Hi everyone. So the excerpt goes: MILLAY. Okay. Bunny is in. Frank, are you in or out? JOHNNY. John. MILLAY. Down the hall, first door to your right. Or counterclockwise, if this is Buenos Aires. JOHNNY. My name is John. So Millay (intentionally or not) misinterprets 'john' as 'toilet' and tells the way. But what about the counterclockwise thing? Does it play with the common belief/misconception that water drains counterclockwise in the Southern hemisphere? I mean, does Millay jokingly explain how to go to/down the john literally? Or am I getting it wrong? Any chance at all that every native speaker will immediately get this joke lol? If that helps, the play takes place in New York, and Buenos Aires has nothing to do with the plot, so just a part of the joke... p.s. I'm asking because I am not a native speaker
probably? But if that's what it's getting at, it doesn't seem very clever to me; left vs. right and clockwise vs. counterclockwise aren’t the same thing.
Ok, apparently it's not immediately obvious or makes no sense at all... Could it be taken this way: Are you in or out? - Neither. I'm going to the john (i.e. I'm disappearing (I'd rather flush myself down the john))? - Then go this way, and in Buenos-Aires you would have to rotate counterclockwise to disappear. Does it sound like a plausible interpretation?) Or am I overestimating the author's wit and imagination?
Not really a misconcetion, if we're talking about large bodies of water, like whirlpools for instance. They do move opposite ways in the northern and southern hemispheres. But for small ones like in bathtubs or toilets it doesn't apply. Especially in toilets, which are designed to get the water spinning in a particular direction. However in a joke it's perfectly acceptable to act as if things like this are absolutely true. As if for instance, because people in Britain drive on 'the wrong side of the road' (compared to America) they must also do everything else 'backwards'. Jokes are often based on these kinds of broad misunderstandings, and I'd say there's definitely an element of that here.
It's not about the Coriolis effect but it might be [probably is] about the northern and southern hemispheres of a clock. If you look at a clock the movement is to the right from the top but to the left from the bottom. The reference is odd unless for some reason it's a common reference that MILLAY uses and expects others to understand. Xoic is right about Coriolis not affecting toilet bowl water. I'm confused about anemic_royalty's answer.
It's hard to say without the full script. Based on this, the only thing that would make sense to me is that Millay is an idiot and conflates unrelated principles/phenomenen.
As an American native speaker of what passes for English in the United States, my answer to the question above is, "No chance whatsoever." I have read and re-read and re-re-read the page, and it doesn't make any sense at all.
It's a a play so those lines are meant to be performed rather than read cold. Millay is a character, not the author. In these couple of lines he's a bit manic with unfiltered word association. There's even a thread on this forum playing with word association. John=toilet is correct. The rest is nonsense, which may be a thing with that character. If so, I imagine it could be funny if performed well. Think Groucho Marx delivering the line.
Good point. When I was reading Shakespeare I had to find movie versions to understand what was going on much of the time. There's no naration, no description, no adverbs, no nothing. Just dialogue with no indication of emotions or anything else. Bingo. He could nail it.
It's Edna Millay, believe it or not, so she's Not sure if that makes any difference, but there you go... I should've probably mentioned that the characters are heavily drunk. But while it's absolutely natural for a drunk person to conflate unrelated principles/phenomenen, I can't believe the author just randomly threw "toilet, counterclockwise and Buenos-Aires" all in one sentence. I mean, there must be a connection) If you google these 3 words together top search results will be fun facts about water draining differently in the Southern Hemisphere etc. But maybe you're right and the author is just a major bore. Unfortunately, I don't have any more info on the play (the year it was written or the author's name).
Gender makes no difference. Men and women are equally proficient in incoherent babble. It's not like drugs or alcohol are involved. Oh. Spend a little time as a designated driver. The only thing remarkable about this babble is its relative coherency. Could still be funny if performed well. Think Angela Lansbury drunk as a skunk.
Yeah I agree that gender makes no difference, but E. Millay is a famous poet and playwright, a real one, so I thought I'd point that out, just in case
Am I invisible? I'm telling you it's a reference to the northern and southern hemispheres of a clock face. Rereading my post I can see that I wasn't clear. I needed to spell it out and didn't. Counterclockwise would be to the left from the top of the clock and to the right from the bottom of the clock. Also the more I looked into it the more sure I am so I edited my post from 'maybe' to 'probably' to show that. I'll look for the reference I used and edit a link in. Is counter-clockwise to the right or to the left?
I get what you're saying, but does anybody actually say that to mean right and left? I mean like "Go to the end of the street and turn clockwise"? Yes, it would mean right, but I don't think anybody would get it. Maybe the terms are used that way in certain places?
Wish I knew GingerCoffee, you were totally clear, it's perfectly understood that clockwise means to the right and counterclockwise means to the left, but just like Xoic and Friedrich I thought it was rather weird and not clever to use 'right' and 'counterclockwise' (as synonym of 'left') in one sentence. Also, the terms are interchangeable only when referring to circular motion. So a person walking down the hall and to the right in New York moves counterclockwise from the view point of someone in Buenos Aires? Is that the idea? Sounds legit to me Very intricate for a heavily drunk though hahaha
No idea. I searched everywhere. Probably written exclusively for a theatre or something. Or not published yet. All I have is this excerpt.
Why are you so concerned about a vague joke obtained from an excerpt from an unidentified play? I think it's safe to say that without more context, character development, or stage direction, this joke would be missed by most theater goers.
