There's no knowing where we're rowing

[austin_dern]

Now and then probably everyone realizes some aspect of their personality is abnormal to the point of being deranged. I had one of those moments today. I knew beforehand that I was a little odd in my peer group for having learned pretty well how to diagram sentences and still remembering more or less how to do it. But today I realized that I think it reasonable to look at the diagram of a complicated sentence, and instantly make the leap of imagining all the words removed and the lines rescaled in order to lay bare to its resemblance to skeleton diagrams of complicated organic molecules. I have developed a form of humor appreciable mostly by myself and the late Isaac Asimov.

And I have used forms of this same joke in multiple Usenet groups across several years. Worse, I'm mildly annoyed that I described the diagram of a particularly baffling Sarah Palin sentence as looking like ``the structure of theobromine'' even though I knew full well that it did not. Theobromine (of chocolate fame) is primarily a hexagonal ring with a pentagonal ring with some streamers off the side. The Palin sentence digram was nothing of the sort, but I couldn't think of an organic chemical which did fit the bill. And I'm a little upset that nobody in the group on which I inflicted this flawed joke seems to mind. They're all letting me get away with my fib. What's the point of making an overly complicated and unobvious joke if people aren't going to grumble about its glaring technical inaccuracies? What kind of response is ``that took some time to process, but it was worth it'' in that light? Is there any part of my thought process here which makes the slightest bit of sense?

I have to get back to making jokes based on the resemblance of something to one episode of the short-lived Banana Splits ripoff The Skatebirds, so that I'm at least telling jokes in the same universe as anybody else.

Trivia: The German chemist Adolph Spitteler developed a plastic-like material named galalith --- soon used for chalkboards --- when his cat knocked formaldehyde into its milk saucer. Source: The Genie in the Bottle, Joe Schwarcz.

Currently Reading: To Rule The Waves: How The British Navy Shaped The Modern World, Arthur Herman.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

As it stands, it is a joke which I was amused by. The point at which you obviously worry too much: you could have described it as "The structure of mexahexiline"[*1], and got the same response from 98% of folks. "Theobromine (of chocolate fame)" implies a very, very stretched use of the word 'fame'.

If you're chasing that 2% of people that might have heard of theobromine, and then within that group, the 10% who might have faint idea of its chemical composition, and then within that group, the 1% who would look it up to make comparisons, and then within that group, the 20% who might think it funny, clever, or pedantic to make note of it, Usenet doesn't have that many people anymore.

Of course, if your true, hidden goal was to make at least one person reading your LJ go to Wikipedia and look up theobromine, well, I now have.

--Chi

[*1] - A chemical name I just made up, which Austin of course knew, but other commenters potentially may not.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't say (of chocolate fame) in my original reference; I just left it as the compound. But you don't think it's at least of modest fame as food chemicals go? It's the caffeine-like compound that makes chocolate dangerous for most pets.

When I do make a joke on an exceedingly technical point I like to try making it as right (or as mock-right) as possible, partly I suppose because it helps the impact of a joke the more reality there is to it but also because maybe only a few people are going to know I put the work in to getting that right, but those people are going to really appreciate it. I'll have fans for life.

'Mexahexiline' is a really implausible name for a chemical for a couple reasons. The big problem is in the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry standardized nomenclature the endings of a compound name are indicative of what kind of compound it is. But there's no -ine or -iline standard ending: the closest that one gets is -amine, which indicates the compound is an amino acid. It's a little worrying that 'hex' appears in the penultimate location: it usually is a suffix indicating six of something. But it can indicate a six-carbon-based parent hydrocarbon chain. That implies a rather small molecule, leaving little room for sidelines, though. 'Mexa', well, that doesn't mean anything although in context it can't have a backbone more than five carbon atoms long. Of course many exciting things have carbon backbones that short, like the functional business of amines or esters. Anyway, I'd stick with something like `3-methanoate hexamine', which is almost meaningless but has the form.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Well, certainly one can put in that little extra effort for the percentage of people who do know their chemicals; if you're after pleasing that 2%, feel free.

And I'd conjecture that a great portion of your average audience, even on the likely scientific-heavy Usenet groups/forums you visit, wouldn't even blink at 'Mexahexiline', even though it indeed doesn't obey a bit of formal nomenclature. If Reed Richards were using a compound of it to defeat the Red Ghost and his super-Apes, I don't think there'd be letters to the editor. (Perhaps, letter.) But I do appreciate the formal reworking.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

You'll be wanting one of the branching polymers, such as polyvinyl chloride or atactic polystyrene. Tiny simple units repeated in their thousands, branching, branching again, and circling back in every conceivable random configuration.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You might think, but they're not right. They don't have enough cross-connecting links --- it's the antecedents messing the sentences up every time --- and as polymers they also don't have any really fixed scale. Really aggravating me is I know I know a molecule that has the rings in just the right places to be a really apt analogy, and the name is evading me.

I think it's used as an example in an Asimov essay, but I can only pin down which decade the book having it was in. Fortunately, that was the decade he only wrote 50 books, but, still ...

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

o/` or which way the river's flowing. Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a-blowing? o/` Not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing, AND THEY'RE CERTAINLY NOT SHOWING ANY SIGNS THAT THEY ARE SLOWING!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You would think that They Might Be Giants at least would have a song that mentioned theobromine, wouldn't you? I don't know how they overlooked that.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

In a side project from one of the band members, he did do a song called 'Tryptophan', but that's as close as you'll get.