BS: stupid sayings

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 24 Feb 23 - 05:58 AM

"The early bird catches the worm"

Stupid because it's the early worm that gets caught!

DC

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Feb 23 - 06:21 AM

I'll have two early birds over easy with bacon.

We have enough gun control. What we need is idiot control right left and center.

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

Women may not hit harder, but they hit lower.

I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.

A TV can insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like click bait.

If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you!

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

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

If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea... does that mean that one enjoys it?

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

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


If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Feb 23 - 06:29 AM

"The foolish man built his house upon the sand."

Try telling that to Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, who built Bude Castle on shifting sand two hundred years ago, and it's still there in all its glory. He was an amazing bloke, well worth a wiki read if you've never come across him before. He invented the limelight, as well as the Bude Light, a replica of which exists in Trafalgar Square. Lots of other exciting exploits too!

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Feb 23 - 07:07 AM

Bud Light sucks.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Feb 23 - 07:53 AM

Whatever is old is new again.
Like the Charleston Cha Cha disco twist twerking.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Feb 23 - 08:43 PM

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 06:21 AM

Even a dog knows if he was deliberately kicked.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 07:46 AM

He certainly knows what side his bread's buttered.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Gone but not forgotten (an entry in the "deaths" column of our local paper that was inserted two days after the person's death)

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 08:22 AM

My dear departed mate Adam was from Glasgow and in response to many "Have you got..?" questions he would reply either

No, but I have a picture of Napoleon with a crew cut

or

No, but I have a sister in the Turkish navy with a black tit

I never found out why and I suppose I never will!

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 09:54 AM

When I was little, if I bumped my head or had some other minor injury and was looking for sympathy, my mum would say:
       "It'll be a pigs foot in the morning".

It didn't help, but it was all you were going to get.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 10:00 AM

"And don't come crying to ME!" (me mum)

"Pull yer socks up, yer nose is bleeding" (me gran - never did quite get that one)

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 05:31 AM

"It was never like that in my day"

DC

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 05:39 AM

On seeing a bandy-legged chap oop north in my youth, "He couldn't stop a pig in an entry."

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 05:42 AM

As pissed as a fart


(Huh?)


...or a rat....

...or a newt....

...or as arseholes....


???

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 05:50 AM

Heard in the greenhouses on Radcliffe parks department in the sixties, a disparaging remark made about the parks superintendent, who was regarded as, er, not exactly "a man's man":

"Trouble wi' 'im, 'e still thinks 'is dick's fer pissing out of..."

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: G-Force
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 06:06 AM

"She ain't no better 'n she should be"

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 09:15 PM

God don't make no junk

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Mar 23 - 09:38 AM

The foundation of English culture is politeness.

English food is unforgivably dreadful.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Mar 23 - 05:10 PM

You can't teach an old dog new tricks

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 04 Mar 23 - 05:18 PM

I have never heard the saying quoted on 04 Mar 23 - 09:38 AM and when I Google them they have no hits. Did you make them up Donuel?

I suppose if you did they still qualify as stupid sayings. Much like "People making things up to score points in irrelevant arguments are knob ends" :-)

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Mar 23 - 05:32 PM

How's about: "American food doesn't make American kids fat." Now that's what I CALL a stupid saying!

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Mar 23 - 11:02 AM

Who said that? I see Fast food isn't, but not American.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Mar 23 - 06:21 PM

Bill Mahre said to Russell Brand "the religious culture of Britain is politeness".
(forget Henry 8th)

My parents were never fond of English food.
The etiology of stupid sayings is stupid.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 11:20 AM

That last line is meaningless, so I suppose you could say it's on-topic.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 03:24 PM

Not what you would call well known sayings then. But, yea, someone did say them. I am sure you will understand my confusion. Never having known your parents or seen Bill Mahre.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 03:41 PM

Sayings full of sound and fury signifying nothing. The excess sputum of neurons. An ignorant gamete capable of genius with enough time.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 04:05 PM

Well, I'll go t'foot of our stairs

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 04:16 PM

Well f*uck*in' stroll on...

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 04:46 PM

I worked with a Geordie who used to say "I'm not surf***ingprised". Dunno if is common in Geordieland though

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 05:17 PM

A Raggytash one that he used once years ago and which I now use all the time: "Well bugger me sideways with a burnt chip."

(Once heard Stephen Fry doing a variant with a bent fish-hook)

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 05:33 PM

When confronted with an unenviable task,

"I'd rather hack off the family jewels with a rusty machete"

Or

"I'd rather rip me top off and staple me tit to a beehive."

Or, when utterly gobsmacked,

"Well paint me privates with honey and bring on the dancing ants."

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 05:57 PM

The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist (or a mystic, an astrophysicist or a magic mushroom expert)

He's a few condoms short of an orgy

I looked into his eyes. The lights were on but there was nobody driving.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Geoff Wallis
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 12:23 PM

'History is written by the winners/victors.'

Pernicious tripe (and very very incorrect).

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 01:08 PM

It is rarely written by the losers, so you need to expand on your remarks. Why do you think it's nonsense?

