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Sunday, June 19, 2016

Sick of It

These phrases, that is:

Suck it up Buttercup
Cute the first dozen times I saw it. I tried to find the phrase’s origin, figuring it was from some big action flick – I can totally hear Bruce Willis snarling that out to some weeny sidekick.

What little I could find online attributes it, in a vague sort of way, to WWI and/or WWII pilots. And on one of those Yahoo Q&A boards, someone wrote that it’s from a Jack Nicholson movie but they can’t remember which.

OK.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
This, according to everywhere I've looked on the Intertoobz, comes from a Polish proverb and means not my problem. Again, very cute but it annoys me more than Buttercup.

Why?

It strikes me as a cold-hearted, I'm-just-so-damn-clever, assholian thing to say when someone needs your help. Granted, there are certainly an abundance of drama queens and kings who are forever drafting others to fix the messes in which they find themselves embroiled. Those folks may very well deserve a turn down on their requests/demands for solid assists BUT do we really need to be dicks about it?  Isn’t there a diplomatic way to phrase things without sounding like a callous, self satisfied shit-stain?

Yes. Yes there is. Find it.
Cowboy up
We’re in New England fer Bast’s sake! There are NO real or urban cowboys here mon ami. AND, if you’re trying to encourage me to employ all my internal strength so that I might face the challenges ahead, fucking find another, less obnoxiously flip phrase! How about “You can do this. You’ve got the smarts and the ability in you. You CAN do this.”

I respond MUCH better when given encouragement versus deriding quips. I don’t believe this casts me in some teeny tiny minority either.

I Will Cut a Bitch
WHAT does this mean and WHY does anyone, outside a prison situation, use it?

Urban dictionary has this:
bitch, I will cut you
Final threat of a dispute, usually from a woman to another woman. This phrase usually indicates that all other forms of negotiation or discussion have failed and some sort of violence may occur. It is a slang declaration of war.
 Nice. I think this has been co-opted by the masses and now means, or CAN mean, something along the lines of, “I’m really frustrated and angry right now so leave me alone or I’ll have a temper tantrum.”

Well, I hope that’s what Sally meant when she said it.

Boot Camp
Gyms advertise intensive get-in-shape boot camps. This has become such a popular marketing gimmick that one Boston gym is actually named Ultimate Bootcamp. 

There are also Coding Boot camps who promise to teach you all you need to know to snatch one of them nifty six figure salaried gigs. There are job hunting boot camps, troubled teen boot camps and even culinary boot camps. Mostly it’s personal trainers and pricey gyms who flog these sorts of programs.

Nothing, NADA, no matter how many promised lost pounds or whatevs, turns me off faster than a program labeled boot camp. The idea of someone screaming in my face, insulting me, calling me names is not AT ALL motivational.

I can't imagine these "boot camps" are actually run like that so why are they billed as such?

OK, done ranting. What phrases are you tired of seeing/hearing?

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