Wednesday, April 18, 2007

When MS Windows isn't your cup of tea

Well... when is MS Windows put into a cup with boiling water added? I don't think it ever is, in which case, it is never your cup of tea. Of course, this is the literal interpretation, not the figurative one that you may have been expecting.

Let us now study the figurative interpretation. The expression 'not your cup of tea' seems to indicate that whatever is being referred to is not preferred. However, what if one is disposed to not liking tea? In this case it would mean that the phrase 'When MS Windows isn't your cup of tea' could be interpreted as 'When you like MS Windows'.

Of course, one could also be making an irrational comparison, for example, I could say that MS Windows is not my cup of tea as compared to a strawberry milkshake. When does a milkshake perform the same things that an operating system does? On the other hand, which is more stable?

Really the essence of such a statement is invoking a comparison with other comparable objects or items, or in this case, operating systems. So, if MS Windows isn't your cup of tea, where does that leave you? (Incidentally, I used the word leave earlier because tea is often in the form of leaves (by the way, it is redundant to begin a parenthesized remark with the word incidentally since the parenthetic remark is by default, incidental)).

Why, it can leave you using an operating system other than MS Windows, of course!

8 comments:

tmfrt said...

YES! GENIUS!!

ghost said...

yesterday i ate a jalepeno so hot i thought i was going to pass out from the pain. i wished i had a cup of tea, but alas, i had to settle for sucking on a wet paper towel.

The OE said...

I thought you meant Ms as in Mrs and Miss so this was a bit confusing

Anonymous said...

i feel like such an ass for missing on that atc thing...:( i'm glad to hear that your job now is better than the one you had before. and hooray for employers that hire employees back.

Debstar said...

I'm so confused, and now my brain hurts. I think I'd better make a cup of tea & have a little lie down.

Phil Plasma said...

Thank you all for your replies, this is my best turnout in days!

m: Genius?
g: was the WPT flavoured?
t: An agent never admits confusion.
p: don't worry about it, you were in the midst of babydom
d: what kind of tea?

Brotha Buck said...

How about, It's not my cup of Joe?

Debstar said...

Dandelion tea or chai, I'll sleep better without the caffeine.