I don't even know what it means.
Some of you didn't grow up in Amurrican suburbs, it seems.
And I can't believe this is a term so many of you haven't heard.
Caucasian Clusterfuck, to assuage white guilt.
Wikipedia, people.
Yes, I looked it up before commenting. I just hadn't heard it before.
Children, in the time before the internet, we often amused ourselves by driving around. When that got boring, we would stop the car, change seats, and drive off laughing at our outrageous behavior.
I'm sure that you are shocked that my generation didnt invent the XGames or Extreme Sports.
Seriously? No one knows what that means?
Is it the same thing as "ghost-riding the whip"?
Come on people, two foreigners commented first; don't let it distract you.
I know it, although as a mostly non-driver I've heard it more as 'confusion accomplishing nothing' than the actuall jumping out of the car routine. But we're absolutely not allowed to say it anymore.
Americans are so sweet when their cultural hegemony is challenged.
Until they start the bombings, obviously.
Is it the same thing as "ghost-riding the whip"?
A lamer version with less risk of crashing into a telephone pole or running yourself over, but that's what it looks like.
Is it the same thing as "ghost-riding the whip"?
No. But you're joking, right?
For the record, I've never done this, because I've never been even that much fun, but I did grow up in the American suburbs.
I bet you can call it a "muslim identity scramble."
I was not familiar with this expression.
In a similar vein, we need replacement terms for "welsh" and "gyp" (as verbs).
I don't think that I've ever done it either; it's more like something that would be joked about at red lights.
Bored teenagers with disposable income driving around in cars! Envy of the world, baby!
The fact that "Chinese national anthem" used to be slang for "explosion" is awesome.
19: Not to mention "lynch," "paddy wagon," and "dutch treat."
We should call it "squoobling". Or if not that, then we should call something else "squoobling".
Hey, wanna squooble?
I think welsh is dead enough to be left alone. And anyway, who's it going to annoy but dsquared?
The term "Chinese Fire Drill" is these days reserved for use by the military in connection with tests of the Strategic Air Defense System.
The fact that "Chinese national anthem" used to be slang for "explosion" is awesome.
Never heard that. Hilarious.
Wait, lynch? Isn't that an appropriate term? It's not an ethnic slur as far as I know. I'm quite happy to slur people who codified or endorsed horrific practices.
But we're absolutely not allowed to say it anymore.
When the Chinese kick our asses on the world stage, it will seem inappropriate. Hence 8.
I think welsh is dead enough to be left alone.
Not when we have such a good replacement waiting in the wings. Compare:
He welshed on the bet.
He w-lfs-ned on the brunch bill.
27: My understanding is that is was named not for the folks who did it, but rather for the folks who were originally likely to be on the receiving end, folks with names like Lynch. Of course, that presents its own problems. One sec, busting out the Historical Dictionary of American Slang . . . which doesn't help. It came from the "Lynch Law" and refers me to a journal article. Will see what that brings.
You'll just have to accept that the contrast between your debonair appearance and your appalling lack of etiquette makes this inherently funny, Young Ben. This incident will not go gently into the good night, no sir.
About 5 years ago, I used the expression -- "ironically", doncha know -- in front of a Chinese-American co-worker in his 20s. He had no idea what it meant (he claimed). So I had to explain it, if only to establish that I hadn't meant something even worse. You can imagine my pride at that moment.
33: My source was the uber-reliable Wikipedia:
The term 'lynching' is believed to have originated during the American Revolution when Charles Lynch, a Virginia justice of the peace, ordered extralegal punishment for Tory acts.
A journal article seems more definitive. I await your update.
34: I agree. The glee with which this information was received was due to the huge imbalance between how much we were actually offended (not at all) and how hard we knew you'd take it (very), yielding perfect mockery material.
My Chinese nationalist roommate is bemused at my old habit from high school, of referring to an inverted version of a game as "Chinese _____."
But then, once he found out I went to a conservative Catholic high school, he came out of the closet and started calling things "gay," so.
