This Thursday afternoon, I created a Slashdot account for the first time. One of the signup steps prompted me for about ten different forms of contact—email, AIM, ICQ, and “Warcraft Main”. I take it that last is a way of asking for some form of identity in World of Warcraft.
An hour or two later, there was a bit of music running through my head. It took me a few minutes to place it: it was a line of background music from Warcraft II, which Wikipedia helpfully reminds me was released in 1995. (In other words, when Newt Gingrich was shutting down the federal government, encyclopedias came on CD-ROM, and dinosaurs walked the earth.) The last time I heard that music through my ears was probably about 2000. Somehow, apparently, after I saw that name my brain decided to make a field trip browsing through some of the dustier shelves of the library, and it put this music on without my noticing.
On the other hand, right now as I’m actually thinking about this, I can’t recall the music even in fragments. Maybe in half an hour I’ll catch it playing in my head again.
I’ve had similar experiences before where I notice that the music playing in my head is connected to some stimulus from minutes or an hour earlier. I don’t think it’s ever come from a shelf this dusty before.
