today's lesson: knowing what you're talking about

Do I talk smack? Of course I do. But let's come right back down to earth. So. Do. You.

We all do. And we all have our reasons. We all have trends that suggest what we are most likely to talk about. Personally, the one thing that tends to push my buttons and yank me right into loose-lip territory is the tendency of others to be opinionated and judgmental. Left alone, I tend to be a "let it be" kind of person. Start spewing your strong and baseless opinions in a loud manner in some open forum, especially when it's about a person or group of people, I throw all of that right out the window. Two wrongs don't make a right, I know this. But if you're not going to care, neither am I.

Aside from the internet and the loud-mouths who use it as their playground - self included - one of the most open forums for such opinions is a good old-fashioned newspaper. Alleged un-biased news aside (I'm looking at you Marianas Variety, heavy with irony), the newspaper also relates editorials and opinions written by the lay-person or free-lance writer. I have, on occasion, contributed to such columns.

And that brings me to one particular writer who is seen in the Pacific Daily News every Sunday. This writer has shared short articles containing gems of wisdom such as her belief that women don't belong in the military, pregnant women should be ashamed of their growing bellies and appropriately cover it up with the tent-like shirts she bragged about donning fashionably when she was pregnant very many years ago and that, on the other end of the spectrum, women who have a slimmer figure who don't have people incubating inside of them should not wear clothes that hide their figures. Yeah, I don't know either.

Her latest was a passive-aggressive address of a person whose comments about our island have gone viral. (Yes, I know I'm being passive-aggressive, as well.) Specifically, she called in question this person's claims that his comments were a metaphor. She did this by recollecting her childhood under a mother who was, for all intents and purposes, a grammar nazi. She used this as a resume of sorts, to cite her credentials before she decided to school the readers about what a metaphor is and isn't.

Funny thing is, for all those years being corrected by her mother and the years she's spent since seemingly considering herself well-schooled in proper speech, she was absolutely, undeniably and verifiably wrong.

The gist of her claim was that in order for a metaphor to be properly executed, its context should be obvious and instant. The reader should know what is being compared to what.

Sorry, professor. You're talking about the most basic form of metaphor, one used to hammer in what a simple metaphor is when teaching children. You probably should have learned that there are different types of metaphors. One of those types is allegory. Allegory is an extended metaphor and while what is actually said is rather obvious, what it's being compared to isn't always so. Whether it's a good allegory or not is up to the reader.

A classic example of an allegory is the poem "she being brand new" by e.e. cummings. The words may describe something of an automotive nature. What cummings was really talking about, however, was the act of sex. And while counting lines is difficult in any cummings work, rest assured it's longer than a mere sentence that compares two things without use of the words 'like', 'as', etc.

Yes, in that case the context was rather obvious. Take a gander at it some time. There is no missing what cummings was referring to. But in his case, we're talking about a well-crafted allegory. A good metaphor. Sometimes people miss the boat with allegory. Sometimes it's just not well done.

So while the original speaker in question might not have made a good metaphor/allegory, he did in fact make one.

I won't be taking that test, thanks. Not when the instructor clearly knows less than those she is trying to instruct.