"sucks" revisited

[neil]

My significant other's English nephew (spliced to a Texan lady) and living
in Austin, Texas, is the drummer for a band who go by the name of The Yuppy
Pricks. One of their songs, which lasts something like 40 seconds (high
energy punk thrash, or what) concerns a hummer in a Hummer.

--Neil Crawford

> From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 10:17:22 -0400
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: "sucks" revisited
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "sucks" revisited
>
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-
>
> A good point. I suppose that a half-century is plenty of time for a
> slang term to die out. Even in my case, "hummer" has never been part
> of my active vocabulary. I've heard it and read  it, but I've never
> said it.
> -Wilson
>
> On 8/7/06, David Bowie <db.list at pmpkn.net> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: "sucks" revisited
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --
>>
>> From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>
>>> My questions are these:
>>
>>> 1) Why does no one, apparently, find "Hummer," connoting, as it does,
>>> a particular method of fellatio, the "Hawaiian hum-job" of the
>>> mid-Twentieth Century United States, offensive?
>>
>> I don't know if it's a current term, at least in all regions. My first
>> introduction to the term was someone telling a story about his parents
>> getting shocked laughter when his father, talking about the
>> radio-controlled model car he'd just gotten, said "Your mother gave me a
>> Hummer for Christmas!"
>>
>> This was right about the same time as i first heard (read: remember
>> hearing) Bob Rivers's "Little Hummer Girl", a Christmas parody song
>> centered around the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Until i heard the story,
>> the song title made no real sense to me--though i got that "hum" was
>> being used to mean "perform oral sex on someone", that was figured out
>> from context, not knowing the word.
>>
>> Of course, now that i've learned this term, i find the billboards for
>> Orlando's Hummer dealership (one of the highest-selling in the nation,
>> presumably because of all the mountains here in Florida) advertising H3s
>> as Hummers "Now in a smaller size!" more than amusing.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> --
>> David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
>>      Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
>>      house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
>>      chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.
>>
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>
> --
> Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have
> found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be
> imposed upon them.
>
> Frederick Douglass
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