Sometimes You Have To Laugh
A special thank-you to the former student who shared these items with me!
Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?Years ago, my boss, the director of a private school, used to remind us teachers of the importance of thinking before speaking (The same applies to writing and proofreading): "Be sure your brain is in gear before you engage your mouth." Somebody needs to remind various public figures of that good advice.
Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."
--Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest.
(On September 17, 1994, Heather Whitestone was selected as Miss America 1995)
"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
--Mariah Carey
"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
--Brooke Shields, during an interview to become Spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign.
"I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body."
--Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward.
"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of> the lowest crime rates in the country."
--Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.
"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president." ["We"?]
--Hillary Clinton, commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents.
"That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it."
--A Congressional candidate in Texas.
"Half this game is ninety percent mental."
--Danny Ozark, manager of the Philadelphia Phillies
"It isn't pollution that's harming the> environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
--Al Gore, Vice President (DUH !) and he wanted to be President!!!!!!!!!
"I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix."
--Dan Quayle
"We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"
--Lee Iacocca
"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
--Joe Theisman, NFL football, quarterback and sports analyst.
"We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people."
--Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instrutor.
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
--Bill Clinton, President
"We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
--Al Gore, Vice President
"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas."
--Keppel Enderbery
"Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances."
--Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina
Note to readers of this blog: You are invited to share some of your favorite bloopers, political or otherwise, by adding other malapropisms and inanities to the comments section.
posted by Always On Watch @ 11/13/2005 09:15:00 AM
24 comments
24 Comments:
Wait a minute...a list of bonehead quotes and none from GW Bush? Come on, you could dedicate an entire blog to those.
"Wow! Brazil is big." -Last week, after being shown a map of the country to its President.
"I was going to say he's a piece of work, but that might not translate too well. Is that all right, if I call you a 'piece of work'?" —June 20, to Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg
Sam,
Wait a minute...a list of bonehead quotes and none from GW Bush? Come on, you could dedicate an entire blog to those.
Of course, but there are already several blogs dedicated to just GWB's malaprops.
Also, I knew that somebody would come by and add something from GWB. Sure enough, here you are to do just that. And as the first comment too!
Thanks for stopping by.
I needed a laugh today, thanks a bunch. Some where around here I have a DVD a friend gave me on political bloopers it is great.
God Bless America, God Save The Republic.
I needed a laugh today. Those were great!
Those were hysterical. I wish I had some readily at hand... if I think of one, I'll come back. :)
I worked with a fellow whose roommate was so full of malapropisms that every month he sent a list home to their friends. Here are a few.
After asking a girl to dance he said that she told him to take a short jump on a long pier.
He likes the cartoon Bugs Rabbit.
When offered a business opportunity he said he was sitting on a land mine.
He saw the war movie "Spitoon" (Platoon)
The thing was he was dead serious. He never understood what was so funny.
Elmer's Brother,
When I get in a hurry and am talking to my longtime friend, I switch the syllables around. It's nearly a tradition with us as I've been spitting out these inanities since 1969. I've often wondered why I make these mistakes only when I'm talking to her.
But I always hear what I just said and amend my comment--so far at least. Now, when I grow older, will I recognize my blooper mistakes?
Curious about that fellow you mentioned, in that he never recognized his mistakes. A brain thing?
Samwich,
That last comment of yours is depressing. Some years ago, I once heard someone say that the national debt doesn't matter because "we owe it to ourselves." The reasoning at the time was whether or not to support the local school-bond referendum. I wonder how much county debt accounts for the rise in real-estate taxes.
In your opinion, what is the safest strategy for individuals to employ in order to be in a good position for the crash you have predicted? I have many friends whose IRA's are in the stock/bonds market.
Also, do you have predictions about the housing market? Houses are moving much slower here, and some sellers are lowering their prices.
And one more question...When the housing bubble really bursts, will property assessments drop? Or does the huge county debt prevent any significant drop in assessments?
You can tell from the above questions that I am woefully ignorant of economic matters.
Elmer's Brother,
I just remembered a blooper I heard a few years ago, in the days of the D.C. snipers.
Of course, those three weeks were a terrible time, and all of us in the D.C. area were stressed out. One news commentator here, in the early hours of the morning and right after another shooting had taken place, began her story with these words: "Now for the latest on the D.C. Snooters." She didn't hear her mistake.
Sam, so if I only own a quarter of my actual debt per the numbers, does that mean I am less poor than everyone else?
Hey gindy,
I'll bet you this month's Social Security check that they were real! Have you ever listened to Sean Hannity's "Man on the street" interviews? You know, the ones where they can't name the Vice President, can't name any senator or congressman from their own state, don't know who ran against Bush in the last election, don't know the year Columbus sighted land on his first voyage to the New World, don't know what is meant by December 7, 1941, and on and on and on? OMG! It WOULD be funny if only it WEREN'T real! It absolutely makes me nauseated (not "nauseous," by the way...).
Anything Marion "smoking crack" Barry says is bound to be ridiculous. Some of these are hilarious. You could write a book of Quaylisms.
George Bush
"I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend."—On the prospect of visiting Denmark, Washington D.C., June 29, 2005
"Who are those guys?" - Vice President-elect Al Gore, pointing at busts of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson during a tour of Monticello in 1992.