36: American Speech doesn't go far enough back on Project Muse, but I think that Wikipedia must be right here. Very interesting. Must have been more propaganda from aggrieved Irish relatives!
What is interesting, however, is that the earliest citation for "lynched" is 1835 and means "rendered infamous." So what the heck it that?
I had heard of this maneuver growing up but never imagined that anyone would actually do it.
What is interesting, however, is that the earliest citation for "lynched" is 1835 and means "rendered infamous." So what the heck it that?
It would be nice to know how frequent that use was, since only one citation is given and it's introduced by saying it's an apparent misuse. (I assume you're looking at the OED too.) And this misuse is by Disraeli, a notorious Brit, hence not to be trusted.
apparent misuse
Yeah, wow, I had never heard the "rendered infamous" definition. I wonder if it's just one of those wild misuses, like "mute" for "moot" or "antidote" for "anecdote."
Neither of those are exactly the examples I want. Maybe I mean the wedding toast at which the best man described the bride and groom's love for each other as "superfluous." Oh dear.
I refuse to believe you people who don't know what it means or haven't done it yourselves. When one is sixteen and driving aimlessly around a town with nothing to do it's a fun excuse to scream and giggle. This is exactly what normal teenagers spend their time doing when they haven't yet made a connection for drugs D&D make-outs.
No. I'm looking in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang. But 1835 is the earliest use of the word. But yeah, it's bracketed here too. The other 1835 usage is, "The were soundly flogged, or in other words, Lynched, and set on the opposite side of the river."
anything involving chinese
in mockery is good for me
so biased, bad me :(
i should strive to be a better person
Oops. The=They. My damn "y" has a Cheetoh stuck under it.
My damn "y" has a Cheetoh stuck under it.
My preferred solution is to shake the laptop/keyboard until the Cheetoh slides under one of the function keys.
48: Mine is to smash the key repeatedly until the Cheetoh is a very fine powder.
I refuse to believe you people who don't know what it means or haven't done it yourselves. When one is sixteen and driving aimlessly around a town
Dude, where I grew up, being at once sixteen and having access to a car was a complete fantasy.
Oops. The=They. My damn "y" has a Cheetoh stuck under it.
Ask Jonah Goldberg for advice.
Also, OT, I hear that at the APA the suite of a certain major university (where interviews were taking place) was at an off-conference hotel and called the "Austin Powers Suite", with a jacuzzi, mirrored ceiling and black, red and purple decor.
My participation in a different nation's fire drill a decade ago was not nearly as fun as I had been led to believe.
Just in case in of you are tempted.
McManly:
You are showing your age. When kids without a connection or sex partner get bored, they play on the internet.
52: Sometimes that stuff can't be helped. A few years ago, I ran my school's hospitality suite at MLA in a Washington Hilton suite whose entire living room was mirrors. Kinkiest living room evar. Would have been a lot less awkward to serve drinks in the totally unkinky bedroom.
I have always shortened it to "fire drill", as in a former .sig: "Remember, only YOU can prevent fire drills!"
Saying "fire drill" is also more polite at work than saying "cluster fuck".
makes this inherently funny, Young Ben
Is Witt even old enough to call him "Young Ben"?
56: I've always enjoyed jobs where "cluster fuck" is the preferred term.
What if your job doesn't involve clusters?
59: Well, as it turns out, mine didn't either. But at one, our job was telling everyone about cluster fucks and, in another, we blamed people for them.
Actually, Witt, I've had the same thing claimed of me as you claim of yourself regarding being 20 and the AARP, and I'm closer to being 20 than you are—we are forced to conclude that I should be calling you "young Witt".
Ha! We've found Witt's weakness.
When we first walked in, we met the gracious Armsmasher, Becks, and Catherine.
The very next person we met was Witt. I know that BR was really, really happy to meet such a normal-appearing, charming person before walking further into the den of Unfoggedness.
The organization that I work for has cluster bombs, but deprecates cluster F-bombs.
Charlie Foxtrot is not uncommon. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot too.
I was really worried that Apo or Bitch would be the first people we met.
