mondays and popular culture

7/31/2019 Mondays and Popular Culture

1/33

Mondays and

Popular Culture

Soph Laugh


2/33

Mondays and Popular Culture 2

IntroductionMondays are a central feature within a seven-day period known as the week. Mondays

occur during the workweek as opposed to the weekend, and occur in virtually every society

- including parallel universes - in the world. While Mondays differ significantly from other

days of the week, there are some common features and frequent phenomena that are both

interesting and significant.

The first and biggest problem faced in writing an overview of Monday and popular culture

is trying to define it. Broad definitions, favored by supporters of Bart Simpson, for

example, assert that they "hate" Mondays.

Mondayologists see Mondays as an umbrella term for just about all aspects of everyday

experience, including commonplace material culture such as processed foods, shotty


3/33


construction, graphic design of anti-Monday sentiments, t-shirts with anti-Monday

inscriptions, street art depicting anti-Mondayism, and just about anything else that people

use as they go about bad-mouthing Mondays.

Narrower definitions often found in American studies and in popular culture studies in

various disciplines in academic circles in the United States often tend to limit the

definition to the popular arts and entertainments, such as unpopular literature, waste-of-

time journalism, lame graphic arts, bad performances, and the hysterical mass media. The

other areas that might be included as Monday popular culture are left for folklore/folk life

studies, anti-Mondayism material culture studies, and Mondays as a social

phenomenonper se.

While Mondays can certainly be studied in every aspect of everyday life, there's more than

enough to deal with in managing with Mondays than meets the eye. Take, for example,


4/33


this essay: it is being written on a Monday. The writer of said essay didn't sleep a wink

last night. Three cups of tea later and the screen on said writer's computer is still fuzzy.

Said writer, an avid Rollerblader, didn't go out to the bike trail this morning, making this

Monday a particularly dreadful one. All in all, writing a tedious academic soliloquy about

Mondays and Popular Culture seems less appealing than returning to bed, which is an

indication that anti-Mondayism is contagious.

In one sense of the definition of Mondays, popular culture is a contradiction, an oxymoron.

If we define culture in the old-fashioned sense of the term - as "cultivated" or refined


5/33


products of civilization, as say advocates and other defenders of sophisticated and elite

expression have done - most of what we include in our study of Mondays and popular

culture simply does not qualify as it is the lot of the common citizen that gives rise to

cynicism about being out of control, a concept associated with Mondays.

The need for the expression "Mondays suck" arises from a perceived necessity to

distinguish "high" or elite cultural expression from the "low" or commonplace. Indeed a

very familiar classification system goes one step further, attempting to distinguish among

"high, "low," and "middle," sometimes termed "highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow"

Mondays. Trying to pin down just what it is meant by these designations is the first, and

perhaps the funniest, exercise in exploring Mondays in Popular Culture.


6/33


There are so many problems, complications, contradictions, and inadequacies connected

with classifying Mondays according to Popular Culture that it would take the rest of my

Mondays to address them all. That amount of effort on a Monday simply does not work for

me, and furthermore there is no mass audience egging me onward to do so. The range of

anti-Mondayism, its motives, functions, and cultural significance will have to wait for

another day.


7/33


Psychology of MondaysPsychology is about people. Hence the psychology of Mondays refers to the study of

Mondays and people. Monday Psychology is a science of the behavior of living organisms

on Mondays, its causes and consequences. Behavior on Mondays refers to activities and

processes that can be objectively assessed and recorded. They may be visible externally

(like wearing a t-shirt that says, I hate Mondays), or virtually (such as posting an Anti-

Monday comic on Facebook). Monday Behavior may also refer to internal processes and

what the mind does, like sensations on Mondays, perceptions of Mondays, memories of

past Mondays, thoughts about Mondays, dreams, motives regarding the avoidance of

Mondays, emotional feelings about Mondays, and other subjective experiences. Causes of

Monday behavior may be internal (like personality) or external (like the social situation),

and so may be the consequences. Monday Psychology wants to describe (e.g., how are

Mondays?), explain (e.g., why do we hate Mondays?), predict (e.g., who likes Mondays?)

and control (e.g., can we avoid Mondays?) behavior.


