NTMP #6, March 6, 2022
Ancient poets with amazing eyes.
This week’s new-to-me phrases
Chunder * Shrimportant deadline * Miley Virus and Ku Klux Hannah Montana * Sharf * Eye of Horace
The phrases, with context
This week we have a small-but-mighty collection of phrases, including prawny puns, a delightful history gaffe, and a game of “what color is your b-hole?”
1. Chunder
Can we take a moment to appreciate Gen Z’s love of the absurd? One of my kids has sent me this IG of a TikTok (as one does) twice in the last week.
As I was watching, I noticed these lyrics:
I come from the land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Chunder? That’s what they’ve been singing this whole time?
Dictionary.com says it’s Australian slang for barfing after the beer does flow.
As with my decades-long WKRP knowledge gap, I’m fully aware that this phrase once again reveals my ignorance. Fortunately, I’m more excited about learning a new thing than I am worried about outing myself as culturally deficient.
2. Shrimportant deadline
This one comes from Semi-Rad’s excellent weekly Friday Inspiration roundup, curated by writer, adventurer, and artist Brendan Leonard.
Monterey Bay Aquarium created a 2-hour chillhop playlist (I love writing to chillhop!) set to video footage of shrimp. The description for the video is a work of art:
Whether you're working on a shrimportant deadline, tackling a shrimpossible task or just shrimply looking to krill out for a while—here's two hours of spot prawns (in fact a large shrimp Pandalus platyceros) to help you work, study, relax and vibe in a crustacean relaxation station filled with lofi hip hop beats.
Look at all of those fantastic new-to-me phrases! Even the hashtag, #shrompweek2022, is masterful. I want to meet and air-high-five the person or team writing this content.
They go on to say:
There's just something about watching a shrimp go about its business that's soothing to the sole.
I am pretty sure their use of “sole” here is a pun but if not, just know that it happens, as you’ll see with number 5, below.
3. Miley Virus and Ku Klux Hannah Montana
You don’t need to click through if you don’t want to look at that photo of sitting members of Congress heckling President Biden during his State of the Union speech.
But just . . . chef’s kiss to this tweet aptly nicknaming these two clowns who somehow got themselves elected, reminding us once again that we are in the darkest timeline, aka The Bad Place, for fans of The Good Place.
If you haven’t watched this show yet, I must insist that you do. The show’s creator, Michael Schur wrote a book based on some of the philosophical questions the series explores. Definitely gonna buy this one. (The book link goes to my local bookstore, Read Between the Lynes, if you want to support an amazing community indie shop.)
4. Sharf
I coined this one without knowing the Urban Dictionary meaning of simultaneously shitting and barfing (we’ve all been there, it is not fun, and this word is a kind of funny cousin to the shart).
My use of this word was a reference to my friend Abby’s amazing sweater-scarf. But given the other meaning, maybe this one shouldn’t catch on?
5. Eye of Horace
My friend Kathleen popped this gem into our hag group chat:
Something about “Eye of Horace” looked odd to me, and then my friend Abby pointed out that it’s “Eye of Horus,” referring to the Egyptian god, not the Roman poet. We were already cry-laughing about these nicknames for our power flowers, aka, ‘namuses,’ but this sent us over the edge.
Visits to the hardware store paint department will never be the same again. The replies to that tweet contain some gems, too.
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