The Watering Hole, Thursday, February 16th, 2012: PARAPROSDOKIANS

Posted on by

While there are many websites with various illustrations of “paraprosdokians” (from two Greek words translated as “against expectation”), most of these are from an email that a colleague forwarded. I added a few extras from some of the sites that I visited. Enjoy!

PARAPROSDOKIANS: (Winston Churchill loved them.)

Here is the definition [although, when googling this, one site said that the word is not in the Oxford English Dictionary]:
Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation.” “Where there’s a will, I want to be in it,” is a type of paraprosdokian. [Sounds like the basis of most stand-up routines by comedians, doesn't it?]

1. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on my list.

3. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

4. If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.

5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

6. War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

8. Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good Evening,’ and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

10. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

11. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.

12. Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says, ‘In case of emergency, notify:’ I put ‘DOCTOR.’

13. I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

14. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

15. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.

16. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.

17. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

18. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.

19. There’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can’t get away.

20. I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.

21. You’re never too old to learn something stupid.

22. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

23. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

24. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

25. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

26. Where there’s a will, there are relatives.

27. The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

28. A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.

29. I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

30. Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others — whenever they go.

31. Some people are like Slinkies … not really good for anything, but you can’t help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

32. Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

33. Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.

34. A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.

35. Hospitality: making your guests feel like they’re at home, even if you wish they were.

And, of course, one of Wayne’s favorite jokes:

“I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.”

For more great one-liners, along with attributions for some of the above, check the following websites: “My Literary Quest”; Bestuff; and Wikipedia.

This is our Open Thread: have fun with it, or discuss whatever’s on your mind.

About these ads

129 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Thursday, February 16th, 2012: PARAPROSDOKIANS”

  1. Good Thursday funnies Jane. 34 and 35 are the same.

    I’m watching Rachel and she opened with how the Maine Republican caucus results appear to be rigged to keep Romney from being declared the loser. I don’t know a better way to depress Republican turnout than for the rank and file voter to believe the party leaders are going to rig the election to suit themselves anyway.

    Last night on Countdown, Keith went down a list from Breitbart’s website, of ‘Occupy’ rapes, and debunked every one of them.

    A good Noam Chomsky article on American Decline, from the Guardian, in two parts.

    Part 1

    Part 2

    Have a good Thursday. I’m going to the dentist at 3, so I may get back here earlier than usual. Remember, I can read y’all while I’m at work! :D

    • I’ev read the first not the second yet – Chomsky does seem to err on finding fault with with western geopolitics a bit myopically – he rarely seems to challenge other nations and their role/geopolitics. I read him with a pinch of salt.

  2. 10. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

    That’s my favorite. I wish I would have heard that one when I was still working for the pharmaceutical industry. Can’t use in my current state of self-employment.

  4. Yesterday, Pete posted this screed by Twin City “journalist” Joe Soucheray which I didn’t get a chance to read till this morning. Soucheray is apparently really pissed that not everybody in the country votes as he does (for wingnuts) and is therefore in favor of doing anything possible to keep “fraudulent” votes out of elections — you know the ones: votes by coloreds, illegals, old people, college kids, poor folk, retards, the senile … alladem. He loves him some voter ID laws, anything to keep ACORN out of the voting booth.

    Anyway, I came up with the perfect solution. Somebody call Diebold, quick! We need a voting machine that allows anybody who wants to, to vote — however many times they want to, in fact — and no ID required. Even if you’re from Kenya it’s ok! The machine records the votes, see, and counts them automatically, thus saving a lot of time and money. And here’s the magic: no matter who anyone votes for, the machine only records the vote as yet one more for Soucheray’s favorite candidates! He submits a list, see, to Diebold, and they set all the machines appropriately! It will therefore and thereby forever be the case that Republicans, conservatives, wingnuts, etc., get 100% of the popular vote all the time, in every election for perpetuity, no matter who votes no matter how many times and/or for whom! The perfect world finally arrives! YAY!!

    I Can’t believe someone hasn’t already thought of this!

    Oh, wait ….. Karl? Is that you? Funny seeing you here!

  6. Ah, yes good ole #30. Had a girl say that to me at a dance my junior year in HS…Never got over the trauma!

    And another version of #26..Where there’s a will, somebody died.

  7. “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” – Frank Zappa.

  8. Like these 28 and 29 are among my favourites… 30 is being fed to SammytheTurtle as ammunition.

    My favourite Churchill-ism: as a woman harangued him at a black-tie dinner:

    “Sir, you are drunk”
    “Madam, *you* are ugly…. But tomorrow I shall be sober”

  10. Next time I go through airport security I want to put a banana in my pocket, and demand the pat-down.
    :D

  11. On C&L this AM:
    Fox News brought back Father Jonathan Morris to double down on his suggestion that clergy should be “ready to die” to fight President Obama’s mandate that health insurers cover birth control.
    Perhaps the good padre should be taking lessons from his Honduran counterparts and hiring hitmen to off the clergy, or cutting out the middlemen altogether and just jumping off a high cliff.
    Do the world a favor, padre, just do it.

