There are two kinds of people in this world........
Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 11:04 am
......... Those who break into their boiled egg with a series of vertical blows, thereby reducing an area of shell to a fragmented wasteland that must then be picked of piecemeal and scattered over the plate and tablecloth for the rest of breakfast - or those who with a single and decisive 'swipe', decapitate their egg leaving a flat surface to proceed from and a 'divot' of white to be enjoyed with a sprinkle of salt at a later point. I am of the latter kind.
It was with this in mind that I decided to instigate a thread specifically with the intent of celebrating [or at least recording] these 'fracture lines' where for no logical reson, the human race separates itself into two distinct species where 'never the twain shall meet'. Posts can comment upon previous examples, cite new ones [which should of course begin with the words "There are two kinds ....etc, etc,"] or indeed be unrelated to the thread, any previous post or anything on the Watch whatsoever ["let each man march to his own drum, however measured or far away"'] - this is, after all, a democracy.
The thread also does honour to the origin of the phrase, not so much as used previously in casual speech, but 'culturaly', with it's 'meme' or unstated understanding of decicive finality, with which the phrase has become associated. This begins, as far as I can tell, with the book 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' by Joe Millard. The phrase was used on a number of occasions by Tuco the bandit, usually as he dealt an underhand blow to someone he was 'partnered' with at the time. The film of the same name raised the phrases 'self-contained' expressive form, when Eli Wallach [in his master role playing the aforementioned Tuco] used it repeatedly, only to have it thrown back at him by a gun toting Clint Eastwood [as the Man With No Name] who drawls at the shell-shocked bandit "There are two kinds of people in the world - those with shovels, and those who dig", he points his gun at Tuco, "You dig." I saw that film many times and loved it. Many years later I sat on a coach in India with my wife having just spent half a day at the incomparable Taj Mahal. As the last of us filtered back onto the coach, the indian tour guide who led our group picked up his microphone. "There are two kinds of people in the world," hesaid, "Those who have seen the Taj Mahal and those who have not. Welcome into the first group." [I have since heard that this is the standard phrase used by all tour guides to their groups following their Taj visits - so thus the 'meme' spreads from a nineteen sixties cowboy novel to a ninteen nineties indian tale.]
But back to eggs. I regard the bludgeoning of an egg into submission as an uncivilised act, worthy only of a simian, so it was with some shock I discovered my wife and daughter [of her previous marriage] doing just that this at our breakfast table this weekend. {'Ive probably seen it before, but it's never become a subject of conversation}. Now as I personally have no recollection as to why I 'swipe' rather than batter, and neither does my wife or her daughter, I can only assume this is a 'learned' behavioral trait, that becomes 'hardwired' into our psyche, before we are even aware this is happening. That there may be an element of 'class' differentiation as to which method is adopted I was too polite to point out [on the basis of wanting my wife to speak to me for the next three months] but this is speculation on my part. But anyway, like it or not, there are two kinds of people in the world......
[nb Of course I am fooling re the 'class' comment at the end here; if there were an ounce of 'class conciousness' in my wife, she would not be with an anthropoid oaf like me in a million years!
]
It was with this in mind that I decided to instigate a thread specifically with the intent of celebrating [or at least recording] these 'fracture lines' where for no logical reson, the human race separates itself into two distinct species where 'never the twain shall meet'. Posts can comment upon previous examples, cite new ones [which should of course begin with the words "There are two kinds ....etc, etc,"] or indeed be unrelated to the thread, any previous post or anything on the Watch whatsoever ["let each man march to his own drum, however measured or far away"'] - this is, after all, a democracy.
The thread also does honour to the origin of the phrase, not so much as used previously in casual speech, but 'culturaly', with it's 'meme' or unstated understanding of decicive finality, with which the phrase has become associated. This begins, as far as I can tell, with the book 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' by Joe Millard. The phrase was used on a number of occasions by Tuco the bandit, usually as he dealt an underhand blow to someone he was 'partnered' with at the time. The film of the same name raised the phrases 'self-contained' expressive form, when Eli Wallach [in his master role playing the aforementioned Tuco] used it repeatedly, only to have it thrown back at him by a gun toting Clint Eastwood [as the Man With No Name] who drawls at the shell-shocked bandit "There are two kinds of people in the world - those with shovels, and those who dig", he points his gun at Tuco, "You dig." I saw that film many times and loved it. Many years later I sat on a coach in India with my wife having just spent half a day at the incomparable Taj Mahal. As the last of us filtered back onto the coach, the indian tour guide who led our group picked up his microphone. "There are two kinds of people in the world," hesaid, "Those who have seen the Taj Mahal and those who have not. Welcome into the first group." [I have since heard that this is the standard phrase used by all tour guides to their groups following their Taj visits - so thus the 'meme' spreads from a nineteen sixties cowboy novel to a ninteen nineties indian tale.]
But back to eggs. I regard the bludgeoning of an egg into submission as an uncivilised act, worthy only of a simian, so it was with some shock I discovered my wife and daughter [of her previous marriage] doing just that this at our breakfast table this weekend. {'Ive probably seen it before, but it's never become a subject of conversation}. Now as I personally have no recollection as to why I 'swipe' rather than batter, and neither does my wife or her daughter, I can only assume this is a 'learned' behavioral trait, that becomes 'hardwired' into our psyche, before we are even aware this is happening. That there may be an element of 'class' differentiation as to which method is adopted I was too polite to point out [on the basis of wanting my wife to speak to me for the next three months] but this is speculation on my part. But anyway, like it or not, there are two kinds of people in the world......
[nb Of course I am fooling re the 'class' comment at the end here; if there were an ounce of 'class conciousness' in my wife, she would not be with an anthropoid oaf like me in a million years!
]
[;)].
