Pluto and misquotes

[mmcirvin]

james_nicoll links to an interesting paper on Pluto's moons, then somebody mentions that something he said on Usenet in 1990 is commonly misattributed to Booker T. Washington. I've seen myself quoted as "Anonymous" once or twice, but Nicoll has clearly hit the big time.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That is fascinating. Especially the follow-up essay, in which the fake quote is revealed to have been spread by an old edition of Bartlett's.

[eb-oesch.livejournal.com]

"There's something rotten in the state of Denmark" is the lousiest allegedly quotable quote in the universe, unless you count the crap they stick in quote marks AND italics for the "Movie Memories" before the trailers before the movies at the theater. Quotes like that are evocative of the quote-picker with a fork in her neck. (The font is like chartreuse and half of the quotes are from chick-flicks, of course it's a her.) Also the blurbs on the back of cheap reprints of copyright-expired classics. Also the backs of some cereal boxes.

Sorry for the interruption. I like to talk to myself where others can hear.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think that line showed up in a Bugs Bunny cartoon once. It's possible that that is why it gets quoted so much.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

A friend recently raised the awful spectre of AFI's Top 100 Movie Quotes (http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/quotes.aspx) and the Bravo TV show that accompanied it. Rather than, say, 100 good quotes, for people who like movie quotes and trade them with their friends, it was rather more like "If you've heard one quote from each of these 100 famous movies, this is the quote you probably heard."

So instead of Bluto's impassioned speech about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor in "Animal House," you get "Toga! Toga!" from a forgettable part of the quotable movie. "Toga! Toga!"? Try to pick a more bland quote from that movie. "Double-Secret Probation?" maybe "I'm a zit!" Nope, it can't be done.