44: C'mon. Turning sixteen was instantaneously and almost simultaneously the time to get one's license and find a place to make out. Doing silly stuff from boredom came later and sometimes decades into a marriage, two cars in the garage, etc.
So headstrong, young Witt. You'll be more mellow when you're as old as I am.
I think wikipedia's wrong. Isn't the term about the hilarity of tenement fires in Chinatown?
When kids without a connection or sex partner get bored, they play find them on the internet.
Fixed.
Reminds me of the old chestnut involving the physicist, the engineer, and the computer scientist sitting in a broken-down car by the side of the road. The Chinese Fire Drill is the computer scientist's proposed solution.
(Though they probably call it something else, like Traveling Salesmen or Dining Philosophers.)
oh we're still talking about the party.
I know that BR was really, really happy to meet such a normal-appearing, charming person before walking further into the den of Unfoggedness.
Particularly after the first three people she met had established her expectations for the bizarre.
My ex of South Asian descent really loved that every time she borrowed something that she gave me I called her an "Indian giver". Still cracks me up.
Becks forgot to mention the part where we went off-roading in the four-wheel drive pickup.
OT - Witt, can you email me re: formal shops in Philly near Penn? robustmcmanlypants at (nc) (rr) (com).
Please. Asian-American Environmental Hazard Simulated Emergency Response.
So why is this phrase inherently offensive, anyhow? Maybe it just refers to the fact that fire prevention efforts in China are fantastically efficient, and evacuees can return to the previously burning car so quickly that nobody has time to get back to their original seat.
79: I surmise it's because anything backward or silly and plausibly foreign is obviously Chinese.
anything involving chinese
in mockery is good for me
At last we've found the chink in read's armor.
Uh, let me rephrase that...
Somewhat on topic, it really is amazing how few US people study Mandarin and how many Chinese study English. Scary.
I should really take Mandarin again; all I can remember how to say now is "I like beer" and "My Chinese is not good". We do have several people on this blog who know more or less Mandarin non-natively, though.
83: To be fair, this is something the MLA has been trying to address from a structural standpoint. Not only are there basically no sufficiently staffed programs in badly needed languages like Arabic and Chinese at the undergraduate level; there are lots of schools where modern language instruction outside of English has been eradicated completely. Not even French, Spanish, or German is being taught at some schools. It's ridiculous.
Obviously, with languages like Arabic and Chinese that are so difficult to get proficient in and are so badly needed by the government and by corporations, you'd think some genius would go around funding some fucking programs to provide professors in these languages. Right? You'd be wrong, though. Occasionally, there are scholarships for students to study, but not pay for professors to teach it.
That seems so bizarrely mysterious. I mean, I know nothing at all about language teaching, but it seems like a reasonably well-educated native speaker would have a shot of being at least a fair teacher, if some kind of curriculum had been worked out beforehand. And it's not as if native speakers of Chinese or Arabic are hard to locate -- there are countries full of them. What's the problem?
85, 86: I don't know, but as I think I've said before, the problem extends all the way to the issue of dictionaries. I was blown away by the miserable lack of decent Arabic/English dictionaries available last year. Five years after 9/11, and this was the best we could do? Talk about not putting our money where are mouths are.
I seem to remember reading that enrollments in Mandarin classes are way up, but who knows.
And I, apparently, need an English dictionary. Our mouths.
In my area, we had a study done that essentially said to forget about teaching German (sorry Blume), Italian, and french, and to fund Manadarian, Hindi and Spanish.
Of course, everybody ignored the report and no changes have been made.
But, AWB is correct. It is all about funding teachers.
88: That's just it; I think student demand is higher than ever because young people realize that Chinese and Arabic would make them instantly desirable in nearly any job market, but universities are still cutting foreign language funding. The MLA can only take a stand, as we have, to say something like "Foreign language instruction is totally important!!1!" but it doesn't help unless money is going into the creation of professorships. A struggling, underfunded department is not going to be able to follow up on that stance without some serious cash. The capitalist in me is hoping that, if the government isn't going to do it, at least some big corporations might sponsor the programs. I know that money comes with strings, but it's just stupid to constantly outsource any and all Arabic-English and Chinese-English requiring jobs overseas, which seems to be what happens.
it doesn't help unless money is going into the creation of professorships
This is a moderately awful thing for me to say, but isn't language teaching something you could do okay on the cheap? Language teachers don't need to be research scholars really -- I'd think a university could do reasonably well hiring well-educated native speakers as adjuncts, even if they didn't think they could afford tenure lines.
