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Each week here at LISTS we aspire to present to you, the reader, thoroughly researched and carefully considered lists that are innovative in both form and content. We aim to do important, groundbreaking work in the field, and this week's list is emblematic of our goals. Enjoy. Top Ten statements that have never been uttered (in speech or in print) until now 1. Can I have fries with that?2. George W. Bush is an idiot.
3. I don't watch The Simpsons anymore.
4. $9.50 for a matinee?!
5. Pop the clutch.
6. Is it illegal to turn right on red in this city?
7. Freedom. Oh, freedom. That's just some people talking.
8. First of all, I'd like to thank God.
9. I'm offended.
10. You want hot sauce?
11. Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things. A tree is a tree. Yes, of course. But a tree as expressed by Minou Drouet is no longer quite a tree, it is a tree which is decorated, adapted to a certain type of consumption, laden with literary self- indulgence, revolt, images, in short with a type of social usage which is added to pure matter.*
12. Kenny G is not really jazz.
13. You can't get pregnant this way. I promise.
14. That Kevin Spacey can flat out act.
15. It all started when I read On the Road.
16. Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.** *This has actually been uttered-but only once-by Roland Barthes in his little read monograph Mythologies. **This also comes from Mythologies. I am sorry for the plagiarism, but at least you, the reader, can now see how difficult completely original thought really is.
By Charles Sterne
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