“Economists’ work is often criticized as being ‘useful as a chocolate teapot,’ The Economist magazine wrote.”
Ottawa Citizen October 25, 1997 (though it has occurred to me since that (a) you could eat a chocolate teapot and (b) what’s really wrong with economists’ work isn’t that it’s not useful, it’s that people don’t want to hear about it... but it’s still a lovely metaphor).
In my latest Loonie Politics column I welcome the youth of tomorrow’s future back to the dismal reality of today’s schooling with an assignment to write an essay on what they’d really do if they were in charge, and why it would be so different from what they promised and expected to do.
“A radioactive isotope of tedium.”
Another of my own, from February 2, 2004, on reading an exceptionally dull column.
“Salt: An Epicure’s Delight”, “Classic Wines of Estonia”, “Flemish Weaving the Traditional Way”.
The in-flight magazine articles the characters use to sedate themselves in Red Dwarf “Dimension Jump” (the Ace Rimmer episode).
“The Convoy Conference prior to our sailing was held ashore at Cardiff and was so particularly dull and uninformative that the Flag Officer Cardiff fell sound asleep. The Conference certainly had the merit that it could not possibly have alarmed the Masters of the merchant ships who were being briefed for the venture.”
Bob Whinney, The U-Boat Peril: A Fight for Survival (regarding a convoy that sailed on June 5 to help supply the U.S. beaches on D-Day).
“The Singular Mark Twain [by Fred Kaplan] arouses in the reader an urgently fugitive instinct, as at the approach of an unpolished yet tenacious raconteur.”
Christopher Hitchens panning the book in The Atlantic Monthly November 2003
“It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.”
Eddie Cantor, according to www.brainyquote.com/quotes/eddie_cantor_309843
“’I remember back on the farm... my mother calling to me... “Jon, you’re boring the cattle!” Ever see a cow yawn?’ ‘Now you’re boring the cat.’”
Dialogue with Jon talking then Garfield thinking in Garfield cartoon in Ottawa Citizen May 16, 2002