Conversational language teaching is indeed the scut work of university language departments, and for good reason.
Hmm. Looking at the Amazon sales rankings for the Berlitz Premier series and the <Language X> for Dummies for Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, and German suggests that the popularity of various languages is similar in undergraduate education and what one might classify as more corporate training materials.
Of course, if one believes that the war on terror is not actually all that important except for domestic political gain, then the lack of Arabic language classes should not come as a complete shock.
That's the other thing the MLA has been discussing, that this goes a lot further back, into high school, where fewer students are being encouraged to take foreign languages, and so are fulfilling college requirements with nothing but conversation and grammar classes. If they do foreign-language lit at all, it's nearly always in French and Spanish.
I did Spanish lit as my second major, and was really surprised to find that very few non-native Spanish speakers were in my classes. It made me realize I was very lucky to have gone to the high school I went to, which I thought only had a middling language program, with no Italian, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, etc.
Heh. Buck got me an computer Spanish-learning software course for Christmas, and I've been saying 'Yo tengo una taza amarilla' and similar into a microphone for the last week. Sally's been very sympathetic about my accent.
we need replacement terms for . . . "gyp".
"That thing fell apart right after I bought it. I feel totally romanied."
Yo tengo una taza amarilla
"I will tase you, coward."
It's for my second career as a corrections officer.
97: I bet the jerk that sold you it got off Scot free.
99: Are your parents happen that you'll be getting a good union pension?
I bet the jerk that sold you it shanghaid you got off Scot free
Five years after 9/11, and this was the best we could do?
The result of our hastily-proclaimed resolve to vastly increase instruction in Arabic and Farsi reinforces my conviction that significant numbers of Americans will give up their cars/TV/red meat before they will achieve basic proficiency in Mandarin or Arabic or Hindi. Or Spanish, for that matter.
In a similar vein, we need replacement terms for "welsh" and "gyp" (as verbs).
"To jew".
106: That already is one(with the preposition down), but the only folks I've heard use it have been Jews (attempting hipster, Heeb magazine humor), although I am sure big old anti-Semites use it all the time. It doesn't mean rip off, though, but rather "haggle the price down."
I think you can jew someone out of something, also, no?
There is something disturbing about how many otherwise incredibly intelligent people feel that foreign language learning is just utterly beyond their grasp. It's a lot like innumeracy, which is completely socially acceptable for intelligent adults. I have very good friends who are a lot smarter than me who see numbers and nearly pass out, and also are on the verge of despair at the PhD translation requirement. I don't blame them at all; it's the same attitude I see in students who are terrified of my class because the only instructors they ever had in writing and literature were cruel, snobby, insulting, unclear, etc.
I benefit from math and language requirements, so of course they seem reasonable to me, but it's only because I'm ashamed of my deplorable Verbal GRE score. I can always point to my perfect math and logic scores and say, "I know I suck at English, but for an English PhD student, I sure solve an equation well!" A wise person would have not steered me out of the sciences to begin with.
I think you can jew someone out of something... laydeez.
Yeah, the expression, "to jew down" comes from the way that Jewish people are stingy with their money, and will attempt to bargain for a better deal in almost any situation involving commerce.
You know what some of it is? Being clever doesn't seem to take much of the work out of learning a language. I can take a math class, and do a third of the work of most people while getting the same results. Language classes, if I don't do the work I don't get anywhere, and focused work has never been my strong point.
I keep on thinking that if I can just get myself to a basic literacy level in some language (Spanish, currently), I can feed my need for stupid light reading and work on language skills at the same time, but I've never gotten there.
108: I haven't heard that one!
