So: Do you see the problem? The problem, my fine fellows, is wibbling. Wibbling always leads to happiness.
I decided to put this to the test. First I visited the online Merriam-Webster and typed in ‘wibbling’.
From there, instead of getting a definition I was given alternate choices. I chose Li Peng. From there I had a choice between Li Peng, a Chinese prime minister, and Lil’ Penguin, a toy available at Amazon. Inexplicably, without even ordering Lil’ Penguin, I began to feel happy.
This needs to be tested by other independent researchers. If you try it, note that in the second phase, you will be given a choice of about two dozen alternate words. For example, if you select ‘whipping’ will this lead to happiness?
This needs to be tested by other independent researchers.
First, I followed the Unsmoked methodology, but M-W didn’t offer me any emperors or pandas; it took me right to the list. The first choice offered to me was “wabbling” (“intransitive verb 1 a: to move or proceed with an irregular rocking or staggering motion or unsteadily and clumsily from side to side”) I thought this might be related to option 7, “highballing” (and why they thought I would have typed “wibbling” if I wanted a definition of “highballing” is a deeper mystery than why we care what Roger Ebert thinks about god), but I was disappointed to find that “highballing” doesn’t mean either of the things I thought it might.
I was pleased to see “wobblies” at option 21, since Joe Hill used to be my avatar, but I can’t say that this led to happiness, as Salt Creek had promised.
I repaired to the Google, and this brought no choices. I was stuck with “Wibbling Rivalry.”
“Wibbling Rivalry” is the title of a single released under the name “Oas*s” by the Fierce Panda record label in 1995.
It is a recording of John Harris (working for NME at the time) interviewing Noel Gallagher and Liam Gallagher of Oasis. The musicians live up to their reputation as feuding siblings by getting sidetracked into curse-laden arguments while responding to questions. The single contains a ‘Liam Track’ featuring predominantly Liam’s use of profanities and a ‘Noel Track’ featuring Noel. Throughout the interview, Noel and Liam argue over an incident that happened on a ferry before a show.
“Wibbling Rivalry” holds the record as the highest charting interview release in the UK, reaching number 52 on November 25, 1995.
OK, I was slightly unnerved that Pandas appear TWICE in this experiment, once in US’s work, and now in mine!
But I perservered. I entered “definition wibbling” into the Google.
Urban Dictionary (a reliable resource which I have even cited in pleadings filed with the court) came up with:
The act of being so overcome with emotion that
1. The eyebrows come together and curve up at the inside.
2. The eyes become big and childlike
3. The lips and sometimes the chin shake.
Number three is what actually constitutes wibbling.
Had we been testing the hypothesis that happiness always leads to wibbling, I might have laid down my burden then and there, and gone back to trying to earn a living. But the hypothesis under examination was:
Salt Creek - 26 April 2009 11:20 PM
Wibbling always leads to happiness.
I thought that I had uncovered a definitive web site: http://www.wibble.co.uk/
but I found it poorly designed and completely unhelpful.
Wibbling may or may not always lead to happiness, but by now the search for the true meaning of wibbling was leading to despair, the kind of black swirling misery that makes one think of listening to Glen Beck or giving $5.00 to that fuckwit in the faux military uniform in front of the supermarket collecting money for an obscure charity; I was wabbling to the edge of insanity, highballing to hell, and then ...
with the last measure of my energy I returned to Google and entered “define:wibble”
Hallafuckinlua!
Definitions of wibble on the Web:
A metasyntactic variable is a placeholder name or an alias term commonly used to denote the subject matter under discussion or an arbitrary member of a class of things under discussion. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wibble
Meaningless or content-free chatter in a discussion; A metasyntactic variable; To make meaningless comments
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wibble
I was, in fact, led to happiness, tinged only by my concern about why Pandas kept appearing in this discussion.
I want to introduce a term, one that it also turns out I have not invented: pandogmatism. In the, um, spirit, if you will, of pandas and wibbling and panpsychism and so on.
Pantheism and panpsychism no longer do it for us, I am afraid, since there is so very very much woo out there with no trace of a deity, and no hints yet of Consciousnessnessness.
So: Pandogmatism. You better believe it.
Then there’s Reformed Pandogmatism, believing dogmatically that people are entitled to their own dogmas. Inevitably, Reformed Pandogmatism will be succeeded by adogmatism. At first this will be stigmatized by the remaining Reformed Pandogmatists, but even that will erode with time. Eventually, those not philosophically-inclined with confuse it with astigmatism. This will lead to a mystical sect, that may very well become known as enigmatism, or possibly utopian myopianism. The enigma of the dogma stigma.
So: Do you see the problem? The problem, my fine fellows, is wibbling. Wibbling always leads to happiness.
I decided to put this to the test. First I visited the online Merriam-Webster and typed in ‘wibbling’.
From there, instead of getting a definition I was given alternate choices. I chose Li Peng. From there I had a choice between Li Peng, a Chinese prime minister, and Lil’ Penguin, a toy available at Amazon. Inexplicably, without even ordering Lil’ Penguin, I began to feel happy.
Look here. See how quickly things get misquoted? There was no panda to start with, and now a whole new religion is springing up around it. OK, we have a Chinese prime minister called Li Peng, but is that enough reason to change my penguin into a panda? Is there a panda at the Bejing zoo called Li Peng? Is that it? True, there are penguins at the Bejing Zoo, and Li Peng, the prime minister, dressed somewhat like one of them, but that’s the extent of it.
This is all so upsetting. I’m trying to remember what it was that made me happy. I’ve just ordered Lil’ Penguin from Amazon, hoping to revive yesterday’s euphoria.
I was going to go to a casino today for a rousing game of panguine, but I became engrossed in my well-worn copy of Sandu Frunza’s Religious Experience And Pandogmatism. I lost track of time pensively perusing this engrossing volume arguing, as you all know, that on account of the core of religious experience, dogma is no longer important as a source of knowledge but as a fundamental structure of the valorisation of existence. By the time I set the volume down, it was time for my television show about Penda, the 7th-century pagan King of Mercia.
Imagine my shock when I returned to this forum and saw:
unsmoked - 28 April 2009 07:06 PM
Look here. See how quickly things get misquoted? There was no panda to start with, and now a whole new religion is springing up around it.
I’ve been evaluating your claim that Li Peng is a penguin not a panda: I think this is very improbable. There are no Chinese penguins, even the ones that the Chinese claim are theirs are actually Tibetan Mountain penguins.
But, maybe we can reach a compromise here.
We could agree that Li Peng was a panguine(see picture below), or better yet, and so as to avoid pandogmatism, we could agree that Li Peng was a penned panda dog.
Been to Panguitch many times. Panguitch Lake is quite beautiful.
Crater Lake is beautiful, too, if you look at it the right way. 6000 years ago, there was no Crater Lake. We are endowed by our Crater with certain inalienable rights. Among these is the right to go extinct.
If you will allow me to be serious for a moment, I would like to clarify something. By pointing out the bloodthirsty ferocity of pandas, I did not mean to say that penguins do not pose an imminent threat to our way of life. Below, an actual unretouched photograph of penguins armed to their pointy little teeth!
