Bananas
Charles Riggs
bananas, I had a banana go rotten on me yesterday morning. It was the
one on the bottom of a bunch resting on my kitchen counter. This
morning I've resumed my old system of hanging them from a loop of
string suspended from the ceiling. That works well. Just drill a small
hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook; women, request your
boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
Charles Riggs
Spehro Pefhany
> Just drill a small
> hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook; women, request your
> boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
How in the world are you drilling these holes that a penis is required
equipment?
Best regards,
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
sp...@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
Contributions invited->The AVR-gcc FAQ is at: http://www.BlueCollarLinux.com
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Robert E. Lewis
Charles Riggs <chr...@gofree.indigo.ie> wrote in message
news:8hregtse46blridaf...@4ax.com...
> Coincidentally, since we were only recently discussing the ripeness of
> bananas, I had a banana go rotten on me yesterday morning. It was the
> one on the bottom of a bunch resting on my kitchen counter.
I caught a few minutes of a film from the early '30s and starring comic Joe
E. Brown on Turner Classic Movies or American Movie Classic the other day.
Brown played a baseball player who'd invented an improved fire extinguisher.
Throughout the small bit I watched, he was eating bananas that were mostly
brown, and he offered bananas to his romantic interest(s), telling her how
ripe they were. I'd have thrown out bananas as ripe as the ones Brown was
devouring.
>This morning I've resumed my old system of hanging them from a loop of
> string suspended from the ceiling. That works well. Just drill a small
> hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook...
I have a hook mounted beneath on of the wall (upper) cabinets for bananas.
> women, request your boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
>
> Charles Riggs
I have discovered that most women are competent to drill a *small* hole.
It's the really big holes, the kind that require the ol' brace and bit, or
the kind I suspect Mr. Riggs dug for himself with the female readers of AUE
with that last sentence, that require a he-man.
ObAUE: I live near a port that's one of the major ports of entry for
bananas - both Dole and Chiquita bring bananas through Freeport. The
bananas arrive in those shipping containers that are lifted off a
specially-built ship and directly onto tractor trailer rigs. What are those
shipping containers called?
And now back to bananas: If I recall correctly, the bananas most Americans
get, imported from Central America (the local Dole ships shuttle between
Freeport and, I think, Honduras), are a variety called "Cavendish," popular
because it holds up well in transit. Do most bananas in European markets
come from Central America or from Africa, and does anyone know what variety
they are?
Robert
Bun Mui
> Bananas
If you don't use it, you will lose it.
Comments?
Bun Mui
Garry J. Vass
> boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
>
"The Good Wife Guide" at http://www.londonelegance.com/hettie
Kathy K
Is there some particular reason I should not drill the hole
myself?
Excuses are the tools of the incompetent. They build monuments to nothingness. Those that excel at them, rarely excel at anything else.
(to e-mail, cure the memory problem)
Linz
> Just drill a small
> hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook; women, request your
> boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
Wanted: boyfriend or other male friend to do jobs around the house...
Nope, easier to do it myself, I think, having seen the mess soon-to-be
ex-husband and his friend made of putting up picture hooks and a new
light fitting.
--
It's not the despair, I can stand the despair. It's the hope.
Rudolf
Robert E. Lewis said:
: Do most bananas in European markets
: come from Central America or from Africa, and does anyone know what
variety
: they are?
I have a cardboard box (US carton?) in my basement, picked up from my local
greengrocer, printed on the side of which is the utterly beautiful phrase
'Bananas from the Windward Isles'.
(You have to say it out loud.)
This phrase is so 'voiced'. (I've lost my phonetic-thinggie..... but I
know what I mean). I can only think of one other phrase I regard as being
more beautiful: 'The Sultan of Zanzibar'.
--
rud...@ntlworld.com - Nottingham UK - www.lizardnet.freeserve.co.uk
Ray Heindl
<9e8mvo$e...@netaxs.com>:
>ObAUE: I live near a port that's one of the major ports of entry
>for bananas - both Dole and Chiquita bring bananas through Freeport.
> The bananas arrive in those shipping containers that are lifted off
>a specially-built ship and directly onto tractor trailer rigs. What
>are those shipping containers called?
They seem to be called 'containers', if the googled sites I looked at
are any guide. I'm surprised there isn't some arcane acronym for them.
OSHA regulations refer to 'intermodal containers', which sounds like it
might be bureaucratese for the same thing.
--
Ray Heindl
Padraig Breathnach
>The renowned Charles Riggs <chr...@gofree.indigo.ie> wrote:
>
>> Just drill a small
>> hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook; women, request your
>> boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
>
>How in the world are you drilling these holes that a penis is required
>equipment?
>
You should remember that when working a power drill over one's head,
it is important to have something firm onto which one holds.
PB
Spehro Pefhany
> They seem to be called 'containers', if the googled sites I looked at
> are any guide.
Sea-shipment containers is what I've heard them called. Aircraft use much
smaller lightweight containers. One standard unit of volume for shipments
is the "TEU" or equivalent volume of one twenty-foot container. Many Asian
companies have a minimum order of one TEU. There are also 40-foot
containers. Some are refrigerated.
Joe Manfre
That accords with what I picked up when I had some experience writing
about the transportation industry. "Intermodal containers" is sort of
a specific technical jargon term for them. Cargo that is shipped in
containers is called "containerized cargo".
Here, browse one of the trade magazines: http://www.trafficworld.com/
There's a story there about a new refrigerated container terminal that
Dole is building in San Diego -- "expected to handle about 40,000
containers a year".
JM
--
Joe Manfre, Hyattsville, Maryland.
Skitt
"Rudolf" <ta...@face.value> wrote in message
news:qQWN6.6231$m93.8...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> Robert E. Lewis said:
>
> : Do most bananas in European markets
> : come from Central America or from Africa, and does anyone know what
> variety
> : they are?
>
> I have a cardboard box (US carton?) in my basement, picked up from my
local
> greengrocer, printed on the side of which is the utterly beautiful phrase
> 'Bananas from the Windward Isles'.
It just so happens that a banana box was my first vehicle that I can
remember -- powered by an elderly grandma at the end of a (and her) rope. I
have no idea how old I was -- maybe two or three -- but I remember being
towed around the dining room table in it. It might possibly be my first
memory of anything, that's how important it must have seemed to me.
--
Skitt (in SF Bay Area) http://i.am/skitt/
I speak English well -- I learn it from a book!
-- Manuel of "Fawlty Towers" (he's from Barcelona).
J Cheung
> > Coincidentally, since we were only recently discussing the ripeness of
> > bananas, I had a banana go rotten on me yesterday morning. It was the
> > one on the bottom of a bunch resting on my kitchen counter.
>
> I caught a few minutes of a film from the early '30s and starring comic
Joe
> E. Brown on Turner Classic Movies or American Movie Classic the other day.
> Brown played a baseball player who'd invented an improved fire
extinguisher.
> Throughout the small bit I watched, he was eating bananas that were mostly
> brown, and he offered bananas to his romantic interest(s), telling her how
> ripe they were. I'd have thrown out bananas as ripe as the ones Brown was
> devouring.
>
> >This morning I've resumed my old system of hanging them from a loop of
> > string suspended from the ceiling. That works well. Just drill a small
> > hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook...
>
> I have a hook mounted beneath on of the wall (upper) cabinets for bananas.
The shops here sell stands specially for hanging bananas. The good thing is
that we can move it around, say to the dinning table at meal times.
The first one I bought was made of plastic, not too stable. I next found a
better one made of wood.
John
Robert E. Lewis
Joe Manfre <man...@flash.net> wrote in message
news:9e9hi3$1mnv0$2...@ID-81441.news.dfncis.de...
> Ray Heindl (rhe...@nccw.net) wrote:
>
> >"Robert E. Lewis" <rle...@brazosport.cc.tx.us> wrote in
> ><9e8mvo$e...@netaxs.com>:
> >
> >>ObAUE: I live near a port that's one of the major ports of entry
> >>for bananas - both Dole and Chiquita bring bananas through Freeport.
> >>The bananas arrive in those shipping containers that are lifted off
> >>a specially-built ship and directly onto tractor trailer rigs. What
> >>are those shipping containers called?
> >
> >They seem to be called 'containers', if the googled sites I looked at
> >are any guide. I'm surprised there isn't some arcane acronym for
> >them. OSHA regulations refer to 'intermodal containers', which
> >sounds like it might be bureaucratese for the same thing.
>
> That accords with what I picked up when I had some experience writing
> about the transportation industry. "Intermodal containers" is sort of
> a specific technical jargon term for them. Cargo that is shipped in
> containers is called "containerized cargo".
I knew that the ships are sometimes called "containerized cargo ships," but
just calling the containers "containers" was too straightforward for me to
ever have guessed. I was afraid someone might have coined a name for them
along the lines of "containerized cargo containers" or equally awful.
Thanks.
Robert
Mark Barratt
>On Sun, 20 May 2001 08:19:24 +0100, Charles Riggs wrote:
>
>> Just drill a small
>> hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook; women, request your
>> boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
>
>Wanted: boyfriend or other male friend to do jobs around the house...
>
>Nope, easier to do it myself, I think, having seen the mess soon-to-be
>ex-husband and his friend made of putting up picture hooks and a new
>light fitting.
Which demonstrates not that all men are incompetent, but only that all
men that you have married are. Who's to blame for that?
Charles Riggs
<sp...@interlog.com> wrote:
>The renowned Charles Riggs <chr...@gofree.indigo.ie> wrote:
>
>> Just drill a small
>> hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook; women, request your
>> boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
>
>How in the world are you drilling these holes that a penis is required
>equipment?
I said a *small* hole. For them I use a drill.
Charles Riggs
Charles Riggs
wrote:
With mine, that would require a third hand.
Charles Riggs
Charles Riggs
K) wrote:
>Charles Riggs <chr...@gofree.indigo.ie> pontificated:
>
>>Coincidentally, since we were only recently discussing the ripeness of
>>bananas, I had a banana go rotten on me yesterday morning. It was the
>>one on the bottom of a bunch resting on my kitchen counter. This
>>morning I've resumed my old system of hanging them from a loop of
>>string suspended from the ceiling. That works well. Just drill a small
>>hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook; women, request your
>>boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
>>
>Is there some particular reason I should not drill the hole
>myself?
None that I can think of. It's just that I've never seen a power drill
in the hands of a woman, but I'm sure stranger things have happened.
Maybe when they drill they only do so in private, like me when I'm
sewing on a button.
