The word for today is "hose".
Dammit. You'd think that I'd be able to choose a more interesting word than "hose" to write about. I mean, English, American and otherwise, has about a hojillion words like "tuffet", "gormless", and "phlebotomist" to choose from and I burden myself with "hose"?
Well, the strongest association with the word "hose" that my brain holds is with the Canadian slang "hoser" so liberally sprinkled through Strange Brew. I was only 11 when I first saw that movie and it left vivid impressions of that strange, foreign land to the north. My friends and I ran around calling each other knobs and hosers. This lasted about two months. So many years later, I still find myself blurting out something like "Oh, man! You are so hosed!" I understand that this adjectival form was developed and promulgated by computer geeks, but it only makes sense that a hoser would be hosed, so it sticks with me.
These are the same friends who had HBO, satellite broadcast HBO from the time before cable snaked its way into our area. When I'd spend the night at their house, we'd usually watch cheesy movies until their parents went to bed. Then we'd stay up trying to watch scrambled porn. The split-second sighting of a bared, multihued, and distorted breast would create quite a stir. Ah, thems were the days.
My most recent experience with hose was rather abstract. As some folks might know, I suffer from a debilitating condition involving an unreasonable attachment to a first generation Chevrolet Blazer. It's been in the family since I was yea high. We share the same birth year. I tend to refer to it as a "she". Anyhoo, I joined a forum, a sort of support network of sufferers. After overcoming the initial trepidation of wading into a new social group, I felt a little giddy being surrounded by people who've experienced the drip of rainwater on their thigh, the rust in the rocker panels and floor, and the eye-rolling of tolerant and loving spouses. For all the positives, there have been a few tiny minuses. For example, one guy was at the tail end of dropping a big-block Chevy in his first-gen Blazer. For the uninitiated, this makes him automatically cool, like the guy who built his own binocular telescope or the first kid to own a 286 in high school. This guy pinged the forum for advice on radiator hoses, custom and otherwise. I responded with some of the flexible hose I've seen on rods, roadsters, and customs. Subtly, over time, I learned that a turn-key solution is not what interests some folks. If it doesn't involve either five sections of hose from four makes of car spliced together or busting out the CAD/CAM software to machine an aluminum blank for casting your own hose from polymerized coatimundi saliva, they're not interested.
I'm trying to think of "hose" in a larger sense, but it keeps boomeranging back to the intensely personal.
Hrm. I guess that's all I can say about hoses for now, except that Strange Brew is Hamlet. The "Elsinore Brewery"... those hosers.
Pakeha