What does "It is what it is" mean to you?

Catatonic

Nine Lives
it is what it is
is it what it is?
I hate this term.Its a copout .Its like saying I don't have a good answer for you so I'll regurgitate the only response that exonerates me from giving you a truthful one.
Yep ... it is what it is. Gotta be going. see ya later DS.
 
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pickup

Guest
I think I would have slipped a check under her door so as not to deal with her.

If only I could have, upstate, but from the get go , she wanted cash presumably so there would be no paper trail for the government to follow . After all, rent is income and she didn't want to pay tax on that income
 

DS

Fenderbender
No hoax I knew you were trying to, but it got me wondering where this silly phrase originated.I found this article on the subject.
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/it-is-what-it-is/
This part stuck out for me
CAN’T
THINK OF ANYTHING INTELLIGENT TO SAY. MAYBE THEY ARE
A) OUT OF BREATH, B) NOT GETTING ENOUGH OXYGEN TO
THEIR BRAIN, OR C) THERE ISN’T MUCH BRAIN THERE TO GET
OXYGEN TO.
IN SOME RESPECTS, IT’S A RATHER LAZY AND
DISRESPECTFUL RESPONSE, ONE WHICH BASICALLY SAYS,
“FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF, :censored2:.”
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
ONE WHICH BASICALLY SAYS,
“FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF, :censored2:.”
Definitely used it in that way ... it is a mercurial little sucker.
This is the way I use it when I get tired of trying to coach the hopeless romantic that thinks the world is defined by a neat set of rules and think it is wrong when the world does not conform to this set of rules ... no idea where they got that set of rules anyway. It's a Mad World.

Mad World - Gary Jules
 

satellitedriver

Moderator
I'll tell you this: different posters , in explaining what the term is , are really revealing a lot about themselves and how they view the world. Sort of like a Rorsharch test , except that the participants don't know that this really a psychological exam and hence don't skew or hide their true feelings.
True,(in a sense)
my analytical friend.
All responses, to any given post, meet your criteria.
BTW,you misspelled Rorschach.(petty on my part)
Define; true feelings.
You told us your observations,not your feelings.
Most posters do the same.
 

drewed

Shankman
sort of like a certain thread I started involving Drewed (not the quarterback, ), it seems to be gone, as if it never existed. It's like getting up in the morning and finding your car gone. Did you forget where you parked it? Was it stolen? Did your wife take it? Was it towed? If it was towed, you would think the police would leave some kind of note

oh, well, it was what it was.

Im glad im still brought up occassionally haha

but back to subject... it is what it is at work for me is this is what we have to deal with, my hands are tied lets just get it done

home its more of the its not worth arguing about because the facts dont give either argument credance over the other
 

upser_J

Well-Known Member
i honestly hate that phrase....to me that means that i have no control of my reality, but I do. it is what you make it, bitches! haha
 
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pickup

Guest
True,(in a sense)
my analytical friend.
All responses, to any given post, meet your criteria.

I suppose you are correct, people reveal much about themselves in a post


BTW,you misspelled Rorschach.(petty on my part)

you got me there, I admit I knew it was a wrong spelling, but too lazy to open another window to find the spelling. (petty? nah, maybe you helped raise the bar for my future postings, I'll be keeping an eye out for any errors in your future postings as well and I will make it a point to tell you if there are any errors.:wink2:

Define; true feelings.


It looks like you should have put a colon after the word "Define" but hey I am being petty. By true feelings, I suppose I meant that one's way of looking at things. To many this is a black and white issue. But we seem to all have different opinions of what "it is what it is" actually means. I see some posters have firm opinions on this and I am not suprised as these same posters have firm opinions on a lot of things

You told us your observations,not your feelings. Well, unlike some posters, I don't state facts as if they were written on two tablets by god and handed to them to announce as if these facts are not open to interpretation. I try to base my opinions on observation not make my observations fit my opinions. (I try anyway) I suppose a short story is in order about "observing".

A man by the name of J.J. Thompson won a nobel prize for "observing" through experiments and instruments, that the electron is a particle.
His son, many years later, won a nobel prize for "observing" through experiments and instruments, that the electron is a wave.(Sort of like a greek myth where the son upsurps the father) Both are right, but depends though how you observe and depends on the biases of the experiment and the instruments used. Maybe I should have posted this under the thread "Wave or not Wave"

I remember seeing a movie many years ago when I was a kid . It was a western, I suppose, where a shooting/murder took place in a small town. A sheriff or investigator comes out and interviews the three witnesses separately. All three witnesses witnessed three different events when relaying the scene they witnessed. All three stories were seemingly mutually exclusive And then I believe the event as it actually happened was shown in flashback. All three stories now made sense, but were different because they were from three different viewpoints.


