25 EVEN MORE MEATBONES

Hey guys, I've been real busy with graduating and jet-setting around the country and all sorts of shit that you don't care about.  But what better way to announce my re-arrival with twenty-five more meatbones?  If you don't feel like clicking that, "meatbones" are situations or visuals that frequently crop up in fiction--especially cartoons--but which have little to no bearing on reality!  A lot of these came from other people, but I haven't documented that so scrupulously as I did last time.  Suffice to say, if you pointed one or more of these out to me, thanks!

25. A performer is bombing onstage, and a cane grabs him/her from the side and suddenly pulls him off.  His/her hat may be left behind.

24. Hunchbacks.  Everything about them.

23. A person is wearing a barrel because they are too poor to afford any clothes.

22. A bomb goes off in someone's face, and the only apparent damage is that their face is now covered in soot and their hair stands on end.  Optionally, they blink once afterwards.

21. A kangaroo wears boxing gloves.

20. Dogcatchers.  Everything about them.

19. Parents lying to their kids after a pet dies, claiming the pet went to a farm.

18. A kissing booth at a fair. (Has anyone ever seen one of these in real life?)

17. A dunk tank, especially one where a figure of authority (read: high school principal) is the dunkee.

16. Stealing someone's secret recipe, especially to win a baking competition.

15. A person lathers up a ton of sunscreen on his/her nose, rendering only the nose white while the rest of the skin looks normal.

14. A man is not at work or home because he has "Gone Fishin'".

13. A kid stuffs a towel under his door so he can read comic books with the flashlight on and his parents won't notice.

12. A "kick me" sign is placed on someone's back.

11. Murder mysteries.  Everything about them.

10. Someone at a party gets knocked into the pool, JUST at the point where everything is starting to get out of hand!

9. A lover throws a rock at a window to get the attention of his significant other.  It works!

8. A bad kid gets a lump of coal in his/her stocking for Christmas.

7. An elegant man's monocle pops off in surprise.

6. The freezer breaks, so everyone has to eat all the ice cream before it melts.

5. Someone announces plans to dig a hole to China, or attempts this, or succeeds.

4. A car stops, a body is thrown out, and the car continues on its way.

3. The end of a date is announced with a disapproving party declaring, "Check, please!"

2. A drunk person sees pink elephants.

1. A girl complains to a nice, sensitive guy about how she wishes she could meet more nice, sensitive guys.

Top 25 Meatbones

PARMLOT delivers on a promise!  It's a list of top 25 meatbones!

For the uninitiated, a "meatbone" is defined as:

meat-bone

(n.)

A basically plausible image, event, or plot point that is much  more prevalent in fiction than it is in real life.  Often, but not always used to refer to a cartoony visual image.

I have recently submitted that definition of a meatbone (which apparently people think is a penis, IT IS NOT!!!) to Urban Dictionary.  My definition is probably on there by the time you're reading this, so please, click that link, vote it up, and we can all let the world know what a meatbone truly is.

And now, the examples!

25. Two people are completely unable to recognize each other at a masquerade ball despite the fact that their only disguises are tiny little half-masks.

24. A class title ends in "101"

23. A child licks his or her ice cream, which causes it to accidentally fall off the cone, and the child starts crying

22. A dog chases a cat

21. A cat chases a mouse

20. A mouse scares an elephant

19. A mouse steals some cheese

18. A cat watches a fish swim back and forth in a fishbowl

17. A man's wife is cheating on him with the pool boy

16. A person hides behind a newspaper or book while people searching for him/her run past, then he/she brings down the newspaper and runs in the opposite direction

15. A cat is stuck in a tree, especially if firefighters have to get it out instead of doing something more important

14. A worm crawls out of an apple

13. A fish skeleton is seen fully intact

12. A woman sings so high that glass shatters

11. A person slips on a banana peel

10. A prisoner wears a black-and-white striped uniform, especially if the prisoner has escaped from jail, robbed a bank, and now holds a bag of money with a large dollar sign on it

9. A young man spies an attractive woman changing from his apartment window, especially if he calls his friends over to watch her

8. A man or woman runs to stop his or her lover from getting on a plane

7. Parents have a serious relationship fight while their kid listens on the stairs

6. Something bad happens on a live television show, and the producers say it'll be good for the ratings

5. People discuss last night's television shows around a water cooler

4. An alarm clock has a bell on it, especially if the alarm goes off and the clock vibrates itself off a nightstand

3. A man eats a large hunk of nondescript meat, holding its bone as a handle

Note: this is the meatbone from whence the term "meatbone" is derived.  Credit to Tobin Mitnick.

2. A plumber's butt cheeks slip out while he is working on a sink

1. A cop eats a donut

In order to help spread this wonderful term, we invite you, the reader, to come up with your own meatbones and post them here!  Perhaps we will have a future list of our favorite guest-submitted meatbones!

