Quotes + Sayings

1930s Slang: How Do You Say Very Good?

/ Ally Bean / 114 Comments

What’s your story, morning glory?

This is today’s silliness, it being the last day of April and all.  Wave good-bye to April.  Busy month for me.  Did different things for the heck of it.

Case in point, out of curiosity I did some genealogical research about ye olde family and in the process I, once again, stumbled over something entertaining.

In that wordy historical way I like.  Bumping gums and a ring-a-ding-ding I say.

What I found is Dirty 30s!, a fun website with a long list of slang terms from, you guessed it, the 1930s.

Reading through this list gave me an idea of how my ancestors spoke to each other.  You shred it, wheat.  Or I assume that they did.  I mean, they probably used slang, right?  No reason to believe that they spoke in scholarly language all the time.

[Well, one did write a book that landed on the NYT best seller list in the 1930s but he must have at least known these words and phrases.  Togged to the bricks, that one.]

Anyway, below I present for your entertainment a simple little poll about the word GOOD.  My theme for the day, it would seem.  I could do worse. Good is good.

Thus I ask of you to shake a leg and use your peepers because you’ve got a poll to take.

[Slang words and phrases defined in comment section below.]

Morphing Into A Southern Lady, Finding My True Self

/ Ally Bean / 106 Comments

Have you ever thought [or said] something that made you say to yourself: now where the heck did that come from?

BE MINDFUL AND PAY ATTENTION to your thoughts, they say. Tune into yourself, they advise. Be cognizant of what you’re thinking about, they encourage.

Then you’ll know your true self, they claim.

Well apparently, if we agree with the basic premise of the foregoing, I’m morphing into a southern lady.  Here are three real life examples from last week in which I paid attention to what I was thinking while the person in front of me babbled on.

~ • 🔷 • ~

#1 – The cashier at the drug store went on a small rant when I gave her cash for payment for my purchase.  She immediately started talking about pennies, specifically her dislike of them, and how recently our county tax rate had changed, making her job more difficult because [somehow] the new tax rate made more work for her when she had to make change… so she was going to get a petition going to change the tax rate back to what it’d been before.

My thought: THAT DOG WON’T HUNT

~ • 🔷 • ~

#2 – The receptionist at the doctor’s office told me in a wordy girlfriend-to-girlfriend way that she was not happy about the newly remodeled waiting room because she could no longer see the TV on the wall in the waiting room without getting up from her seat and walking into the room itself, instead of sitting behind the reception counter… doing her work… presumably.

My thought: SHE’S YOUNG

~ • 🔷 • ~

#3 – An acquaintance, known for being a drama llama, told me with tears in her eyes about her latest troubles that stemmed from being asked to do too much in too short of time for her to feel in control of her project.  Yes, she was sure the system was actively working against her… until she double-checked her text message and realized that she was getting twice the amount of time she needed to do her thing.

My thought: WELL BLESS YOUR HEART

~ • 🔷 • ~

UNTIL LAST WEEK I DIDN’T realize that underneath this midwestern nice exterior lurked a southern lady waiting to summarize the scene in front her with pointed polite colloquialisms that ooze passive-aggressive charm.

Well tie me up and call me Loretta*, it’s like I’ve found my true self, y’all.

I suppose it’s a matter of time before I start saying these things out loud, but with a midwestern accent that may negate their impact.  This will in no way make me less happy, because I can’t stop the people from babbling but I can have fun with it in my way.

What do you say to yourself when people drone on and on about topics you don’t care about? Are you a southern lady, too? Spill the beans in the comments below.   

* Gold star to anyone who knows where that Southern saying came from!

One Martini & I’m Rebelling Against My Own Arbitrary Rule

/ Ally Bean / 107 Comments

Busy week, fast story…

You know how you say you’ll never do something for one reason or another, then one day you do that which you said you’d never do and nothing bad happens to you.

And you begin to wonder why you had the self-imposed rule to begin with and you become somewhat distraught mildly perturbed because you cannot remember why it seemed important to you to not do that which you just did.

That’s what I’m talking about here. All of that.

So what did I do that I said I’d never do?

Ah yes, good question. Thank you for asking.

You see the fastest way to explain what I did is to refer you to the photo at the top of this post. Saturday night I took that photo of a Pear Martini, my new favorite cocktail, while we were sitting at a table in an upscale restaurant.  The drink tasted & looked so good that I pushed aside all hesitation and pulled out my cell phone to take a picture of it.

And that is something I said I’d never do.

Early on when I got a smart phone I declared, oh yes I did, that I would never be one of those people who takes pictures of food and drink while in a public place.  Yet, as the above photo proves, I am now one of the collective.

Like a Borg, but only for Instagram. Resistance is futile.

Which brings me to an epiphany about who I am now.

While you may think that I’m going to wax on about my wonderful Pear Martini, I’m going to tell you that whilst sipping it and musing upon my arbitrary rule to never snap a food or drink picture in public, it dawned on me that I was caught up in some sort of generational way of thinking that no longer served me.

Who cares if I take a fast photo of a drink? Absolutely no one, myself included.

I caused no harm, I had some fun, and I realized that, with a hat tip to Bob Dylan: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

Bad Marketing Is Worse Than No Marketing, But Maybe Not Everyone Believes This?

/ Ally Bean / 99 Comments

“I’m going to let this go because I really don’t want to get into an argument with these people.”

I said that out loud to myself the other day after finding a webpage that had the most forked-up mismatched inconsistent product marketing I’ve seen in a long time.

It stunned me with its ugly.

To wit, there were words written arbitrarily starting with either upper or lower case letters, for no discernible reason.  There were at least 5 different uncoordinated fonts used in garish multi-colored logos that looked like a D+ 7th grade student had made them.  And the information I needed was buried in wordy, pointless copy.

As a woman with a background in communication + marketing who worked at one time as a paralegal who did oodles of proofreading, the mess this organization was trying to get away with appalled me.  As if clarity in written and graphic design communication meant nothing.

There was a time when I’d have taken this as a personal insult, feeling a need to correct the situation by calling/writing about this failed attempt to create a professional image in the world. And while I could have helped this organization up their game to the next level, you know what– I did nothing.

Because this is not my problem per se.

I only share this here today because it irritated me.  Something like this is disheartening for anyone like me who believes in the illuminating power of words and the clarifying potential of images.

And makes me wonder how it is that any organization in today’s connected world can exist with bad marketing.  ‘Cause I’m not the only one who is going to see this and think poorly of them.

Or am I?