8/33


For a psychology of Mondays we need to be precise in describingthe behaviors and

phenomena involved, like the cognitive processes involved in the creation of a funny comic

about Mondays, or the many levels of the emotional response to a brilliant joke about

Mondays. When explainingMonday behavior we ideally want to arrive at laws, such as

perceived Mondayness varies in an inverted u-form as a function of the degree of

incongruity with other days of the week, and when we study whether extraverted

individuals complain more about Mondays than introverts wepredict Mondayists. When

we ultimately are able to make Mondays neutral, or turn anti-Mondayists into benevolent

whimsical Mondayists, we have ultimate proof that we control our internal Monday.

Psychology has its roots in both philosophy and physiology and intersects with, or is

informed by many other academic disciplines. Not surprisingly, early Monday

psychological studies were in the tradition of neither one since this is the first academic

analysis of Mondays. Following the earlier posts of Sophy Laughing in 2012, the empirical


9/33


study of various physiological components of Mondayitis, like respiration, vocalization,

pupil dilation, or heart rate have yet to take place but are now being considered by

Bandwagonists everywhere in the hope of capitalizing on the global fascination with

Mondays. No observations of pathological or drug-induced Mondayitis or possible

neurophysiological studies have been made either.

The influence of philosophy was most visible and lasting through its subfield of

aesthetics, which addressed not only qualia like beauty, harmony, and tragedy, but also

Mondays. While psychologists have conducted no empirical studies of Mondays,

experimental aesthetics might consider changing that in the future, as it is a natural

home for the psychological study of Mondays. Readers of other disciplines should note that

as a science, Monday psychology endeavors to answer questions through the systematic

collection and logical analysis of objectively observable data from Mondays. An empirical

study typically utilizes a SOPHistical methodology, e.g., carefully thought out

experimental designs on Mondays, psychometrically sound Monday assessment tools, and

statistical treatment of the data collected on any given Monday. Those and related

features separate scientific articles on Mondays from pop psychology books, Garfield and

Savage Chicken anti-Mondayism comics, and essays about Mondays.


10/33


Monday psychology is one of the disciplines that could contribute most to the

knowledge on Mondayitis. However, research on Mondays and sucky feelings, like in

other humdrum phenomena, surprisingly, has not hit the academic circles in the field of

psychology. This may, perhaps, be due to the avoidance of Mondays in conjunction with

the consumption of mass quantities of caffeine on Mondays, which leads to lethargy

causing said academics to overlook the very day they feel their worst as an opportunity

to shed light on many psychological behaviors and conditions associated with a social

phenomenon, but what I do know? Im not a psychologist; Im a self-proclaimed

philosophical humorist.

While the discovery of Mondays as a research topic might skyrocket after the

publication of this essay, I presume the initial research will have a strong experimental,

developmental, and cognitive focus, with a later trajectory towards personality, and

applied issues like health and therapy for Mondays. None of these basic issues have been

addressed so in this undertaking I am far from being on solid ground when having

progressed to the application of Mondayology. Luckily, I dont really care, so Im going for

it anyhow. Readers are advised to study anthologies and journal articles about any subject

they choose or ditch that and read comics, post on Facebook, tweet on Twitter, or hang out

with friends in your local pub. The choice is entirely up to you, a concept we will address in

second part of this essay on free will and thoughts about Mondays. It should be noted that

excellent research on Mondays can be undertaken outside the research community from

people using other umbrella texts, like Victor Raskins The Primer of Humor Research, a


11/33


text from which this author, writing on a Monday, is using as a crutch for a laziness in

writing an authentic publication on the subject purported to be explored herein.

However, Mondays are rough in this respect, and massive quantities of caffeine

dont always resolve the feelings associated with Saint Monday (1753), an expression used

with reference to the practice among workmen of being idle Monday, as a consequence of

drunkenness on the Sunday before. Clergymen, meanwhile, when indisposed complained

of feeling Mondayish (1804) in reference to effects of Sundays labors. What Im saying

here is if you dont like my parodical essay on Mondays, cut me some slack, it is Monday,

after all, and you know what they say about Mondays:


12/33


10 Urban Myths about Mondays

1. More than 50% of employees are late to work.2. Monday is the most hated day of the week.3. People aged above 40 suffer more on Mondays.4. Monday productivity rates are 30% lower than other days of the

week.

