[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

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).

I'd already used it before. I hate to bore myself.

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.

I don't know why you're bringing ponies and Flicka into the conversation. Are you Mary O'Hara?

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 I'm all those guys, no wonder I'm so tired. I should talk to my doctor.

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.

Solipcism? Maybe I am you.

The difference is apparent on this thread:

And Velveeta la difference, as the French say.

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.

Nobody, not even Oscar Wilde, has ever dared to call me Earnest. Take care lest I start calling you Vern.

Of course, you could also fancy yourself a modern Twain (Mark, not Shania)

While I haven't seen any pictures of her lately, I'd rather fancy Shania. I've heard that she feels like a woman. I'd like to test that claim.

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.

Why'd you have to end it all with a cross-dressing Ronald Reagan? I'd sally forth against you, but I'm not sure she's still in print. Besides, but I'm busy battling Microsoft at the moment.

Damn! I got extremulously verbitten. Too much. I'll be in bed for a weak. Someone send Shania.