Charles Riggs
Charles Riggs
<li...@REMOVETHISlindsayendell.co.uk> wrote:
>On Sun, 20 May 2001 08:19:24 +0100, Charles Riggs wrote:
>
>> Just drill a small
>> hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook; women, request your
>> boyfriend or other male friend to do this for you.
>
>Wanted: boyfriend or other male friend to do jobs around the house...
>
>Nope, easier to do it myself, I think, having seen the mess soon-to-be
>ex-husband and his friend made of putting up picture hooks and a new
>light fitting.
I'm trying to picture how someone could make a mess installing a hook
and I can't do it. You may be lucky that he's a soon-to-be ex.
Charles Riggs
Linz
> Linz <li...@REMOVETHISlindsayendell.co.uk> wrote:
> >Nope, easier to do it myself, I think, having seen the mess soon-to-be
> >ex-husband and his friend made of putting up picture hooks and a new
> >light fitting.
>
> Which demonstrates not that all men are incompetent, but only that all
> men that you have married are. Who's to blame for that?
All I can say is that I was inexperienced. I assumed that if I could
install a picture hook, anyone could. I've taken to test-driving new
models for diy skills.
Oliver Gassner
>ObAUE:
Why do you call someone 'bananas' if he/she/it is a madperson?
--
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million type-
writers will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Now,
thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." N.N.
Literatur am Draht --> http://www.carpe.com/lit/
Matti Lamprhey
>
> ... I've taken to test-driving new models for diy skills.
Linz, I don't think you've really grokked into the diy ethos here,
concept-wise...
Matti
Matti Lamprhey
> kat...@forgetit.mailops.com (Kathy K) wrote:
> >>
> >Is there some particular reason I should not drill the hole
> >myself?
>
> None that I can think of. It's just that I've never seen a power drill
> in the hands of a woman, but I'm sure stranger things have happened.
> Maybe when they drill they only do so in private, like me when I'm
> sewing on a button.
And me when I'm turning on a sixpence.
Matti
Stephen Toogood
Breathnach <padr...@iol.ie> writes
blind?
--
Stephen Toogood
Stephen Toogood
<rle...@brazosport.cc.tx.us> writes
>
>
>And now back to bananas: If I recall correctly, the bananas most Americans
>get, imported from Central America (the local Dole ships shuttle between
>Freeport and, I think, Honduras), are a variety called "Cavendish," popular
>because it holds up well in transit. Do most bananas in European markets
>come from Central America or from Africa, and does anyone know what variety
>they are?
>
dispute between the US and EU. Traditionally Europe got its bananas from
small farmers in the British and French West Indies. Then a couple of US
companies realised there was money to be made by razing mangrove and
rain forest in mainland South America and setting up big plantations.
The EU thought it should ensure that this enterprise did not bankrupt
the small producers on which it had relied, and who in turn relied on
Europe for their income.
In the end the US government flexed its muscles with the WTO, and the EU
was forced to comply.
It is true that ex-mangrove bananas do have a sizeable market share here
now, because they're cheaper wholesale. Nonetheless, there is an
increasing number of people here who look at the origin before they buy,
and who will leave untouched anything imported by Chiquita, Dole or
DelMonte.
I buy from Windward Islands, Jamaica or Martinique; usually they're
labelled on the box. But The variety usually isn't.
Oh, and I hate bananas.
--
Stephen Toogood
Mike Lyle
Stephen Toogood wrote:
>
[...]
>
>In the end the US government flexed its muscles with the WTO, and the EU
>was forced to comply.
>
>It is true that ex-mangrove bananas do have a sizeable market share here
>now, because they're cheaper wholesale. Nonetheless, there is an
>increasing number of people here who look at the origin before they buy,
>and who will leave untouched anything imported by Chiquita, Dole or
>DelMonte.
>
>I buy from Windward Islands, Jamaica or Martinique; usually they're
>labelled on the box. But The variety usually isn't.
>
to be tasteless and less sweet, as well as having blood on it.
Free trade, I believe they call it.
Mike.
Roger Whitehead
> And me when I'm turning on a sixpence.
What do you do to get it into such a state?
Regards,
Roger
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Roger Whitehead,
Oxted, Surrey, England
Brian J Goggin
<matti-...@totally-official.com> wrote:
>And me when I'm turning on a sixpence.
But do the sixpences turn you on in return?
bjg
a1a5...@sprint.ca
Only in Cork, they say.
Mike Lyle
How many letters?
Mike.
Luke Fitzgerald
"Spehro Pefhany" <sp...@interlog.com> wrote in message
news:gFXN6.147327$2_.45...@news3.rdc1.on.home.com...
> There are also 40-foot containers. Some are refrigerated.
When I first worked in shipping I was delighted by references to 'forty-foot
reefers'. But I was younger then.
Luke
Skitt
"Stephen Toogood" <ste...@stenches.nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:tPzXi7Ao...@stenches.demon.co.uk...
>
> I buy from Windward Islands, Jamaica or Martinique; usually they're
> labelled on the box. But The variety usually isn't.
>
> Oh, and I hate bananas.
Well, at least you are doing your part to keep the economy going by buying
them.
Brian J Goggin
>On Mon, 21 May 2001 15:46:45 +0100, Brian J Goggin
><b...@wordwrights.ie> wrote:
>>But do the sixpences turn you on in return?
>Only in Cork, they say.
They don't waste sheep in Cork, though, as drisheen attests. Cumbria
--- if it ever hefts again --- could learn from it.
bjg
Spehro Pefhany
>>
> Why am I forced to conclude that that would be the blind leading the
> blind?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
N.Mitchum
-----
> > ... I've taken to test-driving new models for diy skills.
>
> Linz, I don't think you've really grokked into the diy ethos here,
> concept-wise...
What did you expect? She a GIRL!
----NM
Linz
Oh, I think I have. I use my finely-honed skills and abilities to
GANMI to do it for me.
Stephen Toogood
<b...@wordwrights.ie> writes
--
Stephen Toogood
M.J.Powell
>news:8hregtse46blridaf...@4ax.com...
>> Coincidentally, since we were only recently discussing the ripeness of
>> bananas, I had a banana go rotten on me yesterday morning. It was the
>> one on the bottom of a bunch resting on my kitchen counter.
>
>E. Brown on Turner Classic Movies or American Movie Classic the other day.
>Brown played a baseball player who'd invented an improved fire extinguisher.
>Throughout the small bit I watched, he was eating bananas that were mostly
>brown, and he offered bananas to his romantic interest(s), telling her how
>ripe they were. I'd have thrown out bananas as ripe as the ones Brown was
>devouring.
>
>> hole in your kitchen ceiling and insert a hook...
>
>I have a hook mounted beneath on of the wall (upper) cabinets for bananas.
>
>
>>
>
>I have discovered that most women are competent to drill a *small* hole.
>It's the really big holes, the kind that require the ol' brace and bit, or
>the kind I suspect Mr. Riggs dug for himself with the female readers of AUE
>with that last sentence, that require a he-man.
>
>ObAUE: I live near a port that's one of the major ports of entry for
>bananas - both Dole and Chiquita bring bananas through Freeport. The
>bananas arrive in those shipping containers that are lifted off a
>specially-built ship and directly onto tractor trailer rigs. What are those
>shipping containers called?
>
>get, imported from Central America (the local Dole ships shuttle between
>Freeport and, I think, Honduras), are a variety called "Cavendish," popular
>because it holds up well in transit. Do most bananas in European markets
>come from Central America or from Africa, and does anyone know what variety
>they are?
They come from the Caribbean Islands with whom we have a preferential
trade agreement, which the US of A, via the WTO is trying to get
cancelled.
Mike
--
M.J.Powell
Brian J Goggin
<ste...@stenches.nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>You've been sloping off down to Clonakilty again; I can tell, you know.
That's Clonakilty-God-help-us: one teapot in the town and that with no
spout.
bjg
Mark Barratt
>On Mon, 21 May 2001 10:39:15 +0100, Matti Lamprhey wrote:
>
>> "Linz" <li...@REMOVETHISlindsayendell.co.uk> wrote...
>> >
>> > ... I've taken to test-driving new models for diy skills.
>>
>> Linz, I don't think you've really grokked into the diy ethos here,
>> concept-wise...
>
>Oh, I think I have. I use my finely-honed skills and abilities to
>GANMI to do it for me.
Get A Naive Male Idiot? That doesn't seem to work. Go on, tell us, Linz.
Mark Barratt
Oh I agree. Anything more than a foot long takes forever to smoke.
Mark "are you Bogarting that?" Barratt
Mike Oliver
>
> "Luke Fitzgerald" <lu...@pellcomp.co.uk> wrote:
>> When I first worked in shipping I was delighted by references to 'forty-foot
>> reefers'. But I was younger then.
>
> Oh I agree. Anything more than a foot long takes forever to smoke.
I dreamed about a reefer five feet long
A might immense, but not too strong
You'll be high, but not for long
If you're a viper
--Fats Waller
Linz
Get A Nice Man In. The only problem is that some of them require
payment.
Linz
I have a friend who made a three foot long one in the 70s. Suspended
from the ceiling in string loops it took about 20 people and a week to
smoke...
Linz
Here, have you been peeking?
Rudolf
Linz said:
: > >When I first worked in shipping I was delighted by references to
'forty-foot
: > >reefers'. But I was younger then.
: >
: > Oh I agree. Anything more than a foot long takes forever to smoke.
:
: I have a friend who made a three foot long one in the 70s. Suspended
: from the ceiling in string loops it took about 20 people and a week to
: smoke...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003758121800270&rtmo=0KrxrKXq&atmo=rrrrrrrq
&pg=/et/01/5/22/whemp22.html
If you're able to reconstitute this absurdly massive URL in your browser's
address window, you can read about how cars might soon be made out of hemp;
apparently hemp is more suitable for making cars than bananas or coconuts.
Groovy man.
--
rud...@ntlworld.com - Nottingham UK - www.lizardnet.freeserve.co.uk
Mike Barnes
Get a new man in? Get a New Man in? Hard to tell.
--
Mike Barnes
Robert E. Lewis
Rudolf <ta...@face.value> wrote in message
news:yKnO6.10201$m93.1...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> Linz said:
>
> : > >When I first worked in shipping I was delighted by references to
> 'forty-foot
> : > >reefers'. But I was younger then.
> : >
> : > Oh I agree. Anything more than a foot long takes forever to smoke.
> :
> : I have a friend who made a three foot long one in the 70s. Suspended
> : from the ceiling in string loops it took about 20 people and a week to
> : smoke...
