Q said...
Thankyou for the most methodical investigation to my last Query, it has proven a great ice-breaker at all my social events... and now for my new question: When it comes to decision making I fail to have the will power to pick a correct option without the need of using the tried & tested methods of Scissor/paper/rock; heads or tails; eenie, meenie, mhinie, mo; shortest staw etc... but they have become tiresome & I beseech you to investigate other systems that can be used & that are just as fun... I regard your judgement highly-is there even a method you favour?
Thankyou for the most methodical investigation to my last Query, it has proven a great ice-breaker at all my social events... and now for my new question: When it comes to decision making I fail to have the will power to pick a correct option without the need of using the tried & tested methods of Scissor/paper/rock; heads or tails; eenie, meenie, mhinie, mo; shortest staw etc... but they have become tiresome & I beseech you to investigate other systems that can be used & that are just as fun... I regard your judgement highly-is there even a method you favour?
posted by hughevans at 3:23 PM
1 Comments:
Q,
Thank you for your kind words of praise. I find you to be most courteous and as such it is a particular pleasure to announce that I have looked into your latest query with some keenness, and have found some enlightening new decision-making devices for you.
You listed some very tried and tested option-reducing methods. Of them, my personal favourite is heads or tails. I personally opt for tails as standard, reciting out loud in a proud and somewhat smug tone “tails never fails!”. Of course sometimes it does, but with my consistency at least I am not opening up my chances to the Gods too much. I am guaranteed a fair 50% chance each time allowing no external forces or hunches to intervene and skew my long-term results.
The problem with all of these, however, is that you are leaving all your decisions to luck. In my experience, chance simply isn’t a sensible way of electing the correct path. You need some insight into the future turn of events; a premonition if you will.
So I looked into the origins of the word ‘premonition’ in the hope that I would discover some clue that would lead me to uncovering the premium way to make the right choice most often.
“Premonition is sometimes referred to as a ‘gut-level’ feeling”
This interested me right away. To the untrained eye this would appear to be an inoxuous statement, but to a super-sleuth such as myself I can see what the cryptic-crossword expert would describe as a ‘reversal clue’. In other words, the description ‘gut-level’ is actually trying to tell us ‘level-tug’. It is just written in a reversed code.
So: ‘level-tug’. Upon further research I discovered that this method has been used for many generations and will be instantly familiar to you when I alert you to its modern name, ‘tug-of-war’. Yes, instead of flipping a coin next time you want to decide whether you or your colleague should go to make the next cup of tea, why not challenge your foe to a gentle inter-office ‘level-tug’ to decide your predicament. My advice would be to ensure you have a large rope and a suitable pair of hand protectors (gloves) before embarking on this particular conflict.
During my enquiries, I also looked up the definition of ‘prophecy’ (another way of predicting the future):
“a prediction uttered under divine inspiration”
As wordplay had set me in such good stead for the previous method I couldn’t help but glance closer at the word ‘divine’. Divine is an anagram of ‘Envied’.
Horatio Nelson once said that “A glorious death is to be envied.” To me this is ironic because the word Envied is full of life (the word ‘vie’ being French for ‘life’). This served as the clue to how to create a prophecy. Re-working Nelson’s quote to help my point slightly, “An enviable death”, using my logic this is what is known as an Oxymoron (An oxymoron consists of two words that seem to contradict each other, or actually do contradict each other.)
So, my conclusion is for you to use oxymorons as your way of making decisions. If in a contest with others, instead of pulling straws to see who gets the short one, why not take it in turns to recite oxymorons until someone can’t any more – they are the ones that should make the tea.
Or, perhaps you wish to decide how many pints to have of an evening on the town. Reel off as many oxymorons as you can think of until you run dry – then use that number in your decision-making process.
I would recommend a little swotting on this one. When I am re-oxymoronising I tend to go here: www.oxymoronlist.com where they claim to have “The largest list of oxymorons ever collected online”
So – there are two new tricks for you. Do re-visit me to let me know of your progress.
All the best,
Hugh Evans PI
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