To sum up my feelings about "It is what it is" (besides the fact I wish Hoax never started the thread): It is what it is, or IS IT?





Most posters do the same.
 
I like this phrase. to me it means acceptance of reality. it sums up that I have to to just accept the things that i cant change and just stop stressing out about them. also means to me, don't take work so seriously. its a view that helps make chaos a whole lot less scary.
 

satellitedriver

Moderator
Quote:
Originally Posted by satellitedriver
True,(in a sense)
my analytical friend.
All responses, to any given post, meet your criteria.

I suppose you are correct, people reveal much about themselves in a post Missed Period.:happy2:

BTW,you misspelled Rorschach.(petty on my part)

you(Y, should be capitalized) got me there,(period, instead of comma) I admit I knew it was( a wrong)(an incorrect) spelling, but too lazy(comma) (delete, to open another window to find the spelling.)
(Add,to correct my spelling)
.
(Paragraph break)
(petty?) nah(N, should be capitalized), maybe(comma) you helped raise the bar for my future postings,(period,instead of comma) I'll be keeping an eye out for any errors in your future postings(comma) as well(period)
( many will occur, in my posts)
(and)(delete, and) I will make it a point to tell you if there are any errors.:wink2:


Define; true feelings.

It looks like you should have put a colon after the word "Define"(A semi-colon is proper grammar, in this case.)(comma) but hey(comma) I am being petty. By true feelings, (I suppose,delete) I meant that(it is) one's way of looking at things. To many(comma) this is a black and white issue. But(comma) we seem to all have different opinions(comma) of what "it is what it is" actually means. I see some posters have firm opinions on this and I am not suprised(sp)(comma) as these same posters have firm opinions on a lot of things
Just having fun, acting like Sister Mary Margret Whoop Your *** grading papers with her red pencil.

You told us your observations,not your feelings. Well, unlike some posters,(meaning,me?) I don't state facts as if they were written on two tablets by god and handed to them to announce as if these facts are not open to interpretation. I try to base my opinions on observation not make my observations fit my opinions. (I try anyway)(Me, too.) I suppose a short story is in order about "observing".

A man by the name of J.J. Thompson won a nobel prize for "observing" through experiments and instruments, that the electron is a particle.
His son, many years later, won a nobel prize for "observing" through experiments and instruments, that the electron is a wave.(Sort of like a greek myth where the son upsurps the father) Both are right, but depends though how you observe and depends on the biases of the experiment and the instruments used. Maybe I should have posted this under the thread "Wave or not Wave"

I remember seeing a movie many years ago when I was a kid . It was a western, I suppose, where a shooting/murder took place in a small town. A sheriff or investigator comes out and interviews the three witnesses separately. All three witnesses witnessed three different events when relaying the scene they witnessed. All three stories were seemingly mutually exclusive And then I believe the event as it actually happened was shown in flashback. All three stories now made sense, but were different because they were from three different viewpoints.
A. Einstein explained this phenomenon, in his theory of relativity, about 100yrs ago.
My favorite quote from Albert.
"Reality is just an illusion,
albeit,
a very persistent one."


To sum up my feelings about "It is what it is" (besides the fact I wish Hoax never started the thread): It is what it is, or IS IT?
It is, because it was,and shall be.



Most posters do the same.
Pickup,
Please take my post in the jest intended
.
I assume, you enjoy linguistics and verbal banter.
If I have offended you with my banter, then, I apologize beforehand.


 

dilligaf

IN VINO VERITAS
Quote:
Originally Posted by satellitedriver
True,(in a sense)
my analytical friend.
All responses, to any given post, meet your criteria.


I suppose you are correct, people reveal much about themselves in a post Missed Period.:happy2:


BTW,you misspelled Rorschach.(petty on my part)

you(Y, should be capitalized) got me there,(period, instead of comma) I admit I knew it was( a wrong)(an incorrect) spelling, but too lazy(comma) (delete, to open another window to find the spelling.)
(Add,to correct my spelling)
.
(Paragraph break)
(petty?) nah(N, should be capitalized), maybe(comma) you helped raise the bar for my future postings,(period,instead of comma) I'll be keeping an eye out for any errors in your future postings(comma) as well(period)

( many will occur, in my posts)
(and)(delete, and) I will make it a point to tell you if there are any errors.:wink2:


Define; true feelings.