>
>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003758121800270&rtmo=0KrxrKXq&atmo=rrrrrrrq
> &pg=/et/01/5/22/whemp22.html
>
> If you're able to reconstitute this absurdly massive URL in your browser's
> address window, you can read about how cars might soon be made out of
hemp;
> apparently hemp is more suitable for making cars than bananas or coconuts.
Yes, I would think it's quite diffficult to make a banana or a coconut out
of hemp.
As for building cars out of hemp, I'd suggest something along the lines of
the late lamented and easily flammable Ford Pinto.
Once, while stuck in a traffic jam on the 610-West Loop in Houston (near the
Westheimer/Galleria exit - people who've driven in Houston will likely be
familiar with that traffic mess), I watched the man in the car next to me
rolling a joint as he drove (albeit driving very slowly). The spectre of a
hemp automobile gives me visions of frustrated commuters scraping bits off
their dashboards for a quick buzz.
Would drivers of hemp cars who refused to carpool be accused of bogarting
their automobiles?
And isn't hemp more suited to vehicles for mass transit than for individual
cars? I am imagining a Canni-bus, with bus tokens.
> Groovy man.
Far out.
Robert
(under the influence of nothing stronger than a Dr. Pepper.)
Linz
Oh, I'm getting one of those anyway.
Rowan Dingle
>On Tue, 22 May 2001 08:39:55 +0100, Mike Barnes wrote:
>> In alt.usage.english, Mark Barratt <mark.b...@chello.be> wrote
>> >Linz <li...@REMOVETHISlindsayendell.co.uk> wrote:
>> >>Oh, I think I have. I use my finely-honed skills and abilities to
>> >>GANMI to do it for me.
>> >
>> >Get A Naive Male Idiot? That doesn't seem to work. Go on, tell us, Linz.
>>
>> Get a new man in? Get a New Man in? Hard to tell.
>
>Oh, I'm getting one of those anyway.
Are Little Men redundant then, in your parts?
--
Rowan Dingle
Laura F Spira
Having misread the final word, I was going to accuse Rowan of being
rather cheeky, to say the least. Having reread it, I still think he's
lowering the tone a bit. Even with the benefit of the doubt, I reckon
he's being sizeist.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
N.Mitchum
----
> > > Linz, I don't think you've really grokked into the diy ethos here,
> > > concept-wise...
>
>
> Here, have you been peeking?
Gentlemen never peek. Well ... almost never.
----NM
Peter Moylan
>Wanted: boyfriend or other male friend to do jobs around the house...
>
>Nope, easier to do it myself, I think, having seen the mess soon-to-be
>ex-husband and his friend made of putting up picture hooks and a new
>light fitting.
ObUsage: my first wife became my ex-wife, in my opinion, on the very
day we started living separately. We didn't get divorced until about
three years later. No point, really. It didn't make any practical
difference except for the freedom to re-marry -- a mixed blessing,
as it turned out -- so I just didn't bother going through the
formalities. Oh, it was necessary to go to court, fairly early in
the piece, to get myself screwed financially, but that was a separate
operation from the divorce.
The way I see it, he's not your soon-to-be ex, he's already
your ex.
>--
>It's not the despair, I can stand the despair. It's the hope.
Hang on to that despair. Once the hope sets in you're at risk of
doing something stupid.
--
Peter Moylan pe...@ee.newcastle.edu.au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au
Kathy K
>On Tue, 22 May 2001 00:02:00 GMT, Mark Barratt wrote:
>
>> Linz <li...@REMOVETHISlindsayendell.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> >On Mon, 21 May 2001 10:39:15 +0100, Matti Lamprhey wrote:
>
>> >> Linz, I don't think you've really grokked into the diy ethos here,
>> >> concept-wise...
>> >
>> >Oh, I think I have. I use my finely-honed skills and abilities to
>> >GANMI to do it for me.
>>
>> Get A Naive Male Idiot? That doesn't seem to work. Go on, tell us, Linz.
>
>Get A Nice Man In. The only problem is that some of them require
>payment.
My momma says:
"If he requires payment... he's not a nice man." (YMMV)
Regards,
Kathy
Excuses are the tools of the incompetent. They build monuments to nothingness. Those that excel at them, rarely excel at anything else.
(to e-mail me, cure the memory problem)
Rowan Dingle
'Cheeky? Lowering the tone? Being sizeist?' quibble the querulous
echoes.
If one accused Finbar Saunders of such things he would turn the other
cheek, he would let one off. Fortunately for you, madam, I am of a less
colicky disposition.
--
Rowan Dingle
Linz
No, in major demand, which is why I can't get one in. I'll have to
make do with a NiceMan.
Simon R. Hughes
You might just have to become a lesbian in that case, Linz. There are
no nice men.
--
Simon R. Hughes -- http://www.geocities.com/a57998/subconscious/
Robert E. Lewis
Simon R. Hughes <shu...@tromso.online.no> wrote in message
news:MPG.157b8064a...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...
Sure there are, but they're all gay.
Charles Riggs
<shu...@tromso.online.no> wrote:
>Thus Spake Linz:
>> No, in major demand, which is why I can't get one in. I'll have to
>> make do with a NiceMan.
>
>You might just have to become a lesbian in that case, Linz. There are
>no nice men.
How about me?
Charles Riggs
Tsippi Jelingold
news:m6l3htogoktma1kck...@4ax.com...
Somehow I can't picture you as a lesbian, Charles. It isn't quite *you*.
Regards, Tsippi Jelingold
--
This sig is under construction, please come back later.
I apologize for the inconvenience.
Charles Riggs
<tsi...@netvision.net.il> wrote:
>"Charles Riggs" <chr...@gofree.indigo.ie> ??? ??????
>news:m6l3htogoktma1kck...@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 27 May 2001 23:52:40 +0200, Simon R. Hughes
>> <shu...@tromso.online.no> wrote:
>>
>> >Thus Spake Linz:
>>
>> >> No, in major demand, which is why I can't get one in. I'll have to
>> >> make do with a NiceMan.
>> >
>> >You might just have to become a lesbian in that case, Linz. There are
>> >no nice men.
>>
>> How about me?
>
>Somehow I can't picture you as a lesbian, Charles. It isn't quite *you*.
Not quite but I certainly can't blame any woman for being a lesbian;
woman are so much more appealing. Several regulars have hinted though
that I have lesbian tendencies in that I enjoy cooking and the arts,
prefer cats to dogs, and detest hunting.
Charles Riggs
Linz
Either my standards have dropped or I've got lucky.
Stephen Toogood
<chr...@gofree.indigo.ie> writes
(Don't worry Charles, I won't force you to go hunting.)
--
Stephen Toogood
Tsippi Jelingold
> woman are so much more appealing. Several regulars have hinted though
> that I have lesbian tendencies in that I enjoy cooking and the arts,
> prefer cats to dogs, and detest hunting.
Cats are the world's natural aristocrats. No monarch has ever managed to
look as regal as a scruffy alley cat washing itself on top of a trash
bin.
Being a commoner myself, I enjoy looking at cats but prefer dogs.
Regards, Tsippi Jelingold
--
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Peter Moylan
The usual description, I believe, is "a lesbian trapped in a man's body".
M. Ranjit Mathews
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003758121800270&rtmo=0KrxrKXq&atmo=rrrrrrrq
> &pg=/et/01/5/22/whemp22.html
>
> If you're able to reconstitute this absurdly massive URL in your browser's
> address window, you can read about how cars might soon be made out of hemp;
> apparently hemp is more suitable for making cars than bananas or coconuts.
Is it known whether cars made thus go to pot prematurely?
> Groovy man.
That looks like ancient slang. Slang evolved quite rapidly when I was
in school. Within a span of a few years, "groovy dame" gave way to
"sexy chick" which in turn gave way to "far out broad". India was a
conservative place at the time and I was aquainted with people who
used such slang only for a few years, so I don't know what terms
replaced these.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> "Charles Riggs" <chr...@gofree.indigo.ie> ??? ??????
> > Not quite but I certainly can't blame any woman for being a lesbian;
> > woman are so much more appealing. Several regulars have hinted though
> > that I have lesbian tendencies in that I enjoy cooking and the arts,
> > prefer cats to dogs, and detest hunting.
>
> Cats are the world's natural aristocrats. No monarch has ever managed to
> look as regal as a scruffy alley cat washing itself on top of a trash
> bin. Being a commoner myself, I enjoy looking at cats but prefer dogs.
I have a most curious story to relate. Our dog Caesar was the terror
of cats. We had many cats, all of which would hiss at him and jump
onto the tallest piece of furniture they could find when he happened
on them. Then, we got a kitten that we named Njori (nj being pronouced
like the gn in "filet mignon"). I'll be darned if Njori didn't have
the temperament of a dog. She and Caesar got along like ham and eggs.
Caesar would nibble at her teasingly and she would mew and walk away
or roll over and let him tease her some more. She'd also lick us
affectionately, which none of our other cats ever did. We were most
distraught when she disappeared one day never to be seen again. One
occasionally saw gypsies (I don't know that they're related to
European gypsies) eat cats; the thought that she might have met such a
fate was far from pleasant.
> Regards, Tsippi Jelingold
Richard Fontana
> "Rudolf" <ta...@face.value> wrote in message news:<yKnO6.10201$m93.1...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>...
>
> > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003758121800270&rtmo=0KrxrKXq&atmo=rrrrrrrq
> > &pg=/et/01/5/22/whemp22.html
> >
> > If you're able to reconstitute this absurdly massive URL in your browser's
> > address window, you can read about how cars might soon be made out of hemp;
> > apparently hemp is more suitable for making cars than bananas or coconuts.
>
> Is it known whether cars made thus go to pot prematurely?
>
> > Groovy man.
> That looks like ancient slang.
"Groovy" (and certainly "Groovy man") should be associated with late 1960s
youth culture (thus fitting the references to hemp/pot here).
> Slang evolved quite rapidly when I was
> in school. Within a span of a few years, "groovy dame" gave way to
> "sexy chick" which in turn gave way to "far out broad".
"Groovy dame" and "far out broad" are completely bizarre because they both
combine slang associated with different eras. "Groovy", as I've said,
and "far out" are both associated with the 1960s youth
culture. "Dame" and "broad", however, are associated with, I
would say (at least from today's perspective), the 1930s and
1940s. "Chick" to me has some late 1940s/1950s associations (like "cool",
"chick" was consciously employed as retro-slang on the 1950s-set nostalgia
sitcom _Happy Days_ during the 1970s). "Sexy" has always been a square
term, I think. I'm surprised it's survived.
