Friday, December 05, 2003
It's in the book
Well, whadya know. Last week I made a comment on a forum about how people in St. Louis call certain other people "hoosiers" and it seems to have nothing to do with being from Indiana, and some snarky St. Louisan gave me what-for (something about how there was an influx of people from Indiana at some point, and they liked to plant geraniums in tractor tires in their front yards or some such nonsense). But I suspect that the snarky St. Louisan was wrong about the Indiana Immigration; according to the Dictionary of American Slang:
hoosier n. 1 An incompetent or inexperienced worker; an unworldly person, a rustic, hick or rube; a fool, a dupe. Logger, carnival, circus, and hobo use c1925; archaic. "Hoosier" == a citizen or resident of Indiana is the only nondisparaging use of this word. 2 A new convict or prison guard; a prison visitor. Prison use c1930.
And the related term:
hoosier up 1 To shirk; to malinger; to plot a slowdown of work. 1926: "When a crew of workmen purposely hoosier up on the company, it means... a 'conscious withdrawal of efficiency.'" S.H. Holbrook, Amer. Mercury, Jan., 64.
So there you have it.
Well, whadya know. Last week I made a comment on a forum about how people in St. Louis call certain other people "hoosiers" and it seems to have nothing to do with being from Indiana, and some snarky St. Louisan gave me what-for (something about how there was an influx of people from Indiana at some point, and they liked to plant geraniums in tractor tires in their front yards or some such nonsense). But I suspect that the snarky St. Louisan was wrong about the Indiana Immigration; according to the Dictionary of American Slang:
hoosier n. 1 An incompetent or inexperienced worker; an unworldly person, a rustic, hick or rube; a fool, a dupe. Logger, carnival, circus, and hobo use c1925; archaic. "Hoosier" == a citizen or resident of Indiana is the only nondisparaging use of this word. 2 A new convict or prison guard; a prison visitor. Prison use c1930.
And the related term:
hoosier up 1 To shirk; to malinger; to plot a slowdown of work. 1926: "When a crew of workmen purposely hoosier up on the company, it means... a 'conscious withdrawal of efficiency.'" S.H. Holbrook, Amer. Mercury, Jan., 64.
So there you have it.
The weirdness of searching
First, there's the Miserable Failure phenomenon, whereby a bunch of bloggers with a thorough understanding of GoogleJuice managed to voice their opinions through searches on Google. That went on all day today.
And now, as I'm looking for something to wear to an office party at a country club, I enter "country club" "saturday night" "what to wear" and I come up with this:
Edison High School Class of 1963 - Looking Back
The people who graduated from my alma mater 21 years before I did have put together a very nice site full of annoying music and charming pictures of high school life in the early 60s. Look through the slideshow. Enjoy all these cute kids with their stiff hair and dorky socks. I think they're wonderful. I wish I'd been in their class, back when the school would have been "the new school" (I think it was built in 1957, although honestly, it's been a long time since I celebrated Edison Week so I really don't remember) and the teachers were still fresh and young and idealistic... I have this image of all teachers in the 60s being kind of like the one in Up the Down Staircase, all "Hi Pupe!" and full of hope. I'm sure that wasn't really the case, but I'm betting that at least one of the embittered ready-to-retire veterans who filled my head with Latin or algebra or U.S. history was once a hip young teacher with an ear for the young (where does that come from, anyway? Doonesbury, I think... wasn't there once a Hip Young Priest with an Ear for the Young who had a coffeeshop? Back in the days when Mike--another Tulsa native, BTW--used to shed hayseeds when he walked around campus).
Oh yeah, I'm in stream of consciousness mode tonight. Kudos on the web site, Class of '63. Hope your 40th was good. Hope my 20th is. I don't know if I'll be there; it's a three-day drive from here. Seems like a long way to go to stand around chatting with people I haven't seen in 20 years while "99 Red Balloons" blares overhead.
