Two conflicting influences are converging to create critical mass. We face the pressures of spring term versus the temptations of the spring season. At such times, I prefer to take a brief recess from serious thinking and let my fantasies flow. Unfortunately, perhaps, I must do all this in my self-contained mind, without major chemical assistance. I learned two decades ago I am allergic to alcohol, and only a month ago that I am allergic to caffeine.
Still I can enjoy the vagaries of others. As a means of diverting myself, I have explored some of the eccentricities of college student life away from the books. Certainly not to my surprise, these eccentricities are constituted almost entirely by booze and romance.
For starters, I have examined some of the many current university terms for imbibing and drunkenness. It’s generally considered much too trite to simply say, “I was drunk.” There has to be some originality attached. Also, adding some euphemism to the condition somehow makes being drunk less repulsive, even when you’re dead drunk. Such hackneyed expressions as blotto, bombed and blasted mark one as mired in the sodden past of juvenile alcohol consumption. College-age drunkenness requires more inventiveness.
The politically correct can now claim to be “chemically inconvenienced.” For the SUV crowd it can be “getting high-centered.” For the wine snobs, “in the grip of the grape” or “inspect the vineyard.” Accounting majors might prefer to be “out of your zip code.” Pre-meds may resort to “gurneyed.” A member of the wrestling team could go for “Hoganed,” as in Hulk Hogan. Another term with an athletic twist is “looking for hockey sticks.” If you’re into obscurities, how about “beyond all shiznat” or its cousin, “shiznzazz?”
One category of label includes the kind of tongue twisting which can afflict a college student after the traffic cop stops you and demands a sobriety test. Among these are “ducking frunk” or “inbreenieated,” as in “No ocifer, I’m not inbreeneiated.” Another is “pucking flowed,” also “sotally tober.” And when you’re so wasted you can’t say wasted you might say “twasted” and be in fashion.
Some current student terms carry a potential sexual connotation, such as “neutered,” “nutcrackered” and “boning the bald eagle”
The pursuit of a night of alcoholic enjoyment becomes celebrated in such phrases as “going out to forget our names,” “hunt the brass rail,” “kick some brain cells,” “getting skis on” as in brewskis, “suck the monkey” or “painting the monkey.”
There is an entire category for that feeling of power alcohol brings. Examples are “driving the magic bus,” “play Boris Yeltsin,” “set sail with Captain Morgan,” “tap the admiral.”
Then there’s that feeling when you’ve had perhaps just enough, perhaps a little too much. That can include “fricasseed,” “gallstoned,” “Kentucky fried,” “legless,” “lost in the sauce,” “redfaced and horny,” “shoot the cat” and “sleeping with the enemy.”
One encounters that regrettable realization that getting drunk can become self-destructive. “Spanking my liver” is a good example. Picturesque is “barnable,” “I was so drunk I should have been locked in a barn last night.” One can visualize being “put to bed with a shovel,” “swallowing tavern tokens” and “to’ up from the flo’ up.”
Then there is MDA, Mysterious Drinking Accident. You get drunk, hurt yourself and don’t remember anything. Closely allied is SDI, Serious Drinking Injuries. To qualify as an SDI, you have to go to a hospital. This is contrasted with TDI, Trivial Drinking Injuries, which earn little respect. Close relatives are the UBI, Unidentified Beer Injury, and the UDI, Unidentified Drinking Injury.
Tomorrow Art explores CBD-Chicks before dicks, HMB-high maintenance boys and more in a further survey of college slang.