> India was a
> conservative place at the time and I was aquainted with people who
> used such slang only for a few years, so I don't know what terms
> replaced these.
Maybe "Swell shorty"?
M. Ranjit Mathews
> On 30 May 2001, M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> "Dame" and "broad", however, are associated with, I would say (at least
> from today's perspective), the 1930s and 1940s.
Really? "South Pacific" was a musical that came much later than that
(50s?) and had a song "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" which had a line,
"she's broad where a broad should be broad". Hmm, perhaps it was
because the story was set in the 40s.
> "Chick" to me has some late 1940s/1950s associations (like "cool",
I remember "cool" from the 70s and bell bottoms in the late 70s.
Skitt
"M. Ranjit Mathews" <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1d4c67e3.01053...@posting.google.com...
I wore bell-bottoms in the late sixties; well, flared slacks, anyway. That
was the era of medallions and Nehru jackets. I broke the ground with the
latter two at Boeing in Seattle.
--
Skitt (in SF Bay Area) http://i.am/skitt/
I speak English well -- I learn it from a book!
-- Manuel of "Fawlty Towers" (he's from Barcelona).
Richard Fontana
> Richard Fontana <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.21.010531...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu>...
> > On 30 May 2001, M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> > "Dame" and "broad", however, are associated with, I would say (at least
> > from today's perspective), the 1930s and 1940s.
>
> Really? "South Pacific" was a musical that came much later than that
> (50s?) and had a song "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" which had a line,
> "she's broad where a broad should be broad". Hmm, perhaps it was
> because the story was set in the 40s.
Sources on the Web state that _South Pacific_ opened on Broadway in 1949.
> > "Chick" to me has some late 1940s/1950s associations (like "cool",
>
> I remember "cool" from the 70s and bell bottoms in the late 70s.
Apparently bell-bottoms were first popularized in the 1940s, in the form
of Navy surplus. I remember "cool" from the '70s, but only on _Happy
Days_, generally from the Fonz. I think I wore some things in the '70s
that might be considered bell-bottoms today, or bell-bottom-influenced
anyway.
Richard Fontana
> I wore bell-bottoms in the late sixties; well, flared slacks, anyway. That
> was the era of medallions and Nehru jackets. I broke the ground with the
> latter two at Boeing in Seattle.
I recall reading an interesting obituary in the early 1990s for the man
who had won the right to be in an office building elevator in
"shirt-sleeves" back in the 1940s.
Robert Lieblich
>
> Richard Fontana <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.21.010531...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu>...
> > On 30 May 2001, M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> > "Dame" and "broad", however, are associated with, I would say (at least
> > from today's perspective), the 1930s and 1940s.
>
> Really? "South Pacific" was a musical that came much later than that
> (50s?) and had a song "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" which had a line,
> "she's broad where a broad should be broad".
The latter line was part of the verse (intro) to the song
"Honeybun." The song itself, and the manner in which it was
performed, require descriptive skills far greater than mine.
> Hmm, perhaps it was because the story was set in the 40s.
Makes sense to me. And, as RF posted, the show debuted in 1949.
"Broad" and "dame" lingered well past the 40s. Sinatra was
squeezing mileage out of them in the 70s and even the 80s (and
probably the 90s, although by then I was paying no attention),
although there was a strong aroma of nostalgia emanating from them
in the later years.
>
> > "Chick" to me has some late 1940s/1950s associations (like "cool",
>
> I remember "cool" from the 70s and bell bottoms in the late 70s.
"Cool" is prominent in *West Side Story*, which premiered on
Broadway in 1957. I personally can recall it in that sense from as
far back as the late 40s. "Chick" also goes back about that far for
me.
Robert Lipton
Skitt wrote:
>
> > Really? "South Pacific" was a musical that came much later than that
> > (50s?) and had a song "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" which had a line,
> > "she's broad where a broad should be broad". Hmm, perhaps it was
> > because the story was set in the 40s.
The musical SOUTH PACIFIC opened at the Majestic Theatre on April 7,
1949 and ran for 1925 performances. It starred Mary Martin and Ezio
Pinza.
The musical was based on James Michener's TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC.
R&H produced and offered him points, but he didn't have the money to
spare, so they lent it to him.
Bob
Skitt
"Robert Lipton" <bobl...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3B16D092...@earthlink.net...
>
>
> Skitt wrote:
> >
> > > Really? "South Pacific" was a musical that came much later than that
> > > (50s?) and had a song "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" which had a line,
> > > "she's broad where a broad should be broad". Hmm, perhaps it was
> > > because the story was set in the 40s.
No, I didn't write that.
Mark Barratt
[ SOUTH PACIFIC ]
>
>The musical was based on James Michener's TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC.
>R&H produced and offered him points, but he didn't have the money to
>spare, so they lent it to him.
Could somebody decode this for me? I read it several times, then gave
up. "R&H" is presumably Rogers & Hammerstein, but after that I'm lost.
Mark Barratt
>"M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
>> I remember "cool" from the 70s and bell bottoms in the late 70s.
>
>"Cool" is prominent in *West Side Story*, which premiered on
>Broadway in 1957. I personally can recall it in that sense from as
>far back as the late 40s. "Chick" also goes back about that far for
>me.
"Cool" seems to have been adopted in Britain (or at least in that part
of southern England that I frequent) during the '90s. It certainly
wasn't in my active vocabulary as a teenager in the '70s, although I
remember it (just as the Americans have reported) being a fad when
"Happy Days" became popular (about '79?).
I first noticed it being used by a later generation in about 1989, I
would guess. Now I have cousins/nephews of ages from 4 to 19 who all use
the word "cool" as a sign of appreciation. I remember smiling when I
heard it from the youngest of these, well before his third birthday.
Richard Fontana
> "Cool" is prominent in *West Side Story*, which premiered on
> Broadway in 1957.
Very interesting. Of course by that time a related usage had come to be
associated with a certain style of jazz.
> I personally can recall it in that sense from as
> far back as the late 40s. "Chick" also goes back about that far for
> me.
My mother informed me that when she was a middle-school-aged teenager
(late 1940s) she belonged to a group of female friends that called
themselves "the Slick Chicks".
Richard Fontana
> Robert Lieblich <lieb...@erols.com> wrote:
>
> >"Cool" is prominent in *West Side Story*, which premiered on
> >Broadway in 1957. I personally can recall it in that sense from as
> >far back as the late 40s.
>
> "Cool" seems to have been adopted in Britain (or at least in that part
> of southern England that I frequent) during the '90s. It certainly
> wasn't in my active vocabulary as a teenager in the '70s, although I
> remember it (just as the Americans have reported) being a fad when
> "Happy Days" became popular (about '79?).
Let's be clear: I think I'm the only American who has theorized, or who
has had the courage to theorize, a connection between _Happy Days_ and the
modern popularity of "cool". Every American I've mentioned this to --
particularly members of the critical generation, so-called "Generation
X"ers -- thinks it's ridiculous, but I think it's because today people
don't like to admit to having watched _Happy Days_ and, especially, having
idolized "The Fonz", who is very much not the sort of cultural figure that
would be popular in the contemporary US. And yet there's no denying that
_Happy Days_ was, during its mid-to-late 1970s run, one of the most
popular American television shows of all time, and it was particularly
popular among pre-teen viewers of that era. In fairness, I think the
1950s revivalism which was responsible for all sorts of
popular culture developments during the 1970s -- beginning with
Sha-Na-Na's appearance at Woodstock in 1969, encompassing artistic works
as varied as _American Graffiti_, _Grease_, and the early punk rock albums
by revolutionary back-to-basics aestheticians the Ramones, and culminating
in the electoral victory of Ronald Reagan's nostalgia-laden brand of
cold-war conservatism in 1980, is a bit difficult for people today
(even those who were around back then) to comprehend.
> I first noticed it being used by a later generation in about 1989, I
> would guess.
I don't even remember it being a fad during _Happy Days_'s heyday, though
it was well-known as a word associated with the then-popular Fonzie. But
I think your 1989 date is not inconsistent with my observations and
research. My own recollections are as follows:
Prior to 1982: "cool" never used except in reference to Fonzie (or Kool
'n' the Gang, etc.), and even then usage was rare and jocular
Summer 1982: I heard an older male teenager (about 16?), typical suburban
longish-hair electric guitar-playing Foreigner/Def Leppard wannabe of that
era, say "That's not cool", meaning "I do not consider that to be a good
thing".
1982-1984: "cool" never used, but fraternal reports of a self-consciously
jocular usage "cool beans" in college slang are made no later than this
time (but possibly as early as late 1980).
1985: Female friend, 16, sophisticated hipster, describes a third party
as "a cool guy".
1986: Female friend, 15 or 16, semihipster, writes in
my yearbook: "You seem like a cool guy". (Seem?!)
1987: A freshman female student at college, the product of a private
boarding school education, says that I'm "supposed to be a cool
guy". (Supposed?!)
1988-1989: Uncertain. Probably limited use of expressions of enthusiasm
"That's so cool!" observed, mixed gender use. (During this era, the
exclamatory usage I noted was "Sweet!", not "Cool!".)
1990: The *parents* (baby boomers) of a 20-year-old college student
self-consciously use "cool" in talking to some college friends of hers,
but in the "That's really cool" usage. The 21/22-year-old listeners later
comment on how strange and awkward it sounded -- especially since the
listeners themselves never, or hardly ever, would use the word
"cool"; conclusion: the 20-year-old daughter (who was not present) used
the word "cool" frequently.
1991- : Probably only during this era is the exclamatory "Cool!" first
noted in wide use. Explosion in use of "cool", especially exclamatory
"cool!", at least in mainstream popular media. Exaggeration of
contemporary national (PPS, RAPWN, RES, etc.) vowel shift of /u/
manifested in enthusiastic re-spelling "kewl".[1] Exclamatory
"cool!" noted even in the speech of very young children. Use by adults
gets out of control and utterly pathetic. Failure of younger adolescent
generation (Generation Y) to come up with a viable rebellious alternative,
for which they will be remembered.
2000- "cool" becomes equivalent of "swell" circa 1955.
[1]Cf. this comment in MW's pronunciation guide (with \u\ used in place of
the original's u-diaeresis):
"Younger speakers of American English often use a more
centralized and less rounded pronunciation of \u\ in certain words (as
news and musician), both in stressed and especially in unstressed
syllables."
