So i have discovered a way to peacefully co-exist, nay thrive, with people on the atkins diet—i eat their bread. For example, today in the company lunchroom the corp. gods bought pizzia for the people that are here for the monthly training session. I noticed one of my coworkers* take the cheese and pepperoni off his crust and then THROW OUT THE CRUST….WTF? I stepped up and offered to eat the carbs for him, in light of the eniviromental impact and general wastefullness of tossing out prefectly good sauced up pizza crust.
Boom next thing i know i have 2 pieces of saucy bread in front of me…bingo-checkmate, game/set/match–this might just work out….i can circle around fatkins people, kinda like those sucker fish that live on sharks or those birds that sit on the backs of hippos (hmm very apporpriate simile if i do say so) and eat their carbs. Then when their kidneys give out from protein overload, i can have the whole pizza! mwahahaah, the world is MINE!
*after lunch this coworker, in an unrelated conversation said to me “you studied existentialism and Heidegger, right? did you ever talk to Jesus Christ?” WHAAA? why yes, he sat next to me in my Ethics seminar, man his one liners about hannah arendt…fucking brilliant. In all fairness i think he meant “to” in some sort of “talking to a subject” as in give time to a topic or somesuch thing..)richard mr grammar what the hell is that called. when you use ‘to’ in that sense?)….anyway. it still caught me off guard. all could think of was jesus on southpark.
that is all.
13 responses so far ↓
1 rcg // Nov 3, 2003 at 9:12 pm
– richard mr grammar what the hell is that called. when you use ‘to’ in that sense?
Hmm. I’d say that’s called using “to” in the freakshow “sense”… the prepostion “to” means what is says. Was I in that Ethics seminar? I don’t recall our lord-and-saviour in attendance. Maybe he got turfed for his soft-touch approach to ethics. Rudi would have given him the Leuven shake-down, at the very least.
I think what you were thinking of was Heidegger’s talking about using “of” in the genetive sense. Like the double-meaning you get when you say “the love of Christ” … meaning at once the love that you have for him and the kind of love that we associate with him.
Here endeth the lesson.
(To non-philosophy types, I apologize for the foregoing erudition and ivory-tower escapism. It’s all we have left of our M.A.’s.)
PS: Soon to spawn web-wide, the following headline: “Atheistic blogger, Jefke, fired for online religious persecution of colleague.” Watch out Jefke, if the Lord isn’t watching, your colleagues are… not counting Don, of course.)
2 jefke // Nov 4, 2003 at 9:16 am
nah you got me all wrong richy….
1) in the “talking/speaking to”, i think it’s a public speaking technique, and thus suspect in terms of the grammatology you love so… i know i’ve heard it used in situatation like “later don will speak to the advantages of dotNet over classic ASP coding, however i will talk to the benefits of gutting an web based system to increase user yadda yadda” i dunno. that’s where i was going
2) i’m not slamming my other coworker, if it sounds that way, i’m sorry, and read the disclaimer. He and i have had some good conversations about philosophy and the like, i was just caught off guard when he brought up JC in the lunchroom. Hell, i could sue the whole place because, as you all know i’m a devote PAGAN, like in the movie “Dragnet”.
3) and the Ethics seminar was with Raemakers or however you spell his name. good seminar, we did it on that Arendt book, the famous one, not the one on evil, dammit i can’t remember the name. i think i got a 16. And more importantly, i was able to stack my thesis defence with him on my committee. ah the good ole days of working the belgian educational system.
3 rcg // Nov 4, 2003 at 11:17 am
Re #1. Fair enough. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, though. Sounds to me — public speaking technique or no — just plain wrong.
Re #2. Christ I don’t care, slam or no slam. Speak your mind. That’s what I’m paying for. Ooh. Right. Not paying, am I. Groovy.