5. More people die on Mondays than any other day of the week.6. More people want to die on Mondays than any other day of the

week.

7. Monday is the least rainy day of the week, causing worldwidedrought and famine.

8. The French Revolution was conceived of on a Monday.9. All cars bought on Mondays will be lemons (French Urban Myth).10.Nobody likes Mondays.


13/33


Regardless, all subfields of psychology seem to contribute to the understanding of

Mondays and moaning. In fact, Mondays can be studied in relation to cognition,

motivation, and emotion. There are individual differences in Mondays that maybe

habitual or transient, and there is a development across the life span (myth #3). Changes

in Mondayitis may be brought about experimentally and by the systematic experiencing of

Mondays. There are genetic and environmental factors. Mondays contributes to emotional

health, and are important in learning and social relationships. Thus, Mondays are an

important domain of human functioning and deserve attention from both basic research as

well as parodies on the matter.

Literature review

The following review will group the literature around some basic issues relating to the

structure and dynamics of Mondays. As psychology is concerned with people, the view

onto Mondays will be made from the individuals perspective; e.g., the phenomena

associated with responding to or creating an internal sense of dread regarding Mondays


14/33


and not a description of Monday itself. It is not aimed to give a full account of the

psychological literature on Mondays, which is not possible given the constrictions of this

writers perceptions on Monday, the day of the week in which this essay is being written.

Rather sources will be mentioned where further information can be figured out by asking

more questions about the subject of Mondays.

The This is Monday Perception

The core of the experience of Mondays is the perception that something bad is about to

happen, and indeed ratings of discontent with Mondays could utilizes as an assessment

tool in experimental research on Mondays.


15/33


Although the perception that itfeels like Monday (i.e., the Monday response a

further parody of McGhees 1971 humor response) is a unique experimental quality, it is

not a primary quality of one single stimulus that we perceive directly (like Saturdays) but

it involves a comparison. Typically we experience an incongruity between objects, between

elements of an object, or between a Monday and an exception. Perceiving such stimuli

properties may cause us to engage in playful processing of incongruity and we feel the

lightness associated with our amusement in complaining about Mondays or the

heaviness associated with hearing other complain about Mondays. However, the second

meanings of the term Monday also refers to the unusual (e.g.,peculiar, strange, or odd) as

well as to the suspicious (There was something Mondayish about that cancelled order)

reminding us that not all incongruities are perceived as non-serious or not consequential.

On Mondays the information we perceive is not really important and does not require an

immediate and appropriate response: we know this is Monday, a day filled with idle ideas.

There is no need to upgrade our knowledge system as the information we received only

has a Mondayish truth; it is Monday, a day when sense and nonsense collide.

The nature and intensity of the subjective experience of Monday is could be

measured via a 7-day Week scale ranging from not at all Monday ( = 1) to extremely

Monday ( = 7). Studies show that mediocre responses to different days of the week (Hump

Wednesday, Thank God Its Friday, and I love Saturdays!) do overlap, but they are

independent of Mondays. It should be mentioned that Mondayness ratings typically are

prone to produce skewed distributions, so dont take my word for it. Most individuals do

find overly focus on Mondays, while other individuals claim that everyday feels like


16/33


Monday. Whos to say whos right? Researchers (namely me) who have investigated half-

heartedly this subject report greater variances in response when this question is asked on

Mondays. So, for whatever its worth, there you go.

The analysis of Mondays and their relation to related qualities have also been

neglected in terms of psychological Monday research. Id like to interject a GIANT duh

here given that I already stated nobody has written anything on the subject of Mondays,

but Ill go along with what I was saying so that this essay might serve as further impetus

to write on the subject of Mondays. In research, previously stuffy academics like myself

assume that there is only one experimental quality that Mondays evoke, namely

Mondayness, albeit to a different degree. This position does not neglect the fact that in

most languages we do have different terms to refer to Monday stimuli and events, such as

Monday morning quarterback (1932, Monday being the first day back at work after the

weekend, when school and college football games were played), andBlack Monday (mid-


17/33


14c.) is the Monday after Easter day, though how it got its reputation for bad luck is a

mystery. Mondays also seem to have different flavors, such as lethargy, sluggishness,

inactivity, caffeine deficiency, slowness, listlessness, laziness, idleness, apathy, weariness,

tiredness, and indifference. Depending on how narrow or broad we define the realm of

