h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

From Aximili,
>>>Just thought I'd repost my page so it's easier to get too: <./>A23621708</.>.

>>>I really want a section on Spaghetti Westerns but I just don't know enough about them. If someone could give me a few pointers I'd very very grateful and reference you in the piece.

When you say spaghetti westerns do you mean the ones Sergio Leone directed and with Clint Eastwood starring as the nameless high plains drifter? Or the original samauri films directed by Akira Kurusawa and starring Tishiro Mifune, which Leone shamelessly ripped off? Or the absolutely hilarious parody western films Enzo Barboni directed and starring Italian actors Terence Hill and Bud Spencer as the two criminally-inclined, hygienically-challenged saddle tramps? You can't mean Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles, because that was a Bagel Western, and it was filmed about 20 miles from where my Mom lives in Southern California.

When I was just a little nerd, someone calculated the number of people killed in western movies and TV shows and found it was higher than the total number of people in the old West. By now that number probably exceeds the entire population of the west of everything, including western Tokyo, western Europe, and west Africa.

Part of what makes a western is the vernacular used in the dialog.

Personal remarks:
Cowardly - Lily-livered or Yellow-bellied
Complainer - He'd complain if he were hung with a new rope.
Young or short - knee high to a grasshopper or half-pint
Young - green horn, wet behind the ears, whipper-snapper
Tall - long drink of water
No account - a worthless person
Full of piss and vinegar - hard to tame (if an animal) looking for a fight (if human)
Techy - touchy or irritable

Activities:
Mosey - a type of perambulation specific to the west, strolling or ambling, but slowly and with the knees slightly bent.
Going to the stomp - going to the dance
Yammering or jawing - talking, gossiping
Sidle - move sideways or sneak
Set a spell - sit or rest for a time
Take a gander - look or examine (something)
Reckon - think or guess.
Skeedaddle, make oneself scarce, or vamoose - leave, leave quickly, or run away. (Well, I best skeedaddle.)

Names for whiskey:
Snake Bite Medicine, Snake Poison, Nose paint, neck oil, Mormon tea, Oh-be-joyful, Pop skull, Prairie Dew, Red Eye

About everyone pointing out who the new guy in town is:
Bartender: "What'll it be, stranger?"
Other people in town: "You new in town?" Or "I don't recognize you, stranger. Where are you from?"

About hanging someone without a trial.
"Hot damn, boys, we're gonna have ourselves a lynchin'."
"We oughta invite him to a necktie party."
"Hanging's too good for him."
"String him up."
"Let him swing."
"Let him do the Texas Cakewalk."

About some other form of "frontier justice" short of shooting or hanging
"A fellow like you ought to be horse whipped/tarred and feathered.
"Ride him out on a rail." (Force him to leave town.)

About taking matters into your own hands:
"Someone's got to do it, and I reckon that someone's got to be me."

About shooting someone:
"What did he die of?"
"Lead poisoning."

About being shot:
"Aahhgh, he got me." Or
"Aahhgh, you got me."

8jaw drops and I kneel in front of your vastly superior knowledge*

I'm not worthy

there's that many types of Spaghetti Westerns? . I only know the Clint Eastwood variety. And I definitely don't mean Blazing Saddles, but love it anyway.

Got any more quotes? I'd love a Western section in, but the only quote I liked from your post was 'Lead poisoning' That was absolute genius!

I'm guessing you didn't like anything over on F7679011?thread=4322113&show=20&skip=20#pi29 either. Unfortunately very few lines in any westerns can be said to sparkle. What makes the western so popular is something apart from the corny dialogue.

"I could squash you like a wormy apple."
"We'll give you a fair trial followed by a first-class hanging."

I'm trying to think of the line John Cleese's character used in Silverado. It cracked me up. Something like, "I suppose you can tell I'm not from these parts." But of course this line is delivered in his best English accent.

I can so imagine him saying that!

I really don't want to, but maybe I should leave Westerns out then, as this Entry is about the dialogue.

