You can’t make this stuff up…

With a hat tip to Deacon Tim at Sacraments Wholesale I bring you a Joint Resolution currently in the South Carolina Legislature:

H 4468
H 4468 Joint Resolution, By Thompson and H.B. Brown
A JOINT RESOLUTION TO CREATE THE “SOUTH CAROLINA STUDY COMMITTEE STUDY COMMITTEE” FOR THE PURPOSE OF EVALUATING THE STATE’S PAST AND FUTURE USES OF STUDY COMMITTEES FOR ASSESSING AND DEVELOPING STATE POLICIES AND RELATED LEGISLATION, AND TO PROVIDE FOR ITS MEMBERSHIP, POWERS, AND DUTIES.

Here is how the text of this legislation begins:

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina:

SECTION    1.    (A)    The General Assembly finds that:

(1)    on a recurrent basis the General Assembly relies upon study committees to study issues before the General Assembly, both those previously studied and unstudied; and

(2)    no study committee has ever studied study committees to specifically study the effectiveness of study committees at resolving or solving the issue or problem that the study committees studied.

( B )  It is the goal of the General Assembly to ensure that:

(1)    study committees are studied to study the optimal use of study committees to ensure study committees are neither being formed needlessly nor studying issues already sufficiently studied; and

(2)    to ensure that study committees are actually studying when they say they are studying.

(C)    There is created a study committee on study committees to be known as the “South Carolina Study Committee Study Committee,” composed of the following nine members…

Now for those who see this as a serious issue I’m sorry but the use of the English language here strikes me as something straight out of a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song.  (Or maybe Donald Rumsfeld) Like if I broke up line 1( B )(1):

study committees are studied
to study the optimal use of study
committees to ensure study
committees are neither being formed needlessly
nor studying issues already sufficiently studied

So others might not see the humor in this, but maybe it helps to remember that the last PC(USA) General Assembly created more Special Committees and Task Forces than I can remember any other GA doing and I just came off one of those Special Committees.  Then again, I used to laugh at the redundancy implied in the former title of one of the research centers at a university – The Center for the Study of Evaluation.

Now in case you don’t share my sense of humor at governmental phraseology, I bring another humorous blog post from yesterday — You might be a Presbyterian If… by Joseph at A Higher Orthodoxy.  Yes, there is an older list floating around, but this one contains a couple of new gems:

2. Presbyterians like to sing, except when confronted with a new hymn or a hymn with more than four stanzas.

4. Presbyterians usually follow the printed liturgy and will feel it is their way of suffering for their sins.

6. Presbyterians feel that applauding for their children’s choirs would make the kids too proud and conceited.

7. Presbyterians drink coffee as if it were the Third Sacrament.

8. Some Presbyterians believe that a PCA bride and a PC(USA) groom make for a mixed marriage.

10d. *The communion cabinet is open to all, but the coffee cabinet is locked up tight;

And there are a bunch more.  Check it out.