Mondays we also do have phenomena like Friday the 13thto contend with. While those

may well be perceived as like a Monday, it is questionable that the sole rating of degree of

Mondayness fully represents the Mondayistic world of the receiver. In other words, do

ratings offeels like Monday and Oh God, it must be Monday covary with judgments of

Monday in irony and sarcasm, respectively? A factor analysis of 23 qualities (e.g., funny,

droll, bizarre, macabre, absurd, subtle) used to judge 60 jokes and cartoons about Mondays

yielded a two-dimensional space. One dimension was more cognitive (subtle, ingenious vs.

odd, bizarre) and referred to more structural features of jokes and the other referred more

to motivational qualities (stinging, macabre vs. droll, touching) presumably reflecting the

impact of the content of the jokes and cartoons about Mondays. Nevertheless, all 23 terms

assumed unique places in that day called Monday suggesting that they all measured

different aspects of inherent Mondayness. The perception of Mondayness was located

directly in the diagonal (subtle high, droll high) suggestion that both dimensions

contributed equally to this perception.


18/33


Smiling While Moaning About Mondays

Smiling while moaning is the most frequent response to Mondays. A review of absolutely

no studies other than my own reveals that in experiments on smiling while moaning

occurs roughly five times more often during Sunday evenings in anticipation of Monday

Morning, Monday morning, and the daily commute back and forth to work on Mondays.

However, smiling while moaning is a misleading category as there might be about 20

types of smiling while moaning that can be distinguished from an anatomical basis of

smiling without moaning. For example, there are five facial muscles that are able to

create an upward move of the lip corners (i.e., the zygomatic major, zygomatic minor,

levator anguili oris, buccinators, and risorius muscles) but only one of them, the zygomatic

major muscle, is involved in the smile of enjoyment.


19/33


When individuals genuinely enjoy hating Mondays they show the facial

configuration named the Laughing display (not to dishonor Duchenne who first described

how a sincere pattern distinguished enjoyment smiles from other kinds of smiling, but

from Sophy Laughings sarcastic description of smiling while moaning about Mondays

kind of smiling). The Laughing display refers to the joint contractions of the zygomatic

major and orbicularis oculi muscles (pulling the lip corners backwards and upwards and

raising the cheeks causing eye wrinkles, respectively) while immediately thereafter

engaging the Oh my God, its Monday depressor anguli oris muscle, which controls the

mouth and pulls the corners of the mouth downward. Located at the lower border of the

mandible (jaw bone), this muscle, when engaged, distorts the smile to a Monday smile-

frown. The mentalis muscle, which sits just below the lower lip near the chin and moves

upward to cause the lower lip to curve downward, depresses the lower lip to assist in the

downward curvature of the frown. It is the cause for wrinkling the skin of the chin,

indicating that premature aging could be linked to Monday smile-frowns, a study that has

yet to be undertaken by anyone with half a brain. The Monday smile-frown also involves

pulling the lips inward, which is called pursing the lips. The orbicularis oris muscles

encircle the mouth and cause the lips to purse inward, creating wrinkles in the lips.

Studies on Botox Treatment for Winkles in Lipsis yet another study few, if any, have

considered conducting because I just made the term up within the last 5 minutes of

writing this paragraph. Theplatysma also assists in the overall Monday smile-frown by

pulling down the lips, causing wrinkling on the skin of the lower face. It is a broad sheet of

a muscle that sits just above the chest and runs along the sides of the neck up to the


20/33


bottom part of the side of the head and underside of the chin. Theres ample evidence that

Monday smile-frowns could be linked to migraine headaches, but then again, I just made

that up, too, so, at present, no studies have yet been conducted on the validity of that

quasi-claim.

