Great continuity Tony.

@Imaginacian

I'd like to think that's because we are artsy philosophical types. That's like asking what is Art or Truth no?

Well, the thing that genuinely tickles me is doing the "real" stuff. Pendulums, hypnosis, readings - Things that aren't 'tricks' per se, but feel really magical and mystical to see happening.

It also tickles me to watch all these people vying to claim the labels that only people in this world care about.

I also get amused by the hypocritical absoluteness of statements made by some non-believers.

I've thought long and hard about this kind of thing over the years - and certainly changed my mind in various ways and degrees on the subject...

these days, I've settled on the following - it is to use my own personal viewpoints about life and what things are and are not to help shape what I present in any kind of situation...i'm from an arty background, CBT trained now, got a few main influences/loves - and have some strong views on things that leak into most mentalism... I'd rather talk about the things I do believe in, and consider healthy, than act and re-inforce things I feel are unhealthy or jar against my world view...

My own twist on a method for my now favourite word test, I use Nietchze's - Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is. If you know the chapter titles, you'll know why I find it such an appropriate book and quite a fun in joke...and I honestly rate Fred highly as an interesting and sometimes deeply misunderstood human being...

that's interesting, I see the ideomotor response, hypnosis and readings all as natural things - I don't feel they are magical or mystical in anyway...they are unusual, maybe surreal and often thought provoking, fun, entertaining, moving (pardon the pun)...but never magical or mystical in my version of the world...

labels are fascinating and interesting things aren't they...

I know exactly what's happening when I do it, but I still really enjoy it. I think it, and it happens. That's cool. And I watch other people do this sort of stuff for the first time and I see the look on their face and that's great, too.

Yeah - me too, I tend to present it with a question "if I could show you how your unconscious mind can communicate with us all right now...would you like to see it?"...

its also why I love Bob Burns' The Swan technique...

Anyway - back to the tickle and bemusement...

when I see mentalists leapfrog from papery product to papery product - if you wanted to do it for real, I guess the brutal answer might be that you use all borrowed paper...but that's not entirely practical, so as a professional person, you might well carry your own papery product...

BUT! in my view, I would just use one papery product for clarity and consistency...to jump from post-it notes for one thing, then business cards for another and then a notepad and then back to business cards once more...just feels odd to me, I know WHY we do it, but maybe just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should...

so if you're happy with a 4B pencil and a block of post-it notes, then I see no reason why I would (realistically) jump from those post-it notes to business cards all of a sudden... when I use post-it notes at work, I use them for all things unless I need to shift logically to say, an A4 pad because I'm sketching something that needs that bigger wider space... otherwise, it all gets put down on those post-it notes...

before anyone says it "the public don't care!" - and they may be right (I don't know how they measure it truly, but that's another discussion) - but what I would say to that is, is that I CARE...and that is also important, because I want to it all to feel natural and relaxed...

I get a tickle when a participant realizes we've past a point of no return. That is, maybe he's been pretty skeptical or stoic and I'm revealing a word he's thinking of. I get one letter, he's steady. I get a second letter, he gets a little smile out of the corner of the mouth. That's the moment. He knows this can only end one way. As we go through the routine he descends more into giggles and disbelief and everyone else's reaction is magnified tenfold. But that one little moment when the mask cracks and he knows how this has to end is a very fun moment.

Iain - I think about that, too. I try to use things that are consistent because it bugs me to do things that don't make sense.

Conner - I like that, too.

Another one - when I am doing a reading of some sort and throw something out that's purely intuitive/guesswork and it hits 100%. The look on their face is glorious.

The look on a volunteer's face when the other volunteer says, "I felt a tap on my shoulder." and then the look on the second one's face when the first one says "He never touched you."