Post #18,307
11/14/01 4:48:00 PM
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Will be on same side of barricades..
Yes.. the War 0n ___ is such a Popular Murican EZ-alternative to profound thought, debate on any issue. Hey! we declared war! - now we can let the &%*#@ Marines handle it, and go back to sleep: the cheeldrun will be safe! (except from us, of course).
I'd give the War on Poverty somewhat higher marks. Johnson was perhaps the Master politico of our time; knew where the bodies were buried, and the intimate strains of personal madness within ALL the heavy lifters (and even me-toos). While his motive was surely somewhat ~personal legacy (how could it not be?), I think he was sorely stung by the disdain and mawkishness of the Kennedy clan - who unwisely dismissed him as a rustic buffoon. LBJ was nothing if he wasn't smart - and he knew fully how any efforts to actually address er 'peoples needs'!, was an alien concept to the c-critters. Etc.
You are of course entirely correct about the prior erosion of lots of principles < 9/11. But I'd see that Mouse That Roared and raise you with a pair of Duesys:
Babbitt, and It Can't Happen Here. Believe Sinclair Lewis was our homegrown de Tocqueville (maybe augment that with Graham Greene, In the American Grain for advanced divination?). 'We' are in fact intellectually lazy (even anti-) as a matter of preference - for simplistic fixes to highly interrelated giant Problems. We flush our problems down the toilet whenever we can - surely our most popular 'solution'.
The Drug War proves: the current crop of 'consumers' hasn't an iota of comprehension.. of the mechanics of Prohibition and why it failed, would fail thus Why: This Too shall pass - after Enough cousins are doing 40 years, for wanting to alter Their Own\ufffd &*%$&* minds (to escape the unutterable banality of the Murica we have let the Corporations 'build' with our ovine complicity).
I spit on the graves (present and future) of the illiterate MBA/CPA-circumscribed entrepreneurs and their Marketing mouth-breathers, so typified by the recently deceased MeMeMe.com in(s)anity. Babies playin Greed The Game\ufffd. Talk 'bout yer virtual Reality..
May they be slowly asphyxiated by masses of ground-up $1000 bills dropping slowly into open throats - as, staked in prone position: they must listen to Corp-CDs of cacophonous sounds (at 90 dBm) as are sold to the grazing sheep, to keep them disoriented. Also smells: of frying burgers with double-bacon. And disco/exercise videos.
Well, so much for the mild solutions.. Bumper sticker seen: Die Yuppie Scum! (Another wimpy moderate.)
Ashton at least we'll soon know Why things will next occur (?) .. things fall apart .. the center cannot hold (We got such a good *price* - we sold it All)
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Post #18,339
11/14/01 7:54:14 PM
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Hey - <lightbulb on> - does this mean the expression...
Ashton uses a spelling I haven't seen before: But I'd see that Mouse That Roared and raise you with a pair of Duesys: ..."That's a doozy!" refers / originally referred to a car?!? (Brand name used as a symbolic expression of "excellence", like?) That it actually means -- or used to mean -- "That's a Duesenberg!"...? Cool! Ya learn something new every day.
Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Comes Ever Closer To Knowing Fucking Everything
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Post #18,343
11/14/01 8:14:49 PM
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Ya gotta watch that incipient Alzheimers..
Twas in fact thee thyself who er emended my scrofulous error of using Deusy, reminding me 'twas Duesenberg! (least I didn't say, Deusenburg).
And while assuredly pronounced Doozy, I feel that proper accuracy for a {sniff} now fading Marque is de rigeur.. a Marque unknown to latest crop of Yahoos lusting after copycat homogenized Logos with interchangeable bodies attached, that is.
(I can only vaguely recall seeing it in print, but would bet 10:1 it was indeed spelled 'Duesy' - I'd remember the post-modern abortion flag.. which Doozy would have evoked in my nascent brain as large as a planet.. I would!)
Natch too, we of the Cisitalia Owners Club possess much finer sensibilities and wisdom, except wehn/sic we transpose ue and stuff.
The Man Who Fills in the Blanks for The Man Knowing Fucking-near Everything
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Post #18,345
11/14/01 8:18:01 PM
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Er
Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle..
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Post #18,533
11/16/01 9:13:21 AM
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I think that was only the whole word I saw then?
