Expressions I Want to Bring Back

I don’t LOL, ROFL, LMAO or anything of the sort. I do, on occaision, SRWFS (smirk righteously while feeling superior), EMTBOCAHM (eat many tiny bags of chips and hate myself), and RMEWIFTCMFSTO (roll my eyes when I forget to change my Facebook status to “offline”). None of those are going to catch on, because they are long and clunky, and because you can’t pronounce them outloud. Although, I get pretty irked when I hear someone actually utter “LOL” aloud.

Anywhoo. There are tons of neato expressions that predate the computer/text messaging/IM/Facebook/Myspace phenomenon. I think we should concentrate on bringing them back. Here is a list of examples:

Calling someone “Turkey”. How I love this. Perhaps best used in the Jerry Reed song “She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft”, “turkey” as a means of addressing someone has to be uttered in a certain way. You can’t drag out the “turkey” like “turrkeeyy”. It’s got to be staccato, like TURKey. TURK + EE. Practice it. Try it on your friends and loved ones.

Responding to the question “How are you?” with “Ducky”, or “Just Ducky”. As an adjective it means “fine”, or “excellent”. You can mean it, or you can say it sarcastically. Either way it’s fun to say and people don’t expect it, so that’s fun too. Incidentally, as a noun ducky means “someone’s favorite”. So you’re sort of implying subconciously that you’re a favorite of some kind, which makes people view you in a more positive light. Note: that last part is utter and total speculation and mostly bullshit.

“I am called…” You might notice that people from countries who speak English correctly (ie any English-speaking country besides the good old US of A) say this a lot more often. My good friend from Trinidad always tells stories about people saying stuff like “I had a friend called Ruth…” and it sounds really nice. Flip it and use it on yourself. You’ve got Instant Importance.

“Fixin’ to” It means that you’re getting ready to do something. “I’m fixin’ to wash the car”. It doesn’t mean like “fixing dinner”. You can be “fixin’ to fix dinner”, but you are not using it properly if you’re merely “fixing dinner’. Dig?

“Golly Gee” or “Golly Gee Whilickers” – People curse too much and too often. Instead of a good GD, or a F’in A, try on a “Golly Gee” for size. You can probably even get the right amount of sarcasm and viciousness into your voice that people will think you’re being edgy.

So that’s a good start. Try these on for size and see how much better you’ll feel.

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Bah

I got so busy talking about the wine festival that I didn’t mention any surreal parts. Here is a recap of the day that doesn’t include what was previously blogged or tweeted about:

* It was so hot that heat waves were squiggling off the surface of not only the rocks and gravel in Innsbrook, but also off of the sweaty people. I kept rubbing my eyes to fix it, but it was an optical illusion from the heat. Either that or a hallucination. I’ll stick with the former.

* The crowd was relatively young, so they got drunk FAST. There were a couple of times when I encountered someone who was obviously tipsy (even plastered) but holding it together so well that I wanted to say “Good job. I can tell that you’re wasted, but that’s only because I am stone-cold sober. To the rest of the drunk people out here you are holding it together remarkably well. Kudos to you, Drunkface.”
* I am a suck-up to cops. I can’t decide if this is because I really respect what they’re meant to do (because I do, the idea of cops is good), because I like having armed people on my side (also true), or because I think that they might let me off easy if I get in trouble someday (me? get in trouble? never!). Luckily for me it was not hard to be extra-nice to the cops at the Wine Festival, because they were extra-nice and friendly. Innsbrook cops are awesome, as long as you’re not gettinig into trouble in Innsbrook.
* I am an old lady. Seriously. I know I mentioned my back and my sinuses yesterday, and today I have a nifty new rash on my cheeks. Regardez:

Heat rash? Nickel poisoning? Heaven only knows. Hopefully my cheeks won’t rot off before I’m able to post again…

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Holy Backache Batman!

Yesterday was pretty surreal.

Back up. A few weeks ago my good friend and ex-boss Jerome asked me to work the James River Wine Festival for him selling water. He sells water. Bottled water from an aquaphor-fed arisan well in Hanover County, VA. It’s fancy good water. Anyway. He asked me to do this for him because he had a family scheduling conflict, and he knows I’m good at working with people.

I’ve been crazy busy at work, so I actually called Jerome last week and told him that I couldn’t work both days of the weekend. In fact, I could pretty much only cover for him while he was doing what he needed to do. I felt bad, but I’m WAY behind on schoolwork and needed one day to work on that kind of stuff. I really wanted to bow out of the whole thing, but knew he really needed someone to do Saturday during the day, so I agreed to do Saturday set-up and work the festival from noon until 4 or 4:30 when he could get there. He’s been a good friend for many years and I didn’t want him to miss out on any profits.

So, imagine being the only water vendor at a wine festival on a 96 degree day. While on the one hand it feels like I was there for 100 hours, on the other hand I was so busy and the time passed so fast that I couldn’t believe it. Hauling ice, restocking coolers, and moving cases of water mean that today I can hardly move my back. Being downwind from the cigar vendor all day means that my allergies are going crazy. Plunging my hands into ice-cold water to retrieve the “coldest” bottle for a drunk reveler mean that my hand dermie is irritated and I have a hangnail on every finger. All that aside, I had a lot of fun and sold every bottle of water he left with me.

And, I was surrounded by free booze all day long and didn’t have a single drop. Mainly because I couldn’t get to it, but still…

Today I am trying frantically to catch up on schoolwork. Away I go…

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