This describes a condition where the subject sits motionless with eyes wide, staring glassily out at the world like one of those freakish Precious Moments ceramic figurines.

While this condition often denotes a complete lack of mental activity, often caused by too much time spent watching television, it can also be caused by an extremely high rate of mental activity, such as when you've been caught in the act and have to come up with a plausible explanation before everyone figures out what it was you were really doing.

This condition is very similar to going tharn.

Psychoceramics, or the study of cracked pots, is a term that was brought forward by the famed Brown University professor, Josiah Stinkney Carberry. This study is, on the grand scheme of things, focused on so-called "crackpots", why the theories and studies they produce are so bewildering to the guardians of their corresponding scientific community, and, more importantly, the cognitive processes they engage in.

Josiah S. Carberry was given birth to in the very building of Brown University Hall, and quite possibly also conceived right there. Sadly, this is no matter of a salacious tryst between a janitor and a librarian, but of an announcement posted in the University Hall's bulletin board by professor John Spaeth, which spoke of a lecture on "Archaic Greek Architectural Revetments in Connection with Ionian Philology" to be given by Spaeth's own figment of imagination; professor Josiah S. Carberry.

Ever since this hoax, Carberry has become a legend among both alumni and professors. Many, like Joel Feinberg from the University of Arizona, have taken to mentioning him in book acknowledgements. As well, every year a lecture of dimensions preposterous as those of the original one is announced, with professor Carberry always being absent for extraordinary motives.

A John S. Carberry fund has also been established, allegedly in memory of his "future late wife", as well as the tradition of placing cracked pots all around the University Hall and library on every Friday the 13th (denominated Carberry Day), where students deposit loose change to augment the fund. Said fund is meant to assist Carberry's fictional family, and to acquire books which Carberry "might or might not approve of" for the Brown University Library.

John S. Carberry has also won an Ig Nobel award, for his notable work in psychoceramics.

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Sources:

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/psychoceramics.html
http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/citations/psychoceramics_2/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_S._Carberry
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/libweb/about/hay/carberry.php
http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2006/04/03/Letters/Josiah.Carberry.Shares.Family.Recipes-1777202.shtml
http://www.analphilosopher.com/posts/1075930981.shtml
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/bookplates/fund.php?account=054082

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