Tuesday, April 04, 2006

One of these days I'll remember what it means

Reading Dr. McNinja a few days ago, I encountered my old foe Deus ex machina. No matter how many times I look it up, I never remember what it means.

Fortunately, in today's day and age, I can always just Wikipedia anything I don't understand. Quoth the article:

In modern terms the Deus ex machina has also come to describe a person or thing that suddenly arrives and solves a seemingly insoluble difficulty. While in storytelling this might seem unfulfilling, in real life this type of figure might be welcome and heroic.

You don't say.

So if a couple of years ago I said, "Man, I wish I knew what 'Deus ex machina' meant, but am nowhere near anyone literate," and then Wikipedia became popular, I guess that would have been a Deus ex machina. And now my world is a little richer.

Current Music: XTC - Go 2
Current seemingly insoluble difficulty: Gosh, I sure am hungry right now.
Current really seemingly insoluble difficulty: World hunger
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9 comments:

  1. Edward4/04/2006 6:47 p.m.

    Deus ex machina just means 'machine of god'

    your high school english teachers stink.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4/04/2006 7:00 p.m.

    It actually means "God comes from the machine."



    You stink.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dickolas Wang4/04/2006 8:08 p.m.

    Oh snap!

    ReplyDelete
  4. jim4/04/2006 8:49 p.m.

    Dude, swear to God, 2 days ago I was reading something, came across the term, thought to myself "why can't i ever remember was deux ex machina means?", and looked it up in wikipedia.

    Yeah.

    ReplyDelete
  5. GOC4/05/2006 12:16 a.m.

    your world is plenty rich

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous4/05/2006 9:00 a.m.

    Wikipedia would not qualify as a Deus ex Machina because there's not much godly about it. The important part of a DeM is that it is unlikely to the point of absurdity (like the steel chains that just happen to be located above the bad guy with the gun in Twins). A DeM for you would have been if E! just happened to have a piece on DeMs while you were wanting to know what a DeM was.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dickolas Wang4/05/2006 11:54 a.m.

    Hm... while yours is unmistakeably godlier, Wikipedia still seems pretty godly to me. I think my likelihood-of-divine-intervention threshold is much lower than yours.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ___________4/05/2006 6:25 p.m.

    I think what he means is that a typical Deus ex Machina seemingly descends out of the blue, whereas Wikipedia evolved slowly and methodically.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dickolas Wang4/05/2006 9:09 p.m.

    Right, but by the time I heard of it, it already contained all the world's information.

    ReplyDelete