(...At least in my head)
Today I learned from the Mental Floss blog that the things I refer to as "joke templates" actually have a real name: snowclones. And a wikipedia entry.
Here are a few that I don't see on there:
"There but for the grace of God goes X" (X being "person more ridiculous than person being described", based on "There but for the grace of God goes John Ritter", which I believe was used to describe Dan Quayle in the early 90's but I can't find it on Google! I use this a lot.)
"First they came for the X but I was not an X so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Y but I was not a Y..." Famous quote from a poem about Germans before WWII, attributed here. I first saw this used as a joke template snowclone on Gawker in 2003 or 2004 by Choire Sicha and thought it was hilarious, but now I can't even find it because it's been imitated so many times (I'm not saying Choire originated its re-appropriation, but it was the first time I saw it used and have seen it a MILLION times since.)
"X, so much to answer for." (obvs)
"I Xd in my Y a little" or "I Xd a little bit in my Y" (obvs)
"Oh yes, there will be X" (Tagline for Saw II: "Oh yes, there will be blood.") This has been done to death, so to speak, including by me. I think there could actually be a cookie shop called "Oh Yes, There Will Be Cookies" by this point. (Immediate self-correction: what I just said is too close to this for coincidence. Oops.)
I'm going to keep an eye out for more (but I stop short at doing whatever one needs to do to edit wikipedia entries. I have a job.)
* There is a guy counting to a million. Of course. Gabe: "Our children are going to hate us so hard for the way we wasted the internet." Also Gabe: "I'm excited for when we put the internet in the garbage and walk away" (but he says this every time I send him a link to anything.)
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