[channelling JDT]
Really, all of these clichés were triggered by the sense of loss associated with circumcision and the need to re-establish connection to one’s foreskin.
[/channelling]
Wow! Look at all the penis ensuing! 
Just out of curiosity: do any currently active Dopers acknowledge that they were the originator of one of these Classic Cliche’s? Or are they all attributable to “They” or “Them”?
Better said: how does one go about creating a cliche’?
Do you ever wish you were the first person ever to have said “cool” when something was rather interesting to you?
How about your very favorite such item? Would you feel like you deserved credit or an award for initiating the catchphrase or expression?
Has anybody gone to the trouble to isolate the thread or post where these jewels were first sprung on the Dope?
Cliche’ Cultural Anthropology, as it were.
Thanks to DancesWithCats for pointing me in this direction. I didn’t realize anyone cared about that stuff anymore, so I kind of let it fall by the wayside. I have found really nifty software, however, for managing a website and it would be pretty much perfect for redoing the TMHP, if people actually want that stuff back.
Oh, and as for the OP: the Hi Opal thing actually started slightly differently than has been mentioned here…
I used to do lists like this:
- real item one
- real item two
- um… ok I didn’t really have a third item, but it isn’t a list with only two items
After a while, other people would put as their third item that they didn’t really have a third item, but that “Opal doesn’t like lists with less than three items”… and then people started just referencing me via “Hi Opal” to indicate they were adding a third item to appease me.
But mostly it just annoys people.
(I should add, though, that I still believe it is incorrect to make a list with fewer than three items. I was always taught that if you only had two things to list, you used “and” to join them, and only took it to list format for 3+ items.)
That sounds very reasonable to me. This makes me wonder what sort of two item lists were being posted in order for this standard to be mocked. Two things are not a list, they are one example and the other one.
Hi Opal! (this is completely unrelated to the conventional usage of such statement)
Wowzers, Hi Opal!
There are only ten times of people in the world:
- Those who understand binary
- Those who don’t
I don’t remember how often other people did it (it did happen sometimes, I’m sure) but that’s kind of my point: it isn’t that I scolded other people for two item lists. It’s that I would be typing my merry way along, making a post myself, and I’d start making a list, only to realize after I’d begun that I didn’t have a list after all, only two items. So I’d throw a fake item at the end to pad it out, and the fake item was usually some sort of self-referential statement about only existing to make a proper list. After doing this several times, other people began doing it when they discovered they only had two items in their list, except their self-referential third item would usually also reference me as the one who would disapprove, since I was the one who was vocal about it [regarding my own posts].
I have had numerous co-workers who, when putting something in outline form, will have:
-
First Item
-
Second Item
-
Hi, Opal!
a. first sub-item
-
Fourth Item
This drives me freekin’ nuts.
- Those who use “times” when they meant “types”
- Those who don’t.
I certainly do. I kept checking every once in a while to see if it was back up. Used to be if I was feeling a little blue, I could go read those pages and laugh my ass off. I’ve really missed them.
I still get uncontrollable giggles from the “headless, heartless, hoofless horse caarcass museum” quote I read on Opal’s page.
As do I. It’s one of my favorites. One nifty thing about the new software–it’s officially a “blogging software” and you can have multiple author accounts, so I could have different people who were interested in such things have access to post new funny stuff as they see it, so it wouldn’t all have to go through ME. (I’m trying to shed some of the excess web responsibilities that I’ve gathered over the years… it was fine back when I was a stay home mom, but now that I’m a single parent and a full time student, well, I don’t have time anymore!)
I suppose you two are going to sit there and tell us with a straight face that you didn’t set that one up ahead of time!
You forgot to add:
11) Hi Opal! 
As they say on another message board, I heartily endorse this product or service. It would speed up the response time on archiving stuff we want to archive, and spares Opal the effort of reviewing it to see if she likes it. Blogging software might also allow us to comment on the quotes.
Yes, it absolutely does allow comments 