The Top 9 Slang Terms I Tried To Make Popular, Peter Edition

As a response to Rob's recent list of slang he tried to get off the ground, here is my own chronicle of words and phrases I tried (and failed) to introduce into the popular lexicon.

By the way, I was going to do a Minnesota Twins related list, but seeing as tomorrow is the Biggest Game of All Time, AKA, the Twins v. the Bitch-Sox for the AL Central Crown, I figure I'll save it for tomorrow, win or (KNOCK ON A LOUISVILLE SLUGGER BASEBALL BAT) lose. WIN TWINS!

9. “Pancho”

There was time when I was, oh, let’s say, seven years old, when I used to call most people “Pancho”. I had a pretty good reason for this quirk. We had a foosball table and my dad nicknamed all the little foosball player-men Pancho, because they were a tan shade of plastic, with little black helmet hairpieces. Total Panchos. Anyway, I started doing that one day while my buddy Julian was over and he started doing it at school the next day, and pretty soon, everyone and everything was Pancho. It didn’t last past the fifth grade. I tried!

8. “Face”

Hah. Yikes. My bold, high-school attempt to replace buddy/guy/friend/you with “face”… it was synecdoche pushed to its lamest extreme. “Hey face!” I’d say to my friends, instead of, you know, “Hey, Matt!” or “Hey, Nik!” Yeah, it was an awful idea. Only slightly worse than Pancho.

7. “Stay black.”

Today in the shower, I was thinking about things I say, and that turned into things I want to start staying, and I arrived at “Stay black.” I should definitely start saying this! Like, always! End of a meeting, looks like we’re moving forward with purpose and direction? Stay black! You totally just made out with your crush of five years? Stay black! Good episode of Gossip Girl? Dude… stop watching Gossip Girl.

6. “Balla, narc, or poseur”

Once upon a time, Eva and I invented a sweet game called “Balla, narc, or poser”. The object of the game is to decide whether the historical figure (usually a president) is a balla, a narc, or a poser. I’ll just copy/past the gchat—you’ll get the gist.

me: john Quincy adams… total poser. TOTAL poser.

Eva: he did make it into Profiles in Courage, though

me: i think all american history can be broken down into ballers and posers.

More like Profiles in BOREage.

Eva: I agree

on both counts

me: henry clay = baller.

samuel tilden = poser

Eva: Garfield, baller or poser?

poser, I think

me: in his first term, he was a total baller, but as he got on in years, he faded into poserdom.

oh yeah, garfield was a huge poser.

Eva: this is true

me: a poseur even.

Eva: Baller = Taft

he was so fat!

slash phat!

me: YES!

it's true!

oh, there are also a few narcs.

Wilson.

Eva: obviously!

Wilson was such a narc.

5. “Make arrest.”

I was obviously obsessed with The Departed during my senior year of college, so for a while, a thing that I decided was really fun to do was to text Rob and Tom the phrase “make arrest” at completely random moments. (Not random in that annoying, girlish sense, ie: “You guys, Trent was so random and awkward last night. He kept like, saying these things from these random movies and it was totes awkward, but like, cute-awkward… or, well, maybe awkward-cute, but, whatever, anyway, SO random!" Not at all random like that... my use of "make arrest" was lacking in purpose, order, or cause.) Anyway, I kept doing this for awhile, and then I started introducing it into conversation, but the problem was, it didn’t really mean anything. It was just a fun thing to say… which was actually really fun? Oh, well. It died.

4. “What powers does he have?”/”What cool features does he come with?”

This is one that I really should have put more of an effort into because it could have really taken off. For a while last year, whenever one of my friends would talk about someone new, I would always say, “What powers does he/she have?” to mean, “What is he/she like?” The thing that I really liked about it was that it cast social skills and personality traits as magical attributes. Then, I thought about it for a while, and it sounded like I was treating human people like action figures… things that could have battle damage or shoot plastic missiles. (Although, it’s true, most of my closest friends are battle damaged. Or just damaged.)

3. “Mom”

Earlier this year, I started calling everyone “Mom”. It is safe to say that I missed my mom. I stopped discriminating between sexes—referring to Tom as Mom after a while (I played the rhyme up quite a bit), and then just random folk I met on the street. Everyone became Mom. Then, it lost its luster, so I stopped doing it. (But now all of Caitlin’s girlfriends call each other Mommy! COINCIDENCE!?)

2. “No one knows!”

This is slightly akin to Rob’s “that’s made up”… but I am still trying to make it work, every chance I get. Here’s the deal. I frequently say things that demand explanation or qualification. Example… Some Person: Peter, why are you so upset about the White Sox losing to the Tigers? Peter: No one knows! What I love about this is that the reason in the example is clear… I’m upset because the White Sox blow and one more loss would mean the Twins would be in the playoffs. But it’s more important than that! “No one knows” is an existential expression of the true uncertainty of this (American?) life. No one actually knows, because absolute truths don’t exist. More importantly, though… it is fun to say! No one knows!

