By: Pop
[2003-08-25]
Things I Don't Hear Anymore
extend both arms and swoop around
"Bombs over Tokyo!"
We were still saying it fifteen years after the 1942 Doolittle raid, and had no idea what a "Tokyo" was.
Usage: While your friends are playing in the dirt with their green plastic army men, load a dirt clod on the back of your pot metal Hubley P-38, soar high overhead and drop it on them. Yell "Bombs over Tokyo!"
"Going like sixty"
I think this dates from the 'Twenties, when 60 mph was pretty goshdarned fast.
Usage: Sob, "I was going like sixty on my trike down Devil's Hill when I hit a rock! Where's the Bactine?"
"Now you're cooking with gas!"
Indicating that someone, after initial failure, is now employing an efficacious idea or procedure. I think this comes from a radio advertising campaign for natural gas, circa 1930s-40s.
Usage: When a friend has been having no luck removing a bicycle wheel, but suddenly finds that turning the wrench the other way works better, supportively exclaim, "Now you're cooking with gas!"
"Famous last words"
When used by their parents, this phrase was many a baby boomer's introduction to the art of sarcasm. I always assumed this was the name of a book, but there have been so many books published under this title that I can't find its origin.
Usage: "Mom! Watch me go down Devil's Hill!" "Famous last words."
"Ahhhhmmmmm . . ."
Expressing impending doom--for someone else.
Usage: "Ahhhhmmmmm . . . you're in troooouuuuuuu-ble!"
"Jet-propelled"
This one was actually fairly new in the 'Fifties.
Usage: Extend both arms and swoop around. Yell "I'm jet-propelled!"
"Full blast"
All the way, said of electronic and plumbing devices. This saying is probably as old as plumbing.
Usage: Sob, "I was taking a drink out of the hose, and then he turned it on full blast!"
Indian war-whoop
Do little kids even know how to do this anymore, what with political correctness and the death of the TV western?
Usage: Sing "Oooooooo" loudly, while repeatedly and quickly covering and uncovering your mouth with the flat of your fingers. Inhale and repeat.
So where's the hate? Hate me! I'm a baby boomer!
I'm sure that someone is tracking words and usages and word frequencies somewhere on a computer; it's fun! I had some items that said "Made in Occupied Japan." I can remember some film of Mitchell B-24 bombers taking off from carriers, bombing Tokyo, then trying to make it to China. Actually, I was watching "The Three Stooges" on one of the VHF channels, and they used the phrase, "Cooking with gas." One thing that I sincerely hate is phoney Gaulicisms. I like French words and phrases that are sort of correctly used, like "a certain I don't know what," but for example some products like "Nouriche" that tries to come off like all continental and sophisticated, but sounds like just pretentious. Or the gomers who stick "le" in front of stuff. Words that are disappearing around here as the original country folk are disappearing are "far" for fire, "tar" for tire, and "poke" for bag. Since they used "far" for fire, far was "fur." Thus, when a local began discussing a "fur piece," it took me a while to decipher that they meant "at some distance."
I still use "Full Blast!" quite a lot. I don't know if that makes me old before my time, or young after my time. I've just confused myself. Also, I don't recall a child doing the "Indian War Whoop" since my childhood days. Kind of sad, really. I figured it an integral part of growing up.
Hoo-raa hate week!
What a splendid way to kick off hate week. I mean... I hate everything!
bad grilled cheese sandwiches. i've had hard ones, soggy ones, burned ones raw ones, ones made with fake cheese, ones made with pam instead of butter, ones made with both...
i like baby boomers though. they write interesting books about how bad the cassaroles were, and how pointy the playground equipment, ergo, kids today are wussies who can handle neither scraped knees nor brussle sprouts.
Baby-boomers: Antwan's Dictionary Definition Any old people that Antwan decideds to blow up.
Why have Hate week, the same week as the fanfictions??? I actually got bored and pissed myself while reading this article. Its a GOOD thing no one says that stuff anymore. Why, Why must everything (but antwan's) suck!!
I still say it.
um
especially now that you reminded me of it.
Sorry to be on topic, but an online etymology site gives "famous last words'" first appearance as 1948.
I hardly ever say, "the bee's knees" or the "cat's pajamas" anymore.
Well Pops, we only like to comment ON TOPIC when the topic is INTERESTING. I don't know what made you think this topic was so great but it's time to put down the vodka and get to work on something GOOD.
Now, everyone who's submitted a fan-fiction, raise your hand.
Am I the only one to notice that Antwan and his fan club, The Cheat, are the same person? Kind of a giveaway when you never sing The Cheat's praises, Antwan.
It is frightening to thing that one may be the other's alter ego, although I'm sure that I don't know which is which.
Who's not on topic now? HMPH! Hipocrit.
Anyway, I knew that you would eventually think that we were the same person as "The Cheat" is always "singing my praises" and "I" rarely ever "say" anything "good" "about" "him". What do you expect? Does a 35 year-old man with a beer gut and heavy beard really deserve any praise?
Don't be too hard on yourself. I'm sure you deserve praise for something, despite your hirsute face and beer gut.
I like the picture of the pouty sandwitch.
Here we go again, Some pot head thinks he has us figured out. "OMG you two are the same people..LOl!!!!1" NO, I'm not antwan. You have no point, so don't try. I could just as easy say HB and Laconic are the same people. We also have another friend "Albert" who would go by Gir..and He would support Antwan, so Would He be antwan? Pop, how do you know I'm not You? or Annna? or Twins? How do we know your not Antwan?
I'm also Harry Beergut. And the King of Prussia. And...
I'm Pops... I've been trying to keep it from you all but I'm afraid tha the truth must come out.
Pop isn't you. If you wrote that crappy of a article, then..well.....ew. When does the contest fanfictions get posted?!?!
If my "Diary of an insane video game player" didn't make it, who the hell did Pops have to sleep with to get this article through?
Me.
My mother.
Often said when someone got in trouble in our childhoods, but no longer used in adult form.
"Aww bur, Dad won't be happy when he sees that you have massacred the apple tree to build a fort."
It conveyed so much fear...
I like etymology a lot more since I've started teaching English as a foreign language. I often use http://www.word-detective.com/ as a way to find little lesson side notes.
who the hell did Pops have to sleep with to get this article through?
Amazing. That has to be the only most humorous thing antwan has ever submitted. I'm going to go ahead and assume he did it on purpose. No need to thank me cheat.
Oh yeah. I knew it was somebody.
My Mom uses the expression, "Hurts like sixty" when describing something very painful. Anyone know where this comes from?
Now that back issues, dating from their first editions in the 19th century, areavailable for several newspapers, it's a bit easier to date the approximate orign of some of the above phrases. I was particularly interested in auto-related items: going like sixty, running on empty, hitting on all cylinders, etc. So I did a Proquest search of the NY Times and the LA Times. I too thought "going like sixty" originated with the car. It didn't. The first usage in the NY Times of that exact phrase came in the mid-1890s. A group of kids got locked in a railroad freight car and weren't found for some time. Describing their hair-raising adventure, one noted that the train "was going like sixty." Probably no automobile had yet reached that speed. "Running on empty" first appears in both the LA and NY Times ... in 1977, in a review of a Jackson Brown album by that title. Hard to believe, but the phrase was not in print in either of those papers before that date.
My mother also used that expression, and we could never figure out what it meant. One day after my sister turned sixty, she called me to say, "Now I know what it means."
