Free-Floating Hostility

Wednesday, February 15, 2006


What's in FFH's Repertoire Now?

Fortitude: Mike detests sports cliché #865, "mental toughness." I concur, as I believe the phrase to be redundant, unless when you call someone tough you mean that they resist puncturing. Mike is crusading to replace "mental toughness" with "fortitude," and I commend his efforts.

Grinder (see also Chapper): He who grinds ones nerves to a mushy pulp. Most often used in reference to a certain Enterprise intern.

Beretta
: Hard core, as in, "Man, Locke is totally fuckin' beretta." Mike believes its etymology may derive from somewhere in the Tarantino corpus. I object to this term, as I don't believe in glorifying guns. Also, cause my Dad had an impractical and widely hated car by that name in the late eighties. [Aside: In searching for an image of Terry O'Quinn's character on Lost I was happy to see John Locke the philosopher still rules the search engines. I was also surprised to learn he looked so much like Adrien Brody.]

Never Dive: This phrase refers to a story told by a poncey friend of my mother's. As a young woman, this friend was advised one day at poolside by a grand dame, "Darling, never dive. It shatters emeralds." We use the phrase to indicate either that someone is behaving like a ponce or that someone has come up with a stupid reason not to do something.

Queen Wrong of the Bastard Fucking Wrong People: We misguidedly watched the 2001 snoozefest Crush, and decided we had to salvage something from the experience. So we started using this phrase, as excellently delivered by Imelda Staunton (who rules) shortly before throwing something heavy at Anna Chancellor.

It's all Tacos to me: We've been using this since we visited Joel in Germany in 2001, but I like it. Joel told us the German equivalent of "it's all the same to me," was "it's all würst (sausage) to me." We adapted it.

That's Short Track: Used much the same as "That's the way the cookie crumbles." Pirated, I think, from a Sports Illustrated article on the unpredictability of the sport in 2002 in which basically every losing athlete was quoted as repeating the phrase. It has been revived for the 2006 Olympics in our home. And just as I was typing, who should use the phrase but Bob Costas. Biter.

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