Supporting Muscles Involved in Monday Smile-Frowns

A Monday smile-frown does not only involve muscles near the mouth. The smile-frown

uses muscles near the eyes and near the forehead. After someone smiles and then frowns,

the eyes will also crinkle downward, mimicking the mouth movement. The orbicularis

oculi is a muscle that surrounds each eye and causes the eyes to turn downward and

crinkle as the mouth pulls downward. It is also a bilateral muscle, meaning there is an

identical muscle surrounding each eye, working independent of one another. Theories on

the variances of Monday smile-frowns for pirates who wear eye patches have not yet been

conducted, but would be interesting in terms of Mondays perceived with incongruous


21/33


thoughts on either the positive or negative nature of Mondays, in particular if said pirate

won a wad of money at a Monday Night Bingo Game.

Smile-frowns result in a furrowing of the brow, which is a horizontal wrinkling of

the mid forehead. The corrugator supercilii (a bilateral muscle) andprocerus (a singular

muscle) furrow the brow. The corrugator supercilli is a thin muscle that sits on the inside

of the eyebrow, just above the area where sunglasses sit on a persons nose. The upper

part of the muscle is attached to the skin of the lower forehead. If youre anything like me,

you just tried this while watching yourself in a mirror. Not a pretty sight, is it?

What Happens During Monday Smile-Frowns

Typically there is a harmonic time course in the action of both smiling and frowning

muscles across onset, apex, and offset, and the contraction is symmetric and is in the time

span between one half and 4 to 5 seconds. Smile-frowns not following those definitions are

perfectly possible given I have not take a single recording of the matter other than the one


22/33


I did in the mirror (above), which I didnt record. It likely that shorter smile-frown

durations are made in defiance and do not reflect genuine enjoyment of the dislike of

Mondays.

While the expression of Monday smile-frowns is innate we have learned when and

to who we should show or not show Monday smile-frowns. Social experiments may activate

those display rules, which might alter our facial actions. Scholars of Mondays should

therefore look at facial signs of the attempt to dampen, control, or suppress smile-frowns,

as those are of significance. When the experimenter or a companion is present,phony

Monday smile-frowns may occur. Phony Monday smile-frowns try to convince somebody

that one enjoys making fun of Mondays when actually nothing much is felt. These are

deliberate (voluntary, contrived) contractions of the zygomatic major muscles (that might

be unilateral, outside the time limits given above, and most likely also not having a

smooth ballistic movement between the engagement of the depressor anguli oris muscle,


23/33


commonly referred to the downer muscle. Most importantly, the eye region is not

involved in this time of Monday smile-frown. Deliberate facial actions probably have their

origin in the motor strip of the neocortex, while spontaneous emotional movements

originate in the subcortical motor centers.

Monday smile frowning (and the facial component of Monday laughter-moans) has

not been assessed by the Facial Action Coding System. FACS is a comprehensive,

anatomically based system for measuring all visually discernible facial movement. It

describes all visually distinguishable facial activity on the basis of 44 unique action units

(AUs), as well as several categories of head and eye positions and movements. FACS

coding procedures allow for coding of the intensity of each facial action on a 5-point

intensity scale, for the timing of facial actions, and for the coding of facial expressions in

terms of events. An event is the AU-based description of each facial expression, which may

consist of a single AU or many AUs contracted as a single expression. FACS therefore

allows for a comprehensive assessment of all facial events related to Mondays. Learning


24/33


FACS takes approximately 100 hours or one week of intensive training, something I

havent bothered doing, but now that Im thinking about it, sounds like a good idea; in

particular if I wanted to open up a Psychic readings practice, whereby reading facial

expressions would come in handy when trying (and getting paid) to sound psychic.

Monday Laughter

Laughter associated with the dislike of Mondays is often seen as synonymous with

Mondays. I like to refer to this laughter as The Revenge of Eden, whereby:

James Ussher (1581 1656), Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, Vice-

Chancellor of Trinity College in Dublin, based on an intricate correlation of Middle

Eastern and Mediterranean histories and Holy writ, incorporated into an authorized

version of the Bible printed in 1701, that the first day of creation was Sunday 23 October

4004 B.C., calculating the days of other biblical events, such as when Adam and Eve were


25/33


driven from Paradise, on Monday 10 November 4004 B.C. [Craig, G.Y., and E.J. Jones, A

Geological Miscellany, Princeton University Press, 1982.]

