I discovered a more tactful way I could have taught him. The Texas Hill Country has a line for this very occasion: ‘It’s Burnet, durn it, can’t you learn it?’

I had a wooden whistle, but it wooden whistle. Then I bought a steel whistle, but it steel wooden whistle. Then I bought a tin whistle…and now I tin whistle.

Is there a punchline somewhere? Is it a cruel prank, like a brain computer virus, intended to lock up victims’ brains as they pursue meaning that isn’t there? It doesn’t matter. By joke conclusion, my head had imploded in a rush of joke anticlimax.

My friend contributes to the field with Worst Job Applications, which I can only hope is a tentative name that will become less self-descriptive and more artsy in coming revisions. As a job interviewer, she receives self-indulgent résumés and melodramatic cover letters that cry out for public shaming. WJA is her quick and easy vector towards that goal.

She is working off her own received content at the moment, but she welcomes contributions from other interviewers.

Unlike schadenfreude—’taking pleasure in the misery of others,’ literally ‘pain pleasure’ in German—there is no word to describe this sensation. Jealousy or envy doesn’t quite cover it, as there is no sense of misery and too much sense of covetousness. The nameless phenomenon is an odd absence in English.

I propose, then, what is essentially (schadenfreude)^-1: freudenschade, ‘finding misery in the pleasure of others.’ ((This probably means the body of English words is not an abelian group: commutivity of multiplication is violated.)) I know you feel it; why not speak it now, too?

All the laughter was pent up in preparation for Case Western’s alma mater song. A tune that should inspire pride and honour in alumni instead made me struggle to keep from snickering. It was written in 1990, even though CWRU was founded in 1826.

Shine on, forever, Case Western Reserve.
Loyal and true are we (are we).
Your brave sons and daughters,
Your knowledge we use to make our history.

Our school days we will cherish forever more,
A lifetime of friends from the start (the start).
Shine on, forever, Case Western Reserve.
You’ll be forever in our hearts.

Let me outline a few rules for any future anthem writers that may be reading:

1. Don’t make your school song so generic that the college’s name can be swapped out with another and have it still make sense.
2. Don’t use the same noun word (pronouns excluded) more than twice. Count the number of times forever is used above. Thanks to Warren for pointing out that, in fact, forever is not a noun.
3. CWRU’s song could have been produced by a computer algorithm told to give weight to a short list of sentimentalist buzzwords. If your school song passes the Turing Test, you’re doing it wrong.
4. Creativity is rewarded, which is why ‘The Eyes of Texas’ is one of the most famous alma maters of all time to the point it is considered an unofficial state song. Phrases like ‘make our history’ are clearly plagiarised from Party of Five screenplays.

Hi Will,

It occurred to me that asking you to do a recitation in class might not be entirely fair and I wanted to give you the opportunity to do some other written assignment in lieu of this one or recite the lines to me in my office. I’m sorry I didn’t think of this earlier. I think last time we talked you mentioned you were scheduled for tomorrow, but it’s fine if you would prefer not to do it in class.

That class, I proceeded with the recitation and bombed, due more to memory failures than stuttering. Afterwards, she elaborated on the e-mail with me privately. She assumed I had a diagnosed speech impediment. The confused but not hostile look I had on my face must have made her want to curl up in a ball and die on the spot. I have the feeling I got a high grade on the project as an apology.

Prior to that class, I was pretty loose with my words. The impact of my professor’s misunderstanding goes beyond stuttering. Self-criticism of my stuttering spills over into general speaking ability. Everything I say is analysed by my brain after the fact for damage control purposes. I’ve become obsessed with the twelve-second past that most people retain as short-term memory. Did my sentence come out in a continuous stream? If not, rephrase it and say it right. Did I say unintentionally creepy? Panic and backpedal. Was there an unintended double entendre? Tack on a ‘That’s what she said’ and turn it in my favour.

No—scratch the last item. According to the laws governing that phrase, it has to be in response to another person’s comment, not your own. The best I can and will do is laugh along.

• What if there were no such thing as a hypothetical question?
• How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
• What if someone had a knife to cut us out of this hypothetical situation?
• Which would you rather fight, one queen-size mattress or two single-size mattresses?
• If you were a bear with chainsaw arms, what would be your stance on deforestation?
• What would you do if I cheated on you?
• What would you do if I slapped you?
• If trees screamed, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down?
• What if they screamed all the time for no good reason?
• Would you rather have another sibling or a toaster oven?
• Would you rather kill a turtle or have one of your good friends become a Scientologist?
• Were I to be a pretty, pretty lady, would you love me?
• If a shark were to high-five a bear with chainsaw arms, would it make a sound?
• What if 3-ways were required by law?
• What if Thucydides had been Herodotus? Would it make a sound?
• Would it make a sound?
• Could God, in his infinite Wisdom and Power, create a beer so bad that he himself could not drink it?
• If tissues were edible, what wine would be served with them?
• What if, in 1980, plutonium was available at every corner store?
• What if Jesus was the ultimate drinker?
• If wine could become blood, what blood type would it be?
• If you were an Athenian during the Peloponesian War fleeing a litigious and plague ridden Athens, what former king/rapist turned bird would go to for help? For extra credit, after you have constructed a wall blocking heaven off from earth, how would you convince Heracles to let you marry the Princess in order to become the highest divinity of all?
]]> http://blog.spamguy.org/2008/03/08/the-right-to-bear-chainsaws/feed/ 0 http://blog.spamguy.org/2008/03/06/2041/ http://blog.spamguy.org/2008/03/06/2041/#comments Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:51:34 +0000 spamguy http://blog.spamguy.org/2008/03/06/2041/ I love riddles, but the one that aggravates me the most is also one of the oldest, dating from 1650 or earlier:

As I was going to St Ives
I met a man with seven wives
And every wife had seven sacks
And every sack had seven cats
And every cat had seven kits
Kits, cats, sacks, wives
How many were going to St Ives?

The sucker’s answer is 2,401 or 2,402, depending on whether you include the narrator. This response is typically followed by a clever smirk by the riddler, because the actual answer is one: everyone is coming from St Ives except the narrator. Furthermore, the narrator is not the group of listed items, so in some circles the answer dwindles to zero.

This riddle plays the language game so much that it’s unfair for the victim not to be able to play it back. What is the context of meet? There is no preposition from or to detailing the travels of the narrator’s polygamous friend. Just as the victim is mocked for believing everyone is travelling together, the questioner should be chided for assuming the two characters are travelling in opposite directions.

It’s generally just a horrible Mother Goose rhyme to read to your five year-old. The ambiguity of it will make his face implode. Stick to the tried-and-true questions with no loopholes: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

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