A Redneck Perspective: Corpus Callosum exposed

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

By Clyde Thornhill

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-The past couple weeks all you hear around town is Jonathan Schechter’s article this, Jonathan Schechter’s article that. Jonathan is not even from Hog Island, yet people hang on his every word. I decided to read the column myself and see what all the fuss is about.

For the uninitiated, Jonathan’s discourse, Corpus Callosum, reads like you would expect from a column named after brain structure. (Corpus Callosum is the part of the brain that decides our beer preference as well as our predilection toward blonds.)

I find his habit of using proper punctuation annoying. It’s a pompous attempt to degrade those of us who make independent grammar choices. Writer whim punctuation carries a certain vogue that economists don’t understand.
He also fills his column with facts. Boring! Hasn’t he ever heard of cable news? Using selective semi-facts and sort-of-truths inventiveness relieves the reader from having to think and increases ratings.

One of the biggest dangers of Jonathan’s column is its use of terminology that if misplaced, can have a negative affect on your love life. Once I tried to explain economic cross-elasticity, a term from one of his articles, to a woman I was dating. “Watching football is free,” I explained using my best intellectual tone. “Demand for other types of amusement loses value when competing against a zero cost basis. Therefore, the $125 cost of taking you to dinner at Koshu rises to infinite expense.”
Unfortunately, she had no concept of economic theory and raged about social applications that have no bearing on economics. I spent the night alone. Damn communist.

As I continued to read Jonathan’s column, I was overcome by a sense of his inner tragedy. He actually admits to being obsessed with BEA reports on income data on a per-capita basis. I understand obsession, but for me it involves beer, shotguns and hot Asian women. For a moment, I considered sending him a copy of the 2008 National Electrical Code. If he is fixated with economics he would be besotted by such stirring prose as “Hard conversion is considered a change in dimensions or properties of an item into new sizes that might or might not be interchangeable with sizes used in the original measurement.” I decide not to send it, lest it’s more excitement than his heart can handle.

After crossing out all words over three syllables, all graphs, and any reference to anything German, I was able to make sense of his column.

Apparently, Jackson is now the richest county in America. I wonder if this means Paris will finally agree to go out with me. JHW


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A Redneck Perspective: Corpus Callosum exposed | Planet JH News Article: General Worm Hole

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