Better than Lizard Tirelli? That’s unpossible!
What claptrap. Everyone knows the best response to this atrocity is to lower taxes.
This is so mundane that it’s not worth mention, except as an exercise in language and colloquial speech:
Local politician was busted recently, because he was in a committee meeting; looked out the window at the approaching storm, and said “Looks like its gonna rain cats & dogs & nigger babies.”
And of course, he said that isn’t racism, it’s just a figure of speech.
That phrase is so bizarre it’s almost charming (almost). Has anybody ever heard it before (past the “cats & dogs…” part, of course).
Hadn’t, but I never lived in the region where it was apparantly a thing (nor “raining pitchforks and n_____ babies.”) Check out the sixth page of this .PDF.
My grandmother was born in 1900 and never even saw a black person until her mid 20s. She was a sweet last who was of her times in many respects, especially with regard to race.
One time on the '60s or '70s she went into a drugstore and asked the clerk for some chocolate-covered candy.It could have been raisins, not sure.
I do know that she asked the clerk for them by a colloquial name she obviously grew up with: She asked for some Nigger Babies.
The clerk happened to be a young black woman whose verbal undressing of poor granny was an epiphany for her. She never used the term again unless she was retelling this story.
Licorice Babies. And, yep, when I was a kid we called them nigger babies. We also used the word in eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
This was before we had any idea what the word meant. I hope I never used that name in front of a young black clerk.
It looks like we still might have mittens to kick around some more.
With the announcement that Barbara Boxer is retiring, there were immediate speculations that both Scott Brown and Mitt Romney would put their hats in the ring for the California Senate seat. I don’t believe either one would do it.
When I was young, I heard my elders refer to Brazil nuts as “nigger toes.” I thought it kinda strange even then.
Mittens Romney and California? LOL. Ahhnold Shwarchi-whatever rips Mitten’s head off. Californians cheer and make profit off it.
Hey, why not, Willard is a red hair shy of being a Mexican.
I did, as well. This was in the late 50s, very early 60s. I was at a friend’s house and they had a bowl of nuts on the table, and I commented on the “nigger toes”. His eyes got very large and he said loudly, “They’re Negro toes!” Knowing that I was right, because my father said it, I repeated my assertion. Looking kinda desperate, he again announced “They’re called NEGRO toes!” Turns out, his parents had had “the talk” with him about racial slurs, which was very progressive for that time. His dad poked his head around the corner of the kitchen and told him “Harry, that’s what some people call them.”
See also “niggerhead”.
“Niggard,” however, is a much older word in English than any form or derivative of “negro,” and etymologically unrelated.
In the original printing of Dicken’s famous Christmas story, when Marley’s Ghost shows up and starts taking Scrooge’s inventory and laying it down about his miserly shit? Scrooge tries to put up some weak-ass defense and Marley’s Ghost says “Oh, niggard, please!”
Ummm, and then what happened?
Then Bob Marley’s Ghost showed Scrooge his past life while singing:
♪
*In this great future, you can’t forget your past;
So dry your tears, I seh. Yeah!
No, woman, no cry;
No, woman, no cry. Eh, yeah!*♪ 
Scrooge dies shortly thereafter, and goes to Hell anyway, because really, one fucking goose? That’s supposed to balance it all out? A whole life of being a miserable stingy asshole, and he buys one fucking goose and its all OK?
I thought it was the one where the ghost reluctantly showed him the future, wherein if he continued to be a nice guy, his descendant would be Baldric’s slave-toy, but if he stopped being so nice, his descendant would carry out a coup d’état on the queen and become the ruler of the galaxy and so he became the genuine asshole we had all grown to love?
Would that have been Sodoff Baldric, or his American cousin, the amputee Sawed Off Baldric?
Yes. That and saying the magic words “I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and savior”, or so I’m informed. Can’t say it strikes me as particularly fair, but then *my *ways ain’t mysterious, not by a long shot.