Category: professional aphasia

Decoding the Note: A(n) (Owl) Cry for Help (?)

All right, our Note-induced case of the vapors has subsided long enough to review the responses to our plea for assitance in deciphering today's Halperinite headline-for-one, "The Owl Flies West (?)" Responses were gratifyingly varied and imaginative, but it's been our experience in such unnerving cases that it's best to hew to the most straightforward explanation. To wit, the enclosed from Reader D.S.:

Oh, poor benighted Wonkette scribes. How foolish you are to misapprehend the significance of nocturnal predators. The owl, of course, is traditionally a symbol of wisdom. West is the direction in which the sun sets, terminating the day. The sun also is a symbol of wisdom and intelligence. It is clear then, that "The Owl Flies West(?)" is a reference to the fact that the wisdom and intelligence of the Note is dying. In short, they all is going bugfuck crazy. Indeed, the parenthetical punctuation suggests that like Hamlet, the Note is unsure of its own insanity, perhaps holding out hope that it is not nuts, and some bird somewhere is actually westward bound. And the one Note Reader for whom the message is intended? I'll give you a hint: it begins with "p" and ends with "sychiatrist." (?) Let's hope the Note makes a speedy recovery(,) D{s}

And here we thought we had it worked out that "Owl" was code for "Matt Cooper," perched in the precarious upper limbs of Scooter Libby's turning "aspens." Or that Harriet Miers was set to resume feeding on small rodents in the Texas plains. But we confess, "bugfuck crazy" does seem to fit better with the evidence. We, too, wish the Note a rapid, restorative convalescence. Our prescription: 350 mg of Zoloft, a DVD compilation of soothing Dan Bartlett talking points, and a copy of The Treason of the Senate. Oh, and no punctuation privileges for at least 60 days. --HOLLY MARTINS

READ MORE: cries for help , professional aphasia , the note , unintelligbility

Decoding the Note: Has the Eagle Landed?

Oh, Note! Why do you tease and derange us so? We swore we would be lured no longer down your florid yet terminally occluded path of dim insinuation and addled wit. For that is where, we have learned by painful experience, the English language--to say nothing of the mental properties of sensemaking that have sustained its frail development over these many long centuries--goes not merely to die, but to be suckerpunched, pitifully buckled over and breathless, wailing the unanswerable plaint, "Why, Note, Why? What have I ever done to deserve this? Curse your portentous prolixities and your gnomic formulations of the teeth-grindingly obvious!"

Absurdly detailed Notely ruminations after the jump.

But so be it. Today the Notely gauntlet is thrown at the very opening: "The Owl Flies West (?) (A Mysterious Note Headline for Just One Reader)" We know not who this reader, let alone the occidental-tacking bird of prey, may be. But Note, really: What the fuck? The parenthetical question mark already has us woozy. Does the owl merely appear to fly west, while in fact doing something else entirely? Perhaps it is studying its diction--or better yet, punctuation usage! Or maybe there is no owl at all. We have to at least allow that possibility as one outcome of the nonsensical pileup of parentheses: We have clearly entered some dark counterfeit life where none of the usual rules apply. Is the Note playing Matrix to Keanu's Neo? Let us, ahem, Note that "One Reader" can be reconstituted as "Neo Red Ear." Yes, we know that yields only two Matrix terms out of three word formations, but that's a far higher percentage of sense-making value than you get by taking the thing at face value.

But we digress. (Or do we)(?) And we are, alas, entirely spent before the main Note event/news summary, which seems to concern some investigation of some sort of a leak involving the Bush administration. All we can think to do is to plead for the assistance of the owl-spotting (or owl-shunning?) Very Special Note Reader Referenced in Set of Parentheses Number Two. Are you out there, Bird Watcher? Let us know, please, since we now lack the epistemological confidence to believe that we are, in fact, in here. And failing your first-hand testimony, O Binoculared One, let other readers step forward with interpretations of what any of this could possibly mean,at tips@wonkette.com. We retire, meanwhile, to the solarium, for some laudanum and a cold compress. --HOLLY MARTINS

The Note: The Owl Flies West (?) [ABC News] (?)

READ MORE: professional aphasia , seriously, what the fuck? , the note , unintelligibility

Decoding the Note: OK, So We're a Little Obsessed

Really, we don't mean to harp on the stylistic flourishes of the Note. But the thing just randomly sprays so much pretension and so many empty faux-knowing asides into our poor overtaxed brainpan that we find ourselves idly trying to formulate Notely phrases to describe its torment: "risible rodomontade"? "power-vocab preening"? "obfuscatory obsequiousnes to power"? "fellatial mash notes to the headmaster"?

Just consider today's entry under--we kid you not--"news summary":

In a television interview on another network this morning LIVE from his Habitat event, the President committed no serious news, but he did laugh at a lot of the questions (for reasons any student of George W. Bush would well understand), and he did allow himself to be shown hammering purposefully, with a jejune combination of cowboy swagger and yuppie self-consciousness.

Forget the typically, and pointlessly, gnomic parenthetical aside about the privileged knowledge available to "any student of George W. Bush," which so far as we can tell roughly translates as "We still love you, Dan Bartlett." No, consider instead that Teutonic trainwreck of phraseology at the sentence's end: "a jejune combination of cowboy swagger and yuppie self-consciousness." "Jejune" is a fancy Frenchy word for childishness or immaturity; alternate meanings include "lacking in nutritive value" and "lacking interest and significance." (It also so happens that it's Dictionary.com's word of the day for Tusday, Nov. 2, 2004. We're just saying.)

So are the Halperinites saying that a combination of traits is itself childish, or nonnutritive, or dull? How would that work, exactly? Did the assembler of the combination grow frustrated, and break out into a wailing tantrum? Did a hunger strike ensue? Neither of the combination's constituent traits--swagger and self-consciousness--suggests arrested development. (They are, however, almost entirely contradictory, which leads us to suspect that Notesters do not grasp the meaning of either "jejune" or "combination.") So how could their fusion produce childishness? Is this the same principle by which multiplying two negatives produces a positive integer? Is this the kind of logic that will permit us to continue to plunder the federal budget while continuing to institute tax cuts?

We confess that the Note has again defeated us. We're repairing to bed for some lethean languor. --HOLLY MARTINS

UPDATE: Operatives report that in a Frum-like burst of Commissar-vanishes editing, "jejune" has been mysteriously replaced by "peppery" in today's Note News Summary. Not the condiment we'd choose--W.'s bipolar hammering has always struck us as more satay-like, somehow--but far be it for us to cavil when the Self-Aggrandizing Tip Sheet takes baby-steps (or if you must, steps of distinct jejune-osity) toward actual sense-making. . .
The Note: Very Dignified [ABC News]

READ MORE: professional aphasia , rudderless pretension , the note , unintelligibility

---