Graphical Manipulations #37: Gina, Paraprosdokian Rambles And The Rat Reprise!

Hmmm!  It would appear that Gina Rinehart’s recent tragic loss of a paltry $6 or $7 billion still weights heavily on my mind (certainly not on my pocket) to the extent that I’m still thinking about her and her billions and especially her well placed barb that she ‘ain’t no ATM’.  That’s Automatic Teller Machine not Autocratic Total Miser in case you’re a tad confused!  Such thoughts led to this;

 

Whilst casting about the the appropriate nasty, snide and/or satirical remark to affix to relevant graphics, in the manipulative form of course, I came across a wealth of verbal put downs which are called paraprosdokians – a word I’d never heard previously (nor had the spellchecker).  Apparently, a paraprosdokian /pærəprɒsˈdoʊkiən/ is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.  It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax.  For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists.^[1]  Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but they also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a form of syllepsis (courtesy Wikipedia).

Ever the opportunist, it got me into a plagairising set of mind and away we went!

The desire never to see Rupert Murdoch or his media monstrosities ever again led to this;

 

And thoughts about trying to hold erudite conversations with those whose erudition and intellect leave something to be desired led to this related to Joe Hockey;

 

And the use of promissory notes without substance from Christopher Pyne, Julie Bishop, Tony Abbott and Warren Truss to this;

PS: I thought it very illustrative of the art of conversation being absent in the NO Coalition that they couldn’t even be bothered to tell their minority National Party consorts, via its leader Warren Truss, that they had done a deal with Labor on political financing by agreeing to support the legislation.  Yep! I guess we all know how it feels to be left out of the game by the big boys, don’t we Warren?

PPS: For some strange reason whenever I try to type the National Party leader’s name it comes out Warrent Truss which is immediately corrected by Word to Warrant Truss.  There’s a message in there somewhere Warren!

 

Thinking of literacy and its counterpoint numeracy led (once again) to Joe Hockey and to this;

Loud whiney noises full of sound and fury, and possessing little of real substance leant validity to giving Christopher Pyne another mention, this time in a solo role;

 

And finally, enlightenment and vacuous sound bites led once again to Tony Abbott and this;

 

And to top it off that bloody rat came back with an illustrative example;

 

And so there we have it!  Leaving you with the usual postscript . . . . . . !

Related articles

• Paraprosdokians (oyiabrown.com)
• Graphical Manipulations #36: Futility, Earners, Cows, Elevenses, Enumerations And That Bloody Rat! (deknarf.wordpress.com)
• Gina Rinehart Calls For Sterilization of The Poor (davidicke.com)