Friday, August 14, 2009

What Life Is

Idly - well, not idly, rather conscientiously in fact - researching words for abject human failures - FUBAR, SNAFU etc - I came across an old favourite, clusterfuck. I also discover a new - to me at least - variation - Mongolian clusterfuck. Apparently P.J. O'Rourke used it for a 'preplanned, wholly scripted news-free event' or 'press conference' as they are sometimes called. But it seems to be more commonly used for traffic jam-like situations where the chaos is such that all progress is utterly stalled. I am not sure there's a substantial, real world difference between a garden variety clusterfuck and the Mongolian form, but there is something about the word 'Mongolian'. It is both exotic and sinister and evokes the wholly incomprehensible. It certainly adds something to the concept of failure. Anyway, this is just to say that, this morning, 'Mongolian clusterfuck' seems to me to be the most perfect summation of human life.
Posted by Bryan Appleyard at 6:50 am

10 comments:

  1. maltyAugust 14, 2009 8:43 am

    Chernobylist would make a good descriptive word, "let's try it with the water turned off, Yuri". "Don't be an utter Chernobylist, Ivan"

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  2. wormAugust 14, 2009 8:56 am

    With no repeats of Top Gear on Dave to watch, the only thing to do whilst sitting in a yurt on the windswept frozen tundra is to form human daisy-chains with your buddies.

    ReplyDelete
  3. maltyAugust 14, 2009 9:39 am

    Talking of Chernobyl or Chornobyl as a pedantic Ukranian might comment, the word, as we know, means wormwood, the entire area abounds in Artemisia, might this not make a sound alternative word for Brown, "I see old wormwood put up a good show at PMs question time yesterday"
    Then we really would have concrete proof of the existence of God.
    The Wormwood star exists so God exsists and the book of revs must be true, look, our PM is the the flaming star, run for it or we'll be in Durer's woodcuts.

    ReplyDelete
  4. PeteAugust 14, 2009 11:43 am

    On the Mogolian theme, the term 'yak shaving' seems to fit a lot of what passes for my life at work these days. Attempting large messy tasks that can only be carried out in a painfully large number of small, messy, and rarely satisfying steps.
    (I'm on holiday at the moment.)

    Pete

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousAugust 14, 2009 2:45 pm

    Chernobyl happened on Wittgenstein's birthday; no one has yet said it was his fault (but it obviously was).

    ReplyDelete
  6. BritAugust 14, 2009 9:27 pm

    History is just one damn Mongolian clusterfuck after another.

    ReplyDelete
  7. DavidAugust 17, 2009 8:38 pm

    And they take butter in their tea, so they probably had it coming ...

    ReplyDelete
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