This Blog is Stolen Property

Monday, August 13, 2007

I am an Idiot

Today I'm doing a little proofreading, and I come across this sentence:

It's important to note here that the ethical concept of "hubris" is often metaphorically extended to pants and animals.

I've been laughing for about 15 minutes. Pants and animals! Hubristic pants! Animals wearing pants! Oh, the hubris of animals wearing pants! It just doesn't stop being funny.

Although maybe it's just me. It has been pointed out that I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old (do you think he wants it back?). One time I got stuck teaching Romantic poetry and we were reading Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and I was feeling a little punchy while discussing this passage:

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced.

and I asked the students if they thought Coleridge wore a belt or suspenders with his thick fast pants.

They were not amused. They looked at me with very grown-up unamused expressions.

I can't help it. "Pants" is a funny word. It's even funnier as a verb.

Unless you're the direct object.

6 Comments:

  • I am also a proofreader and once read the sentence 'Since the collapse of the bipolar order [ie Communism v Capitalism] the world has lost its grammar'. I giggled wholeheartedly for a good while. There's something about being in the context of reading some academic tome and then suddenly coming to something funny. In my case, it's for foreign students so more often than not the mistake is grammatical rather than typos.
    The same thing I find happens with predictive text. I was on a train trying to text someone to explain that I couldn't call them because I was in the quiet coach and I'd have to go into the vestibule. Which came out as testicle. Again, I laughed haughtily and felt very silly!

    By Blogger fluttertongue, at 4:25 AM  

  • I find that sentence oddly poetic, especially the bit about the world losing its grammar. For want of a gerund...

    That's very funny about the predictive text. My predictive text program refuses to recognize naughty words, so I am forced to click out "fuck" and whatnot. It's forced me to clean up my language!!

    I just typed in "vestibule" and got NOTHING. Not even "vestibule."

    By Blogger Feemus, at 3:49 PM  

  • Pants is an extremely funny word. In fact, I've run some tests, and am thisclose to scientifically proving that "chicken pickle pants" is the funniest phrase in the English language.

    By Blogger Limecrete, at 7:50 AM  

  • And you can't argue with science!

    It's nice to know that "pants" is not just anecdotally funny, but verifiably so. What was the control group? Was it shirts? Because shirts are much less funny.

    By Blogger Feemus, at 11:40 AM  

  • Wow.

    I literally burst into spontaneous, uncontrolled giggles at 'Chicken Pickle Pants'. I think you might be on to something...

    Benticore
    Out

    By Blogger Benticore, at 12:12 PM  

  • Then the scientific community is in agreement!!

    Speaking of which--when can we expect the latest addition to the scientific community, Benticore?

    By Blogger Feemus, at 7:43 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home