"pretzel palace"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Gotta be a coincidence, but a 1917 soldier song goes:

I'm goin' to live on the German Rhine,
I'm goin' to have one Hell of a time,
Inlaid pretzels on the floor,
German butlers to open the door,
For my cook the Princess Hohenzollerin,
I'll take Christmas dinner in the town of Berlin,
Hang my pants on the Hindenburg Line,
On my castle on the river, castle on the river,
Castle on the River Rhine!

"Inlaid pretzels" is good.

JL

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "pretzel palace"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jerry Brown yesterday said of California's budget "It=92s a pretzel palace
> =
> of
> incredible complexity.=94
>
> I have never before seen the phrase used before in the context of financial
> complexity.
>
> GB shows a hit in Asia Sentinel from 2006:
>
> "Restructuring negotiations were colored by controversy over a bewildering
> corporate pretzel palace that included a shadowy series of banks in the
> Cook Islands and Cayman Islands and countless legal challenges..."
>
> It's talking about corporate structure instead of budgeting, but similar
> enough for my taste.
>
> The use of the phrase implies to me, however, that it is expected to be
> familiar to an Asian audience in 2006. Does anyone have any insight into
> the use of the phrase?
>
> DanG
>
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