three-point turn

About a dozen times in the past week, I've found myself making arguments where either I say something, and then take it back, or I catch someone else doing this, or else I assert something and then there is a "but", but then that is followed by a "still...".

* Austin is supposed to be really cool, and most people would add "for a small city in Texas," but then Austinites want to un-say the middle part and return to being unqualifiedly awesome. Ain't so!

* By conventional wisdom (CW), Bob Dylan is the hugest innovator on the 1960s after the Beatles, and the Velvet Underground are a Warhol-run cult band. The CW "in the know" would, however, use the Velvets' own terms to play up their legacy and experimentation, making them the UR-band for a whole paradigm in rock. But ultimately, don't we feel that Dylan is ultimately LESS conventional, less predicated, more at home in traditions where the Velvets come across stale, and infinitely more subtle? And, if Dylan can be just as inane as the Velvets, his better lyrical moments are far better. It's tricky, but I think, returning to the CW from considering the middle term, Dylan (still) comes out on top.

* My friend was trying to explain why she was going to take a lame class, and the reasoning all sounded solid and professional and everything. But still, I said, you'd be in a lame class.

I guess my point here is to refute the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model, where some third term is produced. It is more like thesis-antithesis-thesis', where thesis' is a particularly insisten form of what you were going-to-do anyways.