Monday, March 10, 2008

Fun With Categories

Here at Hobson's Buffet, we take pride in offering you a variety of eats, if you will. However, I must admit that during our initial meetings, I disagreed with my cobloggists on a very essential part of the blogging process: categories.

The day I discovered the function of categories was a day filled with cyber-jubilation that I cannot describe to you. For the mildly obsessive bloggist like myself, it was simply glorious--finally, an efficient and overly-organized system of classification. I often imagined myself years from now clicking on various categories with delight, knowing that my scattered entries were brought happily together under one categorical roof. How sublime. And unlikely. Honestly, I rarely utilize the categories function of blogs.

But I love it. Deeply.

I say all of this to respectfully disagree with my fellow authors concerning categories. In order to acquire more traffic, it was decided that our categories would be multiple and very specific as opposed to general categories, which was my preference. Therefore, in order to poke good-natured fun at my fellow chefs here at the Buffet, I will categorize this entry in as many wasy possible based upon the following two sentences:

"One man's trash is another man's treasure. However, metal detectors have not yet been built to detect trash."


Obviously, the first sentence is a well-known axiom, so let's begin by posting under "proverbs", as well as "wisdom" and "adages." Seeing as "adages" and "proverbs" are essentially the same, this could easily be posted under "synonyms" and "redundancy." While we're at it, let's post this under "redundancy."

The conversion of trash into treasure reflects "ideology," "economics," and "treasure," which inevitably leads to "pirates." Let's be honest--you were thinkin' it.

I shouldn't be so hasty, though. Let us not forget that there are two sentences, so we should probably post under "sentences" and "two". [You never know when one of us authors will write a long blog entry on the number two.]

Did I mention that those two sentences are in "English"? Can't be forgetting about our good ol' language, now can we? Ooo! Those were both "questions"--better throw that category in the mix.

The trash and treasure both belong(ed) to "men," so let's also post this under "chauvinism." Interestingly enough, trash and treasure both begin with similar sounds, so I think it's only fitting to post under "alliteration," which is a "literary device."

Speaking of devices, we haven't even touched the metal detector, metaphorically speaking. [Guess we should post under "metaphors," just to be safe.] Metal detectors are a glorious piece of "technology," though if they can't detect trash they are quite prone to "criticism," I should say.

Can't use a metal detector without a beach, right? Can't get to the beach without traveling: "travel." That's the third time I've used a colon in this entry, so I suppose it's only fair to post under "punctuation" and "colons." Now that I think of it, colons are also a part of a vital organ, so let's also go with "anatomy." As a side note I hated A&P in "high school," mainly because I was never good at "science." I did, however, enjoy dissecting "fetal pigs."

Meanwhile, back on the beach, we haven't found any treasure yet! There are many reasons why, such as a malfunctioning metal detector, but I think we all know the true reason. That's right, you guessed it: "Nazis." Those quintessential "enemies" of "Indiana Jones" have undoubtedly impeded with our treasure hunting operation. However, more importantly, we have just violated "Godwin's Law," which arose from the "Internet" subculture in the "1990s."

I think that's as good a place to sop as any. [Honestly, we probably should've stopped with "fetal pigs."] No offense was intended, Jeremy/Drew/Michael. I will concede and use your multifarious categories system, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to make "ridiculous statements" first.

[I attempted to post this entry under all of the aforementioned labels, but I exceeded the allowed number of characters.]

5 comments:

Kelsey said...

Oh, Alex. I'm with you on the broad categories, man. If someone's looking for a specific word or phrase they can search for it. But you have to admit it's fun to post an entry under "fetal pigs." =)

Jeremy said...

The policy I go by, and I believe Drew does as well, is to tag general categories, like news and the internet, and then also tag major points, like movie titles, a main point in the post or what the post is about. I mentioned many more movies in my Oscar posts, for example, that I could have tagged, yet didn't. I didn't even tag it "movies," or "Hollywood," or the like. I think we're doing a pretty good job of compromising. The most tags on any one story is Michael's primary prediction post with 11. That is slightly excessive, because we tagged it with the names of the main candidates he mentioned, which I feel is valid.

I know it's satire, but you missed another good tag you could have used: "straw man."

Anyways, my main point is not that our system is the best, or even necessarily good, but that it's the one we all decided on, and we scaled it back some from what we originally were going to do because of our group discussion. I don't mind you disagreeing with us at all, or publicly and on the log, but it is sort of annoying when it's something that we already discussed decided on as a group. If you feel we should re-look at it, then say something to us directly instead of through a post.

There was really no other way to say what I was thinking, but don't take it as me being mad or offended or whatever either. Just part of our good-natured discussion.

And I thought of another tag: "passive-aggressive." We should send this post to the site Kelsey posted about. ;-)

Drew said...

That was the best laugh I've had all day! It is nearly impossible for me not to tag things like zombies and Nazis, but now there is a new holy grail of ridiculous tagging: fetal pigs.

I'll now have to write something tailored specifically to that tag, just to increase its hit count.

Alex said...

I apologize if this came off as passive-aggressive criticism of what we decided on, Jeremy. Honestly, I wrote this entirely as humor, not criticism. Sorry if this crossed a line, because we did agree on that happy middle ground, which I am very much fine with. I assure you, I don't lose any sleep at night over our categories. Just thought this would make a good humorous post, especially considering I haven't written in a while.

Jeremy said...

Oh, no, not at all. I laughed at it as well. I just thought it was sort of funny that we just had a post on people leaving notes to get people to change, and then you made that post. :) Don't worry, I am not annoyed or whatever. In fact, I'm in a rather good mood today, because my one class was canceled. Although I did just lose over $20,000 on Facebook poker ...