[Ads-l] A slight difference from Green's

[Wilson Gray]

Green's:

don’t pay no rabbit (foot) (also don’t pay no rabbit-ass mind) [Mezzrow &
Wolfe, Really the Blues (1946): ‘When you don’t pay a man no rabbit, you’re
not paying him any more attention than would a rabbit’s butt [or foot] as
it disappears hurriedly over the fence’]

(US black) an exhortation to ignore a person or situation.

1935 1935 1940 1945 1950 1954


The only form that I've ever heard this in is

"out (of) ... rabbit-ass[ed] mind"

in which _rabbit-assed_ is only a meaningless intensifier usually replaced
by           _(god-)damned_ or _motherfucking_ or some such. Oddly, I've
personally known only one person who used this expression and that was back
in 1957. Since then, I've heard it used only twice, both times this year
and only on reality TV.

Heard on the Steve Wilkos Show this morning, mid-twenty-ish black woman
speaking:

"If he think that, he must be _out his rabbit-ass[ed] min[d]_!"

Blahzay Blahzay – Long Winded Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
genius.com › B › Blahzay Blahzay
Jan 1, 1996 - Thinking every line ain't divine / You _out your rabbit ass
mind_.

Dancer of the Sixth - Page 128
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0345379128
Michelle Shirey Crean - 1993 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
You scare the hell out of me, and if anyone even suggested that someday I'd
be sitting on your lap crying my heart out on your shoulder, I'd have told
him that he was _out of his rabbit-assed mind_. [Note the unexpected use of
generic _he_ and _him_ by this clearly self-hating woman instead of _they_
and _them_. WTF?!]

Thin Men of Haddam - Page 51
https://books.google.com/books?id=2mNyAAAAMAAJ
Charles William Smith - 1973 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
Mendez senses the advance guard of a monumental headache ascending in the
back of his brain as the jeep bounces down the rocky incline of the mesa.
"You're so damned predictable — if you think I'm going to ask why or how
you knew that all along you're _out of your rabbit-assed mind_.

The Hippies - Page 164
https://books.google.com/books?id=eAAgAAAAMAAJ
Burton H. Wolfe - 1968 - ‎Snippet view
I remember this one boy I met, Joe, eighteen years old He was using and
selling crystal. One day he said to me: "Man, I'm _out of my rabbit ass
mind_." I asked him what that meant. He said: "I've just turned on to some
good geese [another term for heroin]."


-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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