First, "chain smoking." After a lot of thinking, I still wish this had some significance aside from the fact that it means smoking a lot. I want an actual chain to be involved. At least metaphorically. Even the most literal interpretation of the current phrase involves just lighting a second cigarette with the first, which is so far removed from any concept of a chain that it's just silly. And come to think of it, chain letters are really more like trees or tournament brackets than chains.
"Can't have your cake and eat it too."
Yes you can! What you can't do is eat your cake and have it too.* That's what it should be. And even though this is supposed to mean "the things people want are often incompatible," I am 100% sure that nobody has ever wanted to eat a cake but still have it around afterward. In fact, it's very common for people to eat cake (or force others to) so it won't be around. And if you do want it around, it's only because you want to eat some more of it later, which still leaves these as compatible wants.
If you, for some reason, want to possess cake as much or more than you want to eat it, then you are a non-representative weirdo outcast (who shouldn't be ashamed of being so, but who should also not be the subject of a proverb meant to apply to the general public).
In conclusion, "chain mail" is currently the only compound noun or verb beginning with chain that I support, and we should choose either "You can't eat your cake and have it too, even though you wouldn't ever want to" or "Cake is not unlimited."
Please join me in rallying around these important causes.
*Bartleby agrees!
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Yet let no empty gust/Of passion find an utterance in thy lay,/A blast that whirls the dust/Along the howling street and dies away;/
But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep,/Like currents journeying through the windless deep.
3 comments:
I was always under the impression that the "chain" in chain smoking comes from the fact that you smoke cigarettes one after another, like the links in a chain.
No?
I'm with you on the have-eat cake thing. It's funny how people use phrases without thinking of their meanings. Like "cold as shit". I've also heard people say "colder than hell." My mom, God bless her, often says "It's hotter than TO Hell", a mistake from "hotter than two hells", but it's funny as evidence for people not realizing the meaning of such phrases; said people associate a particular phrase with a particular state, and use it whenever said state occurs.
your comment about the cake phrase just made me think of the last great piece of cake i had, mango.
your cake bit made me laugh out loud!
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