Thursday, January 31, 2008

It's natural

"It's natural."

Easy slip

Translation: I believe that anything natural is good and anything unnatural, or man made, is bad. I will continue to follow this belief blindly, although the way I live is very far removed from a 'state of nature'. Animals are natural, so is 'the rainforest', they are nice. Factories are manmade, and bad. The fact that adequate nutrition, birth control, paper, telephones, pets and other things that make my life bearable are not natural is something I quietly ignore, though its roar may be deafening to you. I will also ignore the fact that not everything in the world can be divided into 'natural' and 'unnatural'. What do you mean 'false dichotomy'? Did you just use a long word? Can't you just shut up?

Hitler did/thought/liked

"Hitler did/thought/liked . . ."

So true!

Translation: I know very little about Hitler or the history of Nazi Germany. I just think of Hitler as a trump card to use in arguments. Anything associated with Hitler must be Nazi in its very nature. If Hitler trained as an architect, goddamn it I'm going to say architects are Nazis. If Hitler had brown eyes then anyone with brown eyes must be destroyed.
e.g. My sister described something or someone as 'intelligent' in a university tutorial during a discussion that was in no way related to Nazism. Another student glared at her and said "Hitler was intelligent".

Have you swallowed the dictionary?

"Have you swallowed the dictionary?"

Big No

Translation: Did you just use a long word? I don't use long words. Neither do any of my friends. Using words of more than two syllables is unnecessary. We don't need long words. Or words of any length that I don't yet know. No, we don't need subtleties of meaning, those words are just there to confuse people, and you are being deliberately perverse by using them. I'm not going to take it as a compliment that you thought I was intelligent enough to say something to me that was complex enough to require words not used in everyday conversation. And I'm not going to ask you what that word means, the way you did when you first heard it. I'm going to get very angry and accuse you of being a snob. Only a snob would think I knew what a long word meant, or imagine that someone deserved to be taught a new word.