Charles Riggs
<rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>I don't even remember it being a fad during _Happy Days_'s heyday, though
>it was well-known as a word associated with the then-popular Fonzie. But
>I think your 1989 date is not inconsistent with my observations and
>research. My own recollections are as follows:
[...]
In this instance I'll have to follow the advice of my movie and arts
eschewing friend in Limerick by thinking that reference to a reliable
book on the subject of "cool" is better than trying to rely on our
memories of when the word first appeared. The OED has this to say
about its origins:
"1948 New Yorker 3 July 28 The bebop people have a language of their
own.+ Their expressions of approval include ‘cool’! 1953 Time 14
Sept. 68/3 The latest Tin Pan Alley argot, where ‘cool’ means good,
‘crazy’ means wonderful. 1955 N.Y. Times 22 May vi. 19/2 Maybe it's
all these new buildings breeding more of these cool Brooks Brothers
cats. 1955 Sci. News Let. 1 Oct. 221/2 This is not cool chatter
between some young hep-cats in a smoke-filled jazz joint. 1957 Sunday
Mail (Glasgow) 10 Feb. 11 Gone—the best, in the top rung, the coolest.
1958 Observer 23 Nov. 16/3 On one side was the frenetic+bumptiousness
of the rock-'n'-rollers, on the other the calculated indifference of
the cool cats. 1959 Ibid. 25 Oct. 29/8 They got long, sloppy haircuts
and wide knot ties and no-press suits with fat lapels. Very cool. "
It goes back a little further than that, to 1947, if you want to
consider "cool" as in cool jazz, as opposed to hot jazz, to mean
roughly the same thing. It came from the world of jazz musicians; I
think we can be pretty sure of that.
Charles Riggs
Charles Riggs
>On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Mark Barratt wrote:
>
>> Robert Lieblich <lieb...@erols.com> wrote:
>>
>> >"Cool" is prominent in *West Side Story*, which premiered on
>> >Broadway in 1957. I personally can recall it in that sense from as
>> >far back as the late 40s.
You've got it.
>> "Cool" seems to have been adopted in Britain (or at least in that part
>> of southern England that I frequent) during the '90s. It certainly
>> wasn't in my active vocabulary as a teenager in the '70s, although I
>> remember it (just as the Americans have reported) being a fad when
>> "Happy Days" became popular (about '79?).
It goes back, in Britain, to at least 1957.
Charles Riggs
M. Ranjit Mathews
> > "Cool" is prominent in *West Side Story*, which premiered on
> > Broadway in 1957.
"Cool", as I recall its usage, was used to describe parents or
guardians who were permissive (i.e., not ultra-strict).
> My mother informed me that when she was a middle-school-aged teenager
> (late 1940s) she belonged to a group of female friends that called
> themselves "the Slick Chicks".
Slick gives me the impression of unctuousness. I presume that slick
meant trendy rather than cunning. Now, I remember what followed "far
out broad". It was "deadly female", with deadly signifying looks one
would die/kill for. The Woodstock phenomenon caught up with us only
after the Concert for Bangladesh. After Woodstock, we were still
listening to pop and rock n' roll; we discovered Woodstock
retroactively after the Concert for Bangladesh, which 3 album set some
of my generation bought just to be patriotic and contribute to the
refugees from Bangladesh. After the records from this concert caught
on, Woodstock also caught on, and jeans with patches and bell bottoms.
Unfortunately, drugs also caught on - I have 3 cousins who turned on,
tuned in and dropped out and 2 of them remain dropped out a 1/4
century later, one of them having been an ace student till he turned
on. These phenomena were only in certain circles, mind you.
Richard Fontana
> Richard Fontana <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.21.010531...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu>...
> > On Thu, 31 May 2001, Robert Lieblich wrote:
> > > "Cool" is prominent in *West Side Story*, which premiered on
> > > Broadway in 1957.
>
> "Cool", as I recall its usage, was used to describe parents or
> guardians who were permissive (i.e., not ultra-strict).
Ah, thanks for reminding me of something that I should have put in my
chronology:
1987 (Fall): 18-year-old woman (college freshman) is heard in dormitory
hall crying angrily to her parents on the phone: "I told everyone
here you guys were so cool!"
I don't know how I could have forgotten that one.
> > My mother informed me that when she was a middle-school-aged teenager
> > (late 1940s) she belonged to a group of female friends that called
> > themselves "the Slick Chicks".
>
> Slick gives me the impression of unctuousness.
That's one usage. For example, an Arkansan journalist critic of Bill
Clinton dubbed him "Slick Willie".
> I presume that slick
> meant trendy rather than cunning.
I think so. Like "cool" I think. I also remember that my sister's
boyfriend back around 1978-1980, 18-19 years old at the time, used to use
"slick" to describe music that he found especially favorable
("_Parallel Lines_ is a slick album!"). And I think he used "Slick!" as
an exclamation much as people today say "Cool!" (or "Kewl!"). Might've
been an idiosyncrasy, though. I've noticed also that some people (only
men, I think) will use "Slick" as a term of address, sort of like "Big
Guy". "Hey, Slick!".
> Now, I remember what followed "far
> out broad". It was "deadly female", with deadly signifying looks one
> would die/kill for. The Woodstock phenomenon caught up with us only
> after the Concert for Bangladesh.
Ah yes, former Beatle George Harrison had some involvement in that as I
recall. I think the usual meaning of "far out" was just "excellent,
extraordinary, very good indeed". But it was, I think, often used as an
exclamation.
> After Woodstock, we were still
> listening to pop and rock n' roll; we discovered Woodstock
> retroactively after the Concert for Bangladesh, which 3 album set some
> of my generation bought just to be patriotic and contribute to the
> refugees from Bangladesh.
So by "rock 'n' roll" I suppose you mean the early "rock 'n' roll" of the
late '50s and early '60s? That's fairly consistent with my usage. "Rock
'n' roll" strongly implies pre-British Invasion and is probably not
properly applied to any post-1965 music (other than stylistically
retrograde musics[*]). That's a whole topic in itself though.
*There again is the matter of Sha Na Na's appearance at Woodstock,
but let's ignore that.
> After the records from this concert caught
> on, Woodstock also caught on, and jeans with patches and bell bottoms.
> Unfortunately, drugs also caught on - I have 3 cousins who turned on,
> tuned in and dropped out and 2 of them remain dropped out a 1/4
> century later, one of them having been an ace student till he turned
> on. These phenomena were only in certain circles, mind you.
I hear ya.
Richard Fontana
Sure. But was it used constantly, with constant frequency and currency,
from 1957 to the present, or was there a lull, a period of temporary
extinction? That, sir, is the question.
Richard Fontana
Of course. I'm not interested in the origins; I'm interested in the
history. I know it goes back at least to the 1930s; Donna Richoux
provided an authoritative citation once. I'm talking about the post-1950s
history of the word. It's here that the OED becomes useless. Even if
they did have up-to-date citations, they don't have any information on the
history of frequency of usage during the past several decades.
Perhaps there was a slow but steady increase in usage beginning
in the mid-1970s -- or maybe not till the early 1980s -- after a decade or
two of dormancy.
R J Valentine
...
} 1986: Female friend, 15 or 16, semihipster, writes in
} my yearbook: "You seem like a cool guy". (Seem?!)
} 1987: A freshman female student at college, the product of a private
} boarding school education, says that I'm "supposed to be a cool
} guy". (Supposed?!)
Oh, man! The kiss of death! Perceived Cool!
The only time I can recall being referred to as "cool" was back in 1968 or
so when we stopped in at the house of a friend of my wife's, and they
happened to have other guests already there, one of whom became visibly
agitated when I came into the room (I think I had a suit on) until the
host quietly said "He's cool," which I took to mean something like "If
you're carrying some controlled substance, he's not here to arrest you;
but you might want to think about keeping it in your pocket while he's
here."
I think by the early sixties, the use in the sense of being fashionable
was already dying down, and it may well be _Happy Days_ that brought it
back, if not _Fast Times at Ridgemont High_.
The word "cool" was used a few times in the characterization blurbs
printed with the pictures for the senior class a year ahead of mine, but I
didn't see any in my class (1961).
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@smart.net>
Charles Riggs
<rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Charles Riggs wrote:
>> It goes back a little further than that, to 1947, if you want to
>> consider "cool" as in cool jazz, as opposed to hot jazz, to mean
>> roughly the same thing. It came from the world of jazz musicians; I
>> think we can be pretty sure of that.
>
>Of course. I'm not interested in the origins; I'm interested in the
>history.
Excuse me. I was trying to be helpful.
>I know it goes back at least to the 1930s; Donna Richoux
>provided an authoritative citation once.
Then you're claiming the OED missed the pre-1948 references to the
word?
>I'm talking about the post-1950s
>history of the word. It's here that the OED becomes useless. Even if
>they did have up-to-date citations, they don't have any information on the
>history of frequency of usage during the past several decades.
>Perhaps there was a slow but steady increase in usage beginning
>in the mid-1970s -- or maybe not till the early 1980s -- after a decade or
>two of dormancy.
Probably so.
Charles Riggs
R H Draney
> On 31 May 2001, M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
>
> > Richard Fontana <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote in message
news:<Pine.GSO.4.21.010531...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu>...
>
> >
> > I remember "cool" from the 70s and bell bottoms in the late 70s.
>
> Apparently bell-bottoms were first popularized in the 1940s, in the form
> of Navy surplus. I remember "cool" from the '70s, but only on _Happy
> Days_, generally from the Fonz. I think I wore some things in the '70s
> that might be considered bell-bottoms today, or bell-bottom-influenced
> anyway.
By the early 70s, "cool", while still in use, was beginning to sound a
little dated...it was then in the process of being eclipsed by "far out",
which lasted until almost the middle of the decade, championed mainly by
Greg Brady and later, John Denver....
("Groovy", already past what little prime it had by this time, was never
really popular except with people twenty years older than those who were
supposedly using it...it turned up in a lot of "Dragnet" scripts)....
Around 1970, I remember the range of styles available in the Sears
catalog...you could get "tapered", "straight-leg", "flare", "bell-bottom"
and "elephant bells"...it was also possible to wear an orange paisley
polyester shirt in public without causing traffic accidents...fringed suede
vests, beaded headbands, jewelry around the neck consisting of either
strands of small beads or a single pendant on a cord (no gemstones or
precious metals), sandals with soles exhibiting tire-tread, and leather
watchbands up to six inches wide were also part of the uniform...(I probably
wouldn't believe any of this myself if I hadn't actually lived through
it)....r
Richard Fontana
> I think by the early sixties, the use in the sense of being fashionable
> was already dying down, and it may well be _Happy Days_ that brought it
> back, if not _Fast Times at Ridgemont High_.
