I never read the book Catch-22 by Joseph Heller when everyone else did in high school so I had to look it up on wikipedia. I still don't know exactly what the book is about but the second line of Wikipedia tells me it is "one of the great literary works of the twentieth century." The more I read the Wikipedia page, the more I feel compelled to read it. Looks like there's some war, some military take over.... That's what I'm into right now! I mean, I'm completely addicted to the Chaos in Egypt so this story that is compared to 1984 and The Trial should be right up my alley. (tangent: i mean, me? addicted to something that's not work? so weird! :untangent)
So without reading the book, I still have no idea what a Catch-22 is!! If the loud guy at work didn't describe every case he worked on with the words "It's kinda a Catch-22" I wouldn't have even been exposed to the term, or that's as true as I can remember. Since he says it, my manager says it. So I look to Wikipedia again. I finally made the breakthrough where the phrase is explained as a common idiomatic English phrase meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" ... also known as self-contradictory circular logic.
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