My previous entry ended with a suggestion that readers should “read, as they say, the whole thing.”
Why is the phrase “as they say” there? Well, it’s shorthand for “I do realize that ‘read the whole thing’ is as clichéd a blogging phrase as one could imagine. By adding the phrase “as they say,” however, I am indicating that I possess an ironic awareness of my use of the cliché, which has the effect of making it not a cliché after all.”
The problem is that many bloggers other than me have wanted to communicate these same general sentiments, with the result that the counter-cliché phrase stuck into the clichéd phrase has, itself, become something of a cliché.
Presumably, I must now start writing “Read, as, as they say, they say, the whole thing,” so that not only the original cliché but also the newer anti-cliché cliché are ironically acknowledged, thus avoiding clichédom altogether. Yet I fear this sort of escalation. Where will it end?.
Soon no blogs will be left. All the bandwidth will be exceeded by bloggers trying to tell their readers to read the entirety of excerpted entries.
We’re doomed, I say.
Where it goes from here is obviously the web acronym.
RTWT.
Or,
RTATSWT.
Or,
RAATSTSTWT.
Or,
RAAATSTSTSTWT.
From there, we can only go to scientific notation, and down that slippery slope I fear to go.
Where will it end? In polygamy, bestiality, incest, and pedophilia, of course.
Man-on-cliche?
It will end (as they say) the moment someone figures out how to visually write out “air quotes.” :)
Following up on Jazz’s suggestion, I think what’s called for here is a recursive acronym (y’know, like GNU) along the lines of:
XEWSCD
…which stands for “XEWSCD expanded with self-conscious disclaimer,” and thus, when fully inflated, produces an infinite number of self-conscious disclaimers. So you can then say “Read (XEWSCD) the whole thing” and be done with it.
(BTW, some additional arcane and useless (but not recursive) acronyms can be found here.
There you go, Stentor, forgetting that it could be “woman-on-cliché,” too.
It’s like they say in French: “c’est ben ben bon” I’m waiting for another “ben” to work its way in there.
PDP –if you’re trying to repeat the litany of horrors that Scalia said Lawrence v. Texas would lead to the legitimation of, you forgot masturbation.
I agree totally with dch that a recursive acronym is the correct solution, but I don’t understand what XEWSCD stands for.
Shouldn’t the recursive acronym be AATS: which expands to “as, AATS, they say”? I think that gives the desired expansion: “… as, as, AATS, they say, they say, …”
Also, “as, AATS, they say” looks very nice and is quite comprehensible when used as a single expansion.
But what happens when “as, AATS, they say” becomes a cliche? What then? Huh? Huh? Doom, I tell you!
But what happens when “as, AATS, they say” becomes a cliche? What then? Huh? Huh?
That’s the beauty of a recursive acronym: it already acknowledges that it is/will be a cliché, because it contains within itself an infinite supply of “as they say”s.
And okay, I’ll defer to Charles’s suggested acronym; I think it’s cool that it’s recursive on the second letter rather than (like XEWSCD) on the first.