Search History
The Breadth of a Writer's Thoughts
In my defense, as a writer you tend to have a pretty spotty search history. Sometimes there are things we need to know that are rather unsavory.
What is the secret language of bootlaces for late 20th Century neo-Nazis?
I was trying to jog my memory about some casual acquaintances I’d had in my teen years. I grew up in the midwest and dabbled in some counter-cultural social spaces, so I already knew a few things that you had to look out for when meeting new people wearing Doc Martens boots. It’s kind of hard to forget that white laces used to mean “white power” and red laces meant that someone had spilled blood for ‘the movement’. These were the first two things to avoid, especially if you wanted to hit a mosh pit. These people weren’t fun. But after all these years I couldn’t remember what ladder lacing looked like, if I had ever actually seen it in person, or what it meant if the wearer opted for other colors beyond white or red. The information has not been relevant to me for decades so I had quite forgotten. I googled it.
I went down a neo-Nazi rabbit hole and got stuck looking at the history and origin of SHARPS (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice). I’m not going to get into the finer points of explaining all of the racist and anti-racists sub-sub-sub-cultures out there, so for now I will ask that you accept SHARPS as shorthand for the "slightly better skinheads”. Anyhoo… I spent the better part of an hour pondering the branding challenges of working class kids who loved ska, Oi!, raggae and the like, but had their style co-opted by a bunch of racist asshats. To be fair, if actual asshats were a thing and Nazi punks took to wearing them, boy that would have solved a lot of confusion and rendered the secret laces codes of the 80’s and 90’s unnecessary.
Alas, this was not the case.
I do find it fascinating, though, that once the style had been sullied by, well, racist asshats, SHARPS didn’t grow hair or develop some other style. They doubled down as if Bic-smooth heads, braces (suspenders for all the uninitiated), Docs and damn near anything army surplus were as central to their being as the blood in their veins.
I have never loved a style that much. In fact, a single cheerleader that I did not like showed up to school wearing torn fishnets ONE TIME and I didn’t wear mine again. And yet, these people refused to cede any ground on their style. As a result, some house parties back in the day could be really confusing. Who am I crushing beers with and if shit goes down, which asshat do I root for?
Speaking of asshat…
What is the etymology of the word asshat?
To my surprise and great pleasure, Merriam-Webster decided to weigh in with Some Notes on ‘Asshat’. My favorite quote for the article:
A final note: careful writers would do well to take care with the correct use of the hyphen and spacing when employing the suffix form of -ass. There is a profound difference between being in possession of a “sweet-ass hat” and a “sweet asshat”; failure to observe these conventions of punctuation may result in significant confusion on the part of your readers.
Some sources never steer you wrong.
Another, rather unfortunate search, has there ever been a crime solved by DNA taken from boogers?
Why oh why was this on my mind? I was thinking about a childhood friend who had a (uggghhh) booger wall by their bed. As far as I knew, this was the extent of this person’s criminal behavior, but I started to wonder. What if someone could do absolutely everything else during the commission of a crime and absentmindedly wipe or flick their boogers somewhere at a crime scene… would they get caught?
Apparently, I am not the first person to ask such a question.
It wasn’t that I wanted to explore the behavior or the science of nose-picking. I was more interested in how professionals who deal with blood, human remains, feces and the like would talk about boogers if they were pertinent to an investigation.
I read up on it a bit. Then I quickly abandoned the concept once the relatively anodyne phrase “nasal secretions” joined the chat.
That wasn’t as fun as I thought it would have been.
Here is the last one for today, mostly because I find this to be a fun exercise every time I do it.
In the mid-90’s I performed and directed shows with The Scrimshaw Brothers in Minneapolis. Those were really fun years and, for awhile, Joseph Scrimshaw made a joke of “collecting” sentences that had never been uttered before. These odd expressions often popped up while we were prepping to do some comedy things at one place or another. My favorite one was, “I bet it would be faster if I put the grenade in my knickers now.”
Every once in a while, I google it to see if it has entered the lexicon. Now that I have offered it here, I am interested in how far it could go.
Oh, and if you are curious, Joseph was right. Putting the grenade in the knickers early was a really, really good call.