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Good and Bad, Then and Now: a contest
by DrNo
+1 Reply

George Orwell, in his essay Politics and the English Language, said this:

I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Here's the challenge:

Find a well-written, simple-English passage and transpose it into meaningless, jargon-ridden doggerel referencing nothing concrete.

The winner, judged by me, will receive compensatory virtual digital-appendage application accolade upon sensitive upper extremities (cyber slap-on-the-back).

Re: Good and Bad, Then and Now: a contest
by JackDallas

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Shit Happens.

Jack

Jack...
by DrNo

Shit happens. It is what it is. At the end of the day. What can I do to make it happen?

All and countless others are surrogate catchphrases for abrogation of responsibility and leadership, especially when uttered by those who presume those duties.

Don't use them.

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene I
by Archaeopteryx

There's another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets,his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers,
his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and
the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine
pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

This muthafucka's dead.

Brilliant, Archeo...
by DrNo
I'm tempted to say you're hands down winner, but await further muthafuckers.
Re: Brilliant, Archeo...
by JackDallas
Wait...give me another chance.
From The Merchant of Venice
by JackDallas

The Quality of Mercy is not Strained

The assessment of the estimated value, based on both tangible and intangible factors, of the degree to which an individual is held accountable, responsible for, guilty of, or that for which he/she may rightly be subject to any one of many levels of restitution, is not diminished, negated or circumvented by laws, opinions, mores, prejudices and restraints of the rules, traditions and statutes of society as a whole or of the individual.

Jack Dallas

To paraphrase:
by Archaeopteryx
I have an innate fondness, some might say a hantise, for those distaff members of the human race who possess a larger-than-average gluteus maximus; for me to intimate otherwise would be a most egregious falsehood, and I cannot in good conscience make such a claim.
Re: To paraphrase:
by JackDallas

I like big butts and I cannot lie.

Jack

Do not enumerate your domestic fowl, in anticipation of the culmanation of their incubation. *

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