[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

Ronald Reagan

 

Nothing is creepier than a bunch of adults being very quiet. 

Tina Fey

 

Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing. 

Woody Allen

 

It’s a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It’s the
opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for. 

Ricky Gervais

 

The one thing you shouldn’t do is try to tell a cab driver how to get
somewhere. 

Jimmy Fallon

 

If we amplify everything, we hear nothing. 

Jon Stewart

 

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Too big for your breeches

 

'Too big for your breeches', or 'too big for your britches', is an American
phrase, first found in print in An Account of Col. Crockett's Tour to the
North and Down East, 1835, written by Davy Crockett.

 

I myself was one of the first to fire a gun under Andrew Jackson. I helped
to give him all his glory. But I liked him well once: but when a man gets
too big for his breeches, I say Good bye.

 

Those of a certain age will probably best recall Davy Crockett as 'the king
of the wild frontier' from the 1950s television show and put him in the same
category as fictional folk heroes like the Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger.
Crockett was, however, a real life US politician who represented Tennessee
in the U.S. House of Representatives.

 

A later alternative version of the phrase - 'too big for his boots' is found
in both the USA and the UK from the 1860s onwards and may have originated in
either place. The first example found comes from the pen of the Scots writer
Laurence Lockhart in the novel Doubles and Quits, which was serialized in
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1868:

 

I could scarcely repress an exclamation of wrath and disgust when I saw him
lolling familiarly in my arm-chair. He was getting too big for his boots;
and then his abominable tobacco and whisky - faugh! it was insufferable.

 

One spin-off phrase that is undoubtedly British and is unlikely to be
claimed by anywhere else is 'I'm too sexy for my shirt', the title of the
1991 song by the UK trio Right Said Fred (rated number 49 in Blender
Magazine's 50 Worst Songs Ever Recorded poll).

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Too much of a good thing

 

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists this phrase as proverbial and
dates it from the late 15th century. The earliest example that found in
print is from Shakespeare's As You Like It, 1600:

 

ROSALIND: Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?

Come, sister, you shall be the priest and marry us.

Give me your hand, Orlando. What do you say,

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flea market

 

1910, especially in reference to the marché aux puces in Paris, so-called
"because there are so many second-hand articles sold of all kinds that they
are believed to gather fleas. E.S. Dougherty, "In Europe," 1922.

 

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What company was it that invented the transistor radio in 1952?

A:  Sony

 

In Australia, John Flynn invented what service?

A:  Flying Doctors

 

Who were the two inventors of CS gas?

A:  Corson and Stoughton

 

The dumb waiter was invented by whom?

A: Thomas Jefferson

 

Harold H Lipman received a patent in 1858 for what?

A: Gluing an eraser on the end of a pencil

 

Whitcome Judson in 1891 invented what for fastening shoes?

A:  Zip Fastener

 

Reuben Tice died trying to invent a machine to do what?

A:  Dewrinkle prunes