On the reunion site at Classmates.com someone wants to know if anyone has a copy of our "senior jam." My inclination is to ask what the hell a senior jam is, so I'm guessing I don't have a copy of it. It sounds very 80s, doesn't it? Senior jam. My husband thinks it's a video. I thought it might be some kind of slam book or something. If it's a video, I hope it wasn't that assembly where they showed slides of all the socs (if you ever read S.E. Hinton you've seen that word. Just in case you couldn't figure it out--and who could, really, from the spelling--it's pronounced so-shez. The socs at Edison in the 80s were very mild, by soc standards. They didn't drive around in Mustangs; they drove BMWs or Volkswagen Rabbit convertibles or Jeeps or their parents' cars. They weren't mean, like the Memorial socs. The ones I knew were mostly very nice, smart, well-mannered kids. But there was still a social gap. Which is why I don't know what to wear to a country club on a Saturday night for an office party. And there we are back at the beginning.) at parties none of the rest of us went to and made up stuff about who dated whom each year.
Oh well, this maudlin reminiscing has gone on too long now, and I'm really kind of curious about that S.E. Hinton site, so I'm going to surf away now.
First, there's the Miserable Failure phenomenon, whereby a bunch of bloggers with a thorough understanding of GoogleJuice managed to voice their opinions through searches on Google. That went on all day today.
And now, as I'm looking for something to wear to an office party at a country club, I enter "country club" "saturday night" "what to wear" and I come up with this:
Edison High School Class of 1963 - Looking Back
The people who graduated from my alma mater 21 years before I did have put together a very nice site full of annoying music and charming pictures of high school life in the early 60s. Look through the slideshow. Enjoy all these cute kids with their stiff hair and dorky socks. I think they're wonderful. I wish I'd been in their class, back when the school would have been "the new school" (I think it was built in 1957, although honestly, it's been a long time since I celebrated Edison Week so I really don't remember) and the teachers were still fresh and young and idealistic... I have this image of all teachers in the 60s being kind of like the one in Up the Down Staircase, all "Hi Pupe!" and full of hope. I'm sure that wasn't really the case, but I'm betting that at least one of the embittered ready-to-retire veterans who filled my head with Latin or algebra or U.S. history was once a hip young teacher with an ear for the young (where does that come from, anyway? Doonesbury, I think... wasn't there once a Hip Young Priest with an Ear for the Young who had a coffeeshop? Back in the days when Mike--another Tulsa native, BTW--used to shed hayseeds when he walked around campus).
Oh yeah, I'm in stream of consciousness mode tonight. Kudos on the web site, Class of '63. Hope your 40th was good. Hope my 20th is. I don't know if I'll be there; it's a three-day drive from here. Seems like a long way to go to stand around chatting with people I haven't seen in 20 years while "99 Red Balloons" blares overhead.
On the reunion site at Classmates.com someone wants to know if anyone has a copy of our "senior jam." My inclination is to ask what the hell a senior jam is, so I'm guessing I don't have a copy of it. It sounds very 80s, doesn't it? Senior jam. My husband thinks it's a video. I thought it might be some kind of slam book or something. If it's a video, I hope it wasn't that assembly where they showed slides of all the socs (if you ever read S.E. Hinton you've seen that word. Just in case you couldn't figure it out--and who could, really, from the spelling--it's pronounced so-shez. The socs at Edison in the 80s were very mild, by soc standards. They didn't drive around in Mustangs; they drove BMWs or Volkswagen Rabbit convertibles or Jeeps or their parents' cars. They weren't mean, like the Memorial socs. The ones I knew were mostly very nice, smart, well-mannered kids. But there was still a social gap. Which is why I don't know what to wear to a country club on a Saturday night for an office party. And there we are back at the beginning.) at parties none of the rest of us went to and made up stuff about who dated whom each year.
Oh well, this maudlin reminiscing has gone on too long now, and I'm really kind of curious about that S.E. Hinton site, so I'm going to surf away now.
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Random creepy definition
More from the Dictionary of American Slang, 1967 edition:
"Target A The Pentagon Building in Washington, D.C. Jocular use. In ref. to an atomic attack against the U.S. in any future war."
More from the Dictionary of American Slang, 1967 edition:
"Target A The Pentagon Building in Washington, D.C. Jocular use. In ref. to an atomic attack against the U.S. in any future war."
The what was what-what?
Here's the first paragraph of Brain Guy, the Benjamin Appel book I won on eBay a few months back. The slang is so thick I can hardly get through it, but here's my interlinear translation. This seems like the kind of thing William Denton would be good for, but unfortunately, there's one word he doesn't list. See if you can figure out what it is.
"Who could he shake down for some dough?"
Whom could he persuade to loan him a dollar or two?
"In the Italian table d'hote he cracked the last walnuts with a spiteful feeling that the meal had cleaned him out, but who gave a damn?"