Yes, we traded a guy that couldn't spell 'potato' for an utter moron.
Granted, Gore is left-wing and therefore physically incapable of displaying intelligence, but that was pretty stupid, even for a leftist.
Duck,
I think you're too optimistic about the housing bubble, though I think that the cities are, so far, not in danger of seeing the bubble burst; the suburbs are another matter, though. And Samwich is right about those foreclosures in CA, and housing/real-estate has been overvalued for the last few years. Furthermore, people have become used to the good times with the real-estate market and have overextended their budgets because they think they can hang on until they sell. We are now moving into a buyers' market, instead of a sellers' one.
At the end of my street, only four out of the seven new houses have been sold since last April. In my memory of some 40+ years, I've never seen new houses move this slowly in Northern Virginia!
But I'm making a few bucks in the slow market. The for-sale sign for the new development--the sign looks like the Parthenon--sits on my front yard, and the developer pays me a few bucks every month which the sign sits there, which has frontage on a major thoroughfare. When the developer first approached me about the sign, he was confident that all the seven houses would be sold in less than four months.
Samwich,
The local governments--at least the ones here--rely heavily on those "fair market" assessments of the new McMansions. And the counties around here have contracted debt based on projected tax revenues which may be in jeopardy should there be a major burst of the bubble.
Are we "due" for a recession/depression? Some eocnomic theory speaks of that cycle.
Most who live in the mansions here treat their homes as temporary-investment property. In sum, these houses are not homes, and give the appearance of not being lived in. I feel sorry for the children growing up in those houses!
Most McMansions are owned by two-worker families. What if one loses his/her job, or it wages are drastically cut (either by the employer or as a result of reduced dollar power)? These couples will not be able to hold their homes for very long, because the concept of saving for hard times is defunct. Furthermore, every couple I know carries a large credit-card debt. For many, the personal economics is worse that paycheck-to-paycheck.
Very rarely do real-estate assessments here drop. And if the bubble really bursts, those with handy cash will reap a windfall with all the foreclosures.
Yes, CA is having a bad time with foreclosures. Prices there have been inflated for some years. What buys a mansion here in Northern Virginia buys little more than a quonset hut in CA.
I've always heard that the best way to weather a recession/depression is to have no debt. Would you agree with that wisdom? Having no debt is how my parents' families made it through the Great Depression.
Social Security is little better than a pyramid scheme. Also, now Social Security funds are used for much more than retirement. Scams to get undeserved Social Security monies about. Many out-and-about drug dealers in D.C. draw disability funds. At the other end of the spectrum are those who don't technically qualify for Social Security benefits but who should, based on the extent of their disabilities.
What happens when the base of the pyramid is smaller than the top of the pyramid? The talk of cutting benefits and of postponing the eligible retirement-age are small patches to a dysfunctional system, the system we call "Social Security." Furthermore, those who are truly disabled cannot afford any cuts to benefits as prescription costs and the cost of providers and the cost of living soar to the moon, with no end in sight.
Used to be that Social Security income for the elderly pretty well covered the cost of a nursing home, particularly in the less expensive states. Not so now! God help me if my mother-in-law, who has Alzheimer's, has to go to a home! She can't afford the rate, and we can't either--even if all the family pitches in.
IMO, privatization of Social Security is a last-gasp effort. And, as my father used to say, "Somebody is getting a rake-off."
Beamish,
What? Gore has never looked at a Jefferson nickel or a Washington quarter?
Crusader,
You're right about Marion "Crack" Barry. But I don't think he's going to be around for much longer. Have you seen the recent photos of Barry? He looks like an emaciated, old crack addict--which he is, of course.
"The soil of a friend"? As on some farmer's lower forty?
Thanks for these, AOW. Can't get enough humor these days.
Two contributions:
While I do not recall just who said it, one of the female talking heads on one of the networks kept referring to the black French nationals rioting as "African-Americans."
And, so far, one of the biggest chuckles this year comes from that awful period of Biblical rain a short while ago in the northeast section of the US. A newsette paddled a canoe to show how deep was the flooding. Only, in the middle of her NBC report, two guys walked through the same "flood" between the newsette and the camera. Talk about flashing your derriere in public!
Samwich,
I just might take you up on your offer to post your report. Thank you.
I agree that recession is looming. I am staying out of debt!
George Mason,
Muslims rioting in France are "African-Americans"? Too funny!
In my lifetime, the ethnic group which we now refer to African-Americans has been called "colored," "Negros," and "blacks"--as well as many ethnic slurs. Three of our African-American friends equally interchange "black" and "African-American."
I think that I saw that news clip you mentioned. Hehehe.
Is Barry still alive?
Crusader,
Yes, Marion "Crack" Barry is still alive. But his clothes always look two sizes too big, and his belly seems distended (even though his arms are very spindly and his face is quite gaunt). He's been hospitalized several times in the last few years; we locals have heard about prostate cancer, liver trouble, gall bladder trouble, what appears to be complexion-pallor. Barry's mental capacity isn't what it used to be, either, and he very rarely gives interviews. Of late, he's taken to dressing like a pimp, with the hat and odd-colored jacket.
I guess the decades of substance abuse have caught up with him and/or he's got serious, chronic illness(es).
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