Virtue Virtuoso Gifts

"It's my conscience... It's all achy"

The Achiever: competing with the appearance of virtue

"You'll love this. It's swarthy yet munificent, didactic and gregarious with hints of dogma."

Academic Idol - 'Professor Johannsen's paper was zippy. It had robust vocabulary and I almost felt that I could dance to it. I would give it a 7.'

"Counsel for prose is overruled. Poetry, you may continue."

Ninedency: A budding tendency

"It's a play on words."

'No, you're not calling at a bad time. I'm a professional wine taster - it's alwasys a good time.'

'So it's the Mumm's Cordon Rouge, '98 Pouilly-Fuisse, '86 Chateau Margaux, and the '92 Barsac - would you like any food?'

'How do you folks get away with such flagrant violation of Prohibition?'

'As Chuck's definition of terroir dragged past the 20-minute mark, Suzy concluded, the longer the explanation, the less likely you know what the word means.'

"Your vocabulary is enlarged."

Thesaurus Company

"Hmmm ... perhaps a pinot noir less spilly?"

"In my next album 'Gettin' Back', I refute all the strong beliefs expressed in 'Gettin' There', my previous album."

My therapist says I should take up basket making as a pastime!

"I'm afraid you have a condition called 'googly-eyes'."

'Either you do or you don't - there isn't any 'cooling-off' period!'

"Why do people think using big words is a bad thing?"

'Sometimes, from time to time, occasionally I wish I'd never bought that ruddy thesaurus!'

"This is nice. You have your knitting and I have my vodka."

'Apparently it's part of the evolutionary process!'

Wordplay: Nonstarter.

"A man never stands so tall, son, as when he stoops to pick up a quarter."

'The other kids at school say I might need glasses, Dad.'

'Coleridge'

Spiro & Pusho: watering the vine and the neighbour.

'We the jury find the defendant very, very, very, guilty.'

"When a wine rates over ninety, this is not alcoholism."

Annette von Droste-Hulshoff

Wino Appreciation Group

'Aha! I think I figured out the headache problem, one of these things is pointed the other way. This would explain the double vision.'