New Aphorism

[gnomi]

Last night, mabfan and I had dinner with somehedgehog, which was wonderful. And during dinner, talk turned to the Great Molasses Flood and the book Dark Tide. The fact that, when it was pointed out to them that the tank was leaking molasses, the owners of the tank "solved" the problem by painting the tank brown came up. To which somehedgehog remarked that "painting the molasses tank brown" or, more simply, "painting the tank brown" sounded like a good description for actions that do little more than cover up a problem.

To which we all agreed that we'd try to adopt this into our regular vocabularies. An example would be a sentence like "The administration's Social Security plan does nothing more than paint the tank brown."

Comments

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

That's lovely -- I'll try to adopt it too.

[joecoustic.livejournal.com]

That is so good that as soon as I read it, it sounded familiar already! I'll try to use it too - though it'll take more explanation in the midwest :).

[red-queen.livejournal.com]

Another one is "painting (or re-arranging) deck chairs on the Titanic," but the connotations *are* subtly different.

My Evil Twin has coined "not only is the Emperor naked, he's BALD," for situations exhibiting spectacular cluelessness and fecklessness.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

My Evil Twin has coined "not only is the Emperor naked, he's BALD," for situations exhibiting spectacular cluelessness and fecklessness.

Ooh -- I like that one.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-The idiom "to whitewash" already occupies that memespace, tho' I like yours better.

[dpolicar]

I'm in.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Works for me... and maybe it'll get more people to read the book, too. :-)