"Drop a hard _J_"

[Garson O'Toole]

Wilson: Through sobering experience I have learned that dates in
online forums can be inaccurate. Of course, any digital text can be
altered and incorrect dates can be inserted. So forum administrators
could, in a sense, falsify data through deliberate acts.

But there is also an automated mechanism that yields misleading data.

Forum software sometimes appends a signature line to each post created
by an individual. When a forum user updates his signature line the
forum software, in some cases, retroactively inserts the new signature
into old postings.

This means that the dates associated with material in signature lines
can be inaccurate. If a researcher uses the Google Groups search
engine then he or she will find misdated text in signature lines.

The phrase "drop a hard J" appears in the description associated with
a user profile. I suspect that this data can be altered by a forum
participant. There is substantial danger that this text is also
retroactively altered whenever a forum participant updates his profile
tagline. But I do not know this with certainty.

Happy to hear other perspectives on this issue,
Garson

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "Drop a hard _J_"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Used on the Comedy Channel sitcom, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,
> wherein it has the meaning,
>
> To use "Jew" in conversation and not "Jewish"
>
> It;s not in the UD and the earliest instance that I've found in Google is,
>
> dan the jew
> drop a hard J
>
> July 12 2006 6:04 PM
>
> http://goo.gl/pWnQa
>
>
> When I checked HDAS for "hard J," I came across _hard leg_. This was
> an everyday term in the Saint Louis of my day. The intonation pattern
> was such that, for StL, the "correct" spelling is _hardleg_, as Majot
> spells it.. It was a mildly-disparaging term for any random male,
> unknown to the speaker, of any age. It was mildly disparaging the
> extent that it was applied only to someone necessary to the telling of
> a anecdote, but of no other pertinence.
>
> Man, I was a hawking a *fine* chick! Till I saw some hardleg run up on
> her and it looked like she knew him.
>
> _Hardleg_ was never applied to women or girls. But, somehow, I've long
> had the impression that the term was originally applied to "female
> impersonators" - back in the day, terms like "cross-dresser" and
> "transvestite" were unknown in the 'hood - because of their "hard" -
> muscular - legs. "Softleg" was occasionally used for a girl or a
> woman, as you might expect.
>
> Speaking of _Major_, Major Lance was hardly the first black male to
> bear that as a first name. During my childhood, I had a couple of
> schoolmates by that name. And I really envied them for their cool
> name. And when I discovered that "Frank" Willis was officially
> "Franklin Delano Roosevelt" Willis, OMG!
>
> But that was then.
>
> --
> -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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