Dont Take Anything Seriously

There is a distinct, algorithmic danger in taking advice too literally. If a piece of wisdom tells you to lighten up, analyzing the structural mechanics of that statement completely misses the point. It becomes an infinite loop of existential recursive overhead—a mental stack trace that compiles perfectly but leaves you entirely empty-handed. Take, for example, the simple mandate to relax. If you try too hard to follow it, you wind up executing something that looks a bit like this:

dont take anything seriously
dont take "dont take anything seriously" seriously
dont take 'dont take "dont take anything seriously" seriously' seriously
dont take "dont take 'dont take "dont take anything seriously" seriously'
   » seriously" seriously
dont take 'dont take "dont take 'dont take "dont take anything seriously"
   » seriously' seriously" seriously' seriously
...
seriously

The above can be generated using the following Java code…

public class Seriously {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String w[] = { "dont", "take", "anything", "seriously" };
    String sp = " ", q1 = "'", q2 = "\"", bl = "";
    for (int i=0;i<6;i++) { 
      for (int j=i;j>0;j--)
        for (int k=0;k<2;k++)
          System.out.print(w[k]+(k<1?sp:sp+(j%2==0?q1:q2)));
      for (int l=0;l<4;l++)
        System.out.print(w[l]+(l<3?sp:bl));
      for (int m=0;m<i;m++)
        System.out.print((m%2==0?q2:q1)+sp+w[3]);
      System.out.println();
    }
    System.out.println(w[3]);
  }
}

Or equivalently, with the aid of some crazy glue…

public class Seriously {
  public static void a(String s) { System.out.print(s); }
  public static void b(String s) { a(s + "\n"); }
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String c[] = { "dont", "take", "anything", "seriously" };
    String d = " ", e = "'", f = "\"", g = "";
    for (int h=0; h<6; h++) { 
      for (int i=h; i>0; i--)
        for (int j=0; j<2; j++)
          a(c[j] + (j<1 ? d : d + (i%2==0 ? e : f)));
      for (int k=0; k<4; k++)
        a(c[k] + (k<3 ? d : g));
      for (int l=0; l<h; l++)
        a((l%2==0 ? f : e) + d + c[3]);
      b(g);
    }
    b(c[3]);
  }
}

But it’s probably not worth taking too seriously…