word salad -or- semi-semiotics

i was throwing back apéritifs with an associate the other day and realised that through the course of our conversation i kept using ridiculous placeholder names like whats-his-name, doohickey, and watchamacallit. in fact, using placeholders is nothing new for me, but this time i became acutely aware of how much my associate probably thought that i was an unlettered boob.

thus i resolved that in the future when my brain is not able to keep up with my patter, i would say WHATEVER word came into my head regardless of the consequences. after a week of following through on this promise, i was shocked by the tame results:

• i said chrysanthemum → when referring to pickled sushi ginger
• colander → cheese grater
• mittens → slippers
• mowing → vacuuming
• foie gras → hummus

what is striking to me is how literal these metaphors really are (eg. a colander and a cheese grater are both punctured metal cooking apparati). i’m no ramachandran, but my conclusion after one week is that one’s brain is indexed by the signified (meaning of a word) rather than the signifier (the word itself). i didn’t say clippers, or slipping, or slappers when i meant slippers—i used the word for another type of garment that covers one’s extremities. to alter the old adage: it is not “the word is on the tip of my tongue” but “the meaning is on the tip of my angular gyrus.”

i was really hoping that my resolution would force me to bark obscenities to my superiors or blabber incongruous nothings to the sunbathing babes in the library courtyard—no such luck for raynor ganan. i am however, just as pleased with these results.