It looks like you should have put a colon after the word "Define"(A semi-colon is proper grammar, in this case.)(comma) but hey(comma) I am being petty. By true feelings, (I suppose,delete) I meant that(it is) one's way of looking at things. To many(comma) this is a black and white issue. But(comma) we seem to all have different opinions(comma) of what "it is what it is" actually means. I see some posters have firm opinions on this and I am not suprised(sp)(comma) as these same posters have firm opinions on a lot of things
Just having fun, acting like Sister Mary Margret Whoop Your *** grading papers with her red pencil.


You told us your observations,not your feelings. Well, unlike some posters,(meaning,me?) I don't state facts as if they were written on two tablets by god and handed to them to announce as if these facts are not open to interpretation. I try to base my opinions on observation not make my observations fit my opinions. (I try anyway)(Me, too.) I suppose a short story is in order about "observing".


A man by the name of J.J. Thompson won a nobel prize for "observing" through experiments and instruments, that the electron is a particle.
His son, many years later, won a nobel prize for "observing" through experiments and instruments, that the electron is a wave.(Sort of like a greek myth where the son upsurps the father) Both are right, but depends though how you observe and depends on the biases of the experiment and the instruments used. Maybe I should have posted this under the thread "Wave or not Wave"



I remember seeing a movie many years ago when I was a kid . It was a western, I suppose, where a shooting/murder took place in a small town. A sheriff or investigator comes out and interviews the three witnesses separately. All three witnesses witnessed three different events when relaying the scene they witnessed. All three stories were seemingly mutually exclusive And then I believe the event as it actually happened was shown in flashback. All three stories now made sense, but were different because they were from three different viewpoints.
A. Einstein explained this phenomenon, in his theory of relativity, about 100yrs ago.
My favorite quote from Albert.
"Reality is just an illusion,
albeit,
a very persistent one."



To sum up my feelings about "It is what it is" (besides the fact I wish Hoax never started the thread): It is what it is, or IS IT?
It is, because it was,and shall be.





Most posters do the same.
Pickup,
Please take my post in the jest intended.
I assume, you enjoy linguistics and verbal banter.
If I have offended you with my banter, then, I apologize beforehand.

Sat, if you are apologizing 'beforehand' should the hilited have been placed at the top of your post. :bigsmile2:
 
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pickup

Guest
Sat, if you are apologizing 'beforehand' should the hilited have been placed at the top of your post. :bigsmile2:

yeah, diligaf, I started out reading his post like I was 6 feet tall and then towards the end, I felt like two inches tall. Then I read his "beforehand" apology and now I feel like 6 feet tall again.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
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pickup

Guest
Quote:
Originally Posted by satellitedriver
True,(in a sense)
my analytical friend.
All responses, to any given post, meet your criteria.

I suppose you are correct, people reveal much about themselves in a post Missed Period.:happy2:

BTW,you misspelled Rorschach.(petty on my part)

you(Y, should be capitalized) got me there,(period, instead of comma) I admit I knew it was( a wrong)(an incorrect) spelling, but too lazy(comma) (delete, to open another window to find the spelling.)
(Add,to correct my spelling)
.
(Paragraph break)
(petty?) nah(N, should be capitalized), maybe(comma) you helped raise the bar for my future postings,(period,instead of comma) I'll be keeping an eye out for any errors in your future postings(comma) as well(period)
( many will occur, in my posts)
(and)(delete, and) I will make it a point to tell you if there are any errors.:wink2:


Define; true feelings.

It looks like you should have put a colon after the word "Define"(A semi-colon is proper grammar, in this case.)(comma) but hey(comma) I am being petty. By true feelings, (I suppose,delete) I meant that(it is) one's way of looking at things. To many(comma) this is a black and white issue. But(comma) we seem to all have different opinions(comma) of what "it is what it is" actually means. I see some posters have firm opinions on this and I am not suprised(sp)(comma) as these same posters have firm opinions on a lot of things
Just having fun, acting like Sister Mary Margret Whoop Your *** grading papers with her red pencil.

