College-age girl in coffee shop: Have you heard of 'Robinson Crusoe'?
College-age guy sitting with her, studying: No.
Girl: Oh, it's this really famous book. The author's name is exactly like the main character, Robinson Crusoe, like, it's 'Daniel Crusoe.' It was written in like the 17th century, and it's about this guy, Robinson Crusoe, who's like a world traveler. And he goes to all these places, and he goes to a place where everyone's really little, and another place where everyone's really big. And he gets this little slave.
Me: [WTF]
Guy: Huh.
Girl: And it's all about, like, Victorian ideas of colonialism and of how people of that time thought about exploration, and control over the native population.
The amazing thing to me about this conversation is how in the end, the girl managed to put out a semi-coherent point, although her getting nearly every fact wrong about the book somewhat detracts from said point. But you can make these points without actually knowing any real facts. I would like to blame post-modernism for this, as for everything else, but I'm going to go with dumbness instead.
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3 comments:
I have to admit that dumb people making valid points does make me feel indignant.
Does that make me an elitist?
she's talking about gulliver's travels, no? and i would imagine her point was made by someone else, and she was just attempting to restate it.
incidentally, after wikipedia-ing gulliver's travels to make sure i wasn't way off, i see that a movie production starring jack black and your lookalike, jason segal, is in the works for 2010.
also, did you go back to canada again?
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