(Video link here.)  Derek Donahue found all of the tautologies —phrases in which the same thing is said twice —from the great, gritty HBO series The Wire and supercut them into one video. Writes the ever-wise Jason Kottke, “these types of phrases characterize the immovable forces the characters feel govern their lives and actions: poverty, bureaucracy, addiction, institutional corruption, ethnicity”.

When we wrote a few down, they seemed more like some seriously ‘street’, existential koans— succinct paradoxical statements used for meditation in Buddhism. Here are our favorites, ESPECIALLY the rather cosmic ones at the bottom. They can be reshuffled to form curiously illuminating poems.

It is what it is.

What’s done is done.

My name is not my name.

My name is my name.

He game is the game.

The law is the law.

The street is the street.

Everybody does what they gon’ do.

The world is still my world.

Think bout the old days, they the old days.

School is school.

When you right you right.

See you when I see you.

The list is the list.

I gotta do what i gotta do.

Good things come when good things come.

I know what i know.

He fights he fights.

I get you when I get to you.

What happened happened.

What he says he says.

Once you in it, you in it.

And if you don’t know now you know.

 

via Kottke 

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