I thought that I'd thought of a very funny thing about Catholics and birth control: that they can use the rhythm method but neither the pill nor birth control, which means they're allowed to use mathematics to avoid getting pregnant (which smacks of hypocrisy) but neither chemistry nor physics. And all of this goes some way to explaining why they revere a Plus Sign.
Look how funny I am, thought I. As always, though, before I pop a turn of phrase into my collection of quips to draw upon later—
aside:
Every author has a Wit On Demand pile. They're lying if they say they don't.
end of aside
—I first trudge over to Google to see if someone has written something similar before. There's always the chance that any (or more likely most, or much more likely all) things I write are just regurgitation of other people's ideas from works I've read and think I've forgotten.
In this case, it seems that I was indeed barfing up my betters. H. L. Mencken said it more than a half-century before, and said it better:
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
In my defense, I hadn't yet edited my text and I did have that bit about the plus sign (which was actually borrowed from an earlier work of my own—I can't even be original when I'm being original). But few can stand up to Mencken when it comes to turns of phrase, damn his brilliant dead brain. My favorite Mencken quote is:
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the same extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
Witness more of his wit and smarts on this H. L. Mencken quotes page.