A book on Mondays in the medieval ages might be an interesting topic is anyone is

interested in a disimpassioned writing topic for a graduate school thesis. In the study of

the psychology of Mondays, the two concepts are more carefully distinguished, as there is

laughter without Mondays (e.g., social, embarrassed, or nervous laughter) and enjoyment

associated with the ridicule of Mondays that does happens on a different day of the week

other than Monday, especially in experiments, when research participants would most

likely be tested in solitude. Still the psychological study of laughter associated with

disliking or criticizing Monday includes the study of Monday smile-frowns and Monday

Laughter for a myriad of reasons, none of which come to mind at this very moment.

Monday Laughter is also not unambiguously defined in research articles or

encyclopedias. In fact, its not defined in any article or encyclopedia, but if it were, I would

imagine that researchers would refer only to the respiratory or vocal component of the


26/33


expressive Monday Laughter pattern (neglecting the face), sometimes referring to the

whole act or behavioral episode. In studies of primates who dont know the days of the

week, the face (when laughing) gets the most attention (relaxed open-mouth display) and

in everyday life a smiling face is often referred to as laughter although the criticism of

Mondays and the vocal parts are missing. As a consequence of the lack of a comprehensive

view on Monday Laughter, there are no estimations of such basic parameters such as

duration. Studies of the face would have to be conducted to know the mean duration of

Monday Laughter, as well as acoustic studies of Monday Laughter to determine whether

or not there are any variances between the two. Presumably the latter would include only

the parts during which respiratory changes occur and thus cover a smaller portion of the

entire response. Naturally, no morphology-based taxonomy exists for Monday Laughter,

and nothing comparable has been attempted for the more complex behavior associated

with laughter evoked from the pure disdain of Monday as a concept. While dictionaries

distinguish between, for example, hearty and derisive laughter, or between a guffaw,

chuckle or chortle, the separation is not done at an objective (e.g., physiological, muscular,

acoustic, Monday) basis so far. Decoder studies could show whether people agree in their

interpretation of Monday Laughter, whether some types of cynical Monday Laughs yield

different FACS-codes and whether nave listeners are able to identify the nature of the

Monday Laugh. Acoustic analyses of Monday Laughter might occasionally distinguish

among types of Monday Laughs, such as Monday Laughter induced by reading Anti-

Monday comics, Monday Laughter associated with individual mocking of Mondays, or

hearty Monday Laughter at the end of the day.


27/33


Darwin (1872) gave a comprehensive and in many ways remarkably accurate

description of laughter in terms of respiration, vocalization, facial action and gesture and

posture, but he didnt write anything on Monday Laughter, which would have no doubt

been updated, elaborated upon, or corrected in contemporary writings. Darwin noted,

[t] he sound of laughter is produced by a deep inspiration followed by short,

interrupted, spasmodic contraction of the chest, and especially of the diaphragm. A man

smiles and smiling, as we shall see, graduates into laughter. (Charles Darwin 1997

[1872]: 195). A graduated series can be followed from violent to moderate laughter, to a

broad smile, to a gentle smile, and to the expression of mere cheerfulness (p. 206).

Between a gentle laugh and a broad smile there is hardly any difference except that in

smiling no reiterated sound is uttered, though a single rather strong expiration, or slight

noise a rudiment of a laugh may often be heard at the commencement of a smile (p.

208). During excessive laughter the whole body is often thrown backward and shakes, or

is almost convulsed. (Darwin 1997 [1872]: 206-207). Were Darwin to write on Monday

Laughter, it might have gone something like this, Lundi, je vous fais grce tous! [For

you, Monday, I pardon all!]. This is humour on the grand scale, and if when we hear it

we do not laugh, that is because our admiration for disliking Mondays covers the

humorous pleasure.


28/33


Cognitive processes associated with Mondays

No theories have been proposed to explain the perceived funniness of disliking Mondays;

with cognitive approaches being the most prominently overlooked together with arousal

and superiority of Fridays theories. Recently, I thought about writing about cognitive

theories on the superiority of Fridays but abandoned the project in favor of criticizing

Mondays in this parodic representation ofThe Primer of Humor Research given my belief

that said book probably didnt sell too many copies other than to researchers in the field

and students of said subject and my further belief that the collection is one of the most

important collections put together in one book, which gives anyone truly interested in


29/33


humor studies, a great overview of the subject. Notwithstanding, I believe that humor is a

subject that interests everyone, and that if one were to relate it to something to which

most everyone relates, such as the dislike for Mondays, as opposed to the preference for

Fridays (as some people may not have day jobs and thus not give a rats ass about the

subject), then said book would have a much better chance of selling, resulting in sales for

the author of this parody as well as the authors associated with the aforementioned book

on humor research. Thats my theory and Im sticking by it.