I must see that movie. It seems to have played an important role in
language evolution. I understand that it helped popularize "dude", for
example.
> The word "cool" was used a few times in the characterization blurbs
> printed with the pictures for the senior class a year ahead of mine, but I
> didn't see any in my class (1961).
On Memorial Day I checked my mother's high school yearbook (1952) but the
signings just use "swell": "Best of luck to a swell girl". My mother
has also told me that in her post-high-school years "crazy" was briefly
popular.
Ah, this is interesting. In my yearbook (1986) there is one printed use
of "coolness", but it is meant to be jocular/ironic: There's a double
list of "What's Fresh / What's Stale", and the introduction says:
======
Having trouble deciding what's hot and what's not? Still think Mousse has
antlers? Looking for guidelines to help you realize your *true* coolness
potential? Well, here it is.
======
A few of the interesting pairs:
==========
What's Fresh What's Stale
Ballroom Dancing Break Dancing
Southern Accents Brooklyn Accents
_Weekly World News_ The _Enquirer_
Marlboro Lights Cloves
Leather Jackets Denim Jackets
Relationships "Seeing Someone"
AIDS Herpes
Kentucky Nuggets Chicken McNuggets
Tequila State Junior College Harvard
Word Processing Typing
AP's Regents
Ben & Jerry's Haagen-Dazs
David Letterman Johnny Carson
1-2-3 Chug Quarters
The Jackson 5 _Michael_
Crockett and Tubbs Starsky and Hutch
Tofutti David's Cookies
Schwarzenegger Stallone
Fresh/Stale Lists In/Out Lists
========
The word processing/typing is interesting. And note that "denim
jacket", not "jean jacket", was used.
In fairness, "cool" might be mentioned in some of those "stream of
consciousness" ads in the back of the yearbook. I don't have the patience
to go through them, but an initial skimming turned up nothing (one girl
used "chilly", I think in reminiscing about 7th grade).
Richard Fontana
> On Fri, 1 Jun 2001 01:47:14 -0400, Richard Fontana
> <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> >On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Charles Riggs wrote:
>
> >> It goes back a little further than that, to 1947, if you want to
> >> consider "cool" as in cool jazz, as opposed to hot jazz, to mean
> >> roughly the same thing. It came from the world of jazz musicians; I
> >> think we can be pretty sure of that.
> >
> >Of course. I'm not interested in the origins; I'm interested in the
> >history.
>
> Excuse me. I was trying to be helpful.
Thank you. Actually, though, I now do have access to the OED online.
> >I know it goes back at least to the 1930s; Donna Richoux
> >provided an authoritative citation once.
>
> Then you're claiming the OED missed the pre-1948 references to the
> word?
I guess so. Turning to Google's Usenet archive, we find this AUE posting
by Donna Richoux, dated 6 April 1999:
====================
Larry Phillips <lar...@home.com> wrote:
> 'Cool', if I remember correctly, came into vogue in the early to mid 50s
> and was probably spread mosty by the 'Beat Generation'.
The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang supports this.
For example, there is this citation:
1951 New Yorker: Described here and there as the coolest drummer alive
("coolest" being, of course, the current word for "hot" in musical
teminology).
I want to add that this sense of the word is originally Black English
and the earliest citation they give is 1933: "And whut make it so cool,
he got money 'cumulated."
It is listed in 1944 in "Service Slang" -- "cool -- good." So the war,
besides the field of music, appears to have been one opportunity for the
word to spread from the black to the white community.
=============
R H Draney
news:Pine.GSO.4.21.010531...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu...
>
> it was well-known as a word associated with the then-popular Fonzie. But
> I think your 1989 date is not inconsistent with my observations and
> research. My own recollections are as follows:
>
> Prior to 1982: "cool" never used except in reference to Fonzie (or Kool
> 'n' the Gang, etc.), and even then usage was rare and jocular
Out of 23 signatures in my 1975 high-school yearbook (the books came late
and a lot of people had already left town when it came time to get them
signed), two use "cool" in the offhand slang sense...another--a student two
years younger than me--uses "super" (as an adverb!)...(the preceding year's
book has only one "cool", and a residual "far-out")...most of the messages
use pretty standard English...this may reflect on my social circle; an
alarming number also refer to chess....r
Donna Richoux
[re use of "cool"]
> Sure. But was it used constantly, with constant frequency and currency,
> from 1957 to the present, or was there a lull, a period of temporary
> extinction? That, sir, is the question.
Richard, these words could be regional as well as age-related and
circumstance-based. You do know that, right? That certain words might be
used in schools in the Northeast or the South or the Midwest or the West
that never make it to other regions -- but a few of them do continue to
spread.
I heard "cool" in the sense of "good" all of my life (born 1954, raised
in the Calif. Bay Area), without break or hiatus, so the fact that you
never or rarely heard it until 1982 is interesting but not a sign that
no one, anywhere, was saying it. It's a sign to me that your parents and
neighbors and siblings and schoolmates weren't saying it.
I not only heard it from my siblings and contemporaries, I even heard it
occasionally from my parents. They were not "Beatniks" by any stretch of
the imagination, but my mother in particular has always been a big fan
of swing music and I'm certain she picked it up from that as a young
adult.
So all of this together might say something about the influences of
California-born scriptwriters spreading their native tongue eastward, or
something.
Aside: I think it's really, really, cool that my mother and my daughter
and I can (occasionally) all agree that something is "cool." That is
really, really cool.
I suspect when you start off a list by saying, as you did:
Prior to 1982: "cool" never used except in...
you are going to inadvertently cause argument, because some readers will
miss that this "never" was just a record of your own personal
experience.
When I have time, I will look up in RHHDAS and see how they date
citations for "cool" in the period 1960-1985. I suspect there will be
plenty. Oh, all right, I'll look now. 1960 & 1964 -- both in jazz
publications. However, 1973, 1973, 1972-4, 1975, 78, 80, 82, 90, 92 are
all general use, some clearly relate to children or college, some are TV
related.
You could say the early 70s is when the word entered the *youth* culture
(of somewhere) in a big way -- as opposed to the jazz culture, the
servicemen, etc. The baby boom generation. The one I'm at the end of.
No, wait, there's still an error there. The fact that it was
*documented* in the early 70s implies that it was *used* earlier, so
"entered" gives the wrong impression.
Somewhere in those old posts about "cool" is a discussion showing the
very old quotes where "cool" meant various kinds of praise. Like
1880... The horseman smiled and broke the silence
by saying, 'That's ---- cool, anyway.'
Why the century-long spread of "cool"? It might say something about
people's need for a label for the concept that runs, "*I* find this
good, I don't mean what *other* people have traditionally labeled
'good.'" That's the heart of "cool," for me. "Good in my opinion."
A word that has "in my opinion" built into it, saves a lot of arguments.
In my opinion.
Now I see others on this thread speak of "perceived cool" and "supposed
to be cool." I suppose there has always been a tension between the the
individualistic "cool" and the group-determined "cool."
--
Best --- Donna Richoux
M. Ranjit Mathews
> > After Woodstock, we were still
> > listening to pop and rock n' roll; we discovered Woodstock
> > retroactively after the Concert for Bangladesh, which 3 album set some
> > of my generation bought just to be patriotic and contribute to the
> > refugees from Bangladesh.
>
> So by "rock 'n' roll" I suppose you mean the early "rock 'n' roll" of the
> late '50s and early '60s? That's fairly consistent with my usage. "Rock
> 'n' roll" strongly implies pre-British Invasion and is probably not
> properly applied to any post-1965 music (other than stylistically
> retrograde musics[*]).
Perhaps we used the term incorrectly. I don't remember very much
pre-1965 music. "Rock and roll" as I remember it's usage, was a catch
all term for the Beatles and anything else that couldn't be classified
as quite pop, or (hard) rock.
Richard Fontana
> Richard Fontana <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.21.010601...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu>...
>
> > > After Woodstock, we were still
> > > listening to pop and rock n' roll; we discovered Woodstock
> > > retroactively after the Concert for Bangladesh, which 3 album set some
> > > of my generation bought just to be patriotic and contribute to the
> > > refugees from Bangladesh.
> >
> > So by "rock 'n' roll" I suppose you mean the early "rock 'n' roll" of the
> > late '50s and early '60s? That's fairly consistent with my usage. "Rock
> > 'n' roll" strongly implies pre-British Invasion and is probably not
> > properly applied to any post-1965 music (other than stylistically
> > retrograde musics[*]).
>
> Perhaps we used the term incorrectly.
I wouldn't say so. There seem to be different understandings of "rock 'n'
roll", "rock", "pop", etc. out there.
> I don't remember very much
> pre-1965 music. "Rock and roll" as I remember it's usage, was a catch
> all term for the Beatles and anything else that couldn't be classified
> as quite pop, or (hard) rock.
It's a difficult subject. I never had a clear understanding of the proper
compass of "pop", for example, and there doesn't seem to be uniformity in
usage. I'm pretty sure I didn't think of the Beatles' later music as
"rock 'n' roll" in any strong sense, but I probably thought of their
earlier music (which I used to like much less) as more rock-n-roll-ish
(though even it seemed to depart from "rock 'n' roll" for me, which I
think shows how restrictive my understanding of rock 'n' roll
was). "Rock" in particular had a different meaning from "rock 'n'
roll". I'm not sure what the definition of "rock" was, but I'd say it
tended to encompass the sort of stylistic hodgepodge that was played
on FM "rock" music radio stations (which occasionally used the term "rock
'n' roll", but I don't think that's how listeners thought of it) in the
1970s and early 1980s, and by the 1980s this was being referred to as
"classic rock". I never had a very clear sense of what "hard rock" was,
except that it was the opposite of soft rock. But I see in your statement
above that you seem to have three categories yourself: pop, "rock" (or
"hard rock"), and "rock 'n' roll", so perhaps you have some sense of what
my distinctions were.
Richard Fontana
> Richard Fontana <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> [re use of "cool"]
>
> > Sure. But was it used constantly, with constant frequency and currency,
> > from 1957 to the present, or was there a lull, a period of temporary
> > extinction? That, sir, is the question.
>
> Richard, these words could be regional as well as age-related and
> circumstance-based. You do know that, right?
Yeah.
> That certain words might be
> used in schools in the Northeast or the South or the Midwest or the West
> that never make it to other regions -- but a few of them do continue to
> spread.
