Archive for the 'Ego' Category

The gravity of their egos would probably rip me in half.

Published
by
Benjy
on Sunday April 28, 2002
in Ego, Linguistics, Metaphor, Philosophy and School
. Closed

So in the fall, I'm thinking about taking Philosophy of Language with John Searle (TTh 2-330), followed immediately by Metaphor with George Lakoff (TTh 330-5). For those of you who aren't in the know, Searle and Lakoff are both hugely egotistical. And while each of them has bigger fish to fry, their paths intersect often enough for there to be some irony in taking that pair of classes. Basically, I think this might be simultaneously one of the worst and best ideas I've ever had. Here's a couple of random comments that people have shared with me on the prospect:

    "It would be like escaping the pull of one black hole, only because you were sucked in by another one."
    -- Alert, on the prospect of Searle followed immediately by Lakoff.
    "It would be like a binary ego system. They don't want anything to do with each other, and yet no matter how hard they try, they can't get away from each other."
    -- Pi.

I'm not actually sure if I'll actually end up taking Searle, but I'm definitely taking Lakoff. Mmm, Metonymy.

It’s Irony!

Published
by
Benjy
on Monday December 17, 2001
in Ego, Favorites, Feedback, Folklore, Irony, Laugh and School: Finals
. 2 Comments

While I was taking my final tonight, I noticed my shirt was a little wet. I looked down, and saw a tear, and a red stain forming, and realized that the test had "ripped me a new one" when I wasn't looking. I touched the stain and then tasted my finger, and I wondered to myself, "Why does blood taste so sweet?"

It's irony.

Well, it didn't quite go like that, and the final wasn't actually that bad. But you see, I tend to take breaks to amuse myself during long tests, and during my final tonight, I ended up coming up with this jokeless punchline that I'm absolutely in love with: "It's irony." As in, employ some nice freestyle english footwork to arrive at the adjective irony, meaning "Of or pertaining to iron."

The best joke I've got for it so far (which, to give credit where credit is due, was offered up by Jan) is the above referenced "Why does blood taste so sweet?," which hopefully explains that whole little story above. But the problem with that joke is that it's just not... ironic enough for the punchline.

So, I'm still mulling over other possible jokes for the punch-line, and enjoyably, by the nature of folklore, a punch-line can have as many jokes as it wants. So, offer up suggestions! Try them out on your friends, family and co-workers! And most importantly, um... I can't think of a most importantly.

Oh, well, finally, it's perfectly possible that this punch line already exists in the wild (Hm, are punch-lines a form of joke parasites?), and that I just happened to have coincidentally bred a related strain during my final. And if that's the case, and I am just ripping off some clever person, please grind my ego down to a stump, and crush the filings into my foot. And then, when I ask if you can see anything stuck in my foot, you, can tell me "It's irony."