butt-crack is the new cleavage

fri8sep2006—36w251d68%— 11h15m00s—0utc

(On “some-assembly-required adaptable cliché frames”)

“Roughly speaking, the thing we need a name for is a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers.”

Geoffrey K. Pullum, Phrases for lazy writers in kit form

X is the new Y.

Original X: “pink”; original Y: “black”; commonly attributed to Gloria Vanderbilt (original 1960s, popularized 1980s)

X. Y X.

Original X: “Bond”; Y: “James”; from the film Dr. No (1962) and all subsequent James Bond movies.

Dammit, Jim! I’m a X, not a Y!

Original X: “doctor”, original Y: “magician”; from a famous misquotation of a line from Star Trek. (c. 1966)

If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z.¹

See Eskimo words for snow ^WP.

X, M dollars. Y, N dollars. Z? Priceless.

Strapline from MasterCard advertising campaign (2000)

From Wikipedia’s List of Snowclones

Glenn Whitman finally dubbed the linguistic artifact a snowclone ^WP (at 22:56:57 on Thursday, January 15, 2004, in Northridge, California, btw) and the meme just bit me. It just bit you.

(oh, and regarding the gratuitous snowclone I used for title: it’s true, but the jury’s still out on whether this is a passing Hollywood fancy or a giant step for butt-kind.)