Yeah.
> I heard "cool" in the sense of "good" all of my life (born 1954, raised
> in the Calif. Bay Area), without break or hiatus, so the fact that you
> never or rarely heard it until 1982 is interesting but not a sign that
> no one, anywhere, was saying it. It's a sign to me that your parents and
> neighbors and siblings and schoolmates weren't saying it.
Yes.
> I not only heard it from my siblings and contemporaries, I even heard it
> occasionally from my parents. They were not "Beatniks" by any stretch of
> the imagination, but my mother in particular has always been a big fan
> of swing music and I'm certain she picked it up from that as a young
> adult.
>
> So all of this together might say something about the influences of
> California-born scriptwriters spreading their native tongue eastward, or
> something.
If they were California-born. I would guess offhand that most
scriptwriters, in general, are/were not born or raised in California.
> Aside: I think it's really, really, cool that my mother and my daughter
> and I can (occasionally) all agree that something is "cool." That is
> really, really cool.
Yeah.
> I suspect when you start off a list by saying, as you did:
>
> Prior to 1982: "cool" never used except in...
>
> you are going to inadvertently cause argument, because some readers will
> miss that this "never" was just a record of your own personal
> experience.
True.
> When I have time, I will look up in RHHDAS and see how they date
> citations for "cool" in the period 1960-1985. I suspect there will be
> plenty. Oh, all right, I'll look now. 1960 & 1964 -- both in jazz
> publications. However, 1973, 1973, 1972-4, 1975, 78, 80, 82, 90, 92 are
> all general use, some clearly relate to children or college, some are TV
> related.
Still, the people who collect citations presumably don't try to document
the *pace* at which a word is getting picked up. I'm not sure they really
could do that (you probably could do that if all documents were available
in an electronic textual corpus). I get the sense that these professional
citation-gatherers love to read really obscure publications, hoping to
catch some very early use of a word that later became popular. This would
have an effect on the nature of the citations collected in such
dictionaries; there's bound to be something misleading in it. I'm
currently subscribed to that ADS mailing list, and the postings are in 99%
of the cases people who are reading through obscure menus from Chinese
restaurants in 1901 hoping to find the earliest use of "kung pao chicken".
> You could say the early 70s is when the word entered the *youth* culture
> (of somewhere) in a big way -- as opposed to the jazz culture, the
> servicemen, etc. The baby boom generation. The one I'm at the end of.
I'm not saying that. I'm contending that *some* people seemed to think
that "cool" enters general white American middle-class youth culture in
the 1950s (among the oldest baby boomers, or the youngest members of the
generation that preceded it). It must be the case that for some people
there was a perception that "cool" died out during the 1960s, with the
middle tier of the baby boomers coming of age. I'm sure that "cool" was
being used continuously in certain regional and social
subcultures. Though I do not think the usage just stayed the same. As
I've said, the "Weak Version" of my theory is that "Cool!", the
excalamation, is more recent than adjectival usages. The Strong Version
of my theory is that *adjective* "cool" only really is
accepted by *general* American youth culture by 1985. I don't see how
anyone can deny that the usage of "cool" has increased from whatever it
was in 1957, 1967, or 1977, to the present day, whether or not there was
mainly continuity or discontinuity during that entire era. But this is
something that OED and RH can't help us with. You really need a time
machine.
> No, wait, there's still an error there. The fact that it was
> *documented* in the early 70s implies that it was *used* earlier, so
> "entered" gives the wrong impression.
> Why the century-long spread of "cool"? It might say something about
> people's need for a label for the concept that runs, "*I* find this
> good, I don't mean what *other* people have traditionally labeled
> 'good.'" That's the heart of "cool," for me. "Good in my opinion."
For me that isn't the heart. The heart of "cool" is "sufficiently
admirable to those who have power in particular social settings involving
young people". Granted, it's gotten much broader. I don't even make a
connection between the jazz "cool" and the modern "cool", in some sense.
> A word that has "in my opinion" built into it, saves a lot of arguments.
> In my opinion.
One of the important features of my recollections about "cool" is that I
first noticed it being used by people who were, in some sense, arrogant
about their own perceived high social standing. Only those who thought
that *they* were cool used cool. What changed later on was that everyone
started using it. Even the dweebiest, most insecure, geekiest and
nerdiest people today use "cool" just as much as the popular people. That
is what has changed. Usage of "Cool" used to be a status marker among
young people; it no longer is.
> Now I see others on this thread speak of "perceived cool" and "supposed
> to be cool." I suppose there has always been a tension between the the
> individualistic "cool" and the group-determined "cool."
That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>Let's be clear: I think I'm the only American who has theorized, or who
>has had the courage to theorize, a connection between _Happy Days_ and the
>modern popularity of "cool". Every American I've mentioned this to --
>particularly members of the critical generation, so-called "Generation
>X"ers -- thinks it's ridiculous, but I think it's because today people
>don't like to admit to having watched _Happy Days_ and, especially, having
>idolized "The Fonz", who is very much not the sort of cultural figure that
>would be popular in the contemporary US. And yet there's no denying that
>_Happy Days_ was, during its mid-to-late 1970s run, one of the most
>popular American television shows of all time, and it was particularly
>popular among pre-teen viewers of that era. In fairness, I think the
>1950s revivalism which was responsible for all sorts of
>popular culture developments during the 1970s -- beginning with
>Sha-Na-Na's appearance at Woodstock in 1969, encompassing artistic works
>as varied as _American Graffiti_, _Grease_, and the early punk rock albums
>by revolutionary back-to-basics aestheticians the Ramones, and culminating
>in the electoral victory of Ronald Reagan's nostalgia-laden brand of
>cold-war conservatism in 1980, is a bit difficult for people today
>(even those who were around back then) to comprehend.
I first heard it in the 1950s, referring to cool jazz as opposed to hot jazz.
Not being a jazz fan in those days, I never used it myself, though I had an
idea of what it meant.
In July 1960 I went to a student conference where an Anglican monk was going
on about what a cool guy Jack Kerouac was, and how St Francis of Assissi was
God's cool cat, and it entered my vocabulary after that.
Steve Hayes
http://www.suite101.com/myhome.cfm/methodius
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>> You could say the early 70s is when the word entered the *youth* culture
>> (of somewhere) in a big way -- as opposed to the jazz culture, the
>> servicemen, etc. The baby boom generation. The one I'm at the end of.
>
>I'm not saying that. I'm contending that *some* people seemed to think
>that "cool" enters general white American middle-class youth culture in
>the 1950s (among the oldest baby boomers, or the youngest members of the
>generation that preceded it). It must be the case that for some people
>there was a perception that "cool" died out during the 1960s, with the
>middle tier of the baby boomers coming of age. I'm sure that "cool" was
>being used continuously in certain regional and social
>subcultures. Though I do not think the usage just stayed the same. As
>I've said, the "Weak Version" of my theory is that "Cool!", the
>excalamation, is more recent than adjectival usages. The Strong Version
>of my theory is that *adjective* "cool" only really is
>accepted by *general* American youth culture by 1985. I don't see how
>anyone can deny that the usage of "cool" has increased from whatever it
>was in 1957, 1967, or 1977, to the present day, whether or not there was
>mainly continuity or discontinuity during that entire era. But this is
>something that OED and RH can't help us with. You really need a time
>machine.
Or pooled memory.
For the period in question, my knowledge of American culture is limited to
written works, and my knowledge of oral culture is limited to South Africa.
As I said in another message, "cool" entered my vocabulary in the early 1960s,
when it had a distinct counter-cultural flavour.
Lawrence Lipton, in "The holy barbarians" (New York, Julian Messner, 1959),
defines it thus:
COOL: Said of anything that sends you, whether cool jazz or a cool chick,
unless you like 'em hot (see HOT).
HOT: Said of anything that sends you whether a hot lick (jazz) or a hot chick,
unless you're a cool cat.
CAT: The swinging, sex-free, footloose, nocturnal, uninhibited, non-conformist
genus of the human race.
Some of the language of the counter-culture of Beats and beatniks (which was
itself largely derived from jazz culture) entered the mainstream vocabulary,
probably because it was commercialised. "Square" and "with it" spread fairly
widely in South Africa in the 1960s, even among people who were not noticably
countercultural.
Another related word is HIP. Lipton gives:
HIP - to know, in the sense of having experienced something. A hip cat has
experiential knowledge. A hip square has merely heard or read about it.
HIPSTER - One who is in the know. A cool cat.
In South Africa "hipster" entered a more general vocabulary through the
advertising industry -- "hipsters" were low-waisted jeans.
Within about 5 years or so (c1966) "hipster" had got shortened to "hippie"
with a new wave of the counter-culture. It had a wider influence than that of
8-10 years earlier, through the underground press.
More of its vocabulary was picked up by mainstream culture, again through
advertising, and some of the earlier vocabulary dropped away.
One of the new words that was picked up was "lifestyle", which was originally
used to compare the lifestyles of the hip and the square, but got taken up by
the advertising industry to signify conspicuous consumption - in South Africa
"lifestyle banking" was illustrated with speed boats, holiday cottages and
various other things that would in those days have been regarded as distinctly
uncool.
"Cool" took a little longer to lose its counter-cultural flavour, and, as you
say, came into more general use in the early to mid 1980s, along with
"awesome", which I don't think was ever countercultural. "Awesome" was
preceded by "magic" in South Africa at least, but both those have died out,
while "cool" seems to have been remarkably persistent.
>
>> No, wait, there's still an error there. The fact that it was
>> *documented* in the early 70s implies that it was *used* earlier, so
>> "entered" gives the wrong impression.
>
>> Why the century-long spread of "cool"? It might say something about
>> people's need for a label for the concept that runs, "*I* find this
>> good, I don't mean what *other* people have traditionally labeled
>> 'good.'" That's the heart of "cool," for me. "Good in my opinion."
>
>For me that isn't the heart. The heart of "cool" is "sufficiently
>admirable to those who have power in particular social settings involving
>young people". Granted, it's gotten much broader. I don't even make a
>connection between the jazz "cool" and the modern "cool", in some sense.
>
>> A word that has "in my opinion" built into it, saves a lot of arguments.
>> In my opinion.
>
>One of the important features of my recollections about "cool" is that I
>first noticed it being used by people who were, in some sense, arrogant
>about their own perceived high social standing. Only those who thought
>that *they* were cool used cool. What changed later on was that everyone
>started using it. Even the dweebiest, most insecure, geekiest and
>nerdiest people today use "cool" just as much as the popular people. That
>is what has changed. Usage of "Cool" used to be a status marker among
>young people; it no longer is.