    • In today’s Amurka, Clergy ‘ready to die’ is a good thing. Clergy ‘willing’ to die is better. Clergy already dead and all churches boarded up would be ideal.

    • I have to wonder where this jerk was when Archbishop Romero was assassinated for his stance on liberation theology. Being willing to die to succor the meek is heroic, being willing to die to deny people the right to choose when to have children is pathetic.

      Perhaps the Church can point to passages in the Gospels where Jesus says, “Oh, by the way, birth control is from the debbil.” I seem to have missed it. Gentlemen, our karma just ran over your dogma.

      • And does this prat have a clue what birth control actually is?

        Oh wait he’s a Catholic priest, never mind….

      • Catholic Church’s take on birth control.

        Don’t! Stop! Having little Catholic babies! We’re dying out here, needs more sheeps!

        • In regions that have long been 100% RC, such as Latin America, they’re getting stiff competition from the Evangeloids so they need all the little Catholic babies they can get. In this country, they’re also run out of priests. One obvious solution is to ordain women, of course, but for a church stuck in the Middle Ages, that just won’t fly.

    • Thom Hartmann is reporting that Darrell Issa refused to allow any women to testify.

      Said it’s a “religious issue” not a “women’s issue.” Fucking moron.

      The two female reps on the committee got up and walked out.

    • Thanks. I snapped it the other day a couple of blocks from my abode. Not an uncommon view as lots of Canada Honkers live here — more honkers than people, actually. :)

      • The photo captures the vision of flight beautifully.
        There’s a resident flock here on the estuary that has become very noisy, lots of chasing each other up and down the river.

  15. I can understand why this would piss a lot of people off . I think I’d be pissed off not on my behalf but if it was used to influence my family somehow….

    … these Morm(o)ns – there’s something seriously wrong with this cult – they have this dogma of mumbo jumbo that makes Christiantity look almost reasonable in comparision (ah maybe not – it just helps Christianity finally ‘jump the shark’ if it hadn’t already) and yet there is an organized, Domininist drive to establish itself across society.

    I was hearing this week that in Boy Scouts the LDS cub packs will only send boys to other LDS boy scout troops and that fully 40% of all boy scouts are Mor(m)ons. My former boss, also a Mor(o)n pointed out to me that the BSA was the de facto youth training organization for the LDS…..

    Dunno what to make of all this, I am concerned about parallels in my and other attitudes, sort of ‘Protocols of Sion’ etc etc that dominated the first 45 years of the last century about another supposed Dominionist religion.

    • In the Middle Ages jews were forcibly baptised, and then persecuted if they returned to their original faith. I can see why the mormon practice would piss them off.
      While many mormon beliefs seem totally whacky to me, I’ve heard it said that much of that may be due to the more recent founding of their religion, it’s easier to examine the historical record concerning the genesis of their beliefs. It’s a lot easier to explain whacky stuff when you can say “It’s a mystery and shrouded in the mists of time”.

      • Like why Catholics eat fish on Friday or risk their souls? I thought it was very materialistic order for the faithful to prop up the Napolese fishing industry – early crony capitalism at work…

        • I always guessed that they were told to give up meat so they’d feel better about the fact that they were too poor to have meat. Early peasant control…

        • First there was purgatory – suspending one between heaven and hell yet not on earth..

          then there was no purgatory!

          23Apr2007

          Pope: No more limbo, it’s heaven or hell

          …after 800 years, Pope Benedict XVI has done away with the concept of “limbo”

    • Possibly.
      If you thought you wanted a career, but realized you just wanted benefits; you might be a conservative.

  20. The monolithic “thinking” of these freaks is truly astounding. They accurately conclude that the government has no right to dictate their beliefs but they miss the full implication of the 1st Amendment. What they fail to realize is that, according to that same first Amendment, churches have no legal standing, much less a right, to dictate law. In fact, churches have no right or legal standing to dictate the behavior of their own members. All religious relationships must be consensual to withstand constitutional scrutiny.

    • Obama is rigging lotteries while manipulating petroleum trading and forcing chaste white women to have protected sex with dozens of dead, female, farm animals! I heard it on FAUX”News” so it must be true (spit!).

  22. Ugly Americans in Yemen:

    Jeremy Scahill reports on the devastating unintended consequences of America’s counterterrorism campaign in the chaotic country:

    “US policy has enraged tribal leaders who could potentially keep AQAP in check and has, over the past three years of regular bombings, taken away the motivation for many leaders to do so. Several southern leaders angrily told me stories of US and Yemeni attacks in their areas that killed civilians and livestock and destroyed or damaged scores of homes. If anything, the US airstrikes and support for [dictator Ali Abdullah] Saleh-family-run counterterrorism units has increased tribal sympathy for Al Qaeda.”

