you better run.
another story in the chronicles of my "writing-cheques-my-body-can't-cash" mouth. i was walking up third avenue around 70-something-th last weekend, on my way to get a juice. (as part of my new healthy me, i am occasionally gagging on a vegetable juice. candle cafe on the UES makes one that doesn't taste like greens collected off "resources road" and pre-chewed by livestock. (resources road is the way my dad used to go to work at P&G, now weyerhaeuser in g.p.)) but, i digress. the eastern sidewalk of third avenue was closed for one block, due to ice falling from one of the buildings. i walked across to the western side of the street to keep trekking uptown. there was no barricade but there were two NYPD guys standing on the sidewalk. i asked if i could keep walking up the western side of third avenue. one of the two practically barked at me. some sort of grunt-snort pre-language call of the wild: "NO, I SAID it's CLOSED. CAN'T you HEAR?" well, actually no i didn't hear you. because your head starts straight out of your shoulders and you were looking off into the ether so anything you said, was lost in the wind. (I kind of wished i had one of those cards that deaf people hand out asking for donations. I would SO have handed it to him and sued his ass for something.) but, that wasn't an option, so, then i get all huffy. because the cops here are neandrathal yellers. okay, not all of them, but most of them. and i'm sick of being treated poorly by people whose salaries come out of my wages and against whom i have practically no recourse. so i looked him in the face and said, "There's no reason to get testy with ME. It's not my fault you're on icicle duty today." He sort of waved me off, dismissed me. To which I retorted in a sort-of under my breath, but not really way: "[snort] New York's finest ... more like New York's asshole-iest." Then I booted it out of there, but the other people who were standing around watching the falling ice started laughing. I wanted to chest thrust the cop and say "boo-ya", but I don't know what that means.
p.s. Still off caffeine. am drinking an herbal tea as i type. what's wrong with the world. will see how long i can go without caffeine. my new goal is to make it to march 1st without coffee or pop.
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7 comments:
You show those "authority-gone-to-their-heads" bullies! Have you noticed that people from gp tend to be a little bit anti-cop?
i'm not generally anti-cop. i'm quite pro-rcmp, but that could be my nostalgia for North of 60 and Due South.
accordinging to wiktionary, boo-ya is an interjection, in american slang, expressing joy or triumph. synonymous with "touchdown!"
but, wiktionary doesn't provide the etymology, which is certainly from "boo-ya-ka", an onotomotopeia in jamaican slang for gunshots.
i think that deep in your heart (or since moving to crown heights) you do know what the word means: and it's probably best that you didn't slam into the cop and shout that afterwards.
wow! there are even more definitions at Urban Dictionary:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Booya
they also give an alternate etymology for "boo-yaka" saying that the long form "booyakasha" (of ali g. popularity) is a jamaican corruption of a gaelic drinking toast!
thanks bhagoooooooosh-ya.
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