I seem to recall the term ‘scumbag’ being used in reference to an implement used by draftsmen back in the days of pencils and T-squares. It was used to remove smudges, etc. from the drawing. But I could be having a senior moment.
No, you’re correct. It was a small cloth bag filled with small particles of rubber. We’d knead the bag until rubber particles came through the weave of the bag, then lightly rub the dirty area on the vellum.
Now it’s a Staedtler Dry Cleaning Pad http://www.artstuff.net/cleaning_pads_and_pounce.htm
I’ve got one right here: it also has a French (!) label “sachet de poudre” I don’t think it was ever trade-named “scumbag.”
This is like how people have forgotten that jazz music was so-called because it originated in jazz houses, “jazz” being slang for sexual intercourse.
And penis ensued.
With it being a used condom and all, wouldn’t that mean penis had already ensued?
Didn’t Belker (sp?) on Hill Street Blues used to call people that?
I didn’t know until I heard Joan Jett call her ex-boyfriend a scumbag in a song called Coney Island Whitefish. Then I figured it out. :smack:
Some other bands, such as Tool, are named for penises. I’m pretty sure, though, that Rods And Cones was named for retina cells. Some others, such as 10 cc and Lovin’ Spoonful, are named after semen.
Nope.
…and Lovin’ Spoonful got their name from a Mississippi John Hurt song:
There’s little doubt that there’s some sexual metaphor in that, but it’s got nothing to do with semen. No sir.
(Now, I Want Some Sugar in My Bowl, on the other hand…) 
Yes, I knew but I can’t remember where from. Maybe some book about an undercover cop with a dog that gets shot in the face by drug dealers during a raid or something. I forget.
I first read that etymology in The Basketball Diaries about five or six years ago. The penny dropped.
That song cracks me up:
Scumbag! You’re a scumbag!
You don’t leave well enough alone…
The two lines–a furious insult followed by a whiny complaint–just don’t go together!
I first encountered the word in 1971 in Rolling Stone, in a description of the time John Lennon and Yoko Ono got up onstage with Frank Zappa and the Mothers at the Fillmore East. Zappa had them perform, among other things, an improvisational chant of “Scumbag,” and Lennon told the Rolling Stone writer that only after he had been singing it for 15 minutes did he realize what it meant…at which point Yoko turned to him and said “What does it mean?”
(The performance can be heard on Frank Zappa’s CD Playground Psychotics. There was also a version of it on the John & Yoko LP Some Time in New York City–with the part where the Mothers sing about putting their Yoko records in a scumbag mixed out!–but it was not included in the recent CD reissue.)
Lucky you.
I’m amazed how many times other people seem to remember the same weird bit of trivia that I do. Not sayin’ that you do, you understand. Just sayin’.
Makes you wander where the phrase “it sucks” come from? 
:eek:
% Yummy yummy yummy, I’ve got food items of a generic nature that explicitly aren’t a sexual metaphor or we’d never get on the radio in my tummy %
I’ve wandered where the phrase “it sucks” came from. It’s in a nasty corner of DeMoines.
I had to burn my shoes, afterward.
I didn’t know of the “condom” meaning until Bill Maher mentioned it on an episode of Politically Incorrect. He expressed disbelief that some conversation/trial testimony/whatever had aired on a network TV program with the word scumbag unbleeped. When one of the panelists made some joke to the effect of “maybe you don’t realize you can now say ass on TV too”, Bill looked at the guest and incredulously asked (wording probably not verbatim): “Don’t you know what a scumbag is? It’s a used condom!”
By the way, I was born in 1959. When I was growing up, terms for prophylactics weren’t bandied about as freely as they are today. When the situation did call for a slangy reference, “rubber” was generally the term of choice in my circle of acquaintances.
Ooooh, sounds kinky.
Count me in as someone who never knew until this thread. Huh. Learn something new everyday.
Hey! I knew somethin’!
Hey, what do you know, I learned something today. It makes sense, now that I think about it… I guess I just never thought about it before.
But then, I come from a sheltered world where Mom called condoms “safes”.
No need to wonder, it’s quite obvious. Back in the 1960s when you told somebody “'you suck” it was close to being fighting words, since it meant “give blowjobs.” The metaphorical meaning was less common. That’s another phrase I find jarring when I hear younger kids saying it today.