There's a word for that.

[fflo]

Maybe what I've got is a vocabulary problem.

I was just looking up "tautological" to see if it had any special meaning in mathematics, and thinking how learning words like that sometimes, with the "There's a name for that phenomenon" aspect, make meaning gel or crystalize or solidify or what-you-will. Meaning is only metaphors and assigned associations, after all. Oh, maybe it's more than that, and a logician or linguist or neuroscientist or psychologist could flesh out the subject for me nicely. But none of them are around at the moment, anyway. It's just me and the insufficiently strong coffee.

But learning the names for rhetorical devices, fer instance, can turn you on to when a rhetorical device is being used on your ass. You know?

I don't know what I'm talking about. It's not exactly what things mean that I can't get at; it's what I feel about them. Or is that the same thing? How can you think about anything at all, the way doing so at all thoroughly makes it one big swirling mess of nothing? Is it wiser not to think about anything much, or to think only a tiny bit, in a flip, cursory way, unless the problem at hand is something like how to build a suspension bridge or a better mousetrap or something so superbly grounded in the physical?

I am now ready to accept your awards for Most Vapid Entry On My Friends Page Today.

Comments

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

I was surprised by the Melanie thing too. I rather hope it was in a song! I'd like to know her for something other than "Brand New Key" and that horrible song she did with The 6ths.

See, I tend to go with "That's so funny I choose to believe it's real." Life is far more entertaining that way. :)

Dude, I cannot tell you how much I miss the Calabi-Yau manifolds. I really think MR should up and move to Bangor. Put the whole operation on a trailer while everyone is at work, and by the time the day's out... here you are! And there's nothing you can do about it except assimilate and also let me back in. Not that I had anything to do with the trailer showing up in the first place...

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I kinda like that plan, Willie. I'll see what I can do! Maybe we could also forget to mention where we'd gone to the overseers "home" office "parent" company holders of the pursestrings...

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

Hee! I can't top that. :)