Monday, October 22, 2007

slang, euphamism and straight talk

This line jumped out at me during a spell of unavoidable delay, from Kramer on LeCompte (Oct 8) which a lot of people liked. I started it but it seemed a little too cute. Except for this, a quote from LeCompte:

"We had that security that middle-class kids had then, before the worst of the Vietnam War. We somehow knew that, for us, it would be all right." (51)

I like it when people are up-front about their apolitical privilege. It's all so wrong, it's right.

Less cool is Kramer, just above, "she landed a Friday-through-Sunday job baking." That's got to be the worst use of "landed" I've ever read. Not that it's ever good, except, literally, in cases of planes and gymnasts and ice dancers. I can't even describe how much that annoys me. It's kind of in keeping with the whole thing, at its worst. Am I babbling?

4 Comments:

Blogger Richard Forster said...

You're not into fishing, are you?

4:53 PM  
Blogger zoe p. said...

It's so true. I don't fish.

9:10 AM  
Blogger Richard Forster said...

Because that's where the euphemism comes from, from fishing. You get the fish out of the water and onto land where you can eat it.

9:07 PM  
Blogger zoe p. said...

I got that.

Actually, I thought about amending my entry to include only transitive uses of the verb land. But then I didn't.

What bugs me is that a baking job seemed rather small fry (so to speak) for the euphemism. Small (highly gendered) fry with bohemian cache.

3:44 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]