Number 59
Do you think the Dalai Lama sends chain letters that promise more good luck the more people you forward them to? Do you think he concocted the Tibetan personality quiz that assesses your personality in a few simple questions? Do you think the man who wrote this:
By thinking of all sentient beings as
even better than the wish-granting gem
for accomplishing the highest aim
may I always consider them precious.
also wrote: "Cooking and love-making should be approached with reckless abandon"?
Misattributions are common on the Web, but someone had to go way out of his or her way to match up the Dalai Lama with the usual e-inanity. Why? If you came up with a fun little quiz or an amusing bit of persiflage, why not claim credit for it yourself? If you've forgotten the source, why would the Dalai Lama come to mind?
Perhaps he really does think a horse symbolizes family and a sheep symbolizes love and a yellow person is someone you'll never forget and a green one is someone you'll always remember. Perhaps he does want his rice cooked with reckless abandon, and perhaps he is innocently unaware of the consequences of the recklessly abandoned love-making going on all around of late. But I don't think so.
You can get a taste of the Dalai Lama's actual mode of thought and speech at (what else) http://www.dalailama.com. I think you'll find only a very general correlation between the thoughts of this contemplative man and the upward-groping piffle of the average person, and there's certainly a wide span between the syntax of the average American and that of a learned foreigner.
He's not the only one who gets words put into his mouth. If you are a Jane Austen fan, you may know that several people have written sequels to some of her novels, and completed at least one unfinished novel, Sanditon. There are numerous adaptations; the teen movie Clueless was loosely based on Emma. The temptation is understandable. It's too bad she didn't live at least twice as long and write three times as much. (I felt the same way after I discovered the novels of Barbara Pym. When I'd gotten to the end of her small output, and learned she was dead, I wished for more ~ and lo! a new Pym novel was published posthumously. But that's not something you can count on.) Someone is even writing a series of mysteries as if written by the inimitable Jane. Any imitators, however much they love her and however much they study late 18th or early 19th century diction and customs, are unable to replicate that fine mind. Trying to channel Jane Austen is as close as one can get to her now. But she's dead and the Dalai Lama is not.
*"One-L Lama" is from an Ogden Nash ditty:
The LamaThe one-L lama,
He's a priest.
The two-L llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet a silk pajama
There isn't any three-L lllama.Author's footnote: *The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.
Son Foy was watching TV late one night when he heard this Bush gem in a speech about his Mars plans: "spatial entrepreneurs." Luckily Foy wasn't watching TV alone, and his roommates were able to confirm that Bush did indeed say what he thought he heard. OK, it could have been "spacial" but that's really just a variation on "spatial" and it doesn't alter this particular reality warp anyway.
Maybe Bush intends to change NASA to the National Aeronautics and Spatial Administration, which will pursue spatial programs and send spatial men and women into space wearing spatial suits.
And who are those entrepreneurs? Are they going to set up hamburger stands on Mars or what?
The following appeared at the bottom of a spam advertisement I opened. It has no logical connection to the ad. Was it written by a bored copywriter, or is it a poetic missive from the universe? Most recent spam contains nonsense words intended to throw off spam filters, random letter and word sequences. ("Boson" and "acoma" are real words.) These random sentences have formed themselves into a pleasing, evocative bit of nonsense, inviting a leisurely smoke and rumination.
I can't help you there. That's fine, though. Our perception of the feminine seems to have changed. Thing [sic] will tend to fall apart.I won't try to get in the way. This is the end result of a life lived with consequences.
They can do what they want. I won't try to get in the way. I see your point. The acoma was dark like the plague.
I am a boson. The ratio of signal to noise has decreased significantly. I am not the wavy carpet. I am the happy kind. It's a question that can't really be answered. It was my favorite thing about her. You were pretty back in the old days.
And at some point, as they say, the map comes to resemble the territory. I'd really like to discuss this in greater detail. It will have to reverse itself eventually. Look:
Thanks to the several readers who responded to PO 58, Comparisons Are Odious:
About the odd number of people who married in Vegas:
About qualifying an absolute:
I defer to Donne and Shakespeare, though not necessarily to Random House. A usage note at www.yourDictionary.com says:
For many grammarians, "unique" is the paradigmatic absolute term, a shibboleth that distinguishes between those who understand that such a term cannot be modified by an adverb of degree or a comparative adverb and those who do not. These grammarians would say that a thing is either unique or not unique and that it is therefore incorrect to say that something is very unique or more unique than something else. Most of the Usage Panel supports this traditional view. Eighty percent disapprove of the sentence "Her designs are quite unique in today's fashions." But as the language of advertising in particular attests, "unique" is widely used as a synonym for "worthy of being considered," " in a class by itself," "extraordinary" and if so construed it may arguably be modified. In fact, "unique" appears as a modified adjective in the work of many reputable writers. A travel writer states that "Chicago is no less unique an American city than New York or San Francisco," for example, and the critic Fredric Jameson writes "The great modern writers have all been defined by the invention or production of rather unique styles." Although these examples of the qualification of "unique" are defensible, writers should be aware that such constructions are liable to incur the censure of some readers.
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