About Me

I'm Shaun. I'd consider myself the epitome of contentedness. I come off as homosexual nine times out of ten, and I'm a very happy person. For what I lack in problems and tragic pasts, I make up for with Awesomeness.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

In case you hadn't noticed, I really enjoy these moments of Anagnorisis sown from past misinterpretations.

Of all the idioms I had come to detest, "You can't have your cake and eat it too" was high up there, along with malformed phrase "I could care less". I just couldn't stand it. Why should you not be able to eat the cake? Utilitarian implications aside, isn't that the purpose of owning the cake? I could just never understand it.
I had not ever realised that this illogical confectionery fallacy was also butchered through time.
It turns out it was originally structured "You can't eat your cake and have it, too", and is perhaps most well known as Ayn Rand's response for a simple aphorism to her second, epistemological tenet of Objectivism, Reason.
I now like it more.

There's this fantastic Vignette in The Great Gatsby.

It's the one where the pragmatic Nick Carraway is being driven around by Jordan Baker, a careless Femme Fatale. He tells her, half joking, half serious, that she's so careless a driver, that she shouldn't even drive. She argues so long as she only meets careful drivers,

“They’ll keep out of my way,” she insisted. “It takes two to make an accident.”

“Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself.”

“I hope I never will,” she answered. “I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.”



I realise only today that I've actually had this precise moment happen to me, right down to the wording, though we were more vulnerable- we were pedestrians. I can't believe I let such a moment pass without more immediate acknowledgement.
I'm really glad that it happened, though.