Tag Archives: dandy

Dandy

Dandy: (n) a man who is excessively concerned about his clothes and appearance; a fop.

I’m a Yankee Doodle one.

Yes, the British soldiers were so intent on getting under the skin of the American Revolutionists that they accused them of being gay.

That was it.

This the whole meaning of the Yankee Doodle song.

In 1776, a dandy was a man who over-dressed, stuck feathers in his hat—which was a style in France known as macaroni—and was so prissy that every woman, upon encountering him, gave up on any possibility of a night of pleasure.

So what did the Americans do?

Did they go in a corner and cry?

Did they punch people in the nose and throw a fit? (Or maybe throw a fit and punch people in the nose.)

Did they curse? Did they swear?

No. They didn’t even claim they weren’t gay.

They just decided to use the song as a rallying cry for the cause, which certainly must have made the British dandies awfully angry.

When I was a kid, the worst thing you could call someone was “a fag.”  But I will tell you—the kids who survived such ignorance are the ones who didn’t throw a fit, but instead, made fun of their attackers. 

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy

A Yankee Doodle do or die.

Yankee Doodle went to town

Riding on a pony

Stuck a feather in his hat

And called it macaroni.

You’ll never get people to stop being bigoted and offering lame attempts at humor to punctuate their prejudice.

You do have the power, though, to absorb their attacks, and turn them into your new marching song.

 

Antler

dictionary with letter A

Antler: (n) one of the branched horns on the head of an adult (usually male) deer, which are made of bone and are cast off annually and regrown.

As is often the case, I will now expound on issues I know absolutely nothing about, but still manage to muster an anemic opinion.

I have gone hunting but am timid to mention it because around those who actually have a “Daniel Boone mystique,” I would appear to be less than a novice and probably considered a “dandy.”

But hanging around a lot of people who have hunted animals with antlers, I have discovered that the male of our species has succeeded in projecting its own insecurity about the penis onto the head decoration of the local, assumed macho, deer.

So supposedly, it is much better to shoot one of these animals with seven points than it is one with five.

I would assume the deer have obviously learned not to be so presumptuous to tout their prowess of being “boneheads,” knowing full well that come spring, they will have to start all over again.

Actually, to the deer a set of antlers is very similar to the savings account of the average American family–just when you think you’ve got a good start, it falls off.

So I do not think there really is “antler envy” among this deer species. It is something we attribute to them because of our male insecurity about our own growth potential.

Maybe we’d be better off if “it” fell off every year … and had to grow back.

 

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