Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
From the Washington Post "Style Invitational" contest last Saturday.
Rules: Compose a new adage in one of these traditional forms:
Rules: Compose a new adage in one of these traditional forms:
- If they can… why can’t they…?
- You can… but you can’t…
- It’s not the… it’s the…
- If you… they will…
- You can rest in a courtroom, but you can't court in a restroom. -- L. Craig (Senator Larry Craig was arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport restroom.)
- You can love your fellow man in Virginia, but you can't send out invitations. (Gay marriage is still illegal in most of the USA.)
- If they can create a thin, pocket-size, touch-screen-enabled e-mailer/Internet browser/game machine/organizer/cellphone, why can't they create a "Cancel" button in an elevator?
- If they can make a microwave oven, why can't they make a microwave chiller? (I want a cold beer NOW!)
- If they can reenact Civil War battles, why can't they reenact witch dunkings? Oh, and the witches should wear flimsy T-shirts.
- If they can create plastics that won't break down in a landfill for centuries, why can't they use them to make a garden hose that lasts more than two summers?
- If they can have Winter Olympics curling, why can't they have Summer Olympics shuffleboard?
- If they can tell me I didn't need to dial 1 for a call to a different area code, why can't they just ignore the freaking 1 and put through the freaking call?
- If they can make a phone that lets you look up movie times and buy tickets, why can't they automatically silence the phone during the movie?
- If they can call the theory of evolution a fallacy by finding a single unexplained fact, why can't we do the same for religion?
- You can turn words like "calendar" and "friend" into verbs, but you can't illiterate me into doing it.
- You can put your best foot forward, but you can't get anywhere unless you also put your worst foot forward.
- You can win the Nobel Peace Prize without doing anything, but you can't win the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes without entering. (This is a widely advertised contest all over the USA.)
- You can live by the Bible, but you can't die by the Bible, unless it's maybe it's one of those big Gutenberg Bibles with the metal clasps.
- You can pet your mate, but you can't mate your pet.
- You can avoid contradictions, but you can't avoid contradictions.
- You can take my committee chair, videotape me smoking a crack pipe, give me a field sobriety test after a traffic stop and censure me for awarding a city contract to my girlfriend, but you can't take my dignity. -- M.B., Washington (Marion Barry was a popular mayor of Washington, DC, despite his lack of morals or scruples.)
- It's not the view of Russia from Alaska, it's the . . . well, everything else. (When Sarah Palin was campaigning for Vice President, she remarked that being governor of Alaska—normally considered one of our most insignificant states—was a good qualification because it’s so close to Russia.)
- If you leave me now, and take away the biggest part of me, they will probably ask you what you're going to do with my butt. (”If You Leave Me Now, You’ll Take Away the Biggest Part of Me” is the title of an old rock song.)