Gone Fishin Part II

July 11 found Emily and I celebrating our five year wedding anniversary in a very boring remake of Planes Trains and Automobiles. Well, I say it's a very boring remake because our travel plans went as scheduled. No crazy adventures with John Candy. But we did take the light rail (trains) to the airport (planes) and rented a car (automobiles) once we got to Sacramento. We went out there for a wedding and came back Sunday night, two days later.

So we drove out to Grapes of Wrath country but hung out on an organic farm run by yuppies-turned-farmers, rather than a Bossman and his 1200 Okie day-laborers. Hybrids ruled the scene, not jalopies. It was a very relaxed setting, with one exception. We stayed in a casino hotel near the farm. walking through the seizure-inducing, smoke-filled casino = not very relaxing.

Top Five Things I Learned On Trip #2

Four years later this blog has finally completed the hostile takeover of my other blog. So all lists will be found here, keeping Mrs. Deets off my back.

5. A lot of people in the casino probably couldn't tolerate five minutes in a Chuck E. Cheese. Irony, or just a contradiction?

4. This may have been a mistake.



According to to someone who knows a lot more about water resource management than I do, farm creek water, no matter how organic, is, um, less than clean. But I am sure the same can be said for any body of water.

3. Emily is a doctor. But this guy is The Doctor.



But I wouldn't follow his medical advice. He's not a real doctor. Well I guess I already knew that, so that's not something I learned. He's also not a Yankees fan, despite the Yankees hat. The Doctor is a Cub's fan. I'm also not sure why he's wearing two t-shirtd. He's an enigma. It was good to kick it with The Doctor again.

A lot of shenanigans went down at The Doctor's wedding many many moons ago. When I compare that to how tame this California wedding was, I realize we have indeed grown up over the years.

2. I ain't too bright. The car Emily and I rented had a keyless start. You push a button to start the car. We sat in the Hertz/Avis/Whatever parking lot for five minutes, the midday heat beating down on us, as I failed and failed again and again trying to figure out to start the damn car. Finally I had to get an attendant to help me. Turns out they don't teach "Car Starting 101" in college or grad school.

And then, once at the farm, I lost the keyless key for about ten minutes. Turns out they don't teach "How To Keep Track of Your Belongings" in academia either.

1. I love being married to Emily. Full disclosure here: I was hesitant to fly to Sacramento for this wedding for a weekend and then turn around the next day and drive to Arkansas. But she really encouraged me to do both trips, because she knew how important it was that I go to this wedding and how glad I would be once we did it. And she was right. It's not always fun to push someone into action (or be pushed), but I am so glad we went out to California.

Coming Soon: Our trip to Arkansas

Novel Sentence?

A fun game I used to play, before I married someone who found my fun games to be very annoying was, "Is This A Novel Sentence, Or Not?" I have a friend, we'll call him The Doctor, who insists that it is irresponsible to claim a sentence you say or wrote is novel, and has never before been produced in the history of time. He is, literally, a math genius, and believes that statistically speaking, the probabilty is always present that any sentence you create has been created before. If you try to make up a sentence, he will provide you with a context for that sentence.

Now, anyone who took Linguistics 101 will know that one of the defining features of language as opposed to any other form of communication is that a single language utterance/gesture/production (i.e. a sentence) can be infinite in length. Also, the possible language utterances/gestures/productions (i.e. sentences) one do are also infinte. Therefore, there are infinity sentences that have never been said.

Even so, The Doctor says we have no way of knowing which oddball sentences have been said/written before, and which ones have not.

I offer the follwoing sentence: "The only difference between a lampshade and the space shuttle is Max Headroom." This is a properly construced English sentence (though quite awkward) and therefore, according to The Doctor, I cannot claim it is novel. He believes the probability that someone else has produced it is just too high.

And on to my main point: I just got off the phone with a friend of mine. We'll call him Zandypants. During the course of our conversation, Zandypants said, "Yeah, fuck my art shanty." The context of this sentence is not relevant. Trust me, it made sense in context.

But this was a historic statement in that I am pretty sure it is a novel sentence. How can anyone have possibly said this before?

I could argue that Zandypants' desire to have his art shanty, er, fucked, is novel and therefore backs up my claim that because there are infinity unsaid sentences, and we can say with confidence that no one else has uttered such a request. I mean seriously, an "art shanty?" Wanting one's own art shanty to have sexual relations? Give me a break; that is a novel sentence. How about a little dose of common sense, The Doctor?

But this claim alone could support The Doctor's argument that there is a context for every single possible sentence, given that this one occured. So it is therefore impossible to claim that any sentence is novel. I don't agree, but I do appreciate the logic.

Who is right?