Huh? A Study in Obfuscation

approximately June 23, 2013 An NBA draft prospect said: "My weakness is my strength."

"My weakness is my strength." Without context, and even with context, this sentence can have so many different meanings, it's almost mind-numbing. In this case, I think the player was saying that he knew he needed to work out more so he could get physically stronger--he was using the word "weakness" in its metaphorical sense, and the word strength in its actual, physical sense. This play on words/almost-impossible-to-understand-sentence sent me on a research project, looking on the Web for "my weakness is my strength", resulting in a lot of hits. Apparently, most uses are the more standard fare, using both "weakness" and "strength" in their metaphorical senses--that is, "one of the worst things about me is one of the best things about me," and then the author explains what he or she means. In some cases, it has a spiritual meaning, others, some kind of internal awakening, in another, it was political of some kind. But I didn't find any cases where the words were mixed, as in the NBA prospect's quote above, so I think we have something of an Unintended Pun.

The multiple meanings I alluded to above:

• The one I already mentioned--my metaphorical weakness--the thing I'm not so great at, is my physical strength
• The opposite--my physical weakness is my metaphorical strength--because it keeps me humble, or relying on my family or God
• Both metaphorical (seems to be the most common)--my metaphorical weakness--the thing I am not very good at--is my metaphorical strength--is the thing I end up being the best at.
• And then it gets really interesting, because if we decide that the last item is the case, that both "weakness" and "strength" are being used metaphorically, we have then to learn what is the weakness and what is the strength. But the player was quoted only one more sentence, with no further explanation.

So I think the activation web comes into play here. The player knows he has an area of his basketball game that needs to improve--he needs to get physically stronger so he has more stamina, so he can withstand the more physical play at the NBA level vs. college, so he can drive to the basket and not have the ball knocked out of his hands as easily, etc. He chose the word "weakness" instead of "area of improvement" or some such because, of course, it is close in his mind's web to the word "strength." But the result is obfuscation, and a pretty good entry for our blog.

New Year, New Category of Unintended Pun

Despite millions of people having as their number one resolution for the New Year to stop saying Unintended Puns, nothing can stop the subconscious mind from uttering them. (Okay, I doubt even one person made that even their lowest resolution, but I had this image of people contorting their lips, tongue and jaw, trying vainly to stop from saying what they know is about to be an Unintended Pun--and it made me laugh.) Reminds me of Mr. Universe in Firefly: "Nothing stops the signal."

Anyway, I think we've run across a new category--the Mixed Metaphor Unintended Pun, contributed by our favorite punster, my daughter Claire. She is a big fan of Ron Paul (as am I), and has been following the news coverage of his campaign. Of course, if you pay attention to the news about the Republican primaries, you know that finding information about Ron Paul requires quite a bit of persistence--the mainstream media seem determined to keep him out of their stories about the primaries, whether because they don't know what to make of him (definitely part of the problem) or because they hope by keeping him out of their stories he won't win the nomination.

But thanks to Claire's persistence, we have a lovely Unintended Pun, which even if it weren't a pun, would make a funny combination of metaphors.

From Ron Paul’s Secret Plan To Actually Win in BuzzFeed. Click here for the story.

January 3, 2012
“One of my running mates is a Paul supporter and there’s nobody in the world that works harder and she doesn’t just work for him – she does a lot of the heavy lifting in my district,” said Karen Karls, a Republican member of the Idaho House of Representatives, a state where Paul’s campaign is focused on validating the candidate with the endorsements of local elected officials. "I know some people maybe think the Paul supporters are sitting in the weeds taking pot shots at us, but seriously a lot of the people that probably would support him would be very likely to get involved long term, and that’s really what a political party needs."

I love the mixed metaphor by itself; the bonus of its making a pun qualifies it as one of the finest quotes ever. With humor like this, maybe the media will start looking more to Ron Paul supporters for their stories; then maybe they'll start noticing that what Ron Paul himself has to say makes more sense than what the other candidates are saying.