Throwing oneself a fastball

[Neal Whitman]

Ah, Urban Dictionary! How could I have overlooked that?

I see that the reflexive component is not a necessary part of the
expression, and now that I think about it, I can see clues I missed in
the calendar page. First, where I put "said" in brackets, the actual
wording was "known", which I thought was a mistake. But if it was not a
mistake, it puts the expression "throw s.o. a fastball" into what the
writers must have assumed was common ground, with the new information
being "themselves". This would also account for the
otherwise-superfluous use of "own" with "hands" and "noses".

The page-a-day calendar does have a line drawing of someone throwing
himself a fastball, complete with whooshing lines coming out of his rear
end.

Neal


On 1/19/2013 9:37 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Throwing oneself a fastball
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Jan 19, 2013, at 9:09 AM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>
>>  From my page-a-day "What Your Poo Is Telling You" calendar:
>>
>> "... some people just love the smell of their own farts. These unique individuals are [said] to throw themselves fastballs. These people like to fart on their own hands and then put their hands up to their own noses and inhale deeply."
>>
>> A quick Google search reveals no relevant hits. I can't access DARE or HDAS at the moment, so it might be in those places.
>>
>> In any case, I've never caught a whiff of this idiom before. Have you? And are there other expressions for this activity?
>>
>> Neal
>>
> from urbandictionary:
>
> 5.       Fastball       32 up, 408 down
> When you place your hand in a cup-shaped form behind your ass. Then you fart into your hand and move your hand (still in cup shape) towards your friend / person's nose, carrying the fart in it. Hence a fastball.
> My fastball just knocked out Kim Dollof.
> ====================
>
> Note the vote, although I'm never sure whether those votes represent a considered disagreement about the accuracy of the lexicographic content or an aesthetic judgment about the denotatum.
>
> I'd check my own page-a-day "What Your Poo is Telling You" calendar, but I must have misplaced mine.  All I have is this one from the Metropolitan Museum and surprisingly none of the reproductions (at least through mid-January) feature anyone throwing themselves a fastball.  Of course some of them are non-representational...
>
> LH
>
> P.S.  Wonder what "throwing oneself a curve" might be
>
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