1. “Ah, life”

Folks! This was a longtime favorite. This was such a catchphrase that I tried to put it on a shirt. It was a mantra, a heartfelt admission of the ridiculous ebb and flow of the human condition. When something wonderful happened, “Ah, life,” I’d say. When something disappointed me, “Ah, life,” I’d say. When the Twins and the White Sox had to play a single, win-and-in playoff, scheduled for tomorrow at 7:30, AH FUCKING LIFE, SAYS I!!!

Top 9 Slang Terms I Tried to Make Happen

I could make these up and it would probably be funnier, but it is actually true that I've been obsessed for a long time with trying to start using a slang term that would catch on.  Here are some of my attempts:

9. "51 cent"

Peter and I came up with this one a while ago.  It is a simple term for those souvenir flattened pennies that you can buy at a lot of tourist attractions.  It's very low on the list because it has limited applications, but it's a pretty sweet name (in reference to--if you can't tell--the price of the pennies).  Here is an example of usage:

Me: "Yo, Peter, I just got a 51 cent with the World Trade Center on it."

Peter: "Ace."

8. "8 Mile'd"

Let's be honest first, the movie 8 Mile was awful.  But the strategy Eminem uses near the end of it, where he (in a rap battle) admits directly to a lot of bad things about himself so that the other guy will look stupid if he tries to say anything mean to him, struck me as something that needed a slang term.  So I started 8 Mile'ing people and then telling them that they just got 8 Mile'd.  Moral of the story: now everyone knows that I fucked a peanut butter sandwich.  This was not such a good slang term.

7. "That's made up"

This is something relatively new that I've been saying recently because it's pretty fun to say.  It's a dismissal of something, most frequently used with something that's not ACTUALLY made up, but seems made up, or you wish were made up.  For example:

Peter: Did you hear that there's a movie coming out called The Family that Preys?  Like, "preys" with a fucking e?

Rob: That's made up.

I haven't really kicked it into full gear and tried to make this one catch on yet, but I may soon.

A similar one that I used to do but don't as much any more is "That's not real."

6. "I dig it like a pony"

This one seemed fool-proof.  I was so convinced that this one was going to catch on, because it

1) plays off an already popular slang phrase ("I dig it"...or that one dude in The Warriors: "CAN YOU DIG IT???")

2) makes reference to something that is both widespread and hip (The Beatles)

Eventually, I think it failed because it takes too long to say.  Seven syllables to express your approval is admittedlty a lot.

5. "Tole"

Okay, I didn't I actually came up with this myself, or at least I don't think I did.  However, the lack of an Urbandictionary entry for this word, which is internet slang for "totally" that can also be used in real life, leads me to believe that it's not actually any sort of accepted use, and some friend of mine probably started doing this and I just picked it up.  Come forth, friend of mine who invented this great and spread-worthy slang term!

4. "Manual sex"

This doesn't really count as a "slang term" per se--in fact, in a lot of ways, it's the opposite of a slang term: I'm trying to create a more codified general term to replace the slang.  Here's what I mean, at the risk of sounding vulgar (which Lord knows this blog does NOT do): fellatio and cunnilingus, or whatever slang you want to use for them, both fit under the category of "oral sex."  However, there is no gender neutral term for handjob/fingering (I'm sorry I told you this would get gross), hence, a very sensible one on which we can all agree: manual sex.  This is going to catch on yet, I'm telling you.

3. "Ace"

Let me be specific: this is "ace" used as an adjective, often with an expletive added as an adverbial modifier.  For instance: "That's fuckin' ace."  I had been working on this one for a few years (2-3, I think), and then I recently discovered that Jake and Amir were making it happen too, but kind of ironically:

Ace from Jake Hurwitz on Vimeo.

Well, I'm not going to claim I was the first person to use the word that way, but I was tole doing it before Jake and Amir.  I am, however, glad, that they started it up as well, because it's a damn good slang word.

2. "Hangin' preps, no regrets"

This is one of the ones I'm working hardest on (hangin' preps, no regrets) right now.  You say it after you just left a preposition hanging and you don't even give an eff 'cuz you know how ace you are.

1. "Meatbone"

This one is almost certainly the best, and has a great chance of catching on.  It was developed collaboratively with several people after I noticed the demand for such a term.  (I believe Tobin Mitnick gets the actual credit for suggestion this specific word.)  The term "meatbone" refers to when a conceit of fiction occurs in real life.  Most of the more obvious examples are visual, cartoony ones: for instance, someone slips on a banana peel, or someone holds up an entire intact fish skeleton, or a cat watches a fish in a fishbowl with its eyes moving back and forth, or someone chows down on a big hunk of nondescript meat attached to a bone that serves as a handle (from whence the name is derived).  But it also applies to when aspects of life follow certain stereotypical fictional routes: if your wife was actually having sex with the pool boy, for example, that would be an excellent meatbone (though not too excellent for you, you cuckold).  A list of the top meatbones is forthcoming.