• Start with the minor stuff first—data blindness. I just don’t get it! But fortunately today’s social culture is basically organized around that condition so it’s no biggie.

• Data-less Certitude: my doctor insists it’s a problem but I insist it’s clairvoyance. Either way, with data-blindness you have no choice but data-less certitude, unless you want to sound weak. Bwuuhh!

• Proof-of-Concept Satisfaction : why actually build-out and patent and sell it if you’ve already attained proof of concept? The idea works? Then ok I’m done here thanks, call the tinkerers.

• Anti-Resonant Discourse: Around intellectuals I like to talk crass and loose, with slapstick pantomime gestures and cheap sound effects for punctuation and emphasis, sometimes in lieu of substance, yes. Plus swearing. Sometimes in lieu of content. But around normal people I like to reply in fact-soaked over-nuanced pedantic paragraphs—their emphatic crass simplifications leave me no choice! ‘Bothers me, bwuuhh!

• Laurel Resting: sure it’s not a whole wreath—I ain’t no Marcus Aurelius—but let me tell you, the couple leaf-scraps I got are damn comfortable. Give me another leaf and I’ll sleep on them for years.

• False Modesty: I actually don’t have this. So it’s true. But I shouldn’t brag.

• Denial: not.

• Pre-Conclusive Burnout: this is similar to proof of concept satisfaction but applies more to written discourses and I guess films and elaborate artworks if I ever tried one. When the discourse is fully rolling and the end is almost in sight—well shit, the rest all kind of plays itself out automatically, I’d be just filling in the blanks like a clerk or an applicant to become a clerk, that ain’t creating, that’s dull… What else is good?

So like this column here, this “Perverted Wisdom” installment bit—we got what, eight jokes? We really need ten or more for a complete column and I certainly have more afflictions to cover but hey, you all see where this bit is going, you see the concept works, more items would just be like filling in a paint-by-numbers image; I’m going to sleep.

On my scraps of laurel leaves I scored through clairvoyance.

(‘Total paint-by-numbers conclusion joke there, simply reprising two earlier jokes so as to “mock” the data-integrating conclusiveness of real discourse. See what I was saying? Bwuuhh!)