  23. The Fox Effect: How Rogers Ailes Turned A Network Into A Propaganda Machine

    On Sale 2/21. (On what would have been my grandfather’s 106th birthday. I only mention this because whenever he looked like he was hurting or something, and we’d ask him what was wrong – the answer was always “2/21/10.” [meaning, he was just getting old] So any time, I see 2/21, I think of him and can picture and hear him saying it. Thanks for indulging me on this random trip down memory lane. Now back to the point of the original post.)

    I take exception somewhat to the sub-title. He never turned it into a propaganda machine. I think it was always intended to be such, and launched as such.

    • Thom Hartmann often talks about Roger pitching the idea for “GOP TV” to Nixon. One of these days I’ll have to pick up the book and see how closely it actually meshes with FAUX”News”. I have a feeling that the reality is more disturbing than the original idea.

    • Gee. Maybe someone finally realized that the more exposure the candidates get the less people like them? Seriously; does anyone really think that Sick Rantorum can survive a debate as front-runner?

    • It will be interesting to see what interest the GOP nominee will have in debating the President.
      Or rather see what lengths (he) goes to in avoiding any debate.

      • Gingritch’s home field is a mud wrestling pit, and the studio makeup artists would have some problems.

    • Remember the time when the 700 hundred GOP candidates would all embrace, lovingly, on the stage? Now there are 3.5 candidates left (read into that whatever you want) and I get the feeling they really don’t care for each other all that much.

  25. On an entirely personal note: Gummitch finally screwed up his courage and asked out a woman at work who he has been developing a serious yen for. Today (why is he speaking in the third person? fuck that) we went to lunch together and had a terrific talk, topped off with remarkably open discussion about our circumstances, our desires and one real barrier to my yen. But the barrier may just be a speed bump and everything was extremely positive. I’m still patting myself on the back for getting past months of dithering and asking someone out for the first time in 20 years.

    She has blue eyes.

    • He had me right up to the last second. “Peace and Love” doesn’t seem to be working. I say: Fuck GOoPers! Fuck ‘em all with a red-hot poker!

  28. We’ve a great, down to earth President!
    No baloney sandwich for him:

    US President Barack Obama pays for a dim sum takeout lunch at the Great Eastern Restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown on February 16, 2012. View Photo »

    • OHMYGOD! He’s kowtowing to the Chinese again! No “real American” even knows what dim sum is, for Pete’s sake. It’s arugula all over again. Why didn’t he get a cheeseburger?

      Under ideal circumstances, takeout dim sum defeats the whole purpose, but I guess the POTUS couldn’t just sit around with friends slurping tea and sharing the har gow. It is a treat having a President that’s a little more cosmopolitan than the last few.

  31. In local news: Joe “only people who live in inner cities vote for democrats and only if they are paid off with bus tickets and cigarettes” Soucheray must be getting some pushback on his racist screed. According to local progressive radio, he spent his entire show today plaintively whining that he’s “not a racist”.

    • ..an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.”

      “I know these blacklisters,” he wrote. “They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats and off-the-record meetings. They work in the dark because, as Al Smith said, nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.”

      Pat – if it were only true that you have been blacklisted. We’d no longer have to see, read or hear you!

      • “I know these blacklisters,” he wrote. “They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats and off-the-record meetings. They work in the dark because… etc.”

        Rather carelessly tipped his hand, didn’t he?

      • Am I a “blacklister”? I’ve been sending MSNBC emails requesting that they fire that old, black-hearted, racist for years. I’ve never received a reply much less been invited to a meeting or asked for any additional input but I like to think that I played a miniscule roll in his finally getting canned. The funny part is that I don’t even subscribe to cable. What the Hell; I think I’ll crack a celebratory beer.

    • Now that he’s got some time on his hand, he and that silly Alaskan person can run for President on the Victim Party ticket.

      Oh, wait, they’ve already tried that.

      Nevar mind…

  35. I cant even be cute about this one. The kindest thing I can say is that I want that awful woman from Alaska to take a flight on a airplane with a catastrophic structural defect. I would prefer it if she were the sole occupant but I could accept some collateral damage just to silence that effing (insert word that rhymes with “runt”)!

    http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201202160017

  37. Ron Paul will be speaking at the University of Idaho tomorrow.

    I’m heartened that only a few of the comments on their facebook page were by students excited about the prospect. :)

  41. Okay, I think I’m tired enough to go to sleep now. In light of these loony times, let me leave you with this Venn diagram I found a while back somewhere on the web:

Comments are closed.