So waaaay back in February, I mused over the scene in Raiders where Indy apparently stows away on a Nazi submarine.
What is going on here? Are we meant to believe that Dr. Jones somehow snuck onto the sub, found a hiding place, and stayed unnoticed for however long the trip to Secret Nazi Island was? In the comments of the original post, some people assumed that the u-boat just cruised on the surface the whole time. It’s true that we never actually see the thing go underwater. However, in my sub movie experience, the only time you hear that klaxon is when you’re preparing to dive.
At the time, the Sub Controversy remained unresolved. But part of Overthinking™ is continuing to think about something well beyond the point at which any reasonable person has moved on. And recently, I had an epiphany: what the hell are those guys saying?
You are my fire
The one desire
Believe when I say
I want it that way
This opening is more interesting than it looks. It’s one thing to say someone is your fire/desire. But the singer goes a step further - he says he wants her to be his fire/desire. That’s sort of a weird thing to say. “Not only am I in love with you, I want to be in love with you.”
But this actually becomes kind of a poignant sentiment when you realize the song is about a relationship on the verge of collapse. The girl is either dumping the guy, or seriously considering it. Anyone who’s ever been through a bad breakup knows that those feelings of dependency that seemed so cute when you were together can make you miserable when the other person is out of your life. But this guy is doubling down on his love. He’s saying, “No matter what happens to us, I don’t regret my love for you.” Or as Fanny Brice put it, “I’d rather be blue over you than be happy with somebody else.”
I recently read an article about the possibility of more Indiana Jones movies, which included this little gem:
Lucas sat down with AP Television at his Big Rock Ranch outside San Francisco, where he said he didn’t pay much attention to the reception from critics and fans to “Crystal Skull,” a sci-fi adventure set in the 1950s.
Let’s just mull over that for a sec.
The phrase “begs the question” does not mean “raises the question.” “Beg the question” means “engage in circular reasoning” (within a single syllogism), or, more precisely, “assume the truth of the proposition you purport to be proving.”
For example, the fact that the phrase is so frequently misused does not beg the question of how our culture’s knowledge of the language we all supposedly speak has gone down the crapper.
Though it does raise it.
[Ed. Note: Yes, it is not Thursday. But something happened. See, I wrote all these posts in one afternoon and the scheduled them weeks into the future. This week, we were scheduled to run my masterpiece about the much misunderstood phrase "The Proof of the Pudding." Imagine my surprise when I open the Sunday Times yesterday and see that William Safire has made it the topic of his weekly column. Damn him! I got scooped, and decided to run this today. Thank you for caring.]
A certain kind of usage error occurs when someone hears an idiom whose precise meaning he doesn’t know, assumes (wrongly) that the context provides adequate clues to guess the meaning, and begins using the idiom to mean what he thinks it means.
Fans of The Princess Bride might term this the “inconceivable” fallacy — though Wallace Shawn’s misuse was a special case. (All correct usage is alike. Every usage error is wrong in its own way.)
Most of the time, guessing at meanings from the context is a reasonable way to go. But you get into trouble when a word you know is being used in a sense you don’t know.
Take the verb “prove.” It has two senses, which are…
I was in a seminar my freshman year of college when one of my classmates identified “the penultimate example” of something we were reading about.
I was appalled. I thought I had gone to college to get away from this bullshit. I had to bite my tongue to keep from sneering, “The next to last example?” I was a jerk like that at the time. (Yeah, yeah, still am.)
See, penultimate means “next to last.” It does not mean “really, really ultimate”. Bonus tip: Antepenultimate means “third to last”.
Next week: Proof of proof
I don’t know what people are thinking when the use the word “nonplussed” to mean the opposite of “moved” or “impressed”. Maybe that those things are “plusses” and the person is not any of them.
The word “nonplussed” means “surprised”, “bewildered”, “at a loss.” It’s the opposite of “unmoved.”
Next Week: A very good post, but not the penultimate.
[I have lately been noticing more and more of the most appalling errors in English grammar and usage. And not just from the president. Maybe I'm getting old and curmudgeonly. So that you are spared the embarrassment of the most egregious solecisms in a post-Bush era, I offer this weekly series as a service to you.]
The phrase “short lived” is pronounced with a long i. Short LIEved, is in “having a short life”, not LIH-ved, as in “living a short time”.
Next Week: Feelng Nonplussed
For the record:
Charlize doesn't know, either.
Amanpour, Christiane (kris-tə-YAN ä-MÄN-pür)
Auel, Jean (OUL)
Baum, L. Frank (BOM)
Blanchett, Cate (KĀT BLAN-chət)
Buscemi, Steve (boo-SHEM-ē)
Clowes, Daniel (KLŌZ)
Coelho, Paulo (POU-lō KOO-ĀL-yoo)
Derrida, Jacques (zhäk dâr-ē-DÄ)
Fiennes, Ralph (RĀF FĪNZ)
Foer, Jonathan Safran (FÔR)
Fraser, Brendan (FRĀZ-ər)
Hedaya, Dan (hə-DĀ-yə)
Herge (ÂR-JĀ)
Inhofe, James M. (IN-hof)
Krugman, Paul (KROOG-mən)
LaBeouf, Shia (SHĪ lə-BOOF)
Lazenby, George (LĀZ-ən-bē)
Leto, Jared (LET-ō)
Limbaugh, Rush (LIM-bô)
Loggia, Robert (LŌZH-yə)
Lohan, Lindsay (LŌ-ən)
Milosevic, Slobodan (slō-BŌ-dän mē-LŌ-she-vich)
Rand, Ayn (ĪN)
Rhys-Davies, John (RĒS-DĀV-is)
Rushdie, Salman (SÄL-mən RÜSH-dē)
Silverstone, Alicia (ə-LĒ-sē-ə)
Stevens, Sufjan (SOOF-yan)
Stevenson, Adlai (AD-lā)
Takei, George (tä-KĀ)
Theron, Charlize (shär-LĒZ THER-ən)
Xiaoping, Deng (DUNG-SHYOU-PING)
Yeoh, Michelle (YŌ)
Yun-Fat, Chow (YOON-FÄT)
Zagat, Tim (zə-GAT)
Zeta-Jones, Catherine (ZĒT-ə)
The government says so.
Like all good geeks, I have a soft spot for Superman II. Today I want to overthink one scene in particular… and surprisingly, it does not feature the line “Kneel before Zod.”
Early in the film, Lois and Clark are on assignment at Niagara Falls. A little kid is playing on an observation platform, and his grip suddenly slips. He falls off the Falls… and falls… and falls…
So here’s my question: how far would a child really fall in 28.4 seconds?