Hooey
My dad used to say "Hooey!" all the time when he was mad.
From Princeton U's online definition mill:
| Noun | 1. | hooey - senseless talk; "don't give me that stuff" |
My dad used the word as a curse word, probably in the sense I use the word "bullshit."
"Hokum" is a good word, too. Hoaxers are full of hokum.
I used to believe one of the lines in the old Woody Herman hit, "Blues in the Night," was pronounced: "a'hooey dah hooey." I sung it that way for years and then one day I saw the sheet music and found out the "hooey" in the song was mimicking a train whistle and was instead: "a'whooee ah whooee."
"Blues in the Night" Lyrics (Johnny Mercer)
My mama done tol' me, when I was in knee-pants
My mama done tol' me, " Son a woman'll sweet talk"
And give ya the big eye, but when the sweet talkin's done
A woman's a two-face, A worrisome thing who'll leave ya to sing the blues in the night
Now the rain's a-fallin', hear the train's a-callin, "Whooee!"
(My mama done tol' me) Hear dat lonesome whistle blowin' 'cross the trestle, "Whooee!"
(My mama done tol' me) A-whooee-ah-whooee ol' clickety-clack's a-echoin' back th' blues in the night
The evenin' breeze'll start the trees to cryin' and the moon'll hide its light when you get the blues in the night
Take my word, the mockingbird'll sing the saddest kind o' song, he knows things are wrong, and he's right
From Natchez to Mobile, from Memphis to St. Joe, wherever the four winds blow
I been in some big towns an' heard me some big talk, but there is one thing I know
A woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave ya to sing the blues in the night
My mama was right, there's blues in the night.
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The reference to knee-pants in these lyrics is interesting since I am currently reading Count Basie's autobiography (co-written with Albert Murray), Good Mornin' Blues, and Basie in reminiscing about his childhood mentions something that I as a kid experienced but had forgotten. Boys in those long-ago days (up into the nineteen fifties) wore knee-pants until they were teenagers--these pants were like knickers--the pants legs ending just below your knees--think of a Boy Scout uniform--the pants--those were knee-pants--like baseball uniform pants in those days, too--you wore knee-high sox with knee pants or you went barelegged. And Count remembers he wore knee pants when he first started playing pianos in back alley joints and for special holiday parties when he was 14 or 15--and he'd get in the adult clubs by acting like he was the band's roadie, helping carrying in the instruments and drums and shit, and then he'd stay on stage and play the piano. His first pair of long pants, he said, was a pair of "sailor-suit" pants--pants made like a swabbie-type sailor's bell-bottom trousers (an old song went, "Bell-bottomed trousers/Coat of navy blue")--like the sailor's wearing on the Cracker Jack boxes. My first pair of long pants were tan slacks from J.C. Penny's. I was in sixth grade when I started wearing long pants and I hated them. I thought very seriously they made me look like a sissy.
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I love the lines in "Blues in the Night": "The evenin' breeze'll start the trees to cryin' and the moon'll hide its light/When you get the blues in the night/Take my word, the mockingbird'll sing the saddest kind o' song/He knows things are wrong, and he's right." That's cool lyric-poetry-writing, folks, very cool writing indeed.
And Speaking of Hooey
And the unoriginal but seemingly unsinkable Tina Brown has an on-line blog now--and guess what she's calling it? Would you believe "The Daily Beast"?
And, Oh Yes, By the Bye, BAILING OUT WALL STREET FAILURES HAS WORKED!
This asshole bastard Henry Paulson has stolen 700 billion dollars from We the People of the USA. Plus, our asshole bastard Congress tacked on another 150 billion bucks in boondoggles for enterprises in their districts in which they have upcoming reelection races. 850 billion down the US government toilets; flushed right into the already gold-lined pockets of mostly white men who already have all our wealth anyway. General Motors tanked today down to $4.76 a share. So GM is broke. The failing of Wachovia Bank, whose headquarters is in the US's second-largest banking center, Charlotte, of all places, North Carolina, is going to wreck the Charlotte economy, dragging some more Good Ole Boy banks down with it--the Bank of America and CitiCorp (read CitiBank) are headquartered in Charlotte, too. "YEE-HAW, the South's gonna rise agin! Gimme a rebel yell!" And the NASCAR race track operators (sleazy bastards) are getting billions of bucks dumped on them by good ol' We the People.
What a wonderful Chaotic mess? The pundits are all so confused. The pro-John-McCain commercial teevee networks are doing their dead-level best to keep John McCain America's Candidate even though he's sliding fast down a black hole--punning is such sweet fun--now said to be maybe as much as 12 points behind Barack HUSSEIN Osama--oops, I'm falling for the Lyndon "Big Balls" Johnson trap now being used by Karl "Siegheil" Rove--you know, "Call him a pig fucker"? And the Repugs, mainly through Sarah "Whiteface" Pale-'Un, are dealing the racist cards already--calling Barack "Hussein," letting slip with the Osama faux-pas--and really playing up his connection with US Terrerist, Bill Ayers. Barack Obama was 8 years old when Old Bill was a US terrerist--and now he's a leading figure in the Chicago politics and education scene--and he once hosted a coffee (laced with crystal meth (Emerald City)), I'm sure) for Obama when Obama was running for the Senate in Ayer's district, which by the way is Obama's district, too.
