NTMP 134: Beef Mist
Under my mombrella-ella-ella
New-To-Me Phrases, March 9, 2025
Minus aura * Vance Pants * Carnival of grievance * Circassian diaspora * Scatalogical content * Ham Spray * Mombrella
The Phrases, With Context
If you’re new here, welcome! If you’ve been around a while, thanks for sticking around!
It seems I missed the third anniversary of NTMP back in January. Wild that I’ve been engaged in phrase herding for three years! Even longer if you consider that I started the original NTMP Google doc back in 2018. I’ve never committed to a personal creative project for this long. It’s a weird and wonderful body of work I’m proud of. Thanks for joining me on this ride.
If you believe in supporting independent projects like this, consider becoming a paid subscriber to NTMP!
Let’s get to it!
But first: poll results
A clear winner here with Sigourney Beaver; it wasn’t even close. Thanks for voting!
1. Minus aura
This phrase, along with its counterpart negative aura, has been around a while with tweens/teens. But I didn’t encounter it until I was at physical therapy and did a Classic Toni Move and put my hoodie on backwards—something I do with astonishing regularity. A PT aide said her nine-year-old would call that minus aura. Vicious! I love it!
Aura points relate to your coolness/vibe, and if you have a negative or minus aura, you’re uncool. That definitely tracks for me! Here’s an explainer from BuzzFeed.
2. Vance Pants
I love a good rhyming takedown of a real piece of shit.
Longtime reader and Hag Supreme Kathleen sent me this one. Here’s a TikTok analysis of JD Vance’s short pants—a commenter called them business capris, lol.
3. Carnival of grievance
Moira Dunegan writes with incisive clarity for the Guardian in a piece titled Why are the Democrats so spineless? and a kicker of a subhed: No wonder the American public thinks of Democrats as out of touch, opportunistic and cowardly. That is because they are.
BOOM! This was written before the “wear pink and carry a paddle” debacle during Trump’s speech last week, by the way.
Here’s the intro, which contains the phrase that made it into this edition:
What does the Democratic party believe in? It’s difficult to tell. In 2024, Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris ran a campaign of moderation, reconciliation and emphasis on restoring institutional norms. This failed to capture much public attention when compared with the Trump campaign’s carnival of grievance. In the months since their defeat, the Democrats have been confused, conflicted and internally contentious over how to best proceed.
I’ve seen the Trump campaign and organization compared to both WWF wrestling and carnivals and it feels apt. It’s attention-getting. But it’s always based in grievance, so there’s always something to be wildly upset about and therefore act upon, regardless of whether the thing they are upset about is true.
I didn’t have “centrist Democrats further radicalizing us” on my Trump 2.0 bingo card, but here we are. This makes me realize I should design a bingo card for this presidency. Stay tuned.
4. Circassian diaspora
While reading about extremely online people visiting the quiet suburban Tampa site of the ‘you know i had to do it to em’ meme, I, an uncultured rube, spotted something I’d never heard of: the Circassian diaspora.
From this article about the 10-year-anniversary of the meme, describing its subject, Lucky Luciano:
The spot sits directly in front of his childhood home, where he grew up the youngest of six, born to parents who were part of the Circassian diaspora, an ethnic group pushed out by a 19th-century genocide from a Caucasian region that’s now part of Russia. Lucky’s own family had landed in Tampa by way of Syria, where many Circassians had fled.
The Russians have been oppressive colonizing pricks since forever, haven’t they? Fun fact: My Ukrainian grandfather, born in 1876 (not a typo; my dad was 13th of 13 kids) was forcibly drafted into the Russian army at age 14. He hated their government for the rest of his life, and it’s part of what drove him to move to the U.S. in the early 20th century.
Anyway, the Wikipedia entry on the Circassians is a fascinating read. This is my favorite detail:
The words Circassia and Circassian (/sərˈkæsiənz/ sər-KASS-ee-ənz) are exonyms1, Latinized from the word Cherkess, which is of debated origin. One view is that its root stems from Turkic languages, and that the term means "head choppers" or "warrior killers" accounting for the successful battle practices of the Circassians.