(Honestly, I hadn't heard most of the nasty words for Jews and Italians until I went to college, because where I grew up everyone was one, the other, or both.)
I mean, I know nothing at all about language teaching, but it seems like a reasonably well-educated native speaker would have a shot of being at least a fair teacher, if some kind of curriculum had been worked out beforehand.
Eh. How competent would you feel teaching English to someone who spoke none? How competent would you think the average English speaker would be? I'm not going to argue that it's rocket science, but it's harder than just finding a native speaker, especially when 'native' isn't necessarily the actual dialect needed.
113: We can do a mind meld and be terrifyingly unstoppable!
That thing fell apart right after I bought it. I feel totally romanied
I once ordered a Sinti-und-Roma-Schnitzel when my company cafeteria in Germany was serving Zigeunerschnitzel, but the joke fell totally flat. As it probably should have.
113: Oddly enough, for me mathematics required a fair amount of work and languages almost none. Until I got old and my brain said no more new words.
How competent would you think the average English speaker would be?
A proposition tested all the time by overseas English language schools, no?
Aren't many of those catering to students that have already had a ton of grammar fundamentals and mostly need to hear what English sounds like?
languages almost none
How does that work? You need to learn the vocabulary somehow.
although I am sure big old anti-Semites use it all the time
"To jew down" was fairly common parlance where I grew up, though overt anti-semitism was pretty rare by that time.
My father's best friend was the only Jew in town (a thoroughly secular one, as it happens). He was famously tight-fisted--in a good way; he was kind of a frugal post-hippie with an amazing facility for barter and exchange. My father tells the story of his friend bargaining with the local autobody shop owner, who unironically used the phrase "don't try to jew me down" without realizing that the guy was Jewish.
In terms of reifying stereotypes, the fact that this guy was a total tightwad was probably nearly as unfortunate as the fact that the only Black kid in my school was stupid and lazy.
How does that work? You need to learn the vocabulary somehow.
There was a guy in my high school, a year ahead of me, named Sprecher. One year, he started taking French 1 in the fall semester. He switched to French 4 in the spring semester and got a 4 on the AP test.
This was not an isolated phenomenon. Dude was good at learning languages.
122: When I was a middle schooler and teenager learning German, I needed to write down a list of new words once to memorize them. Vocabulary stuck in my brain very easily.
122: I can read a vocab list a few times and see the words used and lo those words will just stay in my head. I cannot, however, add.
122: I think if vocab is all that requires work, you're one of the lucky ones who sees grammatical and syntactical patterns easily. I have friends for whom tenses and sentence structures in foreign languages are just impenetrably difficult.
I credit my mom with having sung a lot of French songs to me when I was little. Her French is bad, sure, but I heard sentences other than in English while learning to speak English, and it really helped, I think.
125: Aha! Sisters! Yes -- writing them once tattooed them on my brain as well.
The vocabulary bit is a part of my brain that seemed to vanish once I stopped regular language study. When I decided to learn French a couple years ago, I went at it with my normal methods and found that all I can do now reliably is learn structures and patterns. I'm not sure if this is a function of aging or that my brain is too busy trying to write a dissertation, but when I found I had to study I was really annoyed.
When I was taking latin in high school I was able to learn the words fairly easily, and even in college I could do well on any exam's translation components by reading the passages through, once, the night before.
Now I regularly forget the german words I thought I knew, and 90% of the latin's flown the coop. And let's not even talk about my rapidly diminishing command of mother English.
It's a terrible thing to grow old.
You know what some of it is? Being clever doesn't seem to take much of the work out of learning a language. I can take a math class, and do a third of the work of most people while getting the same results. Language classes, if I don't do the work I don't get anywhere, and focused work has never been my strong point.
This is not my experience, LB. In modern languages you do have to spend some time looking over things and memorizing some words, but mostly I found it pretty easy. Outside of class, I didn't need to do much work at all. Mostly I just absorb them.
Ancient languages are harder, because you don't have aural and oral reinforcement. It's harder for them to get stuck in your brain in quite the same way.
