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Oh my god, oh my god, oh my oh my oh my.

My parents are watching some incarnation of 60 Minutes right now and the segment is about a phenomenon called synesthesia (sp?), wherein some people experience senses together, the most common being people who always see sounds as bright colours. There are also people who always have smells paired with sounds, or tastes paired with sights, or smells with touch, or any combination of senses that are just always grouped together for them.

It was pretty interesting, you know, until they started interviewing this one guy who described what words tasted like, very specifically ("Friday" was "spam, but sort of a fried spam...") And that's when the segment became wildly interesting, because I have always, always associated tastes with certain words. (Most words have some sort of taste for me, but certain words have extremely vivid tastes-- the words "prove", "improve", and "approve" are all raw lemons; "love" is a soft, tart yogurt; "Octavia" is scrambled eggs and "Kirsten" is spinach; "Sarah" is also lemon, but sweeter and more solid, "condition" and "question" are both fried Chinese noodles... well, there's just tons.)

It just shocked me because I figured that everyone does that-- you know, but that's what the synesthetes all thought too. And my mom says she doesn't taste words.

I think it may be part of the reason I'm so horribly suggestable when it comes to food, or where my unhealthy appetite comes from... words are all around me and if I taste them and it stimulates saliva, then I'll be more likely to eat when I'm not actually hungry... hence the obese monster (or, actually, I'm an obese mouse... an obouse?) you see before you.

I must do more research into this. (Research... peach-skin. Just the skin. Bittersweet.)

Why are you in Tavie's head? 8:57 PM | shower me with attention