Scary Faces

Now that this topic occurs to me, I wish I had thought of it a couple of days ago.

We've all heard about terms like "Love at first sight," or "First impressions are important."  I recently read a book titled BLINK which gives a bit of background on where these ideas may have come from.  The basic idea is that there is a lot of proof to suggest that we make better decisions when we are not overloaded with too much information.

Makes sense to me.

There are other books and such out there that talk about body language etc.  All of it tends to tell me that if I have an initial option about someone, just from the way they look, I may not be too far off.  Someone's appearance gives us a lot of information, much of which never makes it to our conscious, reasoning mind.   The brain takes in 400 billion bits of information a second, but we are only aware of 2,000 of those.  Aware is the key word.

I think my mind makes a lot of decisions based on those bits I am not aware of.  I could be wrong, and I probably am...but maybe I'm right.

Here are three faces that scare me for reasons I cannot put my finger on.

Here is the Pope.  From the moment he was first elected, I questioned the wisdom of choosing a guy that looks inherently evil.  I am not Catholic and tend to shake my head in disbelief when people tell me God has an open door policy as far as the Pope is concerned.  To me, he looks evil.  If I were to be in charge of casting for a Broadway version of A Christmas Carol, my first move would be to see if the Pope was available for the part of Scrooge.

The next guy is John Boehner, a leader in the Republican Party.  With him, I have a little more information to go on.  I have just voted, criss-crossing all party lines but, if I ever saw his name on a ballot, I would probably cut it out and throw it in the trash.  His aura, if there is such a thing, is dark.  He is a doom-sayer and thus, a doom-bringer.  If there is an anti-Christ, he would look like Boehner.  Visually, I get the impression of one that is not too bright but doesn't want you to know it.  On the plus side, he does seem to tan evenly.

And just to balance the scales, here is Nancy Pelosi.  While she has a certain Evil Witch of the West look about her, I see a controller. She is a female version of Montgomery Burns on the Simpsons. She is powerful and capable of wielding her power to great effect.  This could be a good thing but when I search for an aura, I only find bleakness.  She doesn't care about me - she cares about the power.  Power is her master, her constituent.

I realize that these views, in some cases wholly unsubstantiated, may not be fair.  But that's to be expected since my view is from the cheap seats.

Now to slip into a closet and don my own aura of Red, White a Blue for I must fight for Truth, Justice and the American way... and there is world saving to be done.  There is always a world to save.

Up, up and away...