Conference thebay::joyoflex

    John Madden -- once coach of the Raiders (a US version football team)
    -- used to inspire his team with the following.  He has since admitted
    that even he has no idea what it means: 
                                            
    
    
    "Never mind that the horse is blind, just load the wagon."
    
    					andrew

    From Monty Python - "A nudge is as good as a wink to a blind horse"
    
    I'm not sure if you're looking for obscurity within the words,
    or a lack of cohesion between them, but here's obscure
    From a book called "a twister of twists, a tangler of tongues"

    Do you have the audacity to doubt my veracity and insinuate that
    I prevaricate?
       (are you saying I lie?)
    
    My gastronomical satiety admonishes me that I have arrived at a
    state of deglutition inconsistent with dietetic integrity
       (I ate too much)
    
    On a desk sign:  I know you think you understand what I just said,
    but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I
    meant.
    
    
    
    -Jody
    

    Don't forget IBM's old motto, which used to appear everywhere, even
    on the beermats in the social club:
    
    THINK!
    
    Hummm...
    
    Andy

    We seem to be straying slightly from the task in hand. See if you
    can invent your own saying which defies analysis but at the same
    time sounds profound and inspiring. For example, "Time is but a
    contraceptive in the face of doom".
    
    Perhaps I should have a go myself.......
    
    
    
    The frying pan of life has no easy chair.
    
    
    
    			Ian   8^>.

    To take off from .-1's
>   The frying pan of life has no easy chair.

    The easy chair of life leads one to the knowledge of higher seats.

    
    Satisfaction is the flight insurance of hummingbirds.
    
    The truth often burns when the bread is stale.
    
    Dreams are but marshmallows in the kitchen of reality.
    
    The school of hard knocks is the condiment of the multitudes.
    
    Memories of childhood are hydrants on the back streets of senility.

    
    better?
    
    -Jody
        

This whole discussion makes me feel more now like I did before than I did 
then.

Larry

    Strange ways bring stranger days.
    
    A terminal on your desk has no meaning in blank verse.
    
    Never strike a rock with a pancake.
    
    A barking dog rolls few rocks uphill.
    
    Cream cheese is no substitute for a day at the beach.
    
    Lizards bask in the sun, but never does a moose forage for algae.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Time flies like an arrow;  Fruit flies like a banana.

    -- Sam

    A woman without an aardvark is like a fish without a bicycle.
    
    --- jerry

    re .6, .9
    
    Absolutely tremendous!! These are just the sort of things I was
    looking for. Well done Jody and Steve, keep them coming. I think
    that :
    
��  Childhood memories are but hydrants on the back streets of senility
    
    is one of the best I have seen so far. It has that elusive quality
    that, when you read it, it appears to make perfect sense. That is
    until you try to figure out what it really means.
    
    
    		Ian    <8^).
                                                     

re < Note 410.7 >
                             -< An old favorite.. >-

<This whole discussion makes me feel more now like I did before than I did 
<then.

	Reminds me of the old Krazy Kat routine...

	Ignatz Mouse:  The world as it is, my dear "K", is not like it was,
			when it used to be.

	Krazy Kat:     An' wen it gets to be like it was, will it?

Dave

    On our system, in SYS$GAMES, we have an .EXE file called COOKIE.
    Sound familiar?  If you execute it, it comes back with one liners,
    some of these sound like fortunes ("You will..."), but others stongly
    resemble the phrases cited in previous replies.  For example:
    
    >	Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth
    >   Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.

    With a little substitution, one could make these sayings less
    meaningful. For example, in the last saying, substitute something like
    "party dress" for "tombstone." If you find a version of COOKIE.EXE on
    your system, try it out for laughs. 

"
As Benjamin Franklin once said:

	To gamble is to coapute the gregs of fretrical inaquicies without
	the crux of pleganous finality.

But as George Raft said:

	What does Benjamin Franklin know ?

"

Trivial question:  Who said all of the above ?  Big hint:  it was on
a TV show hosted by two brothers, but neither said the above.

/Eric

	How Long's a chinaman;  So's his brother.



(It makes sense.  Reread it, or ask the person in the next cube)

    A show hosted by 2 brothers??
    
    Either the Smothers or the Hudsons.  I'll guess at Tom and Dick.
    
    -mike

    Re .15
    
    Pat Paulsen. Who also said:
    
    Happiness is a pledganous glog.

    At the impreesionable age of 20 I was a member of a two-man Punk
    Rock band called The Pieces. Our philosophy of music was that we
    should not perform, and if we did we either wouldn't tell anybody,
    or not turn up (Yes, it was a joke Punk Rock band[but then weren't
    they all?]). Our main activity was lying on our beds in a pensione
    in Florence wishing we were doing something else. Our motto was
    "Our anonymity is so great it borders on the immortal."
    
    Phillip
                                                                 

Keefe is correct, it was Pat Paulsen on the Smothers Brothers that
said that meaningless statement.

He used to do these ridiculous editorials, and that one was on gambling.

They'd always post an address at the end for sending for a transcript.

