"A Pool of Tears"

Phatic, aka T. Fjeld, with whom (and J. M. Geary) I wrote, for unpublication, "Buckley & Co., or the Aftermath of Kabul" -- now made into a film as "The Uninvited Implicature" wrote on my wall in facebook:

why is your swimming-pool full of tears?

He is trying to be _witty_, and perhaps not altogether failing (polite things people say).

But the reason is Occamian.

I wrote back, "They are tears of joy". Or "laetitiam" if you must.

You see. For Occam,

lacrima significat naturaliter dolorem interiorem.

But

risus significat naturaliter laetitiam interiorem.

(Or "interiorem laetitiam" -- his was piglatin, if ever there was one -- the lad, inceptor too, was from Ockham, Surrey -- a place with Whartonian associations!).

(His cousin lives there -- I´ll think about Grice´s razor cut when I visit, he told me).

Anyway, surely Occam was _wrong_.

Etc.