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Slang - Bad Day
Slang - Bad Day text -
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DB: "I proved last week that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong -- which is, of course, Murphy's Law, which is a list of truths, things that can happen in one's life, and I proved this one big time. So I wrote a letter, of course, to my mother, explaining it to her which I'd like to share with you now.
'Dear Slangmom: Last week, I was invited to be a guest on a big international TV show' -- and, of course, TV is the way we all say television, because it's faster -- 'at 10 ofclock the next morning to talk about -- what else? -- slang.
"I only had a few hours to pull it all together (which means to prepare, to pull it all together) so I had to kick it into high gear (which means to hurry, because when a car is traveling at its highest speed, it has to be in high gear -- you can see that the only way I can write a letter, of course, is in slang!)"
AA: "Of course."
DB: "'Well, I pulled an all-nighter (which means I stayed up all night) creating illustrations that represent some of our American expressions to show to the TV audience. Finally, by 6 a.m., I finished the illustrations. But as soon as I pushed the save button on my computer, the hard drive crashed' -- which is something you never want to have happen, which means the heart of my computer died!"
AA: "One thing, when you say illustrations, do you mean scripts?"
DB: "No, actual illustrations. These are drawings, so when we talk about an expression, for example, a hard drive driving, we show an illustration of a hard drive, which is that part of the computer where it stores all of your files, crashing -- so I like to show it visually, it makes it more fun. 'So, as we say in slang, I was rather freaked, bummed out, ticked off and blown away. All that means very upset. Of course, there were other words I used at the time, but Ifll keep those to myself for now.
"With only now four hours before going on international television, I hauled buns to my friendfs house.' And hauled buns simply means I hurried, because when you haul you hurry, and buns is slang for one's rear end."
RS: "So you got yourself there very fast."
DB: "Yes, exactly. 'I hauled buns to my friend's house because hefs a computer geek (and a computer geek is someone who is an expert at computers. In fact, a geek is also used to describe someone whose clothing is not current with todayfs fashion, that's also a geek.)
"So after eyeballing my hard drive, my friend the computer geek knew immediately that I had lost all my files! There was nothing left! I started sweating bullets because I knew I had to create the illustrations again from scratch (which means, from the beginning, from the very beginning.) So I was able to recreate all the illustrations by 9 ofclock. But as soon as I got into my car, it died!'"
RS: "The car."
DB: "Yes, it died, the car died. Or as we say in slang, it conked out, bit the bullet, kicked the bucket, croaked. 'So I decided to take a bus, but as you know, this week and last week all the buses -- "
RS: "Were on strike!"
DB: "Were on strike."
AA: "In Los Angeles."
DB: "In Los Angeles, and to be on strike means to stop working in protest of something. 'So I high tailed it (which means to hurry), so I hailed it it by foot -- "
AA: "You ran."
DB: "I ran -- there's another way of saying it, a more normal way of saying it. 'I ran all the way there, only to discover that they decided to scrap my segment."
RS: "Awww."
DB: "And to scrap means to cancel. 'So after all the trouble I went through, they blew me off (which means rejected me), they blew me off! I thought I was going to die, or should I say, conk out, bite the bullet, kick the bucket, croak!
Copyright © 2010 by Mark McCracken, All Rights Reserved.
