Harris is Gone –  Back to the US Senate

The donkeys she loves so dearly failed to give her lots of money and they failed to support her in the polls. That means that they threw the baby out with the dirty bathwater* (see below). She could be a contender for vice president depending on who the democrat nominee turns out to be.  And we know that Harris has skills (wink). But if Mayor Pete, the ButtGuy, is their anointed one, will those skills work any magic on him? I think that Spartacus would have a better shot for Pete’s #2.

This frees up a slot for another white male billionaire, heterosexual, preferably a smug, disconnected octogenarian. Michael Epstein could have been a contender if he hadn’t met a mysterious end. We know that Prince Andrew would have endorsed him.

Maybe Kamala can go have a drink with Swalwell? If she hung with Willie Brown, I’m sure that flatulence doesn’t bother her.

One key thing to remember about Harris (unlike Tulsi Gabbard, who was polling ahead of Harris at the end of Kamala’s run) is that she’s notoriously lazy. I like lazy donkeys better than I like activist donkeys. In the curious case of Bernie Sanders he’s a lazy activist who has managed to convince a lot of Bernie Bro’s that he will give them free stuff, paid by millionaires other than himself, if they give him money. It’s a sweet hustle. I’m not knocking it. But Kamala couldn’t close the deal. Too lazy.

Trip Downtown

I was speaking to a friend in a parking lot in Phoenix and a couple of inner city people, obviously loaded, approached us. I pulled my mouth guard from my pocket and shoved it in my mouth. He said, “You keep a mouthguard in your pocket?” I said, “Yes and I have my own teeth. No dentures or implants.” He stressed, “Why do you keep a mouthguard in your pocket?” I replied, “for fights like this one.”

The two inner city people just stood there while we spoke. Me with my vampire teeth mouthguard in, mumbling and my friend.

They asked, “You have a mouthguard?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“You get in that many fights old man?”

“Not as many as I used to but I can whip your (deleted) asses.”

~I had a bowie in my back, under my belt and a derringer concealed in my left hand.

They felt that I might be crazy, said so, and retreated.

I took the mouthguard out and put it back into my pocket.

Origins of Common Phrases

During the Middle Ages, urine was used to tan animal skins. Families used to urinate  in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery for a farthing. If you had to do this to survive you were “piss poor.” Some people were poorer than that. They “didn’t have a pot to piss in.”

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June, but maybe not good enough. The bridal tradition of carrying a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor was born. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women, and finally the children. Last of all the babies.* By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it . . . hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water!”
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high. The family animals were herded into a space below the floor (the undercroft). Once there they were less likely to be stolen or to freeze to death. There was nothing to stop things from falling from the thatching, down into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed, therefore, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.
Some people weren’t wealthy enough to afford a home with an undercroft. They lived in dwellings with dirt floors. They were “dirt poor”. The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way, subsequently creating a “thresh hold.”
In those old days, they cooked in the great room with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while, and thus the rhyme, “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and “chew the fat.”
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the “upper crust.”
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up, creating the custom of holding a wake. I always wanted to fake my own death and lay there in my open coffin while people stood around, lying about how much they liked me, then I’d jump out of the coffin, woke as a progressive.
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive, so they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

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45 COMMENTS

  1. While not exactly faking your death, I read this elsewhere – a guy was helping the family clean up the residence of his deceased cousin, several months after the funeral. While going through stuff, he found his cousin's cell phone card….and was tempted to put it in his phone and send a text message to the cousin's girlfriend saying "Guess who's back".
    Sounds like he didn't go through with it though.
    Frank

  3. The jackass party continues in its wonderfulness.

    The origin of common phrases is a great bit of information.

    That last paragraph is a real eye opener to me. I worked many years on the graveyard shift, but never in a graveyard.

    Thanks for the post.
    Paul L. Quandt

  4. I learned a lot from this post, not least the value of a vampire mouthguard.

    Isn't Tulsi a Russian agent? Sorry Kamala, Putin claims another scalp.

  6. Dropping like flies…this is known as hoisting on one's own petard. Trump must be watching with humor as he does real work for America while these clowns continue to eat their own while simultaneously spouting off at him.

    I'm figuring the Dem field of Socialist president hopefuls/codgers/sycophants/rabble-rousers/idjits will implode, which may open the door for Mrs. Obama (assuming she wants to leave the palatial MV estate and fawning admirers) and/or HRC to waltz into the fray. I suspect the Desperate Dem's will get beyond their current weirdness as the next act in this charade unfolds.

    NEVER mess with an old guy, they will kick your —. I do like the mouth-guard as a "you really don't want to go there" forewarn-er to those with bad intent…I figure the timing in showing it is critical to success.

    Interesting how colloquialisms come about…these were born out of practicality whereas modern tech ones, like "selfie", are born out of a self-centered mentality and how far we've come in comfort and tech.

  7. That would be a cold prank, Frank. However, depending on the receiving person, it might be appropriate. I have thought about writing a book on that topic, where the guy actually comes back, like six months later, not really knowing where he's been. Police officer, killed in the line of duty, big funeral, wife and children crushed – six months later he's standing on a street corner in town, not far from where he'd been killed. What's next? Well, that was the general plot.