At the Italian restaurant, with its limited but inexpensive prix fixe meals, he tossed the last of his change down [that's a guess] with a spiteful feeling that the meal had cost him all the money he had with him, but who cared?
"Eighty-five cents plus fifteen cent tip."
The meal cost eighty-five cents, plus a gratuity of fifteen cents, or just under fifteen percent.
"That skunked a buck."
That was a whole dollar.
"Hell, he needed money."
He was badly in need of money.
"It'd been a jinx all day."
His luck had not been good all day.
"None of his horses'd come in."
He had not won any bets at the racetrack.
"The numbers'd been n.g."
The numbers had been n.g.
"And payday was a mile off."
And payday was not forthcoming.
...if you guessed that n.g. was the word Denton didn't cover, you'd be right. And you'll be hitting your head with your palm in a minute, like I just did when I looked it up in the Dictionary of American Slang and found out that it means "No good, worthless; untrustworty, unethical, contemptible. From the initials for 'no good.'"
Here's the first paragraph of Brain Guy, the Benjamin Appel book I won on eBay a few months back. The slang is so thick I can hardly get through it, but here's my interlinear translation. This seems like the kind of thing William Denton would be good for, but unfortunately, there's one word he doesn't list. See if you can figure out what it is.
"Who could he shake down for some dough?"
Whom could he persuade to loan him a dollar or two?
"In the Italian table d'hote he cracked the last walnuts with a spiteful feeling that the meal had cleaned him out, but who gave a damn?"
At the Italian restaurant, with its limited but inexpensive prix fixe meals, he tossed the last of his change down [that's a guess] with a spiteful feeling that the meal had cost him all the money he had with him, but who cared?
"Eighty-five cents plus fifteen cent tip."
The meal cost eighty-five cents, plus a gratuity of fifteen cents, or just under fifteen percent.
"That skunked a buck."
That was a whole dollar.
"Hell, he needed money."
He was badly in need of money.
"It'd been a jinx all day."
His luck had not been good all day.
"None of his horses'd come in."
He had not won any bets at the racetrack.
"The numbers'd been n.g."
The numbers had been n.g.
"And payday was a mile off."
And payday was not forthcoming.
...if you guessed that n.g. was the word Denton didn't cover, you'd be right. And you'll be hitting your head with your palm in a minute, like I just did when I looked it up in the Dictionary of American Slang and found out that it means "No good, worthless; untrustworty, unethical, contemptible. From the initials for 'no good.'"
Liver a little
Odd. Next to my name (which appears somewhere on this site), the most common search term that brings people here is "liver sausage." Hope you're all enjoying that Liver Sausage with Creole Sauce recipe. It's full of livery goodness!
Odd. Next to my name (which appears somewhere on this site), the most common search term that brings people here is "liver sausage." Hope you're all enjoying that Liver Sausage with Creole Sauce recipe. It's full of livery goodness!
There's no place like home
From Charm: the Career Girl's Guide to Business and Personal Success, by Whitcomb and Lang:
"If you're lucky enough to get into one of the residences run for business girls, you'll have the fun of college dorm living at quite low expenses. ... You are surrounded by girls who have the same interests and problems. Usually a happy community life prevails, with the girls finding dates for one another, swapping hats and jewelry, and pitching in when someone has a big job to finish. There's always someone who's good at setting hair or altering dresses and always someone who has plans for fun that can include you."
[Oh, sure, it's all fun and games until your landlady tries to sell you into slavery. Shu-sho, shu-sho!]
Ahem.
So where are these places now? It kind of sounds like fun, and definitely like something that could come in handy in a place like New York or Silicon Valley.
From Charm: the Career Girl's Guide to Business and Personal Success, by Whitcomb and Lang:
"If you're lucky enough to get into one of the residences run for business girls, you'll have the fun of college dorm living at quite low expenses. ... You are surrounded by girls who have the same interests and problems. Usually a happy community life prevails, with the girls finding dates for one another, swapping hats and jewelry, and pitching in when someone has a big job to finish. There's always someone who's good at setting hair or altering dresses and always someone who has plans for fun that can include you."
[Oh, sure, it's all fun and games until your landlady tries to sell you into slavery. Shu-sho, shu-sho!]
Ahem.
So where are these places now? It kind of sounds like fun, and definitely like something that could come in handy in a place like New York or Silicon Valley.