Can’t Make It Up Fast Enough
By Mitch Berg
It’s a fairly common convention in English to refer to very unlikely conditions and scenarios by comparing them to absurdly unlikely conditions or scenarios. Most any native speaker of English knows what you mean when you refer to a “three dollar bill”, a “French war hero”, a “submarine with screen doors”, or a “DFL Listening Tour”.
Now, off and on over the years, I gotta admit – I thought I was clever, in fact – that one of my rhetorical flouishes in this area was “Icelandic Special Forces”. The idea that pacific, reindeer-sweater-wearing Iceland would have a unit of snake-eating cloak and dagger operators seemed like…
…well, you know where this is leading, right?
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:52 am
“Compassionate conservatism.”
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:16 am
“Liberal Intelligentsia”
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:29 am
Clown, go ahead and laugh. You’re just lucky that Mitch and I have been softened by the millenium of Christian influence and aren’t much like our pagan Viking ancestors. Noo Yawkers especially tend to discount Scandinavians. When my great-aunt was murdered by her Brooklyn Irish-Austrian barkeeper husband, his cop buddies covered him by writing it up as a suicide, and he told them that she was just a dumb Norwegian hick from Minnesota, so it wasn’t much of a loss. That quote, and more details were told to my great-grandfather by the beat cop who discovered the body face down in the alley, with the entry wound in the back and the exit wound in the front, and the revolver by the back door of the bar, fifty feet or more behind the body. So, if you’ve wondered why I don’t cut an arrogant Noo Yawker like you some slack, now you’ve got an idea.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:07 am
Um, no offense, but it seems like the Norwegians got the short end of that particular transaction, mefolkes.
Of course Norway’s more recent history – local fascists running the country on behalf of the Nazis during WW2 – is less heroic. Dude, you’re the France of the north.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Clown,
As noted in this space before, you are so wrong.
Norway had the most occupying troops, per capita, of any occupied country. The resistance made Nazi control very tenuous; the Quislings had almost no popular support; for every Norwegian that joined the German war effort, four or five escaped to Britain, Sweden or the US to fight against it. And let’s not forget that it was Norwegian commandos who gundecked the Nazi nuke program.
One can only hope America, today, would do as well.
Much more to come as we approach the 70th anniversary of the Blitzkrieg.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Clown, thanks a lot for a slap in the face. I had relatives shot by the Nazis both as resistance fighters and as hostages shot in violation of the rules of war.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Good takedown of Clown, Mitch.
Clown, you often try to make a pretense of not intending to cause offense, but I’m so sick and tired of your vile and base drivel that you offend me by your presence. It is useless to try to be civil with you.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
“Compassionate conservatism.”
“Liberal Intelligentsia”
“Constructive Clown Comment.”
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
True story.
A couple of years ago I’m going through Rome with my family. The taxi driver brought us through a very nice park. My dad, the Italian in the family, asked the driver, “What are all of those statues?”
The driver says, “Those are Italian war heroes.”
My dad respond, “The park must be smaller than it looks.”
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Oh please, mefolkes (is that Norwegian for “I surrender?”) Angryclown knows nothing and cares less about your personal history. He didn’t intend to offend anyone. That was merely an unexpected benefit.
Norway rolled over for the Nazis quicker than Shiftee at a Village People concert. Yes there were valiant Norwegians, as there were valiant Frenchmen, Poles, Germans and Italians. But let’s not pretend they were particularly effective in opposing the Nazis, other than to the extent they served as an extension of British commercial and North Sea naval power.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
angryclown said:
“He didn’t intend to offend anyone”
*cough* Yeah, right. The ever-inoffensive angryclown.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Angryclown, a legend in his own mind.