darkoshi | Entries tagged with expressions

I am amused at myself for the term I just used when speaking to my dog about me using my laptop:
"doing my little tippy-tappy".

Tippy-tappy also describes the sound of her paws when she walks across wood floors. It's a cute sound except when you keep hearing it when you're trying to fall asleep. But from what I've read, it indicates her nails are too long. It's difficult for me to cut her nails as she squirms so much and pulls her paws away when I try. Also, the last time I did, I cut one nail too far and it started bleeding. That made me feel bad. Before I try again, I plan to buy some styptic powder to stop the bleeding in case it happens again.

To get her quicks to recede to make them less likely to get hurt and bleed, I will need to cut her nails fairly often, little by little (some tips I found are listed below). At her annual vet checkup last week, they trimmed her nails for us, so that's a good start.

Dog Grooming: How To Trim Nails On Difficult Dogs
(Wrap dog in towel like a burrito, but with paws sticking out. So actually, more like an enchilada.)

How To SUCCESSFULLY Recede The Quicks (Watch If You Have Struggled!)
(She says to cut around the quick from the front, top, and sides. That way it will recede.
Make sure the clippers are sharp, not dull, so they can slice thru the nails rather than crush them.)

How often should you do a dog's nails to recede the quicks? | ADVICE FROM A DOG GROOMER
@2:48 photo of nails before & after trim - shows them ground from the top edge not just the bottom.
She grinds them every 2 weeks for normal trimming.
@4:45 even 3 sessions 5 weeks apart made the quicks recede.

..

Note to self: To include an "at symbol" (@) in my posts before another character, and to avoid it being interpreted as a mention and replaced with a user head icon and invalid link, I should use the HTML code: &commat;
"commat" stands for commercial at.

This expression was familiar, but I may not have seen it in writing before today.

Raring: adjective Informal.
very eager or anxious; enthusiastic: raring to go.

I expected it to be spelled "rearing to go", similar to the phrase "to rear up" (like a horse)

In fact, "raring" does derive from the term "rear" as in "rear up":
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=raring

In fact, both spellings are acceptable:
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/In-a-Word/2020/0723/Are-horses-rearing-to-go-or-raring-to-go

Based on the number of search results listed by Google, the "raring" spelling is more than 5 times as common, however.

The song "Gold" by Spandau Ballet includes this line in its lyrics:
These are my salad days

The term "salad days" was not familiar to me, but there's a whole Wikipedia article about it. It says:

The phrase was coined in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in 1606. In the speech at the end of Act One in which Cleopatra is regretting her youthful dalliances with Julius Caesar she says:
...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood/To say as I said then!

The phrase became popular only from the middle of the 19th century, coming to mean "a period of youthful inexperience or indiscretion." The metaphor comes from Cleopatra's use of the word 'green' — presumably meaning someone youthful, inexperienced, or immature. Her references to "green" and "cold" both suggest qualities of salads.

I don't know why, but it strikes me as odd, to think of Ancient Egyptians eating salad. But then, Cleopatra cavorted with Ancient Romans. Did Ancient Romans eat salads? Apparently so.

Bon Appetit Wednesday! An Ancient Roman Salad:
Romans loved salads. Columella’s writings suggest the Romans were much like we are today in their search for delicious and inventive salad combinations.[2] A main ingredient in all of these recipes was salt. In fact, the word salad comes from the Latin word sal, meaning salt.

According to the next articles, Ancient Egyptians domesticated lettuce. But they also considered it an aphrodisiac (or they didn't, depending on the article).

Watch out the Egyptian salad. Lettuce in Ancient Egypt: a ‘sexy vegetable’ and its usages

Lettuce and Kings: The Power Struggle Between Horus and Set

Ancient Egyptian Sexuality: Life in Ancient Egypt

... there I am getting dragged down a winding path of topics from where I started.

Going back to the Shakespeare Cleopatra line, it's neat how it is a double (or more) metaphor. Green is a metaphor for youth; coldness (temperature) is a metaphor for coldness (lack of emotion). And then salad, being green and cold, becomes another metaphor for youth and/or coldness.

Update, 2021/09/29:
The ancient Egyptian depictions of lettuce shown on the above link don't look much like modern day lettuce.

But today I came across a lettuce variety which does look somewhat similar to the Egyptian depictions:
Celtuce (also known as "stem lettuce".
Celtuce: A Stocky Stem Lettuce From China (video)

This was the first time I've heard this expression (though apparently it is common), and after a brief mental moment of "huh?", it made me smile:
"I'd never yuck your yum".

It was in this Anna Akana video : When you and your friend are dating the same guy (ft. Julie Nolke)

Reading the video comments, some other viewers were likewise quite amused by the phrase, while others said they can't stand it. Which, if your exposure to the phrase was from a grade school teacher, I can understand.

Suddenly I remembered this expression:
Up and at'em.

Maybe I'm familiar with it from this cartoon:
Atom Ant (Theme song with lyrics)

Wikipedia indicates Atom Ant had only 26 episodes, from 1965 and 1966. If that is true, I must have seen re-runs, the same as The Jetsons and many other shows of my childhood. Or maybe I saw him on "Yogi's Gang" and other such shows.