I think "cool" was originally an anti-status marker, in the sense of a revolt
against "square" society, the society of the organisation men, the status
seekers, the hidden persuaders. Of course the counter-culture soon developed
its own "more revolting than thou" pecking order.
Note: I'm interested in this question from a wider perpective than just
vocabulary and usage; I'm also interested in it from the point of view of
culture in general, so I've cross-posted it to some culture groups to solicit
views that may not necessarily relate strictly to language and usage.
Steve Hayes
http://www.suite101.com/myhome.cfm/methodius
Richard Fontana
> Lawrence Lipton, in "The holy barbarians" (New York, Julian Messner, 1959),
> defines it thus:
>
> COOL: Said of anything that sends you, whether cool jazz or a cool chick,
> unless you like 'em hot (see HOT).
>
> HOT: Said of anything that sends you whether a hot lick (jazz) or a hot chick,
> unless you're a cool cat.
Daniel McGrath, are you listening?
> CAT: The swinging, sex-free, footloose, nocturnal, uninhibited, non-conformist
> genus of the human race.
>
> Some of the language of the counter-culture of Beats and beatniks (which was
> itself largely derived from jazz culture) entered the mainstream vocabulary,
> probably because it was commercialised. "Square" and "with it" spread fairly
> widely in South Africa in the 1960s, even among people who were not noticably
> countercultural.
I remember, from the early 1970s, when I was a young child, learning the
"square" gesture from my older siblings. To comically insult someone (I'm
not sure if it had any clear content beyond that) you'd take your two
index fingers and trace a square in the air, starting from the middle of
the top side and finishing in the middle of the bottom side:
<<<<<<>>>>>>
v v
v v
v v
v v
>>>>>><<<<<<
If this was used generally (in the US or elsewhere), what was it supposed
to mean? It's my inclination to say that it meant "you're crazy", but
that's so far removed from the obvious "square" origin that I am doubting
my memory.
[...]
> "Cool" took a little longer to lose its counter-cultural flavour, and, as you
> say, came into more general use in the early to mid 1980s, along with
> "awesome", which I don't think was ever countercultural.
I wouldn't say so either. Indeed, I think of "counterculture" as
*only* referring to some aspects of the youth culture associated with the
late 1960s. "Awesome" was, I think, early on associated with Southern
California's "Valley Girl" adolescent subculture, but I think by the early
1980s it was a generally used youth expression. A bit short-lived,
preceding "awesome" (ca. 1980-1981), was "excellent", said in a certain
way (not quite like Mr. Burns, but rather like the way it was done on
Wayne's World). I see both of these as earlier counterparts to
exclamatory "Cool". It's also worth mentioning "chilly", which was
introduced around the same time as "chill out" (ca. 1979-1980). I
remember in fact people saying "chilly is like what 'cool' used to
be" (that is, 'cool' was associated with the distant past). But
"chilly" never really gained much of a foothold, whereas its verbal
counterparts "chill out" and "to chill" are today very mainstream American
slang.
> "Awesome" was
> preceded by "magic" in South Africa at least, but both those have died out,
> while "cool" seems to have been remarkably persistent.
I think "awesome" has been well-assimilated into general US speech. If
it's overused a listener might notice it, but otherwise it's fairly
ordinary. I don't recall any similar use of "magic" over here. My
Bostonian cousins, however, used the exclamation "Wicked wizard!" in the
mid-1970s. "Wizard" was pronounced non-rhotically.
[...]
> >One of the important features of my recollections about "cool" is that I
> >first noticed it being used by people who were, in some sense, arrogant
> >about their own perceived high social standing. Only those who thought
> >that *they* were cool used cool. What changed later on was that everyone
> >started using it. Even the dweebiest, most insecure, geekiest and
> >nerdiest people today use "cool" just as much as the popular people. That
> >is what has changed. Usage of "Cool" used to be a status marker among
> >young people; it no longer is.
>
> I think "cool" was originally an anti-status marker, in the sense of a revolt
> against "square" society, the society of the organisation men, the status
> seekers, the hidden persuaders. Of course the counter-culture soon developed
> its own "more revolting than thou" pecking order.
Even in the earlier jazz usage I think "cool" acquired a status sense of
its own. The "cool" bebop musicians (I'm not talking about "cool
jazz" here, which came a bit later) were an elite, more talented than the
musicians in the square world. However, I don't really object to *this*.
Donna Richoux
> On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Donna Richoux wrote:
>
> > Richard Fontana <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
> If they were California-born. I would guess offhand that most
> scriptwriters, in general, are/were not born or raised in California.
Oh, I dunno, but how to prove it? The TV business is huge here, and the
baby boom started in a big way just after WWII. But anyway, even if a TV
writer wasn't born here, as long he or she raised a family here or knew
any real-life teens at all on which to base some characters and dialog,
those would have been California teens. I don't want to get into the
whole Valley Girl thing again, but I think you and I agree that those
happened to be the teens closest to the camera, at the time.
>
[snip]
> Still, the people who collect citations presumably don't try to document
> the *pace* at which a word is getting picked up. I'm not sure they really
> could do that (you probably could do that if all documents were available
> in an electronic textual corpus). I get the sense that these professional
> citation-gatherers love to read really obscure publications, hoping to
> catch some very early use of a word that later became popular.
I can tell you what the source names are, if you like. I really don't
want to type out all of the sentences, though.
[snip]
> > Why the century-long spread of "cool"? It might say something about
> > people's need for a label for the concept that runs, "*I* find this
> > good, I don't mean what *other* people have traditionally labeled
> > 'good.'" That's the heart of "cool," for me. "Good in my opinion."
>
> For me that isn't the heart. The heart of "cool" is "sufficiently
> admirable to those who have power in particular social settings involving
> young people".
Okay, I will discuss that below, but what is still similar between what
I said what you said is that in both cases, this is a kind of "good"
that is not necessarily the same as the traditional, established,
grown-up, authority-figure "good." The admonishing good of religion,
education, employers, etc. Kids needed a way to say that something was
good by their standards, and important to them, without using the word
"good". You asked today about "square." The old values and rules weren't
precisely "bad," as in evil and wicked, they were just "square." More
like "old-fashioned, corny, out of date."
Maybe the California cool had a different slant from what spread in the
Northeast. You didn't necessarily even get it from us, you had a lot of
beatniks and jazz musicians in New York City. The whole idea of really
top-notch jazz (as I learned from my mother, I'm not into jazz myself)
is that the best musicians are guided by their inner spirit, they put
their soul into their music; it doesn't work if you just imitate what
someone else did. It's a very individual thing.
Maybe in California we were more individualistic, with everyone a
trend-setter, following the beat of their different drummer, setting
their own standards -- while you guys were by nature worry-wart
status-conscious trend-followers. I'm teasing a bit, but nothing says
that as a slang word spreads around, it will be used everywhere in the
same way.
>Granted, it's gotten much broader. I don't even make a
> connection between the jazz "cool" and the modern "cool", in some sense.
>
> > A word that has "in my opinion" built into it, saves a lot of arguments.
> > In my opinion.
>
> One of the important features of my recollections about "cool" is that I
> first noticed it being used by people who were, in some sense, arrogant
> about their own perceived high social standing. Only those who thought
> that *they* were cool used cool. What changed later on was that everyone
> started using it. Even the dweebiest, most insecure, geekiest and
> nerdiest people today use "cool" just as much as the popular people. That
> is what has changed. Usage of "Cool" used to be a status marker among
> young people; it no longer is.
You're making some sweeping generalizations here.
When those dweeby types started to use "cool" did they mean "I
personally think it's cool, no matter what anyone else thinks," or
"that's what the high-status-slang-here think is cool"? When you say
that use of "cool" is no longer a status marker, does that mean, because
the dweebs are deciding for themselves what they like, they are not
respecting the top dogs' imaginary authority? Of course, you, Richard,
may not know what they really meant unless you are or were a part of
that group.
Suppose a new word came along, say "drin," and clever, with-it, rich,
arrogant people started describing things as "drin." Then lower status
people would start asking, "What do they mean by 'drin'? They say this
is drin and that is drin, but those things over there are not drin." (I
now remember the silly U and non-U). Even if 'drin' used to mean
something else before it arrived in this community, in this location it
would almost have to pick up the connotation of "drin means whatever the
top dogs say is drin." Under those circumstances -- because of the
arrogance or ignorance of those trend-setters -- the word would have
lost the aspect it had elsewhere, in this case, that *anyone could
decide for themselves what was drin.*
I don't want to pretend that California is free of snobbishness and
conformity and all that, or was so in the 1960s. No doubt the desire for
teenagers, in particular, to conform to their own group standards and
please other teenagers is everywhere. A Dutch psychologist I know once
told me that people in the Netherlands score quite high in valuing
tolerance and accepting individual differences and all that -- except
for in the age group 14-18. Those are the key years, they've found, when
conforming to the group is really important. And that might be true for
teens everywhere.
But we, in our Bay Area city in the 60s and 70s, did repeatedly advise
each other to "do your own thing" and we said "different strokes for
different folks" and "You can't please everyone, so you gotta please
yourself." Non-conformity was good. Originality was good. Creativity was
good. Oh, it took courage to swim against the stream and all that. But
"cool" did not distinguish between the rich kids and poor, or top status
and bottom. It distinguished the artists and rebels from the
traditional, mainstream squares. In particular, it was generally
considered cool to drink and smoke pot and stay out late. Not to do so
was square.
So where does that leave us? I know this is all very speculative. Maybe
from 1930-1960s the word was mostly in the adult province of jazz and
jazz fans like servicemen, and it had that independent, individualistic,
express-yourself, anti-authoritarian quality. Then in the 60s and 70s it
was taken up by some teens, and started to change into what the young
people thought was good. So as it spread into the 1980s, it lost that
individual quality and meant more, cool is what the other teens say is
cool.
See, I would rebel at *that* point. "You guys that say that is cool if
you want. Okay, that's cool. But I say such-and-such is cool." The
freedom to say this is built into the word.
That's not so different from the underlying word "good," and the freedom
of all of us to say what is truly good and what is not. But we couldn't
see that so easily half a century ago, when the old, established
societal norms of what "good" meant were much bigger and stronger than
when they were ripped apart in the 60s.
>
> > Now I see others on this thread speak of "perceived cool" and "supposed
> > to be cool." I suppose there has always been a tension between the the
> > individualistic "cool" and the group-determined "cool."
>
> That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux