Monday Miscellany - A Collection of Odds, Ends and Personals

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From Byter David J, in response to my comment on the German word Treppenwitz:

The French have a term,"l'esprit de l'escalier" (staircase wit) with the same meaning as the German "treppenwitz".

I had written:

Treppenwitz: the things you should have said but only occur to you when it is too late.

Remember the Seinfeld episode about George Costanza coming up with great responses after everything was done? 

According to Wiktionary, both terms mean a devastating rejoinder thought of only after leaving the scene of the debate. 

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From Byter David B in response to the following cartoon:

Your joke about Jesus being gypped on presents strikes a chord since my daughter was born on Christmas Day in 1993. When she was younger we used to even things up by having a "half-birthday" party for her on June 25th. In England that is mid summer so we often made it a garden party.

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Having mentioned George Costenza (I used to love watching Seinfeld), let me acquaint you with his Worlds Collide Theory:

This is a theory which states that a man must keep his personal life (i.e. friends) separate from his relationship side (i.e. girlfriend). Should the two worlds come into contact with each other (by means of his girlfriend becoming friends with his friends), both worlds blow up. That is, that if ones relationship self and their independent self met it would be the end of the independent self.

"If Relationship George walks through that door, he will kill Independent George! A George divided against itself, cannot stand!" - George Costanza

Someone expressed it this way:

The worlds colliding theory is quite simple, many people live their lives in a similar way: you have your "independent self" (the guy that tells nasty jokes, swears, hangs with the fellas, and is an all around cool guy) and then you have "relationship self" (the guy that does nice things for his lady, leaves the seat down, cooks sometimes, still a cool guy, but a little adjusted).  Some have the "family self" (which is just like relationship self, just a little less wussy). 

If either of the latter mix with the first, say a girlfriend begins to "hang out" with you and your friends, then it's chaos because the way you act around her was never supposed to be seen by your buddies, who have every right to make fun of you after that. You no longer have the ability to act like the independent wildman because you're constantly in conflict with the relationship guy. 

One of the two will have to go and, depending on your strength of will, it may well be the independent side that suffers.