Re #3. All those seminars are a blur now. The turfing thing, I recall now, occurred to me in Parret’s Aesthetics seminar. I think Jesus may indeed have been in attendance. He got off on the whole Duchamps urinal thing. Democratization of art, beauty, and the sublime, or some shit. Aaron (go figure) gave him a hard time on that…
4 Natty // Nov 4, 2003 at 11:21 am
Ugh, reading these posts I am suddenly transported back to the days of SuperHuis, trapped with a bunch of guys who only talk philosophy crap. Man, I can’t wait until I am totally emersed in nursing school- I’ll invite Mel over, tie Jeff to a chair and talk about medical stuff all day long!! Ah, sweet revenge. Maybe I’ll fly Clive (aka Richardke) down for that as well.
5 clive // Nov 4, 2003 at 11:51 am
Hm-yes. Yes-yes-yes dahling. I’d *love* to see you again. That would be spec-Tack-ular.
6 Wawa // Nov 4, 2003 at 1:23 pm
My friend told me back in school that Philosophy Majors were pretentious. Never understood. Got it now.
7 jefke // Nov 4, 2003 at 1:30 pm
i’d love to take this moment to say i love 8pt verdana it is my favo(u)rite font in the whole interworld.
8 Natty // Nov 4, 2003 at 2:38 pm
Any colour preferences?
9 rcg // Nov 4, 2003 at 4:13 pm
I gotta say… I totally associate 8pt Verdana with Jefke now. Diminutive, but wiry, wily, clearly the font of an ideas-man, if not a details guy.
Can you set up this blog to detect Wawa’s comments and set them to 4pt Verdana? Or to white?
10 Wawa // Nov 4, 2003 at 4:28 pm
But then you wouldn’t be able to rea . . .oh, I get it, Richard. Bastard.
11 jefke // Nov 4, 2003 at 5:23 pm
sometimes a man takes a look at his work, folds his arms across his chest and thinks to himself..”i created this”….sometimes that makes him smile. other times it makes him cry.
that last exchange made me smile.
12 B // Nov 9, 2003 at 1:57 pm
(1) It is not so much the use of “to” that is involved, but rather, the combination of “speak” and “to” as a phrasal verb combination. “To speak to” can mean “to give evidence of” or, sometimes, “to give comments on (a subject).” So if you say “I am going to speak to the advantages of dotnet,” for example, you mean that you will demonstrate the advantages of dotnet. Saying “to talk to” cannot have a similar meaning and can only refer to the object/pronoun (e.g., “I talked to him”).
(2) I bleed internally and my skin catches fire whenever I hear someone apologize just for mentioning philosophy. Why do people feel ashamed of being intelligent and having been educated? I agree with Natty, however (hey Nat!), that if someone can ONLY talk about philosophy then they deserve a good flogging. But that is not something specific to philosophy. Many people’s brains are sealed hermetically in their offices, even after they leave. If a bank manager, an engineer or (shudder) a financial consultant can only talk about his work, then he too should be flayed alive. Are philosophy majors pretentious and thus more likely to monopolize conversation (acc. to Wawa)? I don’t think so. The number of times I have been trapped in a sports conversation, for example, is far greater than the number of times I have been trapped by philosophers. What is true is that philosophy, in itself, is truly interesting and exciting, while most other topics are only interesting to those who share similar preferences. Philosophy is universally interesting. So if you are going to be held hostage by the transcendental, better try to make the most of it and be grateful, because that’s better than the group spending half its time trying to remember in what Simpsons episode Homer eats pink goo.
(3) It is spelled “Raymaekers.”
(4) Hannah Arendt’s “other” book is called ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.’ A very misunderstood work.
(5) Do not laugh, jefke. Weep. Weep deeply.
13 jefke // Nov 10, 2003 at 9:06 am
wow, i feel kinda like mr maloney showing up at this point in time, and doing what he does so well is like when they brought heather locklear on to Melrose place to boost ratings. he’s a powerhouse that maloney, well not for you ADD people that bitch about the posts being too long. you’ll adapt, you’ll have to. did i mention that Brendan even looks like locklear?