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A colleague invited me for an 'ideas shower' the other day. My first assumption was that this was a trendy new type of sexual perversion whereby he might urinate on me while talking dirty.
Which isn't really my scene, so I told him to get stuffed. But it turns out I was wrong. 'Ideas shower' is in fact the new term for what was previously known as a 'brainstorm'. Brainstorm was ditched because it upset people with epilepsy. Or at least, it upset people who spend their time worrying about what might or might not upset epileptics.
Speaking as an epileptic myself, I never really thought of the term as offensive. That's because I've always interpreted it as a reference to an open-ended ideas meeting, not a derogatory reference to my unfortunate neurological condition.
In fact, now I come to think of it, I quite like the idea that my seizures
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Sam Delaney Newish Man |
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Apparently the word ‘brainstorm’ is offensive to epileptics. sam delaney likes it |
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might be referred to as brainstorms. It makes them sound cooler and more dramatic. Like the sort of thing a Marvel comic character might practise in order to summon up his superhuman powers. I can imagine myself alerting onlookers to the onset of an epileptic episode by bellowing: 'Behold the might of my magnificent Brainstorm!' - then passing out on the floor and twitching about for five minutes.
Certainly, brainstorm is a more agreeable way of referring to such incidents than, say, 'mongs', 'moodies' or 'spaz outs' - all of which have been used against me in the past.
Incidentally, it's quite common to wet oneself during a brainstorm. I like to describe this humiliating side effect as 'having an ideas shower in my pants'. 
FIRST POSTED MARCH 29, 2006
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Last week: at weekends I am scum
