If you find a phrase you like, keep repeating it


Needless to say, I was fully aware of the behind-the-scenes machinations which, needless to say, would ultimately result in my departure from the executive board of VoxMagic Enterprises. The VP of Product Interface Experience who was, needless to say, a close personal friend of mine, kept me fully informed of who was saying what to whom and when – needless to say, this involved me needlessly hearing a lot of what people had to say about me, which, needless to say, was not all of a positive nature.
Needless to say, this period of needless nay-saying was brought to a swift (although, needless to say, temporary) end by the introduction of our revolutionary predictive transcription system, VoxMagic Ultra, which, needless to say, changed the whole face of voice recognition technology, allowing, as it did, the pre-emptive conversion of spoken sound to text. Needless to say, it was an exciting time for the whole industry, no matter what anyone might needlessly say about the needs of, say, the consumer and, it needs to be said, I was at the forefront of this (needless to say) revolutionary paradigm-shift. For the first time, we had produced speech recognition software so advanced that we had eliminated the need to actually say anything.

14 comments:

  1. Well this is timely... I'm reading a book and it's annoying the crap out of me because the author keeps saying 'such a thing'... 'how could he do such a thing...', 'it was impossible to understand such a thing...', 'he'd never seen such a thing...' Needless to say... ARGH!!!!

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  2. This was a joke used on Alan Partridge ages ago, specifically with the phrase "needless to say".

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  3. Oh man, I have a coworker who continually peppers his long winded monologues with "...long story short..." Not "...to make a long story short..." or any other variation. Always "...long story short..."

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  4. I read a book that used the phrase "proffered hand" at least fifteen times in a 45,000 word book. A friend of mine (who had given me the book because a coworker had written it) said she'd noticed it too, and that night had a nightmare about this giant hand reaching out to shake hers.

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  5. Please tell me I'm not the only one who wanted to shoot their brains out after reading half of that.

    ps. No, I could not bring myself to finish the entire thing. I have suffered enough brain damage for one day, thank-you-very-much.

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  6. Hilarious! One of your best. Love the ending line.

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  7. Dinah, I'm with you. Brain freeze halfway through. Point perfectly well made, needless to say, within the first two sentences.

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  8. this made me want to hurt somebody

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  9. If this hadn't ended quick, somebody was definitely getting hurt.. really bad..

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  10. I hate that phrase anyhow. If it's "needless to say" why say it?

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  11. Needless to say, this was hilarious. Also needless to say,though I'll say the needless anyway, is that I laughed quite a bit at this needed post. Needless to say, I have needless homework to do, and needless to say, I'll get in trouble if I say that to me teachers, so needless to say, I have to go. Bye!

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  12. Variation: I have a friend who likes to text me. A lot. And every time she texts me (which - I've counted - can be upwards of thirteen conversation initiations a DAY), she starts the conversation with "Hey". That's it. Three characters, no punctuation. Just "Hey". Needless to say, it's worse than needless to say, and, needless to say, it's gotten to the point where I ignore any text that, needless to say, says "Hey" needlessly.

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  13. It goes without saying that it actually doesn't.

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  14. So the entire story didn't need to be said?

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