Quote:
Originally Posted by Fluribus
Being understood is rarely my only goal. My name ain't Finnegan, but I always reserve the right to Muddy the Waters (maybe because I don't know Diddley).
To avoid controversy on this issue, one would also have to avoid "I couldn't care less". Might I suggest something like "my Care-o-meter is pegged at zero" or "call the veterinarian 'cause my Care Bears are flatlining".
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The odd part of this exchange is that I feel as though I were talking to myself under a pseudonym. See my wordplay as Scrypt on Head-fi (and my writing nearly anywhere else).
Your puns on blues musicians' names and dalliance with
care are not ambiguous in tone or intent. If you had brought in
could care less as well, you'd have continued putting your particular spin on that grotesquely large chestnut (as it were).
Being understood doesn't necessarily mean being simplistic. If the intent is to use
I could care less ironically and/or playfully, then some readers will get it and some will not; it's your choice whether you want to be crystal or opaque.
Personally, I try to avoid using cliches and/or notoriously incorrect phrases inattentively; in ways that have nothing to do with my intent.
The phrase we're discussing is not only cliche but controversial, and if the intent isn't playful or metalinguistic, then by using it, I would be taking the reader right out of My Little Poesy. I'd effectively shatter the spell of my wordworld, causing my reader to blink at the text while thought-typing
What The Flick.
If you're
Charles Bernstein,
Bob Perelman or a
Flarf poet (more than Joyce, for example), then you're practically fated to use
could care less in a macaronic prose/stanza'd/typographically-experimental poem.
If you're a journalist trying to convince someone of your argument and said argument doesn't involve mockery, then you might prefer sanding your own ribcage to sassing the reader with a solecism.
The difference is apparent on this thread:
Some people have used the phrase humorously while others have defended it in earnest. Few if any of us have actually
used the phrase in earnest.
Of course, you could also fancy yourself a modern Twain (Mark, not Shania) and create a character who thinks in cliches to non-cliche-yet-earnest effect (
Huck Finn, anywound?), but that's not the same as using
I could care less uncritically, let alone while sleepwriting your way through a paracaramel shoegrazing Zombie Kong coming-of-phage bodice gypper.