I guess Lucky really was born to do it to ‘em.
5. Scatalogical content
You may not know this, but there is a NTMP Phrase-O-Matic Submission Machine where you can submit phrases for consideration. It’s been around a while and I’d wondered whether it was fully operational when I finally got a submission!
This one comes from NTMP megafan Deborah, sourced from Stephen Colbert:
If you don’t or can’t watch videos, this references when Elon Musk’s team of broccoli-haired turd nuggets at DOGE sent an email demanding that federal workers justify their jobs by listing five things they accomplished that week. And people responded with all manner of replies that some might call “vulgar” and others might call “appropriate resistance while we sharpen the guillotines.”
6. Ham Spray
I’m reading Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer, a book I recommend, although I’m not finished with it yet. Dederer is a skilled writer and thinker, and she does a fine job of exploring the nuances of fandom, criticism, and who is free to make art and to also do monstrous things—and who is not. (Take a wild guess there.)
While delving into author Virginia Woolf’s antisemitism, Dederer mentions that the Bloomsbury group of artists and writers that Woolf belonged to frequented a summer home called Ham Spray.
The house is situated on Inkham-Spray Road at the top of Ham Hill, but, like, they didn’t have to call it Ham Spray. Choices were made.
7. Mombrella
OK, it’s peak “I’m over age 40” time, as I launch into some birdwatching nerdiness.
I’ve written about longtime bald eagle mates Jackie and Shadow before. This year I’m once again hanging out with a tab open to the live feed on YouTube. It’s literally awesome to see the activity at their massive nest in a Jeffrey Pine tree2, where Jackie and Shadow are raising three baby chicks in the Big Bear Valley of California.
The nest cam is maintained by a nonprofit called Friends of Big Bear Valley (you can donate at that link) and monitored by volunteers who update nest happenings via Google Docs. That doc links to events like the hatchlings emerging and occasional visits from a flying squirrel or battles with predators like owls and ravens.
One of my favorite things is watching the eagles do this waddle move as they settle in over the nestlings to keep them warm. It often snows during nesting season, so volunteers refer to the eagles spreading their wings over the babies as a mombrella or dadbrella, depending on which eagle partner is tending the nest.
Here’s a video clip from the webcam to see what a mombrella looks like.
Watching the eagles this year and excitedly sharing updates with friends and family has been such a balm to my weary and pissed-off heart. /🦅🤓
A (Literal) Bonus Bit
Last week a 404 Media newsletter described people doing weird stuff to Cybertrucks like tossing American cheese slices onto their windshields. (A+ move, no notes—but cheese owners should be aware that those vehicles have surveillance cameras.)
The post went into detail that had me cackling, and those details did not make it into the web version of the newsletter. Good thing I saved my copy for your reading enjoyment.
The way this was written had me wondering if they used AI to scrape that Facebook group and summarize it, lol. The newsletter describes how Cybertruck owners in a Facebook group are not happy about people making fun of their life choices. They are sad that people are writing FASCIST in the dirt on their Cybertrucks, or in one instance:
Another post shows images . . . people had drawn on the side of a dirty Cybertruck with their fingers, which included . . . two different penises, one of which was hairy and ejaculating. The owner of the Cybertruck posted videos taken by his Cybertruck that showed two snowboarders scrawling the art on the truck. A photo posted by the owner after “two washes” showed that one of the penises faintly remained on the car.
First of all: snowboarders drawing penises on stuff? Who would’ve thought? Secondly, I love everything about this. I also learned that Cybertrucks have a ‘surveillance mode’ that records activity near them. Super-normal and not at all weird.
That’s it for this edition! Remember to keep making it weird and stay furiously curious!
Exonym is also new-to-me!
The Jeffrey pine can grow to 5,000 feet!
I've always wanted to give my house a name, even though it seems like only summer homes and rich peoples' estates get them. Ham Spray is decidedly not being considered, although it does offer up a more comedic angle on the custom.
Vance Pants 🤣🤣🤣
And love the bit about the cybertrucks!!!