Mental Midget
From Falsipedia
Mental midgets (Alio-Minimus Sententia) are microscopic, elf-like creatures that have a symbiotic relationship with the human brain.
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Symbiotic Relationship
Mental midgets are essentially the brain's secretarial staff, filing memories and thoughts and retrieving them as situations warrant. As a human being watches a marathon of crappy 80's television, for example, the mental midget assigned to the recall of memories of bad television will rummage through an extensive archive of filed memories to select specific moments that were associated with the particular program and feed them into the main processing unit. This same mechanism is employed by literally hundreds of thousands of other types of memories and thoughts. When you remember fondly your first kiss, it is due to the hard work of a mental midget.
In exchange for this valuable service, the brain provides mental midgets with shelter and sustenance. Sustenance for the mental midget comes in the form of aged short-term memories. As a short-term memory is ready to be forgotten, a mental midget in the related area will actually devour the energy used to maintain the thought. A single electrical pulse of a neuron is enough to feed a mental midget for two to three weeks.
Rogue Mental Midgets
On occasion, a rogue mental midget will feed off the electrical impulses of the transfer of fresh thoughts. This causes several issues, the primary being that the thought is removed from the system, regardless of its current relevance. The second problem, and perhaps the most serious, is that once a mental midget has tasted fresh thoughts, it becomes very tempting to continue feeding on fresh thoughts.
Rogue mental midgets can convert normal mental midgets into rogues as well. If enough mental midgets go rogue it can cause chronic absent-mindedness. Eventually this rogue effect can lead to amnesia, Alzheimer's disease and other serious neurological disorders. If afflicted, seek the assistance of a neurologist immediately.
Other Dysfunctional Mental Midgets
It is also possible to have lazy or incompetent mental midgets in areas of the brain. A lazy mental midget will usually take longer to transmit a memory or thought than a standard mental midget. The effects of the lazy Alio-Minimus Sententia can be seen when you recall important information many minutes or even hours after the information was needed, such as an important name or how you know a person who has just greeted you.
Incompetent mental midgets tend to manifest themselves by providing the wrong memory or providing the correct memory along side other unrelated or unimportant memories. There is some speculation that Tourette's syndrome maybe exacerbated by an influx of incompetent mental midgets serving conflicting thoughts and memories.
Keeping the Mental Midgets Healthy
There are risk factors for problematic mental midgets that can be avoided through changing lifestyles and habits. One of the primary causes of a mental midget trying fresh thoughts is a general lack of mental activity. This can be countered by exercising your mind regularly by doing math, thinking about science, exploring history, having stimulating conversations with friends or reading and contributing to Falsipedia. With regular exercise, it has been reported that new, healthy mental midgets will come to an afflicted area, thereby reducing the influence of a rogue or other dysfunctional mental midgets.
Lifespan and Reproduction
Mental midgets live for about four years and count their age in REM cycles (REM's). A mental midget begins work after roughly 150 REM's and continues to work until they are 1,360 REM's old. Mental midgets reproduction schedule is cued by the level of brain activity. Mental midgets are able to reproduce between the ages of 300 REM's and 900 REM's. The gestation period of a mental midget is 90 REM's.
Mental midgets tend to court just before the REM stage is reached in the sleeping host's body. The potential suitors head to the brain stem, where the atmosphere of instinctual thoughts set a appropriate mood for the mating rituals. Mental midgets are not monogamous and mate frequently when the brain's activity level is adequate to support an influx of young workers. Unfortunately, some mental midgets are not very selective when it comes to mating, and incompetent mental midgets often are quite successful in the brain stem. Lazy mental midgets tend to be less successful unless their department is close to the brain stem, or they can catch a ride with other healthy mental midgets. Rogue mental midgets are usually too engrossed in devouring neural energy to come to the brain stem.
Offspring of mental midgets can either work in the same department as their mother or father, work as a liaison between the departments or occasionally form a new department which is a synthesis of the two parents areas. The third type tends to create opportunities for "out-of-the-box" thinking. If a parent is dysfunctional, there is a very high likelihood that the offspring will also be dysfunctional. This combined with the tendency of the offspring going to the same department of the parent causes certain areas of the brain to have a higher concentration of dysfunctional mental midgets. Again, with proper exercise, this can be overcome.
