Interesting phrasing

[Jonathan Lighter]

You're too tolerant.

"In the middle of an earthquake," when the quake is over, implies that
there's so much act-of-God chaos at Verizon HQ that *of course* they haven't
fixed it.

BTW, the news claims (truthfully, I suppose) that the quake was "felt" in 22
states and Canada.

Felt by what super-sensitive devices?  I'm in an adjoining state and neither
I nor anybody I've asked felt or noticed anything at all.

JL

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Interesting phrasing
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A comment on the cell phone outage in parts of the country today:
>
> > When asked why the phone lines weren't working Tuesday afternoon,
> > Richard Young, a Verizon spokesman simply responded: "We're in the
> > middle of an earthquake right now, so it's not surprising."
>
> Well, that's fine, except that "we"--including Verizon--were not "in the
> middle of an earthquake" when the comment was made. The earthquake had
> long passed by then. I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong
> with the comment--in fact, it seems to be fairly typical shorthand for
> the "extended event".
>
> Take it or leave it...
>
> VS-)
>
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