Potpourri

And I mean Potpourri in the same sense in which it is used as the most idiotic category in Merv Griffin's seminal gameshow "Jeopardy!". It's essentially a category whose unifying feature is that all the questions therein come from other categories on other boards from other nights that ended up not getting used because of that little time's-up noise that Alex Trebek always points out right before we go to a commercial break.

It's a category whose unifying feature is that the questions therein have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. And we call this a category, straight-faced, on a show that allegedly caters to the intellectual elite of the pre-prime-time television watchers.

Nevertheless, this post is made up of items which I just needed to put up at some point or another, and which don't really fit under any heading but "stuff Collin has found ironic or amusing or both".

First off, we have strange and ironic photographs:



This was taken at a franchise of whatever's that shoe store in shopping malls that's not Foot Locker (you know the one I'm talking about), in the Paddock Mall in Ocala. I was there following up on a girl my mother said I should look up and possibly ask out. She turned out to be one of the butchest lesbians I have ever seen.

The interesting postscript to this photograph involves the conversation I had with the lesbian in question, who, sexual preferences aside, is someone I knew in high school and with whom I would have enjoyed having a nice bitch about old times. Pursuant to that, I made the suggestion that we eat something sometime.

Whereupon she asked me what I like to term a "one-answer question". This is not a loaded question, nor a trick question, nor a rhetorical question. It has features of these, but it is an infelicitous question in its own right. An example will serve best both to explain the concept and to continue the story:

"Are you asking me out?" (Remember, this is her response to me suggesting that we eat something in company sometime. Remember further that she is the lesbian former high-school classmate I met in the shoe store. Just wanted to make sure we hadn't lost the thread of the anecdote.)

Now, of course, this is a one-answer question. What can one say? Only something in the affirmative: either a strong affirmative, such as "Yes, my love, of course I am," or a weak affirmative, such as "Sure, why the hell not." I opted for the weak affirmative, because the question precluded my answering anything like "Certainly not! Pshaw!" without being outright rude.

Incidentally, she followed my response, which was of necessity an affirmative one, with a second one-answer question. This second was of a sneakier sort: a declarative statement to which one must give a certain response. That is, a one-answer question which is not even a question proper at all.

"I have a partner," she said. Of course, I was obliged to answer along the lines of "So what?". To have answered otherwise would have been tantamount to stating outright that my earlier purely social invitation to mutual food consumption had in fact been a romantic overture, which it wasn't, but which possibility I had been forced to leave open by the previous one-answer question which had been posed to me.

Does your head hurt yet? I know mine does.

In conclusion: women are devious by instinct. Even those women who enjoy sexual activities with other women are devious by instinct. They don't intend outright to do these brilliantly coercive things any more than a fish intends outright to swim. (We can tell that they don't intend outright to do them because they can't possibly be intelligent enough to formulate something so devious in a mere instant. Hell, I would have a hard time doing that... a woman? Ha. Flame away.)

It is a funny picture, by the way. Mix and match indeed.

This one is also a lot of fun:



It's hard to see because of the cellophane, but you can tell that this vision chart was manufactured by Lighthouse Industries. If you're familiar with government office supplies, you probably know that Lighthouse Industries is the commercial arm of the Lighthouse for the Blind. Ah, irony. I always knew there was a reason I kept waking up in the morning.

To finish up this mishmash, I'd like to express my contempt for the soon-to-be-premiering reality television program about kids creating and managing their own society or whatever.

Any such experiment in child-generated society without adult interference must necessarily result in the sort of behaviour detailed in William Golding's classic work of literature, "Lord of the Flies". The only reason that this little television program will not end up with animalistic death-worship cults and the blood-sacrifice of littluns is because the children will know they are being observed, and observed by adults.

I imagine it'll turn out looking rather like "Animal Farm", instead. Heartwarmingly communist, with a dash of John Lennon's insipid "Imagine" tossed in for good measure. I'm quite glad that fellow shot him, really. There is justice in this world for godless limey nihilists.

And with that, I bid you all a good night, but not before the following obligatory comment:

Sucks to your ass-mar, Piggy.