Are we being creative yet?

14 Jul 2005  around lunchtime  Matt Winckler

<rant type="petpeeve" intensity="moderate">

There are some phrases that, when taken in large doses, annoy me. One such phrase running rampant around this office is the droll: “Are we having fun yet?”

Firstly, who is “we”? Are you using the royal “we”, as in “We are not amused”, or are you trying to imply that the literal “we” share some sort of ill fate, like the space marines riding the dropship down to the planet surface in Aliens? If that is the case, then I don’t know if we are having fun. Tell us when you figure it out.

Secondly, just what is the meaning of the petulant “yet” tacked onto the end of this phrase? Are you trying to imply that we haven’t been having fun for the past indeterminate period of time, during which we should have been having fun? Or are you simply using this misbegotten combination of words as sort of a one-size-fits-all bludgeon of sarcasm?

Thirdly, who said that whatever we are doing was supposed to be fun? It’s entirely possible that whatever unpleasant task at hand was in fact supposed to be unpleasant, and that to have fun would defeat the purpose.

Fourthly, as I already alluded to, this is the poor man’s sarcastic witticism. The poor man’s logic for arriving at a witticism runs something like this:

if (CanThinkOfSomethingWitty()) {
    print SomethingWitty();
} else {
    print "Are we having fun yet?";
}

I suggest a slight revision to this logic.

$attempts = 0; $max_attempts = 5;
while ((!CanThinkOfSomethingWitty()) && ($attempts < $max_attempts)) {
    $attempts++;
    sleep 1;
}
if ($attempts < $max_attempts) {
    print SomethingWitty();
} else {
    CounterpartExpectingResponse() ? die "Well, have a good day!" : print "";
}

Being the friendly and helpful guy that I am, I will personally volunteer to upgrade the firmware of anybody suffering from the above logic error for free! All you have to do is sign a little waiver, have me stop by with my handy-dandy EEPROM programmer, and you’ll be able to start using the new and improved logic (almost) right away.

However, none of this solves my immediate problem. What is the perfect, one-sentence retort to an inane “Are we having fun yet?” The only real possibilities (short of writing up a bunch of stickynotes with this URL on them) I’ve thought of are “No”, “What does that mean?!“, and “I don’t know; are we having beer yet?” I am not truly satisfied with any of them.

</rant>

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