Submariner [was "thousand-yard stare"] (UNCLASSIFIED)

[George Thompson]

There is a put-down that I think I saw in Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy, that someone was too dumb to pour sand out of a boot, even if the instructions were printed on the heel.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Date: Sunday, August 1, 2010 8:56 pm
Subject: Re: Submariner [was "thousand-yard stare"] (UNCLASSIFIED)
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> At 8:38 PM -0400 8/1/10, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >I have a pair of Dockers brand pants, less than a year old, that have
> "ONE
> >LEG AT A TIME" printed in red letters an inch high on the inside of the
> >waistband, right front.
> >
> >m a m
>
> Not quite rising to the level of the apocryphal Coke bottles in (pick
> a country) with the legend on the bottom reading "OPEN OTHER END",
> but...
>
> LH
>
> >
> >On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:
> >
> >>  I remember a manual for US Army chemical officers (officers, not enlisted)
> >>  that detailed all the tasks that a chemical officer needed to
> know. The one
> >>  for donning chemical protective gear included instructions such as
> "put on
> >>  pants one leg at a time, fly facing front." The only non-intuitive
> step in
> >>  the task that actually required some instruction was lacing the chemical
> >>  protective overboots--which were not like standard boots--and the
> >>  instruction for that was simply "lace boots."
> >>
> >>  I'm convinced it was written by a captain who had been passed over
> for
> >>  promotion and was exacting a bit of revenge.
> >>
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org