News 1: RIP,
Terri Schiavo and
Mitch Hedberg.
News 2: I hear the Pope's been given last rites. 'Tis sad.
Link:
Sushi Pictorial Book. Mmm, sushi...
Note: LJ Ruling the World Memegen by OOMarilynMonroe.
This is taken from elsewhere on the internet:
ORIGIN OF DRINKING WORDS AND PHRASESFor when are we at our most loquacious, when are we most willing to take liberty with the lingo than when we're on a hoolihan, tossing back pots, and three sheets to the wind?
All alphabets start with A: So A seems like a logical place to begin our journey of learning:
A: Alcohol: The word for the thing that makes us so happy started out as an Arabic word describing a fine metallic powder used as eye shadow (
al-kuhul). The word was then broadened to mean "the pure spirit of anything" in 1672, but it wasn't until 1753 that it was first recorded in the sense of something you'd want to put in your mouth. Alcoholics didn't exist in print until 1891 -- before then, our gang went by the less clinical names tosspots, topers, and soaks.
A: Absinthe: Absinthe takes its name from
Artemisia absinthium, the botanical name for the bitter herb wormwood, known in French as
grande absinthe. This ingredient of the liquor absinthe also contains the molecule
thujone, which supposedly accounts for its alleged mind-altering properties. Wormwood infusions had been known as a medicine as far back as Greek times. However, it was not until around 1792 that the alcoholic elixir was supposedly created. Pierre Ordinaire, a French doctor living in Switzerland, distilled the wormwood plant in alcohol with anise, hyssop, lemon balm, and other local herbs. The final tonic, quite powerful at around 72% alcohol, was heralded as a medical cure-all. According to popular legend, Ordinaire left his recipe to two sisters (or was it the two sisters who gave the recipe to Ordinaire?) and it was in turn passed on to a Major Dubied, whose son-in-law was one Henri-Louis Pernod. Whatever the truth behind its origins, absinthe stopped being a local curiosity and started on its route to becoming an international phenomenon in 1797 with the foundation of their distillery in Couvet, Switzerland.
In 1805, the famous Pernod
fils distillery expanded and opened in Pontarlier, France to avoid customs taxes between Switzerland and France. By 1905, there were hundreds of distilleries in all corners of France producing absinthe, with over 40 distilleries operating across the Swiss border in the French Jura region. 22 of the distilleries were located within the town of Pontarlier itself which produced 70,000 hectolitres a year from 151 stills. The success of the highly regarded Pontarlier brands brought many imitators and profiteers soon introduced cheaper, adulterated, and even poisonous imitations onto the market that were in turn partially responsible for the wild reputation that absinthe gained for causing delirium and madness in those who drank it. AKA: the green fairy, Dali's child, Picasso's ear.. I'm sure there are many other names for it!
BAR: An abbreviation of barrier, it naturally came to describe the counter that separated the drinks from the drinkers. Near the end of the 16th century, it came to mean the building that housed that bothersome barricade as well. "Barmaid" didn't appear in print until 1772, "bartender" arrived fifty years later, and the "barfly" didn't start hassling them for their free drinks until 1910. AKA: Norm, the one-toothed girl at the end of the bar.
BEER BONG: Drunks may have filched "bong" from the hippies, but the hippies lifted it from Vietnam veterans (from the Thai word
baung, meaning "a cylindrical wooden tube"). The Flower Children weren't above borrowing from the squares at the bar, either -- "high" and "stoned" meant being drunk long before those words were applied to marijuana use. AKA: The dude, dirty hippy with the brown paper bag.
BENDER: Some believe a drinking spree is called a bender because a lot of bending of the arm is required. Others assume it's a reference to the bends one might experience after a long bout, which is unlikely as benders were being executed as early as 1846... fifty years before "the bends" appeared in print. More likely, it owes its name to an obsolete British coin, the sixpence. The sixpence was commonly called a bender because they were made of silver, and could be bent as a test of their veracity. To go drinking on a sixpence or bender meant you were loaded for bear (or beer, if you will). A popular pub sign of the day read: "Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence, clean straw for nothing." That meant you could stay loaded for six days, or really tear it up for three. Either way, you got a nice bed of clean straw to pass out on. Now that's hospitality. NOTE: a "roll" in the hay wasn't coined until later on -- either way, it's gonna end up costing extra!
BINGE: Originally meaning "soak" (as in "soak up some booze"), it became a dialectal term meaning "to drink heavily" in 1854. It wasn't until the 1910s that it became associated with eating and shopping. So the next time you decide to get loaded, just inform your spouse that you're going on an "old-school shopping binge." That can roughly translate into "shopping to drink heavily," or barhopping. Just don't tell her that.
