"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle"

[Jesse Sheidlower]

When they can ride bicycles.

Jesse

On Fri, Sep 03, 2010 at 03:04:30PM +0000, Charles C Doyle wrote:
> But at what moment would evolving fish stop being fish?!
>
> --Charlie
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Jesse Sheidlower [jester at PANIX.COM]
> Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 9:42 AM
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Sep 03, 2010 at 09:37:51AM -0400, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> >
> > One thing that has struck me about "a woman without a man is
> > like a fish without a bicycle" or the earlier "a man without
> > God is like a fish without a bicycle" since I first heard
> > them in the 1970s is that they both seem a little flawed as
> > parodies. The idea of the second one, for example, is that a
> > man doesn't need God. But "a fish without a bicycle" could
> > also be interpreted that the fish is not advanced enough to
> > appreciate a bicycle, so that the fish is at fault,
> > suggesting in the parodic context that there is something
> > deficient about the man rather than that God is useless.
>
> I don't have that reading at all.
>
> There is no way a fish, at any stage of advancement, can use a
> bicycle, which to me is the whole point of this. Even the
> greatest, smartest, most agile fish is still a fish living
> underwater, where a bicycle is useless.
>
> Even if you want to hypothesize a fish who develops legs,
> walks out of the water, and becomes human, well, then it's no
> longer a fish.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
>
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