You told us your observations,not your feelings. Well, unlike some posters,(meaning,me?) I don't state facts as if they were written on two tablets by god and handed to them to announce as if these facts are not open to interpretation. I try to base my opinions on observation not make my observations fit my opinions. (I try anyway)(Me, too.) I suppose a short story is in order about "observing".

A man by the name of J.J. Thompson won a nobel prize for "observing" through experiments and instruments, that the electron is a particle.
His son, many years later, won a nobel prize for "observing" through experiments and instruments, that the electron is a wave.(Sort of like a greek myth where the son upsurps the father) Both are right, but depends though how you observe and depends on the biases of the experiment and the instruments used. Maybe I should have posted this under the thread "Wave or not Wave"

I remember seeing a movie many years ago when I was a kid . It was a western, I suppose, where a shooting/murder took place in a small town. A sheriff or investigator comes out and interviews the three witnesses separately. All three witnesses witnessed three different events when relaying the scene they witnessed. All three stories were seemingly mutually exclusive And then I believe the event as it actually happened was shown in flashback. All three stories now made sense, but were different because they were from three different viewpoints.
A. Einstein explained this phenomenon, in his theory of relativity, about 100yrs ago.
My favorite quote from Albert.
"Reality is just an illusion,
albeit,
a very persistent one."


To sum up my feelings about "It is what it is" (besides the fact I wish Hoax never started the thread): It is what it is, or IS IT?
It is, because it was,and shall be.



Most posters do the same.
Pickup,
Please take my post in the jest intended
.
I assume, you enjoy linguistics and verbal banter.
If I have offended you with my banter, then, I apologize beforehand.


No, my martian friend, you have not offended me. Your apology only served for me to see that you weren't pissed off in your response for I thought maybe I did piss you off before I arrived at the end of your post.

I do enjoy linguistics and verbal banter so you assumed correctly. Here is a little back at you. All offered in the spirit of jest.
I am not going to inject more writing into the above lest it causes too much confusion. And for a moment there, satellite driver, I did feel like I was back in 6th grade staring at the red marked composition that I felt, just a days before, was going to come back unscathed. However, I took some delight in seeing your own glaring errors and laughed to myself saying "this guy is going to remove the mote from my eye when he can't even remove the one from his?"

I'll start off with the usage of the semi-colon . You previously stated "Define; true feelings" I suggested usage of a colon in place of your usage of semi-colon. Upon further review, I see that I should have told you that you should have stated " Define true feelings." . Now that I did some checking, I see that my latter ruling is correct.

I see that a colon is definitely not called for here because you do not separate a verb from its objects. This would be case # 2 under "common misuses of the colon" in the linked article. So I definitely conclude you should have correctly stated "Define true feelings." I would have correctly corrected you earlier if I didn't fall into your trap of thinking there had to be any punctuation marks at all, in that part of your sentence.

Now for the easier stuff. You stated after I stated my view about trying to make my opinions subservient to my observations , "Me too." I think the verb "try" is implied in that sentence and if so , the correct response would be "I try also" . If you want to disagree and say the verb "do" is implied as opposed to the verb I thought was implied, Okay! You still have to choose the first person pronoun that would be in the nominative case, not the accusative(direct object) case or ablative case (I am trying to close any loopholes your devious :wink2:mind might devise). So the correct choice is "I". Just say "I too" mentally to yourself to determine if it sounds correct.

Okay, you got me on a missed period or two. If I were a woman and wasn't trying to conceive, I might be worried. As for the usage of commas, you got me in a couple of spots. I think you got overzealous and suggested a few places for commas that didn't need them. However, I will definitely go into a coma if I go into a long dissertation on commas.

When i was referring to other posters as if they were coming down from Mount Zion, no, I wasn't referring to you. Sorry if you might have felt otherwise.( You might be offended now if you have a "Moses Complex" . Sorry if my response doesn't validate your feelings.)

I liked your tie-in with the Einstein view. I have read the english translations of his works and see that it ties in well.

Well, Mr. Satellite driver, thanks to you , I will continue to strive upwards (excelsior) in my quest to reach perfection in terms of the grammatical quality of my posts. I will not succeed because perfection is unattainable but I will be a better poster for trying. Although, like others here, I am posting when I should be sleeping so some of my errors will have to be forgiven.

Continue educating me, if you so desire , for there will be times when I see a glaring error of yours, that I will nail you on as well. Wait until my lesson on "Predicate Nominative" . :wink2:
 
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