@whatthefluther – it’s John hands down.
Now that this is out of the way, my favorite stupid argument was in college. I lived next door to this guy named Ted, who was 6’7” and looked like the lead singer of the Spin Doctors, and pretty much wore the same stained, full of holes wifebeater every time I saw him. He was a big Dungeons and Dragons fan, and one guy who was unfortunate enough to live with him for a while began to refer to him as “The Encroacher Beast” due to Ted’s propensity to sort of take over their dorm room with his stuff. Ted eventually moved out of the dorms and back in with his mom, and on about 3 separate occassions he’d invite people over for “dinner” and have you come at noon only to find out that dinner would happen after you helped them move from one trailer to another. Ted also liked to serve drinks, usually something along the lines of Windsor and Mountain Dew and you’d want to watch out because he might just toss a radish in your drink from across the room when you weren’t expecting it.
Now, one day my roommate and I were hanging out next door at Ted’s dorm. I believe it was about 2 am, and we had basically just finished watching the porn movie we’d all rented at the local gas station, which we’d set off at about 9 that night to get, along with some liquor (Ted was the only one of age at the time)....a trip we made through the Cemetery and back for God knows what reason, probably just quicker. Not really sure what the logic was in having the soire at Ted’s pad instead of at ours, maybe it was because Ted was of age and thought it would be better if he got caught with liquor in his room than if we got caught with it in ours, so instead of watching the movie on our 19” color TV, we watched it on Ted’s 13” b&w television. So, we were having some good times, chatting, cracking jokes, and I can’t remember exactly what led me to make this joke, but someone mentioned something about mace, meaning the kind that you would squirt in an attacker’s face, and I made a joke to juxtapose that with the medieval weapon known as a mace, something akin to “yeah, that would be rapist won’t know what hit him when she swings a spiked ball on a chain at him.”
Well, some of you may already be crying foul here if you’re way into medieval weaponry, but as you may or may not be aware, a “mace” is essentially a club, it may well have a heavy protrustion with sharp points on the end of it, and would have the traditional handle, but it is not the instrument which has a chain between the ball and the club…the bludgeon part is affixed to the club itself. So, Ted (and with the avent of the internet, I discovered he was technically wrong about this), informed me that the weapon I was referring to was not a mace, but a “morning star”, which is technically “more” accurate, because a morning star has a spiked ball, though it is not attached to a chain. Turns out what I was actually referring to was a “flail”, which is a spiked ball on a chain attached to a handle. I would have thought of this as a mace, and as wikipedia points out (I was going to link, but the links get messed up because of parentheses in the URL), “Modern authors have multiple conflicting names for this weapon; the terms “morning star” (a stick with a spiked tip), and even “mace” (a bludgeoning weapon similar to a morning star) are used interchangeably with “flail”, because of historical fallacies.”
So, the conversation went something like this, to the best of my recollection:
Ted: It’s probably good that she carries mace to protect herself from would be rapists.
Me: Yeah, I bet her would be rapist won’t know what hit him when she pulls out a spiked ball on a chain and goes upside his head with it.
Ted: THAT’S NOT A MACE, THAT’S A MORNING STAR.
Me: Really? I thought that was a mace.
Ted: No, a mace doens’t have a chain, that’s a MORNING STAR.
Me: OK, but you knew what I meant, right?
Ted: But that’s NOT A MACE, IT’S A MORNING STAR.
Me: Alright, I’m sure you’d know better than I do. But you still understood the joke, right?
Ted: THAT’S NOT A MACE, IT’S A MORNING STAR.
Me: OK, Ted, I’m not arguing that, you are 100% right. My point is that people, maybe not you, but people would get that joke, they would know what I meant, right? You would know what I meant, right Tony?
Tony: Yeah, I thought that’s what a mace was too.
Ted: BUTIT’SNOTAMACEIT’SAMORNINGSTAR!!!!!!
Me: Yes, we’ve established that. But you see, here’s the thing. I’ve seen in books, on TV, in movies, morning stars being referred to as maces…I in fact had never even heard of a morning star before you told me.
Ted: It’s not a MACE, it’s a MORNING STAR.
Me: You’ve made that perfectly clear. I’m just saying, if you stopped 100 people in the hall and showed them a picture of a morning star and asked them what the name of this weapon was, I bet you at LEAST 90 of them would say it was a mace. Yes, they would be wrong, I believe you, but this is what people THINK of when they hear the term.
Ted: But it’s not a MACE…it’s a morning star.
Me: You’re right….aww, I’m tired, I think I’m going to head back to my room and hit the hay.
I believe it was later that same month when I was coming down the hall and I saw Ted standing int he hall with a cast on his right hand. I asked him what happened, and apparently the night before, as a joke, Ted’s roommate had locked the door when Ted went to go to the bathroom at like 1 in the morning (they were both still up). When Ted turned the door handle and found it locked, rather than say, “haha, let me in” or knock or do any of the other things he could have done, he hauled off and punched the solid oak door hard enough to shatter the bones in his hand.
Sigh…I miss Ted.
But perhaps the funniest thing ever is that a few months ago, I saw an episode of Metalocalypse, and Nathan Explosion, the lead singer of the band Dethklok (which is what this show is about, in case you haven’t seen it), who is a big, imposing dude, not unlike Ted, is talking to his manager about this huge shipment of medieval weaponry he just got. And the manager while holding a stick with a chain and a spiked ball refers to it as a mace repeatedly, and Nathan says, “it’s a morning star and you already know how I feel about that.” I swear, the writers of this show must know Ted too.
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