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Terms Which Have Disappeared

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12,005
Location
Southern California
I got 10 out of 12 right; the chatelaine and dress lifter tripped me up. The last five items were a bit of a surprise, since they've become outdated in my lifetime. Geritol, anyone? lol
 

KILO NOVEMBER

One Too Many
Messages
1,068
Location
Hurricane Coast Florida
The chatelaine is the one I missed too. Still don't quite get that one.

I was recently watching a BBC crime drama on the local PBS station. It ended at about 15 minutes before the hour. The time was filled with a segment from the Antiques Roadshow. One of the visitors brought just such an item to be evaluated. That's how I recognized it. Think of it as a Victorian house maid's Swiss Army Knife.
 

Bruce Wayne

My Mail is Forwarded Here
chatelaine

Nurse's%20chatelaine,%20Old%20Operating%20Theatre%20%26%20Herb%20Garret,%20London%20-%2002.JPG
 

Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,808
Location
Cobourg
A+ wise old timer.

Saw a Chatelaine last night, in a 1938 Bob Hope film called The Cat And The Canary. Ghost story/comedy set in an old mansion in Louisiana. The plot revolves around the pretty young heiress and attempts to do her in. At one point the old housekeeper offers to give her her Chatelaine because she is the new owner of the old mansion.
 

Stearmen

I'll Lock Up
Messages
7,202
I saw a bumper sticker today that said, I hate tweakers. I thought I was one, I like to tweak machinery! Turns out, it has a lot of different meanings. To hit with an object from a catapult, slang term for someone exhibiting compulsive or repetitive behavior, it also means, a heavy meth abuser who hasn't slept for days! Who knew. I guise, it's like the Tea Party members, who called themselves Tea Baggers. In farness, I did not know the meaning either! Now I know, always check the Urban Dictionary, before you start any group!
 
Messages
12,005
Location
Southern California
I saw a bumper sticker today that said, I hate tweakers. I thought I was one, I like to tweak machinery! Turns out, it has a lot of different meanings. To hit with an object from a catapult, slang term for someone exhibiting compulsive or repetitive behavior, it also means, a heavy meth abuser who hasn't slept for days! Who knew. I guise, it's like the Tea Party members, who called themselves Tea Baggers. In farness, I did not know the meaning either! Now I know, always check the Urban Dictionary, before you start any group!
I've only ever heard the term "tweaker" used in reference to someone with a serious substance addiction, so I didn't know it had other definitions as well.

As for "Tea Party" versus "Tea Baggers", considering the term "Tea Bagger" is also a derogatory slang description for someone who performs a very specific type of sexual act upon a man, I think anyone who would self-apply that moniker is targeting themselves for ridicule these days. lol
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,715
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
I've never heard it used that way, and I had a meth lab for a neighbor.

The "tea bagger" thing in a political sense goes back quite a ways -- I remember covering a school board meeting back in the early 90s in which an agitated local crank threw a box of Lipton's Tea Bags at the superintendant following an argument over the budget. The headline in the paper the next day read "SUPERINTENDANT TEA-BAGGED IN SAD 28 BUDGET FLAP."
 
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Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,808
Location
Cobourg
The tea party protests of 2007 harked back to the Boston Tea Party. They were protesting the $700,000,000 giveaway by the government to the country's biggest banks. At the time, members of congress reported their constituents messages were from 100 to 1 to 300 to 1 against the measure. They passed it anyway.

After that the usual political hacks ran around and assumed the leadership of the tea party, detouring it onto well worn, and politically unimportant issues.
 

ChiTownScion

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,247
Location
The Great Pacific Northwest
The tea party protests of 2007 harked back to the Boston Tea Party. They were protesting the $700,000,000 giveaway by the government to the country's biggest banks. At the time, members of congress reported their constituents messages were from 100 to 1 to 300 to 1 against the measure. They passed it anyway.

After that the usual political hacks ran around and assumed the leadership of the tea party, detouring it onto well worn, and politically unimportant issues.

As I recall reading about that Boston event of 1775, it arose out of the issue of colonial taxation by a parliament that did not contain colonial members. The concern itself of the British government was legitimate: reimbursement of costs incurred for the military protection of the colonies- primarily during the Seven Years War ("French and Indian War"). The protest in Boston Harbor was over taxes and excises imposed without representation of those footing the bill.

Thus the puzzling attempt at a parallel with contemporary taxation: taxation policies of the United States 2007 et seq. may have been imprudent, ill advised, or even burdensome... but they were not by any stretch "taxation without representation." One may loathe their current Congressman- I certainly do mine, more often than not- but he was duly elected, even if I question the sanity of those who so exercised their franchise, or worse, couldn't be bothered to exercise their franchise. If redress of grievance over a particular vote is not offered, the remedy is still the ballot box. That simply didn't exist in 1775 and so, the tea chests got dumped.

I mention all of this not to start a political battle here, but to note how the past is often redefined, and even rewritten, to dovetail into current agendas. Herein the agenda was political, but I think that also is seen in the fashion and popular cultural realms as well. I sure love my pinstripe suits, wing tip shoes, silk ties, USAAF flight jacket and bespoke fedoras that reflect the better (in my mind, anyway) facets of the '30's and '40's, but I am always reminded by the posts of Miss Lizzy and others that the average Joe or Jane back in the day didn't usually dress like the fashion models or movie idols of that day. Times were tough, people were tough, and a sense of style was usually not the highest priority.

I maintain that while a purely objective study of the past is certainly a noble end worth striving to attain, it is, nonetheless, an idea never truly attained. Honestly recognizing our own biases that we bring to these discussions is, I believe, a giant first step toward that ideal.
 
Messages
10,930
Location
My mother's basement
...

I maintain that while a purely objective study of the past is certainly a noble end worth striving to attain, it is, nonetheless, an idea never truly attained. Honestly recognizing our own biases that we bring to these discussions is, I believe, a giant first step toward that ideal.

No ****, Sherlock.

I have, for decades, acknowledged my own various "isms," racism among them. I'm certainly not proud of it, and I wish it weren't so, but I'd be less than honest if I were to portray myself as a person who never makes assumptions about people based on their "racial" characteristics.

In my own defense, I offer that I am a person of my time and place (as has been cited ad nauseum, great champions of personal liberty, Thomas Jefferson among them, kept slaves), and that I have assumed, by a process akin to osmosis, the general biases of this culture, and that I am a person who has been around long enough to know the difference between who he really is and what he presents to the world. And I hope that my awareness of my biases goes some ways toward averting unfairness in my dealings with others.
 
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Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab
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2,808
Location
Cobourg
I don't know how you can call it representation when the so called representatives totally ignore their constituents. The original Tea Party was organized to redress this grievance, before it was hijacked and turned into a circus.
 

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