  9. Better to work the shift than work in the graveyard. I'm not superstitious, but you know, there are things I'd rather do than that.

  10. Tulsi took Kamala out at the knees. Maybe that will be her political epitaph?

    I'd wear the mouthguard every time that I walked through the doors of the Pick-and-Steal near the Compound.

  12. I'm hoping for Hillary if for nothing more than entertainment value. Maybe she'll swoop (like the Wicked Witch of the West, followed by her flying monkeys) into the Convention and take it there? High drama. She may come in before the Convention as it would be good form for her to snatch a few super candidates from Bernie for old time's sake.

  14. Judge Roy Bean laid down the 'Rule of Thumb:' too many women in the jurisdiction were dying when their men folk, all whiskeyed up, took to beating them to death with sticks of firewood. To nip this in the bud, Judge Bean declared that it is only civil to beat your woman with a stick no thicker than your thumb.

    Ol' Judge Bean cared.

  15. Not just any BAH. Blue Terminator has bionic body enhancements and a radar unit that is tuned to FexEx and UPS and inner city people. He's like a one-hound tornado.

  16. The Quran says the same thing. I'll bet that Roy Bean didn't know that he was laying down some Mohammedan sharia there. He was a man of the law, though. No denying that.

  17. I hadn't thought about carrying a mouth guard, sigh… Probably why I have a couple of replacements. Re the wakes, they 'hoped' the primary breadwinner WOULD wake…

  18. The mouth guard sounds like a good idea, but what ya' gonna do if you have a compelling need to bite off a nose or an ear? Or is that what the bowie is for?

  19. Now there's a solid characterization of HRC…nice visual.

    The Desperate Dem's are continuing their Sham-Circus as we speak (does ANYONE believe these clowns?), grasping at every paper straw they can conjure up no matter how quickly they disintegrate like the environ-MENTAL-ly ones do before dinner ends.

    Maybe at the next Dem Presidential "debate" they should all get Gift Bags (paper or plastic?) with a Sham-WoW inside to wipe up the flood of crocodile tears after the 2020 election when Trump handily wins again, regardless who they select as his opponent.

  22. Fredd…Rule of Thumb – and here I thought it was from the British when setting the table (distance from edge) and utensil etiquette "rule" (outside in). Quite the differential on the life scale.

  27. The Sham-WoW only works if they can send that annoying guy that sells them to North Korea, where he will remain as the Democrat Ambassador-at-Large.

  28. I think that if mayhem is involved, it's better administered by a bowie. The mouth guard is evidence of my conservative nature. When your fist is headed to my mouth, my guard hand has the bowie swinging for your arm pit. So I may need to take a hit.

  31. It was a TV show on Fox in 1998/1999. Peter Horton (Thirtysomething) played a cop, and John Glover played the Devil.

    Very interesting show.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brimstone_(TV_series)

  33. If you think the race obsessed left Pissed about Chlamymdia Harris
    dropping out, wait until "I am Spartacus" bails. The cries of racism
    all across America! Booker is at 2 percent, and he will not even
    qualify for the next Democrat debate.

  37. Spartacus is boring and annoying in the best of circumstances. They're smart to be keeping him out of the debate. But yes, of course, the Democrats are racist.

  38. Myth: People didn’t bathe in the Middle Ages, therefore they smelled bad

    Not only is this a total myth, it is so widely believed that it has given rise to a whole other series of myths, such as the false belief that Church incense was designed to hide the stink of so many people in one place. In fact, the incense was part of the Church’s rituals due to its history coming from the Jewish religion which also used incense in its sacrifices.

    This myth has also lead to the strange idea that people usually married in May or June because they didn’t stink so badly – having had their yearly bath. It is, of course, utter rubbish. People married in those months because marriage was not allowed during Lent (the season of penance).

    So, back to smelly people. In the Middle Ages, most towns had bathhouses – in fact, cleanliness and hygiene was very highly regarded – so much so that bathing was incorporated into various ceremonies such as those surrounding knighthood. Some people bathed daily, others less regularly – but most people bathed. Furthermore, they used hot water – they just had to heat it up themselves, unlike us with our modern plumbed hot water. The French put it best in the following Latin statement: Venari, ludere, lavari, bibere; Hoc est vivere! (To hunt, to play, to wash, to drink, – This is to live!)

  39. It'll probably shut down your central nervous system first. Sterno is mostly Methanol (aka "Wood Alcohol") and it's pretty bad stuff to consume.

    But you guys know that already….,.

  40. "The French put it best in the following Latin statement: Venari, ludere, lavari, bibere; Hoc est vivere! (To hunt, to play, to wash, to drink, – This is to live!)"

    EC: If the phrase is in Latin, how does it become French. I know that the French are immoral enough to steal anything not tied down and heavily guarded; but Latin was the language of the Romans and their empire. Please enlighten me. Thank you.

    Paul L. Quandt

  44. Thoroughly enjoyed your piece about the origins of common phrases. Makes me extra glad to be born in modern times despite our problems.

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