5 Sayings that make no sense
This is actually a post I started back in 2004 and, since I have nothing of any importance to say this week, I thought I'd finish this one up.

1) When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that when life gave us the lemons, it also gave us a pitcher and sugar and water. As far as we know, life just gave us the lemons. We can squeeze those lemons if we want, but that won't make lemonade. It'll just make lemon juice, which is bound to get into a paper cut so life wins twice. Maybe if life gives us bread crumbs next time we can put it together with some nice chicken cutlets, a little italian vinegairette and some sweet basil and make a nice chicken parmesan. While you're at it, ask life for some twice-baked potatoes. Oooh, I know, see if life has an old transmission is his garage and we'll go ahead and build a fleet of rental cars. The bottom line is, you can't make something out of stuff you don't have.

2) What doesn't kill us, only makes us stronger.
This is just nonsense. I don't recall Christopher Reeve pulling any buses with his teeth like the world's strongest man two months after he fell off that horse.

3) A penny saved is a penny earned.
You know what, if you're saving for retirement a penny at a time, you're not earning enough money and you'll eventually die at work, probably while you're in the men's restroom. You'll be found slumped over on the can by your co-worker and trust me, that's going to be embarrassing. Anyway, enough about your untimely death, you ought to be investing, chump. Start turning those pennies into nickels. I'd say a penny saved is a penny wasted.

4) A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
You really don't hear this saying much anymore, probably because people now realize birds are filthy and disease-ridden. Why you would want a live bird in your hand is beyond me. The lorikeets at the zoo like to land on my daughter's head and even that creeps me out. But all that aside, I think this saying means that being able to control one thing is twice as good as two things you can't control. I guess my thought is, if I can do anything I want with this bird in my hand isn't he worth more than two of those birds in that bush over there? This bird I have here is worth hundreds of those birds, maybe thousands. I made a tiny curly-cue mustache for this little guy and I borrowed a bowler hat from one of my Tombstone action figures. I even made him a small bird vest with a fetching argyle pattern. Once the tiny novelty pocket watch and cigars arrive from FancyBird.com, this guy will look like he's ready for a night on the town with the other late 1800's banker birds. Those bush birds over there are living claw-to-mouth at best. They spend all day at the park fighting with the squirrels over hot dog buns, whereas my bird is high-society. This bird here is worth a small fortune. And he looks the part.

5) Hindsight is 20/20.
As any person with an advanced degree in optometry or opthamology would gladly explain to the layperson, 20/20 isn't actually perfect vision. So, if the sentiment of this saying is to convey that things are perfectly clear once they've already happened, then I think we owe it to the fine folks who routinely price gouge us for eyecare to make this saying technically correct. As some enormous nerd (ironically, he probably has very thick glasses) with too much time explained at wikipedia:

If the optics of the eye were otherwise perfect, theoretically acuity would be limited by pupil diffraction to 0.4 minutes of arc (minarc) or 20/8 acuity. The smallest cone cells in the fovea also have sizes corresponding to 0.4 minarc of the visual field, which also places a lower limit on acuity. The optimal acuity of 0.4 minarc or 20/8 can be demonstrated using a laser interferometer that bypasses any defects in the eye's optics and projects a pattern of dark and light bands directly on the retina.

You see that? Minarc...fovea...laser interferometer! I rest my case! Clearly the quote would be accurate, then, if we began saying, "Well, you know what they say, 'hinsight's 20/8.'" But wait, what about the metric system? Apparently in parts of the world where the metric system is the unit of measurement flavor of the day, "20/20" doesn't mean anything. Sort of like in Pulp Fiction when Vincent is trying to explain to Jules they don't sell Quarter Pounders at McDonald's in Paris. In Europe the old saying would be, "Hindsight is 6/6." Granted that sounds pretty stupid, but then again these are the same people that shower far too infrequently and kiss each other upon meeting for the first time. Stupid euros and their metric system.