watch.
What is sad about juggling is that it holds the attention of children for about three minutes before they are back on their 'gameboy'. They will also blame de-forestation for the reason they can't climb trees. Now, if kids watched a juggler climb a tree while he juggled, then that would really be something. On lookers would be astounded. Health and Safety regulations would have to be observed. For instance no waving to the performer in case he gets half way up and recognises somebody from the crowd.
Jugglers become hod carriers or glass collectors in pubs.
I love all the fun of the fair though. I went to Windsor castle and watched with my child the splendour of medieval re-enactment. We watched Grandfather try to eat a kiwi with a spoon. The fruit, that is, and not any impropriety to do with a passing tourist from New Zealand. But Grandad finally got the hang of it when I told him the war was over.
It was like a scene from "Lord of the Rings" without the special effects.
The knight's swordplay. Then we watched agog, the street carnival within this magnificent historic reminder. The sights and sounds soaked with atmosphere. I wondered what it was like to live without pilecream and reeling with avid interest and was staggered and the magnitude of the place. It made me think that once we were a great nation and could construct beautiful fortresses of stonework even without a JCB or curb-layers from Cork.
A giant testimony to a dozen generations. No, entire eras using this monster of pre-industrial engineering as their living, breathing metropolis. An infirmary an orphanage where the souvenir shop was made we wish Ikea had thought of that. Somewhere to leave the children if they had a urine infection.
What would the first Romans think of it. I wonder? A pretty posh timeshare, I'd say. No bijou back-to-back duplexes to match that bugger. Can you imagine Caesar saying, "Lets splosh a bit of artex on that wall for a stucco finish to hide the nail holes where, the shelf fell off."
The Normans. Tudor. Renaissance. Elizabethan. Queen Ann and classic dynasties of royalty past and present all lived and worked rearing future Kings and Queens where some of the greatest battles were fought to change the course of history. A gargantuan temple of crowning achievement to pride our history books. The awesome feats of engineering that have made visitors gasp and marvel for centuries.
Now what great events can we boast today that will shape the future for our children?
Atomic kitten have split up?
Windsor castle. A day to remember. An timelessness never to forget.
Spanning each century with the taste and styles of the age. Windsor castle was a sort of never-ending 'changing rooms' without the insult of a soft fop like Laurence Llwelywn Bowen mincing about with a nailgun in those days. None of your barmy 'Bohemian flush of chintz' or 'splash of baroque rusticism' in those days. Such greatness overlooked by a couple of towerblocks that were to disappear like a blip on the screen of infinity before this national treasure ever even needed the lawn cut. Vintage masterpieces of masonry from craftsman who would have never lived to see their work ever finished.
A bit like an NTL engineer, really.
You could not help slip into a realm of fantasy as you realise that a whole community lived within these embattled walls. You imagined them going about their harsh little lives in their chainmail and corsets with not an en-suite in sight.
It's sprawling beauty and majestic stateliness dwarfing the buspark below, spilling out countless orange 'gagooled' Americans. In their matching orange baseball caps all dressed like Satsuma clones so they would not get lost and be easily be recognised.
How difficult is it to spot an American in an English castle, I wondered? Would they be harder to locate if they were mute or their wives were thinner? Perhaps they should be chained to a cannon or the drawbridge to stop them shouting "Honey, I still think the one in EDINBURROW was kinda cuter than this one, huh?" Or, "Guess they didn't have air conditioning in those days, smells kinda fusty in here, don't it."
I don't know. Hand them some heritage and they want to buy six of them to go on their mantelpiece 'back home'. Treating our monuments like a road house or like they were spending the day at the Superbowl. If you asked one what neo-gothic or Romanesque was they would probably tell you it was either perfume from Bloomingdales or a training shoe.
I am not exactly infatuated with Americans. But it has to be said they gave us 'Wallmart' and cable TV for which I am eternally grateful. All this fuss about weapons of mass destruction. Where are they? Everyone knows they are. They are all in America. "Look Behind you George Dubbya." But I digress. Tony Blair has enough of his own juggling to do.
I lied about juggling. It's very sexy. Jugglers should be naked. Especially when they spin hoops on their legs while lying on their back. Who needs clothes when you can see how they do it in far richer detail?
