Sometime last year, someone here posted about something so ill-considered and wrong-headed (I’m sorry I can’t remember exactly what it was) that we all responded with general comments that agreed with the original poster–namely, that it was a really stupid idea. TB responded with the phrase, “Now what could possibly go wrong with that?” It was the perfect comment to sardonically illustrate how obviously stupid the original suggestion was. I fell in love with the phrase, and soon found myself using it frequently in conversation. Eventually I realized I was over-using it, and made a conscious effort to curtail that use. Whether Tom actually made up that phrase, or whether he was just repeating a comment he had heard before, I do not know. I do know now that the phrase has become very common in public discourse, so common, in fact, that it is quickly losing its humor and becoming a cliche.

Example: “The Navy is working on a robot torpedo, which will cruise the world’s oceans until it identifies an enemy, and then destroy it.” (Now what could possibly go wrong with that?)

This got me to thinking about verbal memes, little phrases that enter the language and flourish, get passed on from one speaker to another. Another one is “I’m not making this up.”, as a means of pointing out that what one has just referred to is ludicrous beyond belief. I started beating this one to death too until an annoyed listener finally pointed it out to me.

Example: “I hear Gingrich just accused Obama of sympathizing with Mau-Mau terrorists because of his Kenyan anti-colonialist upbringing.” (No, I’m not making this up.)

Surely all of you have heard little phrases or sayings like this, pithy remarks that spread like wildfire. But have any of you actually created one? It’s impossible to rule out that maybe you heard it from someone else and just don’t remember doing so, but maybe we have been meme-originators at one time ourselves.

I think I have originated two myself, although I must point out, I can’t guarantee that I didn’t hear them from someone else and simply forgot, or that I came up with it coincidentally at the same time as someone else.

When considering the demographic implications of the Baby Boom, it occurred to me that the post-war birth cohort was passing thorugh history (or society) like a “pig through a python”. I hear that phrase (in that context) quite repeatedly lately.

Another common verbal meme I believe I may have originated, and which I hear now quite frequently, refers to a contemporary scandal in sports medicine and is used to point out an example of exagerration. It is best illustrated by a contrived example: “A Bathtub Porsche is just a Volkswagen Beetle on Steroids.”

I’m curious, how many of you (you seem to be a pretty communicative bunch) have noticed the emergence and propagation of these verbal memes, and do you suspect you have perhaps originated a few yourself?