GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS "life is a game" = about 25,000 "life's a game" = about 8,430 TOTAL: 33,430 "life is not a game" = about 5,720 "life isn't a game" = about 588 TOTAL: 6,308 "life is a thing in which games take place" = nil TOTAL: nil Having applied a suitably democratic method of inquiring into the merits of your propositions, I find myself in the regrettable position of having to make the following announcement: you fail.

Don't defend me. I misspoke and needed punishing.

I gave you -10- though. What's your surname?

Obviously, as I said.

No.

oops - i just posted a regular comment instead of reply... yeah. totally genuine. i feel very silly now! but i do thank you for your comments. (sarah)

Make your eyes look at this: 1. The quirky use of "as they pleases" instead of "as they please" to force a rhyme with the word "diseases" sounds like something Dr Seuss might have written; 2. The idea of a person's "organs" getting "the wheezes" sounds like the ill-advised joke of a red-faced provincial vicar; 3. The description of dying and being deposited in a mortuary as being "filched" to the "freezers" looks as though it was intended to raise a laugh; 4. The rest of the poem is similarly funny. Are you genuine in saying that this poem was not intended to be light-hearted and/or amusing?

He slouches; When [his] Master's gone to bed, He sneaks [away] [behind] the shed And crouches. Better?

Interesting phrase "take place" "life is a thing in which games take place" "take place" as "occur", "manifest", "become; become apparent" - it all feels redundant. Games as a thing defined, as having a label and used by language - already exist. "life is a thing in which games occur(...)" could be: "life is a thing with games" Yet, life as a thing has lots of things, in fact, it could be argued that it contains all things (including nothing) - not just games. So really, it is meaningless to claim it has games. Life has belly-button lint too, but do we really need to state it? "Life is a thing" But really, we know life to encompass more than just things, it also contains the set of no-things. "Life is" Yet, sometimes it isn't - is that true also? Seriously - if life can contain the thing "no-thing" can it also contain the thing "non life"? And by doing so, does it negate its own existance? Or rather, does it make it's definition meaningless - or at best - fruitless? I offer the previous ruminations as proof that defining life is fruitless. As fruitless, at least, as wondering if Foucault would have had nearly the fame he enjoys if he wore a toupee and contacts.

Do you know someone called Peter Allen? (I think he went to Guffborough Grammar)

Drat.

"Life is just a game" is the world's stupidest platitude. Life is not a game. Life is a thing in which games take place. It's not even an understandable confusion; the features of 'games' are almost entirely distinct from the features of 'life'. Also, what is this speech about wouldn't it be ace to be a philosopher? I never said there was anything wrong with professional philosophers. Indeede, I implied that it was OK to feel proud about studing Wittgenstein if you were being paid for it. Nice one!!

Think of how often, in the middle of doing something pointless and pleasurable, you suddenly think, hey, I wish there was some way I could be paid to do this for the rest of my life. Sure, you'd probably better spend your time developing an AIDS cure or portable non-polluting jetpack that runs on urine, but at least you're not developing super-cholera am I right? And you can (make a living doing something pointless, I mean,) provided no-one realizes how pointless it is - else they'd stop buying your books or taking your classes. Philosophers are the best at this, followed by writers. Any decent philosopher has to have noticed that no new idea has been formulated in the field of philosophy since 1) all questions in philosophy are steaming cornucopiae of bow'ls, and 2) this is probably because there's no way to really know anything with any degree of certainty. And maybe 3) there is no God worth thinking much about in this lifetime. As far as I know, all of these were said pretty well in the 19th century, if not before. Naturally, philosophers can't come out and say that or they'd lose tenure, so they've spun it out endlessly in gobbledygook code and hundreds if not thousands of people have lived long comfortable lives doing philosophy instead of having to work in coal mines or something. That said, certain philosophers probably do think they're saying something new and important. These are the gay ones. The half-decent ones know it's just a game and treat it as such, i.e., Wittgenstein. That's fine. Incidentally, if you think you're life is something more than a game, then it's most likely just a more deadly game, i.e., designing super-cholera or participating in Middle Eastern politics. I haven't read Wittgenstein since I was required to do so years ago, and I don't think I ever will again. It's sufficient for me to condense his entire body of work into a one-line summary which I use to whiffle-bat anyone who thinks anything means anything.

Or, indeed, "he soils such moveables and/or immoveables as with which he may (from time to time) come into contact"?

First, Hume would win Wittgenstein any day of the week. Second, for you to go around trumping out miniature gushing guffs of adulation for Wittgenstein is as bulgingly ignorant as it is appallingly pretentious. Wittgenstein was a crazed loner whose only achievement, which was realising that nearly all questions in philosophy are steaming cornucopiae of bow'ls, was continually nullified by his inexplicable continuing engagement in philosophy. Furthermore, to think about Wittgenstein's work is to expend hideous amounts of mental effort on a completely useless task. Anyone who is somehow proud of having tried to understand Wittgenstein is either being paid for it, or is so acutely aware of the total waste of time their life has been that they have to tell themselves it was incredibly fulfilling. Studying him as a requirement for a class is no excuse whatsoever.

4. Thomas Hobbes - he was a sloppy cunt, State of Nature, State of my arse more like. 5. Jean Jacque Rosseau - credible right up to the part when he started fucking anything that moved including himself. 6. Locke - Would have had slightly more gravitas had his father not locked him up in a cupboard for the first 16 years of his life. 7. Darwin - rubbished in fine style by David Koresh. 8. Ron Atkinson - was for a time revered, however, recent actions have led to a revisionist backlash against what was formerly regarded as gospel.