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 01:22 PM

It's written by neutral observers quite often, and, these days, there's plenty of recorded evidence in the media. If Russia does defeat Ukraine, heaven forfend, it wouldn't be Russia writing the history, would it?

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 03:43 PM

This "history is written by the victors" is a pet peeve of mine, and I tried to debunk it earlier this week on the A.l. Lloyd Shanties thread, to wit:


"'History is written by the victors.'

"That proves that Jeff Davis and the Kaiser were both in the right.

"History, in fact, is literally written by professionally trained historians who aren't afraid to modify or change their conclusions in the light of new evidence. Their work is scrutinized by others. They don't always agree, either.

"Now that I've been told that the news is fake, science is fake, and history is fake, I guess the smart thing is to believe any goddamned thing I want.

Feels GOOOOD! :} "

**************************************

The idea is an old one:

https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/history-is-written-by-the-victors-quote-origin.html

But it's only true when the victors have a monopoly on writing and historians, a state of affairs that obviously held true when the vanquished were non-literate. The fact is that even non-literate societies have had spokespersons among the supposedly monolithic victors. For example, the notorious 1864 massacre of Native Americans at Sand Creek, Co., was investigated and condemned by the U.S. Congress, whose report contained the following words:

“It is difficult to believe that, being in the form of men and wearing the uniform of the United States, soldiers could commit or countenance the commission of such acts of cruelty or barbarity as are detailed in the testimony.”

(Not quite the stereotype of the victors, is it?)

Outside of Colorado and neighboring Kansas, the event was also widely denounced in the popular press.

The smug assertion that "history is written by the victors" implies that the "victors," whoever they may be, control the historians. Sometimes, as in Nazi Germany and the USSR, they do, but in democratic nations they don't. It also works as a pseudo-intellectual slogan meaning "I don't believe anything historians from the winning side have to say, because they're naturally liars, the voices of the losers have been silenced, and we'll never know the truth anyway. So don't confuse me with facts."

The saying also implies that the victors' historians solidly agree.

I mean, really. If the voices of the losers had been silenced, there wouldn't be neo-Communists in Russia and neo-Nazis in America.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 04:06 PM

Take a big uptick, Lighter.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 04:07 PM

No one is saying victims and/or losers don't write their stories, but alas, the accepted party line is usually that of the victors if they remain in power.

The fact that the South lost the Civil War yet their party line that it wasn't about slavery prevailed for over 100 years is an illustration of losers still controlling the story. But in general, it takes paradigm shifts to move some of the things we think we know about past events, which is the point when reasoned voices make the case often enough to change minds.

I'll read your link a bit later, just posting now because my thoughts were incomplete in my earlier response.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 06:08 PM

To maintain power the Republicans hope to set aside differences and unite with; the religious right, white supremacists, the KKK, Proud Boys, QAnon, Mexican cartels, the Russian Secret Service, Anti Zionists, Smersch, U.N.C.L.E., SPECTRE, Hair Club for Men, Old Nazis, Neo Nazis, the SSS Steve Shaw Syndicate, Russain Mob, Italian Mob, Westboro Babtist Church, Oath Keepers, Kill Jews for Jesus, Death Lovers R Us, and friends of Barney.

Stupid is what stupid does.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 07:02 PM

The saying /philosophy that I heard at the CIA and have railed against for 45 years...
"Truth is perception"

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 10:41 PM

Its easier to rename a problem than solve it.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Neil D
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 06:46 AM

Any statement that begins "At the end of the day".

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 06:52 AM

Any statement that begins, “Basically…”.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 07:33 AM

I agree with those last two. But I do sort of like one or two that some find grating. I don't mind at all the gross overuse of "like" or "know what I mean?" Neither of those is used in order to sound pretentious. But if someone starts their statement with "I have to say..." I feel like butting in with, "No, you don't have to, not if you don't want to. That would be fine by me..."

I'm not sure about those people who start a sentence, often when trying to explain something, with "So..." but if you end your sentence with "...going forward" you should be incarcerated without heat or light for life, especially if you're a politician.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 07:42 AM

Its easier to rename a problem than solve it.

I wouldn't count that as a stupid statement..

DC

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 08:38 AM

In reality...

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 09:40 AM

"Know what I mean" is pronounced "jomeen", and is how one pronounces a question mark; "innit" is a pronounced full stop, like. As Professor Higgins would say: "Garn."

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 10:55 AM

Using the word "alternate" in any sense other than "first this, now that, now this again, now that again..." is utterly diabolical. The word is alternative. This lingovirus is so common now that dictionaries are accepting it as standard English. That's a crime, committed mostly by yanks. I blame the Monkees.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 03:03 PM

There are a bunch of Orwellian weasel words of bad intent that soil language by corrupting meaning. Turning equality into equity is one of them. Illegal aliens, death tax, deep state, fake news etc.

Subject: RE: BS: stupid sayings
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Mar 23 - 07:11 AM

100! Alternate truth is a fascinating fascist favorite.