BLACKOUT: Believe it or not, the sense of losing your memory predated by a year the idea of killing the lights to confuse some enemy bombers. Both senses of the word lifted the idea from the theatrical term meaning "a darkened stage." Next time your friends accuse you of theatrical behavior during a blackout, you may smugly reply: "Well, duh." Usually only accompanied by hard alcohol use, the "blacking out" portion of it may seem like minutes or hours -- and don't believe everything that they tell you that you did -- especially if it's the whore on the fourth floor.
BLOODY MARY: Two distinguished bartenders lay claim to this archetypical hangover slayer. Fernand Petiot said he came up with the idea of combining tomato juice and vodka at Harry's New York Bar in Paris in 1926, then added the spices later in New York. George Jessel, on the other hand, swore he threw it together at a friend's Palm Beach home in 1927. What both men can agree on is that the cocktail was not named for the violently anti-Protestant Queen of England, Mary Tudor. Petiot said an American customer told him the new cocktail reminded him of a woman named Mary who hung out at the Bucket of Blood Club in Chicago. Jessel claimed it was named in honor of heiress Mary Brown Warburton, who happened to walk in on the cocktail's inauguration. According to the story, she spilled some of George's prototype on her gown and thus exclaimed, "Now you can call me Bloody Mary, George!" Sounds a bit anecdotal to me (a legendary raconteur, George had a wild story about nearly everything), so I'm siding with Fernand. NOTE: Find a good "Make your own Bloody Mary" bar and take the Sunday after morning crowd! You'll be smoking before you know it.
BLOWOUT: The word may smack of the 1970s, but it came to mean a "big, loud party" as early as 1824. Probably a play on the term "blow up," as a properly-executed blowout is easily as loud and expansive as an explosion. NOTE: not to be confused with "blow-up" as in "dynamite" or "doll."
BOILERMAKER: Shorthand for boilermaker's delight, a 19th Century slang term for a type of cheap whiskey favored by the craftsmen who built and maintained boilers. They called it such because the liquor was thought capable of cleaning the scales from the inside of a boiler, which explains why the delight was eventually dropped in favor of a beer chaser.
BOOTLEGGER: In the 17th century, a bootleg described the upper part of the rather tall boots popular at the time. It was also popular (amongst English smugglers anyway) to hide bottles of untaxed booze there. The term was later affixed to the enterprising chaps who dealt in illicit alcohol during U.S. Prohibition. aka: JAYMZ MOM MAKING CHERRY EVERCLEAR - SEE HIS DAILY POST!
BOOZE: It's a common misconception that the word was borrowed from a brand of whiskey sold by one Mr. E.S. Booz in the 1800s, but it is actually a much older word. The 1529 Oxford dictionary defined it as "affected by drinking," and it is most likely a derivative of the Medieval Dutch word
busen, meaning "to drink heavily." Benjamin Franklin seemed rather intrigued with the word, as the Founding Father listed "boozy" as one of his 225 synonyms for "drunk" and was the first to put the word "boozed" (drunk) in print. Note: good old Ben -- cheers to you.
BOUNCER: Drunks who reckon doormen are bullies are more right then they know. While personal experience has led some to think the word comes from a bouncer's desire to bounce their victims off the sidewalk like a rubber ball, in truth it comes from the 13th Century word
bounsen, which means "to thump or hit." That explains why the first recorded use of bouncer (1833) described a common bully. It was a tidbit in an 1883 edition of the
London News that forever attached the word to the guy defending the saloon: "When liberty verges on license and gaiety on wanton delirium, the Bouncer selects the gayest of the gay, and -- bounces him!"
BRANNIGAN: This colorful and increasingly popular term describing a drinking spree probably owes its life to the very popular 1820 Irish ballad
Barney Brannigan (sometimes
Barney Brallaghan), in which the eponymous hero rouses his heart's true desire at two in the morning with promises of whiskey and wine. The term was immortalized in Emily Bronte's wildly popular book
Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff declared to Cathy, "Excuse me m'dear, but I shan't be in for supper this evening as I'm off out on a prolonged brannigan with the boys." I bet that excuse didn't fly with her!
BYOB: This abbreviated request to bring your own (whether it be beer, bottle or booze) didn't always pertain to poorly-stocked parties. Before the drunks hijacked the term in the 1950s, and as far back as the 1800s, it meant Bring Your Own Basket to the picnic. Who says we aren't becoming more civilized? NOTE: Bring Your Own Basket of Booze sounds even better.
More to come later.....
Since when is THAT a weapon?! o_O
pretty good
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