“‘Hurricane Hattie, didn’t you read your assignment? Your quiz answers are all wrong?’ ‘Oh, I read the assignment all right! I just can’t seem to remember anything I read… It just seems to go in one eye and out the other!’”
Dialogue in “Born Loser” cartoon (their elision) in Ottawa Sun May 18, 2000.
“My mother was already out of it by this time (not that she was ever deeply into it)…”
Mordecai Richler Barney’s Version
“‘God Will Never Give You More Than You Can Handle In Life,’ Says Man Unfamiliar With God, Life”
Headline on Babylon Bee piece Oct. 8, 2022 [https://babylonbee.com/news/god-will-never-give-you-more-than-you-can-handle-in-life-says-man-unfamiliar-with-god-life].
“I once went to an International Labour Organization meeting in Geneva, and by the end of it I was ready to jump into Lake Geneva. It was so g***ed slow. It took them two days to welcome the chairman.”
Jack Munro and Jane O’Hara Union Jack
“O, I smell false Latin.”
Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost
“An insubordinate clause.”
Another of mine, from February 4, 2004, about an impertinent remark.
“the Palestinians have seemed, as in the last election, to show a preference for the evil of lessers.”
OpinionJournal July 28, 2006
“We do not consider this a credible explanation.”
The BBC when Chinese authorities detained, handcuffed and beat up one of their journalists “for his own good in case he caught Covid from the crowd” November 28, 2022 (https://twitter.com/BBCNewsPR/status/1597000489513537536).