Yesterday morning, I engaged in a fairly lengthy argument about whether septadecahedron was a valid word or not. A dodecahedron is a twelve-sided three-dimensional figure, and is up there with "defenestration" on the list of words useless in daily life that many people seem to know anyway. A septadecahedron, I argued, would therefore be seventeen-sided; the fact that this is an impossible figure to make under the current rules of our universe did not in any way make the word itself less valid.

The argument raged back and forth, becoming increasingly silly; I called an end to it when the claim that there was no point in having a word that described something that couldn't possibly exist was met by a list of imaginary and highly lethal creatures, and a threat to wander around the house naming them. It had clearly descended far beyond the level where any reasonable argument needed to go, so I declared myself the winner and withdrew from the fight. Since I had been arguing both sides, this was a satisfactory result all around.

I often tell people that I enjoy taking up contrary positions for their own sake, but I don't think they realize how deep-seated this interest is. I subject other people to only a fraction of the arguments that I put myself through. It's admittedly quite a large fraction; double digits at the very least, and possibly nearing 50%, but it's nowhere near the 100% contradictory attitude I subject my own ideas to.

Not all of these arguments are good. Often, it's as juvenile as "That's stupid," which is met with a, "No, you're stupid," which echoes back and forth until I squelch it by singing bits of Les Misérables. It's puerile, but there's not much of a contrary stance to be taken against "Huh, my shoe's come untied." I try to spare other folks the arguments like these that don't actually contain ostensibly valid counterpoints; I assure you, you don't want to know how often I have "Master of the House" running through my head.

Come to think of it, I should try that when I'm tired of arguments I'm having with other people, too. If I suddenly burst into "Do You Hear the People Sing?", I bet it'd end the argument. There'd probably be some sputtering and confusion at first, but I doubt it would outlast the song. Not that I often get tired of arguments, but it's a technique worth remembering, I think.

Incidentally, the internet says that a seventeen-sided shape would actually be a septendecahedron, but that's a technical foul, at best; the argument about whether non-Euclidean shapes deserve their own terminology was still valid. [EDIT: The internet showed up in person to tell me I am wrong. Mea culpa!] Also, apparently a twenty-sided polygon would be a vigintihedron [NOTE: Still wrong; this whole paragraph is wrong, but I'd rather clutter it up than delete it.], so I think I can see why that one never really caught on amongst gamers. Not to mention what you'd have to call a six-sided die; that'd add a few immature giggles to family game night, to be sure. [Wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong. Greek roots ruin the joke, which wasn't all that good to begin with.] Bigger words aren't always better, it turns out.

Mood of the Moment: argumentative
Auditory Hallucination: Les Misérables -- Javert's Suicide