It is always darkest before the dawn

The sun will come out tomorrow, right? Like the senator from Illinois appointed by the corrupt (allegedly) Chicago mayor, we can say: "It is always darkest just before the dawn." I can't actually believe that Illinois Senator designate Roland Burris used that tired cliche, but we may be in store for many more cliches, or newly minted cliches-to-be, with President Obama's inaugural speech.

Check out this Web site on cliches. From that Web site, a reflection on Kennedy's legacy:

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m just as patriotic as the next intoxicated monster truck driver, but I also have a deep and abiding hatred of cliches, and Mr. Kennedy created a species of cliche that has since grown popular enough to strangle a whole truckload of bay pigs. I’m talking about the form of truism that says: x followed by y equals a commonly accepted truth, but y followed by x yields a deeper truth made more profound by its juxtaposition with x followed by y.

People say things like “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care” and everyone is supposed to furrow their brows and nod their heads furiously as if this were the deepest, most interesting thing they’ve ever heard. “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to me nice.” OMG! You’re so right! Here this whole time I’ve been thinking it’s kind of enjoyable being thought of as important, but YOU’RE SO RIGHT! I need to focus more on treating others with kindness and compassion and less on others perceiving me as superior.

To shed further light on the pithy banality of these proverbs, I thought we might create some of our own. You can use this form to say just about anything, while somehow managing to say nothing at all.

TK: How about these:

Local is the new organics, but the old organic is the new local.

While all we have to fear is fear itself, fear itself is pretty scary.

Those who fail to plan, plan to fail except sometimes when they fail to plan and they somehow succeed.

Times they are a changing, and change is all about timing.

It is always darkest before the dawn, but it is always brightest way before sunset.

You can take the consumer out of the produce department, but you can't take the produce department out of the consumer.

Any others out there, readers....