Sigh, I love learning foreign languages. It's too bad that the foreign service isn't really an option for me.
Oh, they're all gone now. It was in the past when I was smart.
130: Yeah, I could look at the Loeb the night before an exam and in the morning be ready to recite the thing, practically.
(FYI: I knew a guy who pronounced the Loeb series "Leb." Now that is a pretentious mofo.)
Huh. Then whatever it is that makes most academic work not laborious for me doesn't kick in for languages -- I'd thought that was a common experience, but maybe not. I'm going to make a push on Spanish this year because I have Sally available for ad hoc conversation practice (I'm hoping her Spanish is as good as people tell me it is; Nancy's Uruguayan husband thought she was a native speaker over the phone the other week, or at least said he did and put on a show of being surprised when he figured out who she was.)
But once I get past the basic grammar, which is pretty easy, I find languages a deadly difficult slog. My Samoan stayed terrible even after two years, and Samoan's pretty easy for most Americans to learn.
"I will tase you, coward."
No tasarme, bro.
I'm Asian, grew up in the Americano suburbs, and have never heard that expression either. Hmm.
Re "w-lfs-ned": Hmm, remember when we saw that movie Ben, and I got there early and got our tickets for us, and you asked me how much you owed me and I said "forget it, just buy me a drink afterwards at dinner"?
You owe me a drink, w-lfs-n. A good, stiff one.
I'm sorry, but if you're looking for good, stiff ones, I'm not the one to ask.
Nice auto cockblock, w-lfs-n.
You still owe me a drink of some sort then. Don't renege on this obligation.
Thank you for making that explicit.
Speaking of learning languages early, there was a good local news article in the Washington Post about an immersion program in Montgomery County that started out well in 1st grade but has ended up with the children not learning much by the time they got to 12th grade.
I hate that my language skills are so bad. I passed my French requirement in grad school (about 15 years ago), but that was focused on reading. Last year, I went to Paris and was able to understand the signs and muddle through the newspaper. But dealing with people? Ha! I have been taking classes recently because I was so embarrassed by that experience.
I called her an "Indian giver"
Ahem. I think you mean "Native American giver."
(As it happens, Teo, Asilon, M/ & I were talking about this just the other day while waiting and waiting for Sifu 'No need for directions from a longtime resident; I've got my fancy-pants iPhone' Tweety & crew to show up.)
once I get past the basic grammar, which is pretty easy, I find languages a deadly difficult slog
Ditto. I, too, thought it was a universal experience, but apparently we were wrong.
142: To blend threads: You haven't lived until you have attempted to translate for a gentleman in a lingerie shop trying to describe his voluptuous wife to two tiny, pancake-flat salesclerks. I decided then and there that college Spanish had been decidedly lacking in certain descriptive terminology.
I'd thought that was a common experience, but maybe not.
It's my experience. There are some things that come easily to me but facility with language is not among them.
142: That's a weird article. The strong impression one gets from it is that the high school Chinese teacher purposefully torpedoed the program, but who knows what the truth is.
In the immortal words of Lebowski,
Walter Sobchak: What the fuck are you talking about? The chinaman is not the issue here, Dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.The Dude: Walter, this isn't a guy who built the fucking railroads here. This is a guy...
Walter Sobchak: What the fuck are you talking about?
The Dude: Walter, he peed on my rug!
Donny: He peed on the Dude's rug.
Walter Sobchak: Donny you're out of your element! Dude, the Chinaman is not the issue here!
The word "Chinaman" in "Lebowski" was presumably a reference to Nicholson's joke at the beginning of the L.A. movie "Chinatown".
147. Yes, that's the impression I got.
It also seemed that the program shifted around quite a bit as the kids aged through it. I don't like the rationale for limiting the language to math and science instruction. It seems the school wanted to avoid teaching useful abstract vocabulary, grammar, and writing. That set them up for frustration in high school. MoCo is a well off school system, but co-ordination across the grades was very lacking. The end result is probably a bunch of students who say they took Chinese for 8-10 years and learned little because languages are hard.
