Chewing on it...

All my life I've heard the phrase "chewed him down" and though nothing of it. For example, someone might say "Yeah, he wanted $50 for the used lawnmower, but I chewed him down to $35". It always carried overtones of gnawing away at the price, bringing it down bit by bit.

Today, I was shocked to learn that the more common version of the phrase is"jewed him down", alluding to the old-fashioned and bigotted notion that Jews are greedy and tight with money. And, it turns out, it's almost impossible to tell which version a person is saying. Whichever version you grew up with is likely the version you hear, regardless of what the speaker intends.

Well, shit. Not wanting to be perceived as a person who might use those sorts of phrases (like the neighbor kid did when I was younger), I guess I'll give it up. I'm sure I do, since the phrase "chewing him down" is so evocative for me. Maybe I can transition to "gnawed him down". Damn, damn, damn. This is more irritating than when I learned that gyp ("Aw, man, what a gyp.") was intended as a slur against gypsies (aka Romany); "Gee" was actually "G", short for God; and that a scumbag was really a used condom. Why do all of the flavorful phrases have secret poison in them?

Milwaukee Memories

Page after page of contributed Milwaukee Memories here. I remember a lot of these, and I've heard about a lot more. I guess that means I'm well on my way to being an old fart. Does anyone remember the soda with riddles in the bottom of the can? What was that? Graf's? No, I think it was JollyGood. Would make sense with the name anyway. As a further rambling aside, check out this site, for their pics of old soda cans, including conetops! Who knew that soda came in conetop cans? Not me.

Modern mix tape technology

I was a huge fan of mixtapes in college. The only thing better than making one was receiving one. But mix tapes ended with the era of the CD-R. Somehow they just lacked the same panache found in the classic mix tape.

Well, a worthy successor to the mix tape has been found at last- the mix thumb drive. This is the best idea. Now they just have to get the price down a bit. $30 is a bit pricy for a mix tape, no? Get it into the $5 range, and you've got a product that I can get behind. Check it out here

Troop House

Look what I found! It's my old troop house from my boy scout days. I seem to recall that St. James Church tore the building down when they expanded in the late nineties. Hanging out in there before Christmas, selling Christmas trees as a fundraiser - one of my fondest memories on my youth. That ended over 25 years ago. Geez, I'm an old s.o.b.

Lots of good stuff from Sussex,Lisbon and Lannon at this site. It's a little unorganized, but worth a perusal.

Banana Split Boats

Cool! These are the banana split boats that I grew up with! They're ceramic and painted to look like real bananas. According to the listing, they're "odorable", but I've never noticed. If I were made of money, I'd snap these up, along with a bunch of the ESSO (or was it Exxon?) tiger glasses that my grandma had, and the aluminum cups that my other grandma had. But $42 (with S&H) for a set of 4 ceramic banana split dishes? I don't think so. Besides, I've already got three already - nobody else wanted them. Call me sentimental... at least as far as ice cream bowls go!

Zine Wiki

Stumbled across (surfed into?) another Wiki today. It's the ZineWiki - the history and culture of zines, independent media and the small press. I loved zines, but not all of them. Music zines, personal trauma zines, political zines... none of these could hold my interest for an entire issue. Looking back, I see strong similarities between the zines I enjoyed then, and the blogs and websites I enjoy now.

They were personal, quirky and chatty, but focussed. At once, more and less than a journal. Dishwasher was a great example. This guy travelled the country washing dishes at restaurants, and writing about it. He shared his dishwashing experiences and his personal philosophy of life, as seen through dishwashing. I'm sure there was more to his life than washing dishes, but he spared us the gritty details. Donut Frenzy (not listed in the wiki... yet) was essentially an extended personal essay about the joys of donuts. Reading some of the personal zines (Amykins, for instance) was like receiving a long letter in November from a friend you met on summer vacation. You might not catch all of the references, might not recognize the band names, the movie titles, but there was just enough you understood to make you want to understand more.

And I guess that was the point. For me, zines, and the web, are a window into ways of viewing the world that are different from my way of seeing things. Fringe cultures, special interest groups, strange new philosophies... even today, I just can't get enough!

Gnip Gnop Lives

I can't believe that Gnip Gnop is still around! If you aren't familiar with it, think of it as a rubber bands and ping-pong balls version of pong. But for some reason, you can still pick it up from Amazon for only $13.77. This is definitely going on my wishlist... The children must learn of gnipgnop!