Or perhaps the discussion was already so car-oriented that if you used the short form, it was "too obviously" a nickname for the car-building brothers? Either way, I don't think the connection to the *idiomatic expression* for "Great!" had occurred to me before.
Couldn't swear to it, though... Indeed, Alzheimer is the final Nemesis of us all -- if Murphy doesn't get us, he will!
Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
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Post #18,585
11/16/01 3:41:36 PM
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Heh.. forgot what -- er, what you said is prolly correct :-)
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Post #18,597
11/16/01 7:27:43 PM
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Not that we should...
Either way, I don't think the connection to the *idiomatic expression* for "Great!" had occurred to me before. ...regard that connection as fully established -- or should we? I was mostly just speculating, you know; much of what "occurs" to one as "obvious, in hindsight" turns out not to be so obvious at all, but just plain wrong. Anybody know which on-line dictionary to turn to for etymologies of outdated slang expressions?
Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
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Post #19,032
11/20/01 8:47:50 PM
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Not sure what you're unsure about. Also: need New Word!
What I can report from childhood memory is that, "That's a Duesy" (perhaps often misspelled as Doozy or other? too young to know that at time) - indeed meant Great! or to translate for our newcomers: Kewl as replaced Rad ... bitchin .. and all the serial attempts to create a new Word-def to own for just one's peer group.
Pretty sure I used it well before realizing it was about That Car - though pretty early on, I did find out about the real Duesys: them was bitchin! (with 19\ufffd gas) {sigh}
Now I'm looking for a New word-def to encapsulate our Renegade Attorney General Ashcroft, as he abrogates new powers to his Exec Group, almost daily. Something perhaps hinting at the ease with which he is also so-far not much opposed in this dismantling of various rights, etc.
Something of the droll casuistry of say, Satisfiction
(IIRC - someone's typo which rang huge gongs here: possibly it describes the ersatz feeling of having watched infotainment? or had to hear an entire Ad run through? Or bought most any '80s hunk of Detroit Iron? .. or ever believed any single phrase from Redmond - for an entire minute)
So any ideas? - something suggesting duplicity, sanctimony, spin, nefarious sub-plot and overall: disingenuousness via a Patriotic rubric.
Guess I'll post this in Politics forum - everybody loves a Contest. Winner gets: attribution and a free \ufffd
Cheers,
Ashton Linguistics Ltd. Don't like the sound of 'bad' ? We'll make it sound like 'good'
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Post #19,038
11/20/01 9:18:33 PM
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Ashcroft has at least a temporary setback.
[link|http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Assisted-Suicide.html|NY Times: Oregon.] A federal judge on Tuesday extended a court order that has temporarily blocked a move by the U.S. government to dismantle the nation's only law allowing physician-assisted suicide. Checks and balances in action.
Alex
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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Post #19,046
11/20/01 9:46:09 PM
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The mob is very loud, though. A small step for a man
a giant backwards leap for Muricankind, swaddled in the required Patriot mouthings. Will it work again as it has so often worked?
Will it take a few months, years - a decade? - to unDo it? We are such babies at self-government -- care to guess how many around you could even ID the Bill of Rights' contents? (the sad test has been done many times)
Stay tuned.
PS - he'll soon end-run around all physicians and kill Med Marijuana next - bet?
Hey Gerard: is he still Da Man? (all misunderstood and unfairly accused of: losing his last election to a dead man?) He did, you know - in MO. Where they *know* who he be. And they be 'conservative of Their Stuff there' too.
A.
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Post #19,060
11/20/01 10:00:11 PM
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About whether the idiom *actu-really does* refer to the car.
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Post #19,068
11/20/01 10:22:55 PM
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It do: less'n they lied to a little kid :(
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Post #18,655
11/17/01 9:08:08 PM
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The real D\ufffdsey --
>Twas in fact thee thyself who er emended my scrofulous error of using Deusy, reminding me 'twas Duesenberg! (least I didn't say, Deusenburg).
::chuckle::
Christian, you should have been able to work that one out; after all it's a German word. D\ufffdsenberg -- and the usual convention of umlaut = letter + e when there aren't any umlauts on the keyboard (there's a reason it was called ASCII)
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Post #19,025
11/20/01 7:01:34 PM
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Huh? Of course I did; that may be *why* I could correct him.
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