Bad Habits - Where my slang at? - May 02 2001

I'm out of slang.

I thought of volunteering for some inner-city kids to pick up some good street lingo, but I'm not available at an hour when kids are plentiful. Plus, to interact with kids I need a crutch, props of some sort like my dogs or fireworks. And since fireworks are illegal here, and my dogs have licking disorders, that leaves me.

Maybe I should make the time, though, because my vocabulary is important to me and it's dwindling. All I have left in my arsenal of fun words is "motherfucker" and that's wearing thin. Without something good to mix it up with, I've pretty much tapped it out, as well as its variations — mofo and muthah-fuckaaaah.

I've also been limping along with "Booya!," "In your face!" and the perennial retro favorite, "Yo mama." But they're not really taking care of business. I can't even consider tired old "talk to the hand," or "that's just crazy talk," and no one in their right mind uses "cool" anymore other than as a filler word. I used to be "the shit" when it came to words. Now, I'm just swimming in it.

I need slang. It makes anything you do seem more colorful. It makes ordinary activities seem important, more impressive. One of the reasons I'm out of slang is that so much slang has become legit.

So many media sources are trying to be "hip" that they're dissing standard English and co-opting the slang. Once it becomes part of the establishment though, you have to move on and find more subversive words.

Maybe I've just become more of an addict. Maybe I'm just getting older. But hell, I read teen mags, and there's been no new slang there for a while. It's still "hottie" and "jonesing" and "chill" and "hooked-up" and "peeps." Dubya and Whitney Houston say the children are our future, but I can't crib shit these days from those lazy little fucks. Back in the day, you know, barefoot in the snow five miles and shit, my generation coined crazy-phat words like, well like phat, and fly and homies.

Now the AJC, not quite a legitimate newspaper, but close enough, "kicked it old-school" last week and talked about the gorillas at Zoo Atlanta "hooking-up." It's sort of like when you're a kid and your parents like your music — it ruins it. Or when your parents try to be "cool" and instead end up looking like buffoons.

Now "real" publications, and everybody and their grandmothers are using my former beloved slang. Of course, I realize that I am also some groups' word destroyer. Once a white-bread homegirl like myself gets hold of a word, does it automatically mean the word is on its way out? Probably. I know this. I'm OK with this. Just look at what happened to crunk. But somewhere, there has been a halt in slang production, as even my "fly," "def," "phat" friends have nothing new. You smell me?

I'm not the only one out of slang it seems. Here is a conversation overheard in my supposedly "hip" work environment forwarded to me in an e-mail titled "White Boyz." It reads:

I meant to tell you about the scary scene I happened upon today (names withheld to protect us all): [Tall white male] 'Honky' teaching [another tall white male] homeboy dialect.

TWM#1: "They used to say, 'proper!' — although I never figured out what that meant — but now they say, 'straight!' "

TMW#2: "Do they still say, 'the bomb?' "

Sigh.

Jane's looking to kick it waaay new school — motherfuckin' Montessori! So please, contribute to the Save Jane's Vocabulary Fund: Send good slang to jane.catoe @creativeloafing.com.??