I was kind of hoping to eventually put generic quotes from all genre in here, but I suppose it's not going to happen.

That's completely understandable.

A lot of westerns use the exact same dialog as any other action film, but with the sort of substitutions I listed earlier. Where the action hero walks into a bar and ordering a shot of gin, the cowboy moseys into a saloon and orders a shot of red eye.

My little corner of the West: Just as a totally trivial aside, there is a small town Boonville about 25 minutes away that developed its own spoken dialect/language during the late 1800s/early 1900s. Back then of course it was not 25 minutes by car or anything else; it probably took two days by horse or half a day by car on dirt roads to get through the mountains to get in or out of that town. The dialect Boontling thrived until the mid-1900s, before it faded away.

But traces of Boontling live on. Boonville's local brewery, Anderson Valley Brewing Company, advertises their beer as "bahl hornin'" - good drinking. Some folks still call a phone a "bucky walter", even though that was supposed to refer to a a pay phone, and you hardly ever see working pay phones anymore. For more on the obscure dialect Boontling:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boontling
http://www.avbc.com/news/boontbeerfest.html

The robber-poet Black Bart is sort of a hero around here, like Robin Hood. There's a yearly Black Bart festival. Black Bart did not steal from the rich and give to the poor. He stole from Wells Fargo (bank) coaches, but never shot anyone, never robbed the passengers only the coach, and often left poetry at the scene of the crime. He was popular enough in his day to only get a 4 year sentence for 30+ stage coach robberies.

Was it Vogon poetry? That would probably hurt worse than being shot

Perhaps headed in a vogon direction, but you don't like the truly modern spelling of "poet" in his signature?

July 25, 1878:

"here I lay me down to sleep
to wait the coming morrow
perhaps success perhaps defeat
and everlasting Sorrow
let come what will I'll try it on
My condition can't be worse
and if theres money in that box
Tis munny in my purse
Black Bart
the PO 8"

The guy could have invented txt spk

He's bad, but he can't match up to the Great Mcgonnagle. Now THAT'S bad poetry. Are you brave enough to want a link?

The "Great Mcgonnagle"? Is that for real?

Sure, I'm brave. I made it through high school lit, after all. Which is to say, we had high school teacher read bad poetry meaningfully and dramatically at us.

About the txt spk, yes, txt spk has its roots in Black Bart's era, which is to say the telegraph. So yes, although he didn't invent txt spk per se, he used the common typographic shorthand of his day, which was telegraph speak. The telegraph customer had to pay by the word, and the telegraph operator tried to economize as much as possible.

Of course the great William Topaz Macgonnagle is for real. I take it you've heard of him? Spike Milligan, a very famous British comedian, admired him. Just for you, here is one of his most famous pieces: The Railway Bridge Over the Silvery Tay...

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/pgbridge.htm


Congratulations, Happy Nerd. You have just won the Aximili Award for Most Fascinting But Useless Fact Of The Day!

Wow. That poem was something else, really. In a perversely fascinated way I had to click on the follow up bridge disaster poem, too. And you're sure he isn't a character that the Monty Python boys made up?

Thank you for sharing that slice of bulldada.

(Bulldada - that which is good because it has no idea how truly bad it is.)

Glad you, ...enjoyed it?

And no, he really did exist. Unfortunately for the world of poetry. Spike Milligan admired his pluck and determination so much that he and Peter Sellers wrote and starred in a biopic of him, in which Peter Sellers played Queen Victoria, whom Mcgonnagle approaches to appeal to be made Poet Lauerate.

And thank you for a new word: bulldada. Perfectly describes some of the films I watch. (Really bad 50's and 60's B-movies. I absolutely adore them)

No, really?!? Peter Sellers as Queen Vicky, oh yeah, I'm adding that to my Netflix queue.

Yes really. You might have a bit of trouble tracking it down though.

Yeah, I just noticed that. Oh well.

You could try E-bay or Amazon.

<./>ook</.> !

TRANSLATOR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuyskxSslys !

Yay youtube