Still fatigued. Still coughing up mucus. Green mucus. Still having coughing fits at night.

The BBC is the main culprit—not behind my sickness, but behind the misuse of the phrase, “Carrot and Stick.” Because of British stupidity, the phrase has come to mean a two-part process of reward and punishment used to bend someone to your will.

But the original phrase meant only the use of a future reward as an incentive. The “stick” wasn’t there to beat the Donkey; it was to attach a carrot to (actually the carrot attaches to the string which attaches to the stick, but we don’t care about the string). So the “carrot”—the incentive—is always being dangled in front of the donkey’s mouth, making him perpetually move forward without ever reaching his goal. Kind of like the American Dream.

So thanks to the BBC, that nice little metaphor is fucked up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.