One that I seldom find occasion to use, and which probably fails the test of “heard once or twice,” came from some movie and maybe more than one.
As I remember the scene, some character has just been wounded, probably shot in the abdomen, and the witty character is in the process of bandaging the wound, or at least trying to slow the bleeding. Whether provoked by another character to say the line, or whether he just volunteers it, it’s on the order of,
“John’s just got hisself a hole in him you could throw a cat through.”
There are too many images to contemplate, but just the idea of throwing a cat through anything is the topper.
Do any of you have variations on this? Can you remember the scene(s) better where something like this happened?
Also, just to keep the spicy ones going, I like to use the putdown:
There was one in our college paper’s daily cartoon that said “He couldn’t hit a cow in the butt with a bass fiddle!” (Thanks to Tim Downs, Downstown, Indiana U., ca.1977…)
Also. Zeldar, Vonnegut used your “rolling donut” thing repeatedly in one of his books… I don’t remember which one anymore.
Excrement Ocures
Who you callin’ a cracker?
Fall down,go Boom!
Love peace and hair grease
Love grease and hairpiece
Be real have fun
Loveing life an livein’ large
That’s not enough. It should be: Well, fuck me sideways with a rusty fireplug.
I also found a kid-friendly alternative to the word “bullshit” when I was reading 40’s fiction: “My virgin grandmother!”
Kerfuffle - I think I got that one from James Lileks. Just a fun word. "Shucky darn, and slop the chickens!" - this came from Garfield, I believe. "Come to Kenya, we got _____" - this one came from the Flash animation (in the original, it’s “Come to Kenya, we got lions!” but we’ve adapted it to anything that someone has a lot of. Ate his lunch - beat him badly (either literally, or in a sports contest, game, etc.) "Some parts are edible" - this comes from an old 70s commercial with Euell Gibbons. We use it as a response when someone asks, “You ever…(do something)?”
(I think the original was “Did you ever eat a pine cone?”) "Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope…" (without finishing the sentence) "Don’t teach my grandmother to suck eggs." Got this from Ren and Stimpy, and had to go look up what it meant (which is, don’t tell me something obvious, apparently)
I’ve always interpreted this one as the image of people scrubbing a floor on their knees - what you see is elbows and assholes, and meaning heavily involved in the task and working hard.
From the comic book ‘The Authority’ comes the situation in which the supervillain, designed pretty much specifically to destroy our… Heroes (I use the term loosely. Those that read The Authority will understand why)… Gets his powers removed completely, and then is forced to suffer a certain ammount of indignity, part of which involves being turned into a chicken. He’s mouthing off to the heroes the entire time, and the man transforming him simply says, “Shut up and cluck.”
So, thus, to honor it, in World of Warcraft, whenever my mage polymorphs someone into a pig… “Shut up and oink.” (Usually the sequence is: “You- Shut up and oink. You- Die horribly!”)
Here’s one that I fell in love with the first time I heard it, have used occasionally since then, but have heard often enough since that first time that it fails the acid test of “once or twice.”
But it was memorable, so I’ll share.
We had a newsletter for a computer club, back when Commodore 64 was The Thing. Other computers had their own Users Groups and some met at the same location we did. One of the groups had their newsletter which our editor described as “content free.” Too descriptive and so succinct.
I’m not a theological expert, but I’ll venture that it makes a bit more sense if you consider that Jesus, God, and the Holy Ghost are the Trinity, and… you know, three in one. waves hands
Since someone mentioned The Authority, I’ll tack on one more.
“It needs doing.” – Pete Wisdom in WarrenE’s run on Excalibur.
My grandma uses two versions of “head over heels.”
“tip over teakettle”
“ass over appetite”
I’ve only ever heard her use them to describe falling down suddenly and spectacularly, as we don’t talk about people falling in love all that often. Occasionally they’ll morph together and come out as “ass over teakettle,” which is basically like saying “ass over ass.” That’s the version that I use.
She also says “purt near” all the time, and it’s slowly starting to slip into my vocabulary in a non-ironic way.
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