Is This an Unintended Pun?

New York City is currently experiencing the effects of very bad weather. (By the way, I refuse to open my thesaurus to find all the words that most of the media outlets always use to describe hurricanes in the most graphic human terms.) I hope folks are okay, and took the preparations they needed to stay safe. One article I read quoted Mayor Blumberg saying something, which I can't tell whether to count as an Unintended Pun, or what it is exactly. I'll need you to weigh in.

Click here for the article. "Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned New Yorkers Irene was a life-threatening storm and urged them to stay indoors to avoid flying debris, flooding or the risk of being electrocuted by downed power lines. "It is dangerous out there."

August 17, 2011
Later in the article: "New York is the greatest city in the world and we will weather this storm."

I don't think anybody would purposely make a pun in this situation. I've discussed that scenario in several previous posts. Of course, politicians talk so much that he may have just said so many word that he said something silly like this, and the author chose to quote these particular words. People usually use "weather this storm" in a metaphorical sense, such as weathering the storm of a divorce, or some other bad season in your life. But I can't remember hearing somebody use it in the sense of weathering the storm of a storm.

What do you think? I'd appreciate your comments.

Obvious But They Really Oughta Know Better

Okay, this post shows a little more about what I do at work. Last time, I described a conversation about satellites, hinting that I work on communication systems, which happens to be the case. This time, I'll again reveal a little more, describing part of an article I read at work. This shows that as part of my job I need to understand some fairly esoteric issues with regard to technology.

In an article on the SSWUG website, Ben Taylor wrote about virtual machines. Click here for the article. In this technology context, "virtual" means "acts like something else." For example, in the movie The Matrix , the characters had to make the choice to stay or leave the "virtual" world that had been created by the bad guys. But Mr. Taylor used the same word in its more common meaning in the same sentence as its technology meaning, when another word could have been used, which would have been much clearer.

August 17, 2011
Here is the sentence: “With the ability to use a virtually free host operating system such as Linux, the licensing costs for virtual machines has fallen.”

Mr. Taylor could have used "essentially" or "almost" or one of several other words to get his meaning across. Linux can be downloaded for exactly free for those who know what they are doing. There are other costs, such as maintenance, etc., which I think is what he means be "virtually." But of all people, in all contexts, you would think he would have chosen just about any word besides "virtually." I mean, the title of the article is "Are You Virtual?" But perhaps this is either an intended pun, in which case I've just wasted my time on this post, or this is futher proof that the human brain cannot be stopped when it comes to the activation web.

What do you think?

How Do You React to Unintended Puns?

A work colleague and I were discussing a company he used to work for in the nineties. Part of the company was sold.

August 12, 2011
He described it this way: “[Company name omitted to prevent slander charges] bought the satellite business and drove it into the ground.”

As usual, I didn't laugh even though I thought it was pretty funny, because my colleague didn't notice that he had made a pun. I wanted to say something like "Did they drive the business into the ground because they kept driving satellites into the ground?" but I was afraid he wouldn't get my comment, or he would get my comment, and think I was making fun of him. You know, the usual reactions when you try to expand on the enjoyment of an Unintended Pun.

Have you come up with any non-offensive ways to further the enjoyment when you make or hear an Unintended Pun? Let us know here at Baring My Sole.

Multi-Sensory Unintended Puns

This Unintended Pun combines the visual and taste senses, along with the word usage itself.

My daughter, a regular contributor to, and encourager of, this blog, and definitely a verbally fluent person, was struggling to screw the cap onto a bottle of S. Pellegrino sparkling water. A few inches away from the S. Pellegrino bottle, there was a bottle of Refreshe Raspberry-Acai flavored sparkling water on the table because Claire likes to have some of both waters with dinner.

You'll need to have an image of the dining room table in your mind as you contemplate the following words.

July 21, 2011
As the cap spun uselessly in her hand, she said: “It's fruitless.”

This seems a little different from the multi-modal puns we discussed a few months ago, since it includes different senses. What do you think?

The Pun as a Boundary Line and an Integrator

I am about 30% through a fascinating book called Boundaries of Order by Butler Schaeffer. Click here for the book's Amazon page.

In what I have read so far, the author describes how today's technologies, especially but not only social media, have started to lead to the disintegration of centralized, institutionalized, hierarchical, vertical structures, in favor of decentralized, organic, horizontal associations. He uses examples from nature, including biology and chemistry, as well as species other than humans, to show how they are organized in the second way. He also discusses that though institutional structures try to emphasize human dualistic thinking to segregate us into various groups ("You're either with us or against us"), human language and thinking can show us that our minds actually often subconsciously integrate what our conscious minds segregate.

This may be the strongest evidence yet of the reason behind Unintended Puns, or the activation web, that I described from Dr. Motley several months ago. This activation web, perhaps, subconsciously integrates two thoughts that our conscious minds had segregated. Here is a long quote from Dr. Schaeffer's book:

"Humor seems to be a reflection of our unconscious mind’s awareness of the harmony found in seemingly contradictory relationships. Whether we are considering jokes, puns, sight gags, witticisms, irony, or satire, humor provides a pleasurable meaning because it gives us the opportunity to integrate what our conscious mind tells us is to be segregated. James Thurber described “humour” as “emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.” It operates along the boundary lines separating the expected from the unexpected, sometimes bouncing back and forth from one side of the line to the other, giving us glimpses of the complementary nature of the world. This is what gives puns their potency: a word or phrase used to communicate different meanings than when such expressions are used in a different context. Puns challenge the boundary lines of what we like to think of as the mutually-exclusive meanings of our abstractions."

In terms of the purpose of investigating Unintended Puns, I think Dr. Schaeffer is saying that puns, as abstractions, allow us to mean two different things at the same time, which allows us to integrate two thoughts into one. Unintended Puns are often silly or mundane, but show that our brains are perfectly capable of doing such a thing; therefore, as an example: we as humans can handle the fact that a person might be of a different race or nationality, but not want to kill or harm us just because of that difference (as Dr. Schaeffer discusses in a different part of the book)--our brains can deal with that fact, even though some institutional structures in some contexts would have us keep those facts separate.

We don't have to think in terms of the simple segregated groupings that many of us have been taught most of our lives. Our brains are capable of integrating things that we've been told can't be integrated.

Let me know what you think. This seems right to me, but maybe it's too big of a leap to think that Unintended Puns show that we are capable of holding two disparate thoughts in our minds at once, especially thoughts that have been inculcated by years of teaching.