Snowclone cyclone

A snowclone is a cliché that's adapted by changing or adding one or more words, I discovered today. You've probably seen these everywhere and not known they had a name (other than, perhaps, "atrocious pun"). Headlines of the type "Sex lies and Advertising", say, are snowclones. Language Log describes them as "the some-assembly-required adaptable cliché frames for lazy journalists", which quite sums them up.

Private Eye, of course, have been on to this for quite some time with their Neophiliacs column, which has been recording that laziest of the snowclones "X is the new Y".

I found this out because I was curious about one of them as I'd been seeing it a lot and had half an idea I knew where it came from. The snowclone is:

"I, for one, welcome our new * overlords"

One of Language Log's contributors recogised it as a Simpsons quote (as is so much these days) from the episode "Deep Space Homer":

News announcer Kent Brockman mistakes a floating ant in a space shuttle experiment floating close to the camera for a giant space ant:

"Ladies and gentlemen, uh, we've just lost the picture, but what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has apparently been taken over -- 'conquered' if you will -- by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."

It gets used and discussed quite a bit as a Google shows.

Computer programmers even have their own specialised one: X Considered Harmful. This is from a classic article "Go To Statement Considered Harmful", the title usually being shortened to "Gotos Considered Harmful". An article on Dives Into Mark shows just how much harm hackers believe themselves to be in.