old lang guy's definitions

Work Songs

Also songs used when people needed to work in rhythm. Many are familiar folk songs. Like

--sea chanteys where the lead singer's solo line would get everyone set, and then they'd all sing (and therefore exhale) when they put out their effort pulling on a line.

-- field hollers that were used to keep lines hoeing a field up with each other. (And field hollers, speeded up and with some rhythm and some guitar added, might have been one of the origins of the blues, and thus of most American popular music since 1920)

-- capstan chanteys that kept people pretty much walking in the same rhythm while they turned giant cranks.

Very often work songs were subversive, making fun of the boss, complaining about the conditions, and sometimes carrying instructions for prison breaks, union organizing, or the Underground Railroad.

Work songs examples:

Sea chantey,

Leader (while the end man belays, and everyone walks up the line and gets a grip): Reuben was no sailor ...

Crew (Singing while they pull the line back): Ranzo, boys ranzo!

(later in the song it turns out Reuben is now the captain ...)

Field holler ...

Leader: (while the crew picks up their hammers, stretches, and gets ready to swing): When Israel was in Egypt land ...

Crew (hitting on the drills on let, peop, and go): LET MY PEOPLE GO!

Capstan chantey, used to turn the winch to move the locks on the canal ...

Leader (while crew breathe and get set): I got a mule, her name is Sal ...

Crew (Walking forward, pushing on the capstan bars): FIFTEEN MILES ON THE ERIE CANAL!

by old lang guy July 14, 2008

I am fishing for your Goombas

Slang among political ops for "I am looking for dirt on your candidate." May or may not be connected to the classic line from The Godfather: "Clemenza sleeps with the fish." Meaning he's been whacked, per orders. So "Fishing for your Goombas," maybe, started out meaning "looking for the bodies in your candidate's background." (Classically such bodies would be a live boy or a dead girl).

"Hey, what's this bullshit with a guy with a camera in the parking lot at four in the morning?"

"I am fishing for your Goombas, asshole. If your boy can't keep it zipped, the people got a right to know."

by old lang guy October 14, 2006

slut in a box

The "private live show" booths at the back of some porn shops and strip clubs, where a girl strips, masturbates, and/or inserts dildos on the lighted side of the glass, while the paying customer jacks off in the dark on the other side of the glass. A few of them are fronts for prostitution or have glory holes, but most are just places for a guy to have a quiet private yank on his crank while a pretty girl shows off to him.

Sandy got tired of guys trying to get under the G-string when they tucked in a bill, so she started working at the slut in a box club.

He didn't have the money for a hooker or even for a rub-and-tug so he ended up going to a slut in a box.

by old lang guy September 25, 2006

tit in a wringer

This is the last survivor of one of many "Haven't heard anything like that since Grandma (Grandpa) ..." expressions that used to mean someone was overdramatizing their problems. Implied the person commented on was acting like a whiny old person. "Haven't heard anything like that since Granny got her tit caught in the wringer" was what you'd say when, e.g., a coworkers spent the morning complaining about someone having taken the last cup of coffee and not making a fresh pot.

"And everyone forgot to tell me that Awards Day is next week! Why doesn't anyone ever tell me? Doesn't anyone care ...." etc.

(whispered to friend) "Haven't heard anything like that since Granny caught her tit in a wringer."

(Alternatives that once were common) "Haven't heard anything like that since someone put a cherry bomb in Grandpa's truss."

"Haven't heard anything like that since Granny sat on the toilet plunger."

"Haven't heard anything like that since Grandpa got a turd stuck sideways."

by old lang guy September 18, 2008

pube jeans

Jeans so low cut that some pubic hair curls over the belt buckle; thought to be daring and sexy by a certain kind of younger woman.

That can't be her real hair color!

It's not, check what's sticking out of her pube jeans.

by old lang guy October 17, 2006

cinderella fuck

In the ancient days of the 1970s, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and men were tiny squeaking rodents (not all that much has changed), a cinderella fuck was getting intercourse from a girl in her dorm room before the curfew when men were thrown out of the women's dorms. If you were really lucky, she'd want to get started early, but a lot of women preferred to start the cinderella fuck at about ten minutes to midnight. The opposite of a "rule of half past four."

"So you getting any?"

"I got about five minutes of a cinderella fuck before the PA announced 'all men off the floor.'"

by old lang guy August 24, 2007

fork stuck in the road

A song line that seems to indicate ignorance, sloppiness, or lack of education on the part of the songwriter.

According to urban legend, the line in Green Day's "Good Riddance (The Time of Your Life)" "a fork stuck in the road" says that the fork is "stuck" rather than just "in the road" because of the mistaken idea that people somewhere back in "olden days" used to stick dinner forks into the road when they changed directions; the claim is often made that one or another member of Green Day told such a story during an interview, but if so there doesn't seem to be any such interview online. It really doesn't sound like them; they're a pretty bright bunch of people.

Alanis Morisette's "Ironic" is a fork stuck in the road; nothing she describes in the song is ironic.

"Hey, that doesn't mean what he thinks it means!"
"Relax, dude, at least it rhymes, and it's just a fork stuck in the road!"

Every time you hear the rolling thunder, you don't need to run, because the lightning already struck and you're still here to hear it.

by old lang guy September 30, 2006