147, 149. In reading the comments, it appears this was the teacher's first year. So taking on students made mediocre by a compromised program, and prepping for SIX classes seems unreasonable, if not impossible.
150. Ah, comments. I failed to read them. Six classes! Ugh.
I pointed to this article to illustrate the challenges that can face even one of the best school systems. Language instruction in the US needs to change quite a bit.
re: 100
97: I bet the jerk that sold you it got off Scot free.
Racist!
I have friends for whom tenses and sentence structures in foreign languages are just impenetrably difficult.
It's definitely the hardest bit for me, yeah. Not impenetrably difficult but it requires real work [and I've had formal education in linguistics so at least understand the terminology]. I've been half-heartedly trying to learn czech for 6 years and still have no more than rudimentary grammar. Vocab is much easier.
I don't speak any foreign languages fluently but seem, from limited travel experience, to be able to acquire 'advanced tourist' competency pretty damn quick just through having a good memory for vocabulary, rote learning of stock phrases and a good ear for accents/pronunciation.
Hey, ttaM, you know what's cool? A Scotch verdict, that's what.
I never heard of Scotting someone down. Perhaps we can use that. Thrifty Scots.
It's definitely the hardest bit for me, yeah. Not impenetrably difficult but it requires real work
For a Scot you seem to speak English really well, ttaM.
Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.
I had to act out this clue in charades at the in-laws over Christmas.
He does all right on the internet, but I understand they have a very hard time learning to pronounce English comprehensibly.
You people better watch out! Those Scots are brawlers. He is going kick your butts.
re: 155
'Scotting' someone down would involve haggling fiercely, and then thumping them with a stick if they didn't accept your price. Then blame the English.
There's a Washington Sunday Post article about Scots (in the Orkneys) who have stripped rugby of its frills and niceties and made a real man's game of it, scrum only and 1000 to the side. You have to admire the primitive simplicity of that culture.
re: 158
I have a tame English man who impersonates me whenever I have to meet people in real life. Slol and C/harleyC/arp have met him.
I saw that article and thought immediately of ttaM.
How did we get the term Scotch Guard?
The Scots probably invented it. They invented just about everything else.
After a couple shots of drambuie, I need something to protect the furniture.
Haggle fiercely Harvard was Lehrer's first draft.
The WaPo piece—with pictures!
How did we get the term Scotch Guard?
Both of them are pretty repellent?
I keed! I keed!
Scotch Guard, from the fine people who brought us that thrifty Scotch Tape: Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing.
re: Scotchguard
Perhaps the name is a tribute to the rubberizing of fabric to be used in waterproof overcoats [a scottish invention]? It's a similar process.
re: 171
We Scots are a very dour, literal people.
172. All this time I thought I was Irish-American (with an admixture of Lithuanian). I suspect adoption. I am often literal and dour.
This Ba' game: I'd never heard of it before, but when we were kids (in Ireland) and someone at school had, e.g., the last of a packet of sweets or the end of a bar of chocolate, or whatever, they would sometimes throw it out to the group, whose members would then tussle violently for it. (Insert joke about Irish kids desperately struggling over bits of food here.) The signal that this was about to happen was that the person with the treat would should "Up for the Ba!" and throw it in the air. This bit of slang had no obvious local origin, and I wonder if this Orkney thing is connected to it.
Use of the term "Scotch" in the name has a pejorative origin. To cut costs 3M applied the adhesive only to the edges of the tape. A remark was made by a St. Paul automobile detailer[citation needed] that the stingy Scotch bosses needed to put more adhesive on it, and the name has stuck ever since. Scotty McTape, a kilt-wearing cartoon boy, was the brand's mascot for two decades, first appearing in 1944. The familiar plaid design was introduced in 1945.
142: Dude - Potomac Elementary! My alma matter. We didn't have no Mandarin Immersion program in my day.
Scotty McTape, a kilt-wearing cartoon boy
ADHESION!
152: Yes! That is exactly what the giant ginger Scot mr. oudemia would say! Is it also racist to note that he keeps the house at 58 fahrenheit? Put on a sweater, he tells me!