After the one on gambling, we actually sent for it !  It was so funny
that I memorized the entire speech, most of which I've forgotten except
for that double-talk sentence which I continually recite whenever people
are opening fortunes at restuarants.  (did I tell that anecdote yet?)

/Eric

        How about the meaningless jokes that were popular when I was at
        college ?


        Q:  What's the difference between a duck ?

        A:  One's similar but the other's the same.


Stupid, eh ?

And another :

        A man walks into a shop and says 'Have you got any bread ?'
        The woman behind the counter says 'They're all blue today'
        And the man says 'That's all right, I've got my bike outside.'



The basic idea was that someone in a crowd would be in 'the know' and
at the end of the 'joke' would fall about laughing.  It was amusing to
see how many others joined in because they didn't want to look as though
they didn't understand the punch line.

Anybody got any dafter ones ???


John Booth

    Back in the mid-sixties, a college friend and I rode a greyhound
    from Providence to Atlanta. For 26 hours, any conversation between
    us pure nonsense:
    
    	" Did you get to the beach this Summer?"
    
    	" Not usually, I generally prefer a pencil."
    
    After several stops enroute, all the empty seats on a mederately
    crowded bus were surrounding ours.

    
    
    
    The thoughts I thought today may be the same words as the thought
    I thought yesterday, and may be the same thoughts I'll think 
    tommorow, but they won't be the same thoughts, I think.
    
    
    					/^PiT^\
    

    Re .24:
    
    I think it's too long and convoluted.  A meaninglessly impressive
    saying should be succinct, like:
    
    		An umbrella is no substitute for a book.
    
                                   or
    
    		Reflections on the pond of adversity cause no ripples.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    A pen in the hands of an imposter is like a prune in the paws of
    a chipmunk.

        When trying to wield the unfamiliar, I have been told


        "You look like a cow with a gun !"

RE: .27

Reminds me of what I think of the people who work for the
Registry of Motor Vehicles, Commonwealth of Massachusetts:
bureaucrats with guns.

    
    It is not what you know, but what you *think* you know, unless,
    of course, you don't know it.
    
    --mva
    (with apologies to SNL)

    What, me worry?
    
    "It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide."
    

    re .30;
    
    If you translate the slang, this actually means something!
    
    crackers = unwise
    rozzer   = police officer
    dropsy   = ?
    "in snide" = ?
    
    Can anyone fill in the blanks? I'm afraid my memory isn't as good
    as I thought it was.
    
    -dave
    

    I'd assume "in snide" would mean "in a snide way"
    
    Dropsy used to refer to a common sickness (epilepsy?  tuberculosis?
    I dunno)...but I don't think that's what it means here.  Whatever
    it was, I think it made the physical features droop or "drop", or
    made the person clumsy.
    
    It can also be used to describe someone who's clumsy, as in "they
    have dropsy".
    
    Another idea would be "dropsy" as possibly being "payola", as criminals
    are sometimes told to "make a drop" somewhere, or to drop off goods
    for money, or money for goods.
    
    
    I tried.
    
    -Jody
    
    

    You're close, Jody.  "Dropsy" was a bribe; "snide" was counterfeit
    money.
    
    How do I know this?  In one panel of one Mad magazine, they had
    a foreign film frame.  The actor was saying "It's crackers to slip
    a rozzer the dropsy in snide." -- which I had seen many times
    before in that magazine (I subscribed) -- and the subtitle was
    "It's crazy to give a cop the pay-off in counterfeit money."  The
    joke, of course, was that the dialogue being translated into English
    *was* English.  (I belabor, er, belabour the point.  Sorry.)
    
    							Ann B.

    re .34;
    
    Many thanks! The phrase has been driving me crackers for years.
    I, too, first encountered it in the MAD marginalia.
    
    -dave

    1)  I remember a piece in "Mad Magazine" which lampooned Reader's
    Digest's "My Most Unforgettable Character" feature.  The Mad lampoon
    had a rather conceited individual who would come up to people at
    random and say, "The echoes of Mankind are irrepressible!"
    
    2) I just saw a book entitled "Never Trust a Naked Man Who Offers You
    His Shirt."  I didn't bother to look inside it, so I don't know what
    it's about.
    
    Bill

    RE: -.1
    
>    2) I just saw a book entitled "Never Trust a Naked Man Who Offers You
>    His Shirt."  I didn't bother to look inside it, so I don't know what
>    it's about.
    
    The book is targeted for management (or anybody interested in
    business).  Harvey Mackay also wrote "Swim With The Sharks (Without
    Being Eaten Alive)".  His books blend humor and cold hard business
    sense together into thought provoking prose which can profoundly change
    how you think about your job.  "Swim With The Sharks" gives insite into
    sales, management, employee motivation, and negotiation.  "Naked Man"
    continues the saga. I just got the book and haven't read enough to
    really say much about it.
    
    These are good books (I'm prejudging "Naked Man") and should be
    required reading in every business class.

    Life is a road with many forks, and time is the spaghetti that slips
    between the tines.

    - Jim