The Windsor change
Falconry, ratcatchers, archery displays. Trumpeteers, pied pipers. The flashes of cloth crests on glinting armour. Wenches with baskets of flowers. Rooms of ancient artifacts. Frozen in time. The headiness of scaling each tower and at the same time realising that the castle was probably once run by pygmies without blood pressure problems or had to squeeze over nourished frames up the endless steps to the parapets.
Norman soldiers had to be at least three foot nine or I had to lose more weight.
The atmosphere made me want to make contact with one of the entertainers. I almost wrestled a juggler to the floor who was dressed like a peasant from yesteryear. When I finally yanked his balls off him to talk, I questioned him about his performance and he agreed to chat. I asked him what he did for a living when he wasn't a street entertainer and he said he worked as a rail guard. I felt the air of expectation leave my body in an instant.
Had the drawbridge left its cog, winch and shackles and fallen on my head? It felt just like I had just asked Buzz Aldrin if he got out much these days.
Too much time on their hands?
We all have balance and coordination. Some more than others. For instance I can get on and off an escalator without any self harm, generally. Yet, I cannot get my radio tuned into the cricket scores. But that is not a problem for me, because I hate cricket.
We can train dolphins to balance objects from hoops to humans but we may be crap at balancing the books after the show.
I should imagine doing something more useful than making a prat of yourself on the local church green will encourage more brain growth. Like getting a job for instance. I was never any good at sports at school because my 'timing' for the 'hop, skip and jump was always off. It was more like a 'Hop, trip and splat' event for me. However, I could make a polo mint last longer than any other kid at school. My tongue has proved very useful in such activity as previous school girlfriends and the French teacher would confirm. I am perfectly rubbish at shuffling cards. Or playing darts. I dance like I have borrowed someone else's body and they are fighting to get it back through telepathy.
Does that mean I have a small brain, though? Every Friday my brain swells to twice its normal weight and size while processing alcohol and constructing a mammoth of a hangover. To be frank it does nothing for your memory, balance or coordination, not to mention rid me of the 'charlie drakes'.
Big brain? Big bastard right behind the eyes I wager. I have five pounds of beef sausages for hands and so could never be a watch mender. If I ever had to use contact lenses I would have my eye out and probably stop driving again. If there is dog squeeze on the pavement I will find it. Yet, I can roll a fag and undo a bra all at the same time. The bra may be difficult but that usually depends on if it is cutting into my arms or I have to use my teeth.
What astonishes me is that research is done on such meaningless exercises. It staggers me how such futile findings for such rubbish is justified. Resources wasted on finding out what happens to our brain when we juggle for, cripes sake? How about doing research on what happens to our brain when a Jehovah's witnesse calls and we are too scared to open the door? When we have to hide behind the sofa, and stop breathing in case their God sees us and makes us buy bible magazines to line the breadbin with? Or, some warranted study on why it is when you ask your ask wife for an early night she still prefers to watch 'Sex and the City" than have to put up with your own fiddling with her twiddly bits for half an hour? Or a thesis perhaps on what possesses people to park their car so close to you in the doctor's surgery you are forced to put superglue in their doorlocks.
I would like to do a case study in my own house.
What happens to the brain when your kids refuse to speak at all except in mono syllables and with a face like a slapped arse and then, when you offer to 'top up their phone' they suddenly find the power of speech and they can speak for hours to anybody else but you.
Or what happens to your brain when you walk into a lamp post looking at a navel ring or a pink letter 'Y' sticking out of the back of a 'spray on' pair of jeans trying to wiggle free, when you know fully well your wife will refuse to call the emergency services because of your lechery? (Why do they have little jewels set in the crosspiece of the 'Y'? For whose benefit exactly?)
Juggling is fine if you can also master the art of emptying the dishwasher and feeding the cat at the same time. Having a bigger brain is like having a bigger penis. Size does matter.
Like juggling. Tossing is one thing but keeping it in the air is quite a different matter. And it doesn't matter how big your brain if you can't keep it in your trousers.
Jugglers are tuppence a throw. I might entertain a 'swordswallower' but I would have to know them reasonably well or buy them a cappuchino first.
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