(This little guys defiance never ceases to make me laugh!)

Cognitive theories on Mondayitis as opposed to Friday Thank-Godedness would

typically analyze the structural properties of Monday stimuli or the way they are


30/33


processed; sometimes these two levels are also mixed up. Perhaps beginning with

Aristotle, incongruity with goofing-off was considered to be a necessary condition for

Mondays. From this perspective, Mondays involve the bringing together of two normally

disparate ideas, concepts, or situations in a surprising or unexpected manner. Despite

what will no doubt be critics to this undertaking, there is widespread agreement among

the voices in my head that incongruity is a necessary condition for Mondays. However,

some of the more docile voices argue that it is not a sufficient one. Incongruity associated

between the grand perceived distinctions between Monday mornings and Friday nights

may also lead to puzzlement and even to averse reactions. Therefore, such variables as the

resolution of the incongruity (party like its Friday night), the acceptance of unresolvable

incongruity (theres nothing you can do about Mondays), or the safeness of the context in

which the incongruity is processed (just deal with it) have yet to be proposed. Further,

absolutely no one has emphasized the importance of the distinction between possible and

impossible incongruities and between complete and incomplete resolutions. This is

important, as only possible incongruities can be resolved completely while for an

impossible incongruity only a partial resolution is possible, and a residue of Mondays

incongruity is left.


31/33


The definitions of Monday incongruities (conflicts between what is felt on days

other than Monday and the actual feelings associated with the experience of Mondays)

and the resolution (second, more subtle aspect of Mondays which renders incongruity

meaningful or appropriate by resolving or explaining it as a bad day) refer to the process

already, and less to the material.

Some of my Facebook friends have provided precise descriptions on what Mondays

stand for, most notably are Gabriel Dayans contributions: Morosely Omnipotent


32/33


Nuisance Destroys All Yummiliciousness, My Own Neediness, Deep and Yearning,

Magnificently Outrageous Nemesis, Doom Advances Yonder, Maybe Only Narcissists

Dream About Yesterday, and for kids who do their homework: My Obedient New Dog

Ate Yours. (Gabriel Dayan, Monday, June 11, 2012).

Linguists have yet to provide a precise description of what defines a Monday (Greek

day of the moon). It would be pretty freaking awesome if Raskin would present in detail

the first formal semantic theory of Monday, which due to its reliance on the concept of

day after Sunday would become known as the Semantic Script Theory of Monday

(SSTM). The SSTM could be summarized as two necessary and sufficient conditions. A

text about Mondays if and only if both the conditions obtain: (i) the text is incompatible,

fully or in part, with other days; and (ii) the distinct days are not Mondays (i.e., the

negation of Monday, if only for the purpose of putting it into perspective), following a list

of basic oppositions, such as real/unreal Monday impersonators, possible/impossible


33/33


Mondays in alternate universe, etc. For example, Raskin could refer to Gabriel Dayans

poem:

Deliver me from my Mondays, O God;

Be my bank holiday fortress against those who are attacking me.

Deliver me from evildoers,

And save me from those who are after my weekend.

However, it is highly unlikely that Raskin would quote Dayan given that Raskin is

not one of my Facebook friends and has probably never read this response to my

announcement post on writing a book about Mondays.

How are Mondays cognitively processed? Perhaps we need to distinguish three

stages. Historically, often two stage models were described, however, referring to two

distinct albeit different stages or recursive processes. For Kant (1790) laughter was an

affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.

In other words, that which is originally perceived in one (often serious) sense is suddenly

viewed from a totally different (usually implausible or ludicrous) perspective. Monday

Laughter goes beyond disconfirmation of an expectation by positing that the incongruity

associated with wanting to goof-off as opposed to having to do something one doesnt

want to do needs to be reintegrated. As such, Monday laughter results from the sudden,

insightful integration of contradictory or incongruous ideas, attitudes, or sentiments which

are experienced objectively.

mondays and popular culture

Documents