I never understood the 4th of July reference in the song, Lake of Fire. Recently I heard another song that had a similar reference, and this song sounded older, which got me to wondering what the origins of this expression are, and what exactly it means. So, I did some research.

Still not sure. Seems to originally come from an old children's rhyme. May refer to the Apocalypse and Rapture, or to the civil war...

Meatpupets/Nirvana - Lake of Fire:
Where do bad folks go when they die?
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly
They go to the lake of fire and fry
Won't see them again 'till the fourth of July

http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=373
comment by aldeayeah:don't know why but 4th of july is often associated to the end of the world. i think that's what it means in this song
comment by hongo: i agree with aldeayeah.. i think that the meaning of the "4th of July" is associated with the Apocalypsis
comment by Monkets291: It says 4th of July i think because all the fireworks remind you of a nuclear war (hence the end of the world)
comment by djdude2828: i think this song was written bout duluth, minnesota, not georgia, because of the big lake superior out there and every forth of july they shoot fireworks up from boats in the lake, creating the name "lake of fire"
comment by Scark: [quote from Wikipedia article on Rapture] ...it seems like "see them again" refers to this, but I'm not sure why It's called the Forth of July. Despite certain movies I don't think there's a history of independence day being the end of the world (though it's certainly a poetic thought, mortal coil and all that), on second thought I guess that really makes sense, and would be along the lines of meat puppet's attitude, so to hell (pun not intended) with the idea of fireworks looking like the faithful rising...

Viva Voce - Drown Them Out
Gray, gray is the color when I go outside
And the rain won't stop until the Fourth of July

Rudy Toombs - PIECE A-PUDDIN'
Mom said, "Son here's fifteen cents
Go watch the elephant jump the fence"
He jumped so high, he started to fly
He didn't get back till the Fourth of July

Green Day - Walkin' the Dog
Asked your mother for fifteen cents,
See the fellow he jumped the fence.
Jumped so high he touched the sky,
Don't get back till the fourth of july.

Aerosmith - Walkin' the Dog
Ask yo mama for a-fifteen cents
To see the elephant jump the fence
It jumped so high, touched the sky
Didnt come back till the fourth of july

Several other bands/musicians have done versions of "Walkin the Dog", too - Rolling Stones, Rufus Thomas/Grateful Dead, Johnny Rivers...

Mary Mack (clapping game)
She asked her mother, mother, mother
For 50 cents, cents, cents
To see the elephants, elephants, elephants
Jump over the fence, fence, fence.

They jumped so high, high, high
They reached the sky, sky, sky
And they didn't come back, back, back
'Til the 4th of July, ly, ly!
or
They jumped so high, high, high
They touched the sky, sky, sky
They never came down, down, down
Until the fourth of July, ly, ly, ly, ly, ly

From Wikipedia:
The origin of the name Mary Mack is obscure, and various theories have been proposed. According to one theory Mary Mack originally was Merrimack (an early ironclad that would have been black, with silver rivets) suggesting that the first verse refers to the Battle of Hampton Roads during the American Civil War. In America, slave children would sometimes sing the hand-clapping song while they worked.

I've noticed myself uttering a new expletive lately, "For Christ-fuck-sake!" I can't even find any instances of this utterance via Google. Surely I'm not the only person to have come up with that combination of exclamations.

I was thinking today that a part of my problem is that, all logic aside, I haven't emotionally accepted that me and Qiao are finished. That it's finito, game over, no more. But I'm getting there. It's strange how emotions and logic can be such separate and conflicting forces within a person. (And how emotions themselves can be so conflicting. There were emotional forces, after all, in addition to the logical ones, which led to the break-up.)

I do want Qiao to be happy. I do want him to meet someone nice who is compatible with him. Yet imagining him already now being or getting involved with other people bothers me, because that would mean he got over me faster than I got over him. That would mean he didn't really care that much about me. Although that reasoning wouldn't necessarily be true; it might just mean he's more pragmatic than me, or deals with sadness in different ways than me, or gets on with his life faster than me.

I still don't totally trust that he wasn't involved with other people even while involved with me. He's so nice, and he hasn't done anything to tarnish his image in my eyes like Wododu did, but still I have these niggling doubts. What does that say about me? Will I never be able to totally trust anyone, even when they are trustworthy?

.

What does "to play the dozen" mean? I heard it on TV, a teacher was dealing with a difficult student and told him, "I'm not going to play the dozen with you". So I searched Google, and found an instance of it in a JayZ song, but that didn't explain the meaning or etymology for me.

Current Mood: semi-sweet glittering
Current Music: another dimension

And you can't get back what might have been,
because it never existed.

I have to keep that in mind,
because my mind is being nostalgically difficult.

...

errant curiosity

Why does "a piece of ass" refer to vaginal sexual intercourse? It sounds more like anal.

Is it really true that a hymen "may be broken due to vigorous exercise"? I do believe that some people may not have much of a hymen to begin with, and that hymens can break or get stretched from things like tampons or fingering. But from vigorous exercise??? What kind of exercise could cause something way down inside there to break? Mine never broke from exercise. It is hard to imagine.

Does "to eat a cherry" mean the same thing as "to pop a cherry", or does it mean cunnilingus?