Scotty McTape, for some reason I'm laughing at this name. Image search. I like the "at the North Pole".
Clearly this should be everyone's new mental image of ttaM.
And per the "school daze" ad, it looks like they continued to use the thriftiness stereotype in marketing.
...the very tops — in thrift and quality
180: Maybe. He did explain that the world used to be black and white. Also: North East Ohio.
Weirdly, shivbunny and I were having a conversation yesterday about the phrase 'going dutch' and how it must have stemmed from a perception that the Dutch were cheap.
It's actually because the dutch are feminists.
There is a small genre of jokes that begin "There was a Scotsman, a Dutchman and a Jew ..."
189: There's a Dorothy Sayers novel that has the cheapness of a character underlined by the fact that he was both from Aberdeen and and Jew.
The exclusion of Indians from cheapo jokes is racist and Occidentonormative.
How widespread is that stereotype, though?
I didn't think Indians were cheap, just untrustworthy. "Don't steal from or cheat someone you know, but strangers are all fair game" and all that.
How widespread is that stereotype, though?
More Occidentonormativism!
I don't know; certainly every Iranian ever believes it. And my Indian friend systematically overtips, in order to combat it. I'm counting that as 1.something billion people, right there.
I recall it's come up before, actually.
I'm counting that as 1.something billion people, right there.
Yeah but Ben means how widespread is it amongst, you know, real people.
187: common Belgian joke is that copperwire was invented by two Dutch men fighting about a penny...
As for fire drills, the only one I know is the Bavarian Fire Drill.
Scotty McTape, for some reason I'm laughing at this name. Image search. I like the "at the North Pole".
From the same image search, we not ony get nattarGcM, but Doc Slack.
The term "Indian" is not only racist but ambiguous. "South Asian" is the preferred nomenclature.
re: 201
"South Asian" is the preferred nomenclature.
Not for Indians.
200: OMG the collars! the cuffs!
get out there and eat some beans and rice and greens, kids. it's luuuucky.
the japanese believe that the first dream dreamed in the New yr night will come true
alas i never remember my dreams
not sure if i even dreamed the last night
I'd think a university could do reasonably well hiring well-educated native speakers who are committed to foreign language pedagogy as adjuncts, even if they didn't think they could afford tenure lines.
If the point is to take foreign language learning seriously, I think a good start is to take foreign language pedagogy seriously. (What Cala said in 115.)
forget about teaching German (sorry Blume)
I know, I know. All too well!
Thing is, to become really competent in speaking a language, you almost have to spend time somewhere that language is spoken. Which requires a real time commitment.
Dear lord, ttaM, I had a Scotch egg the other day. Of course I thought of you. Also the really fat guy in The Office.
re: 206
I'm not that bloody fat!
Scotch eggs are tasty, though.
I was a little afraid of it. But it was kinda good. Still, I don't think I'll be having another any time soon.
The prepackaged ones can be a bit nasty [sort of a guilty snack-food pleasure]. The hand-made ones done with good sausage meat are really nice, though. Luckily, there's a butcher in the market in Oxford who does proper home-made Scotch eggs.
It was a fancy restaurant; the egg was actually a quail egg. Part of a horrifying appetizer plate that also included confit and some version of pig-in-a-blanket. I'm having to drink heavily in an attempt to thin my blood enough to get it through my arteries.
Anyway, I thought of the Office guy not because you resemble him (although....) but because of that scene where he's eating a Scotch egg.
certainly every Iranian ever believes it.
Yeah, but Iranians are all spendthrifts.
I'm not that bloody fat!
Better not set high expectations!
Maybe we should call it a whitebread wriggle
I fucking love Scotch eggs. Someday I will make millions of dollars selling Scotch eggs on sticks at the county fair.
Imagining you with a booth at the county fair is pretty entertaining, Tweety.
215: I dunno, I get a pretty heavy carnival barker vibe off of Tweety.
He'd need a good hat. The mustache stays.
216: oh my god, that's awesome. I will endeavor to obtain a carnie hat.
