Semantics

Martin: Whole grain pancakes and an egg-white omelette, please.
Waitress: What would you like in your omelette?
Martin: Nothing in the omelette. Nothing at all.
Waitress: Well, that's not technically an omelette.
Martin: Look, I don't want to get into a semantic argument about it, I just want the protein, all right?
- From one of the best movies of all time, EVER...Grosse Pointe Blank
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Had occasions over the weekend, to think about semantics.

Semantics... they're fun.

Hell, the definition of semantics even sounds important and profound.


se·man·tics
[si-man-tiks]

-noun ( used with a singular verb )
1. Linguistics .
a. The Study of Meaning.
b. the study of linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form.
2. Also called significs. the branch of semiotics dealing with the relations between signs and what they denote.
3. the meaning, or an interpretation of the meaning, of a word, sign, sentence, etc.: Let's not argue about semantics.


"The Study of Meaning".... Impressive!

Yet, generally speaking, when we use "Semantics" in conversation, it's generally as a prop, a set up for humor, perhaps, or a (hopefully) good spirited argument. I lump it in with words and phrases like "oxymoron" and " contradiction in terms" and "that's redundant".

"Wow, he's... very staunch in his convictions."
"He's an ass-clown."
"I guess it's just a matter of semantics..."



So, in the study of meaning and context...

My best friend, a guy I've known since first grade, came to see me on Saturday. He, his pregnant wife and almost one year old son were in town for the afternoon. Only non-negotiable point - real Chicago-style pizza.

We had lots of fun breaking down the semantics of this. Ordering chicago-style pizza in...Chicago.
"I, uh... I don't think they call it that, here."

Chicago-Style Pizza. You order this at pizza joints NOT in or around Chicago. Here, it's simply listed as "pizza" on the menu.
Noone advertises it.

Like Chicago-style hotdogs.
they're just hot dogs, here.

Does this mean, if you just want a hotdog with, say... catsup and a slice of american cheese on it, you'd walk into the Plush Pup, around the corner from my office and order a... Kalamazoo dog?

(Oh, and as an aside - Good luck with the whole "Catsup on a hot dog" thing around here. "You want WHAT?" is the apparently only correct response to that request, at every mom and pop place within a 25 mile radius...)

"Look, I don't want to get into a semantic argument about it, I just want the protein, all right?"

It'd be like looking for a good Chinese restaurant, in China. It's not chinese food there, it's... food.

See?
Semantics! meaning and context.


There's a winter storm advisory for W. Michigan today.
But... it's Spring.

Wait, let me retype that with proper emphasis...
But... but...it's SPRING... (followed by quiet sobbing...)

It's been Spring for almost a month.

How can they call it a WINTER storm, if it's no longer winter?

I just had my exit interview for my soon to be ex-job. I kept it largely professional, because...I'm a pretty professional guy.
Yet, there were some points that REALLY needed to be made...

Semantics, my friends. Meaning and context.....

The day that Santa died.

Was trying to transfer some old files from a mostly worthless old laptop, prior to recycling it, and came across some stuff I had written years ago. I completely forgot this existed.... perhaps I'll clean up some of the other ones, and post them, too.


The day that Santa died.

As is often the case, the story begins before I had a chance to sit down with my first cup of coffee. I was actually on my way to my sister’s house for coffee, and early morning pandemonium courtesy of her boys, my nephews, to whom I am a large wonderful toy. You’ve all seen the scratching post /perch/ carpeted thing to climb that are the joy of so many house cat’s existence? I am this toy, for my nephews. Which I wholeheartedly approve of, until they get big enough to be a real challenge to my superior might and intellect. Which will be 3 or 4 more years on the might part, and 6 weeks or so on the intellect.
But I digress.

Early and often.

I was driving down the street, listening to Ike Reilly on the CD player, when I spotted him, crumpled in someone’s front yard.
“Jesus Christ, that’s Santa.”
Santa looked like he had fallen from his sleigh at some great height, and came to an abrupt and permanent halt at terminal velocity in the slushy front yard of a brick Georgian, in a southwest suburb of Chicago. What an anti-climatic end for such an august personage. This guy had made millions happy over the years, brought a sense of wonder and whimsy to generations of people, hung out with cats like the Mizer brothers, Burghermeister Meisterburger and the Winter Warlock, and had a well documented obsession with the undersized. But, like it is for all of us, at some point in time, it’s your time. The siren song of Mr. Coffee interrupted my thoughts, and I kept driving.
A couple of blocks further on, and goddamn but there was Santa again, in the same sad state I had just witnessed him to be in. And this time he had company. It looked for all the world like Frosty the snowman had broken the big guy’s fall. This act of selflessness did neither of them any good.
I listened close for Jimmy Durante’s voice, explaining to all of us what had happened, but heard nothing.

While I never cease to amuse myself, thinking like this, I was questioning whether or not it would amuse others in the re-telling, as I pulled up in front of my sister’s house.
Not everyone has the penchant for dark flights of fancy, as do I.

Of course I had not actually observed the tragic evidence of some mid-air collision earlier, but a number of those gawd-awful inflatable lawn ornaments with which so many have gone to so much trouble to ugly up my neighborhood during this most sacred of seasons.
They’re ugly enough when wasting valuable natural resources to power the engine that powers the fans that keep them inflated, but they look like nothing but colorful piles of refuse when the plug is pulled.
Or, perhaps, the result of a really bad accident...