Such HOOEY! Such jive.
And what's scarier even than confusing Barack Obama's name with Islam or saying he associates with terrerists and is for higher taxes and is a coward (aren't most black men cowards?) (McCain quips he's never heard Obama use the word "Victory") and will leave our troops to fend for themselves when he turns tail and runs from Iraq--and the bullshit is pitched higher and deeper the further McCain slides downward in the polls--BUT the scarier thing is that at Repugnican rallies now the Pure-dee White beer-bellied Swift Boaters are getting up and tough talking Big Bad Captured John and angrily saying they're tired as hell of this country being taken over by Socialists--and these punkish older white men have a tough-guy anger on their faces--and then come the faint at first but then "Crucify Him" loud "Kill Obama" suggestions. Sweet Sarah of Alaska gives a little wink when the crowd starts shoutin' for Obama to be killed! Hey, if John McCain gets desperate and maybe quits taking his Prosac or Zoloft, he'll come out shootin' at the next debate or one of his wack job Swift Boaters will step out Jack-Ruby-style and rid the world of who Sarah Paleface Palin called the most dishonest man in this country. Why not just come out and say "Hey, Hockey Moms, let's lynch this Knee-Grow--like we lynched his namesake in Iraq (Saddam Hussein Obama)? Lynchin' is an old traditional White way of executin' evildoers we've let fall by the wayside. Maybe it's time to get the hemp rope out again and teach this uppity Knee-Grow from Chicago a lesson or two, same as the White man lynched that sassy little Chicago uppity Knee-Grow Emmett Till back in the Good Ole Days 'fore all the niggahs took those miles when all White folks meant for 'em to have was a scraggly few inches." Remember, Rudolph (rhymes with Adolf) Mussolini Guiliani has already used the "give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile" metaphor in his speech at the Repug Convention, that joke of a bruhaha club meeting of fools, yuckers, rubes, and idiots. Only an idiot would vote for McCain-Palin, even though Obama's really not that much different in terms of policies and intentions--only Obama's and Mrs. Obama's skin color is strikingly different from McCain's washed-out honky-white pale, drooping skin and Sweet Sarah of Alaska's smooth-as-Jersey-cream, exotically smooth and creamy like due to shaving with the potential for a lot of hair in that tang spot, the way a real white man likes his poon's skin and tang spot--and that's what Sweet Sarah of Alaska is, POON TANG!
BASEBALL TONIGHT: L.A. Versus Philly!
I wouldn't miss this one for the world. Baseball's greatest manager is Joe Torre and Joe was driven out of his successful Yankee post after last season for being too old, stodgy, losing his hold on the team, getting his team to the playoffs every year since the early nineties but losing last year in the first playoff series with Cleveland when a minor-league-whizkid let a few gnats shake his ass up and after that farce game, Cleveland barely went on to beat the Yanks--but oh no, Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman (rewarded for his fucking up with a new 3-year contract) thought they knew more about baseball than Joe--so there is no Yankee team in the playoffs this year. Where's Joe Torre! You'll see tonight!
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
NOTE:
Thanks to L Hat for cluing us in on wood s lot being 8 years old this month! Huzzahs to Mark W. (our favorite Canadian) and one of the greatest Websites on the Internet Highway.
EIGHT YEARS OF WOOD S LOT.
Unbelievably, wood s lot is eight years old and still going as strong as ever. Back in October 2000, Mark Woods was linking a Ted Honderich article ("This new piece begins with a defence of determinism against those hopeful persons who think it has been refuted by Quantum Theory"), "A touching story from Lingua Franca's archives: Death Of An Altruist Was The Man Who Found The Selfless Gene Too Good For This World? by James Schwartz," "Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier says computers are too dumb to take over the world, by Damien Cave," TheWatcher Website ("Millennium Apocalypse Updates Conspiracy & End Time Prophecy: bringing you all you could ever need to know about The New World Order, The One World Religion, Masons, British Israelites, Rosicrucians, Pokemon Mind Control, The Southern Baptist Convention and other dire portents"), stuff on Owen Barfield, Pierre Trudeau, Derrida, Haruki Murikami, internet radio, love and the brain, Orwell, and much more. Today he's celebrating Elizabeth Bishop, linking to Greenscapes, further memorializing Hayden Carruth, focusing on the "train wreck of investment vehicles" and related politico-economic phenomenal, and much more, including the usual gorgeous selection of photographs (lately often including his own, which are excellent). I know of no one on the internet with a wider range of interests or better taste, and I with my measly one post a day stand in awe of his unceasing flow of links, quotes, and images. All I can say is: keep it up!
Posted by languagehat
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