the pretension checklist

Are you pretentious? I sure am. After all, I run my own website, don’t I? This self-insight comes in handy, helping to keep my pretension under control most of the time. The line between pretension and ordinary elitism can be a hard to distinguish at times. If you think that you may be pretentious but aren’t sure, just consult the following list. You may be pretentious if:

  • The majority of the movies that you watch are foreign, subtitled in English with the original audio preserved (please note that Japanese anime does not count; this makes you a dork)
  • You really get the plastic bag scene in American Beauty.
  • You use the phrase “social zeitgeist” instead of “fad”.
  • You own a Mac primarily for the drop shadows (Level 1 Pretension) and don’t think that the Mac Guy in the “Get a Mac” ads comes off as smirking and arrogant (Level 2 Pretension).
  • You are American but choose to pronounce “Iraq” as Eh-Rock. While the fairly common Eye-Rack is about as bad as whipping out Eye-Talian, your attempt to be culturally sensitive should probably stop at Eh-Rack. Anything more sounds like you’re putting on an accent. Try using the Eh-Rock pronunciation on “Afghanistan.” Right. Thought so.
  • You own The Portable Jung (Guilty! So very, very guilty.)
  • You claim to enjoy zither music beyond “Paint it Black.”
  • You think wearing only black clothing sends a message of some kind.
  • You can honestly get through more than three Emily Dickinson poems in a row.
  • You sit in your bedroom looking at a black-light painting of a Mobeus strip and thinking, “What does it all mean?”

And so, another post is concluded. One more parcel of words released into the eternal abyss before I pass from this mortal coil. Like the sunrise is to the sunset, so I am to my readers, a dawn and dusk of words and punctuation, on into infinity.

–February 7th 2007

Commentation

(4 Comments)

  1. Brian Lee wrote:

    let me see here,

    -Yes
    -Yes
    -Actually I use them 50-50, so I guess a tentative yes
    -Yes, but Level one only
    -Yes, becaue Eh-Rock is the only real way to pronounce it. The British ruled Iraq, they anglocized the arabic, so we Americans should pronounce it the way they do. BTW, the Himalayas is He-MAL-E-yas, not Him-a-LAY-as.
    -Actually, yes
    -Hell No, anyone seen listening to zither music should be shot on sight, but since I am a compassionate, ther shooter should only aim to wound
    -Yes
    -Yes
    -No

    So to wrap up, I am pretentious.

  2. sociallytangent wrote:

    - Yes
    – No (Haven’t seen it.)
    – No (I prefer “meme”.)
    – No, Yes (I luv my Unix.)
    – No (“ih-rahk”, and dictionary.com concurs.)
    – No
    – No (I don’t like “Paint it Black,” either.)
    – Yes
    – Yes
    – No

    5/6. Almost pretentious, but not quite.

  3. Damian Hopper wrote:

    -No.
    -On some level, yes. But on the other hand, it’s a freaking plastic bag.
    -No.
    -He is smirking and arrogant next to John Hodgman, but I’ve seen worse.
    -I’m going to start.
    -No, but my mother probably does.
    -I am unfamiliar with the term “zither music.”
    -It does send a message, just not the message the people who do it thinks it sends.
    -No.
    -No.

  4. GDeeeeZL wrote:

    I refuse to answer your questions on the basis that there are starving children in Dah-four being persecuted by the Sue-don-ase rebels. Instead, I’ve written a haiku in their honor:

    Little children go
    Janjawid rebels stop now
    My heart pain runs deep