Metaphorically yours..

The pen is mightier than the sword, and the metaphor is one of the strongest products that a pen can conceive. For people very anal about their grammar, obviously when I say metaphor, I implicitly also refer to all analogical literary devices. Metaphors buy you precious time in tricky situations (Riddles in the Dark anyone?), they can easily add insult to injury, and employed in literature, lower the temperature of the literary piece by a significant bit.(Um..make it cool, in other terms :P. This however is because metaphors make writing difficult to understand and anything that people do not get is uber cool, by definition.)

Here's a thought. Metaphors also create a sense of unity, a sense of brotherhood if you will. It's pretty much the same with jokes too. Here's how, I make a decent joke because I'm smart, now you got the joke and laughed at it, ergo, you're smart too. And smart people tend to get along very, very well. Maybe we could you know, work towards winning a Nobel jointly or something, who knows?

The confusion, or the fun, as far as the observers are concerned, occurs when the (do forgive the usage of the terms to follow, it's just that using them gives me the kicks) Metaphor-er and the Metaphor-ee cease to be on the same wavelength and hence the Metaphor in question is labeled a bad one. And when this happens, chaos reigns.

What could be more fun, as a few of us friends discovered one fine evening, is interpreting dialogues from films as metaphors. Most dialogues can be interpreted in more than just the context they're meant to be relevant to. Want examples? Always at your service,

Star Wars,

• 'I have a bad feeling about this' -used in the bedroom or in the toilet.
• 'I love you.''I know.' -used in a Bollywood movie.
• 'May the force be with you' -used in a physics assignment, or at a game of cards(read force as fours in which case).
• 'Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size do you?' - Amazing how I cannot think of a non sexual connotation for this, try as hard as I might.
• 'Twilight is upon me, and soon night must fall. That is the way of things, the way of the Force' - Somehow, the word Twilight repulses me, not funny.
• 'I am your father' - I dunno, 20 years after a Kumbh Mela perhaps?

The Lord of the Rings

• 'The wizard arrives precisely when he means too.' -This one I'll leave to speculation. Hint: the word 'arrives' :P
• 'The Dark Lord Sauron..yadda yadda' -if this isn't racist, nothing is.
• 'The Black Riders!' -And just when you thought nothing could be more racist.
• 'Three rings for the elven kings...' - Let's say Jack Nicholson was hired to voice the opening lines from The Fellowship. He'd probably go about it like, Three fucking Rings for the fucking Elven-kings under the fucking sky,
  Seven for the fucking Dwarf-lords in their fucking halls of stone,
  Nine for fucking Mortal Men doomed to fucking die,
  One for the Dark fucking Lord on his dark fucking throne
  In the Land of fucking Mordor where the fucking Shadows lie.
  One fucking Ring to rule them all, One fucking Ring to find them,
  One fucking Ring to bring them all and in the fucking darkness bind them
  In the Land of fucking Mordor where the fucking Shadows lie.
  
  

More soon.